The Limb Library
Rigging Shape layers with expressions is one of After Effects' most powerful workflows. This is how Path, Taper, Circle and Shape limbs are made, but there are so many more possibilities, and we can't include all of them as limb types in the main tool.
Enter… the Limb Library.
The Limb Library is an online, continually updated repository of dynamic shape layer limbs that extend the range of styles possible with Limber.
Click the
Limb Library
button. Limbs are organized into alphabetical folders in one column so you can quickly find them by name. Select one or more tags in the other column, and the folders will be replaced with a list of all limbs that have the selected tags. Select a limb to preview it. When you click OK
, it will download and build in the current comp.
Each limb has it's own, unique pseudo effect on the limb layer to control it's special features. They range from the specific to multi-purpose, but all of them can be adapted to some degree.
Browse the library, download a limb, and play with it!
If your character already has limbs and you want to change them into ones from the limb library, you'll need to copy and paste from the library limb, into the rigged limb.
Auto-scale and Outlines
A lot of the Limb Library limbs have an outline, and along with outline properties like color and width, you'll often see a checkbox called Auto-scale
. This controls whether the outline width changes, or is constant, when the character is scaled using Auto-scale.
If you find a bug in a limb library limb, or need a limb style that you cannot reproduce with an existing one, get in touch, and we may be able to help.
Offline Installation
Not recommended
We don't recommend using this feature unless you really have to. An offline limb library will not be updated alongside the online version and you might well miss out on new limbs and bugfixes to the library.
The limb library repository is hosted at GitHub. A small minority of users cannot access it due to network restrictions that are beyond their control. For this situation, you can download the library repo and install it locally, where Limber can use it without requiring network access.
To download the current limb library repo, click here. This should save a file called LimbLibrary-main.zip to your drive.
To install this library file into Limber, click the
Settings
button, then the Install offline Limb Library
button. Navigate to the LimbLibrary-main.zip file and click OK
.
Then, enable the Use offline Limb Library
checkbox to tell Limber to use the local version instead of the online version. If you want to switch back to using the online library, simply disable the checkbox.
Limber will display the date of any installed Library. You can compare this to the date of the current Limb Library by visiting this link in a browser and mousing over the timestamp in the table header, as in the image below.