Character Animator

Hi, my project has suddenly stppped working - I can't do anything without encountering this popup 'Invalid Surface Image'. I've tried refreshing the scene and moving the project to my desktop with no luck. Is this Character Animator project just corrupt and ruined? Should I start again from scratch?

Hi there,I've downloaded a trial of character animator and am trying to import a puppet, but coming up with this error. Is it because I'm on a trial? I purchased from Graphic Mama and their bonus content will import but not the main ai file. Any ideas? I'm just starting to learn this program...Thanks!

Everytime I save a project it comes with 0KB. When I zip it and try to open, the programs cannot read it

Hi,I am a complete beginner here with Character Animator. I have watched Okay Samurai's videos, but they do not really address how I can make adobe stock character sets into puppets. The below image is what I am trying to make a puppet from. When I have downloaded the image it saves as JPEG and it looks exactly like below. I have tried searching videos on how to transform this, but I have not gotten anywhere. My adobe account is for a student and I have tried using Ps and Ai. I have tried looking for step by step picture instructions with bits of text to help with my understanding, but I am getting nowhere. I would really appreciate some help or guidance.

When I try to save my puppet in Character animator on my file server I get this warning:        Is it really not possible to save on my file server?

Not sure what is going on, but when I blink, the entire eye disappears, but the blink artwork does not display. I have 4 other characters set up the same way, and they are fine.

Hey, I've been sitting with this puppet for hours. I created multiple versions and I'm still running into trouble. I need the puppet to tilt with the tracker but so far it either only does it in the right quarter view, or in the right quarter and back views but with awful distortion. I can't see any difference in the rigging of each view or what the difference is in the two puppets that's causing them to behave differently. The branches on top of the head should be more like very stiff antennae - they shouldn't really move on their own. I've created many many puppets where the head is just the features and directly on top of the body with no neck and they work just fine.  If anyone can take a look and help me out, I'd really appreciate it! https://www.dropbox.com/s/zxbcp50og8wqunb/help_menorah_v2.puppet?dl=0https://www.dropbox.com/s/hl80g9w2y19v4tu/help_menorah-tall.puppet?dl=0

I've created automatic brow wrinkles that use Layer Picker: when eyebrows are up, wrinkles appear on the forehead, when they are down, the brow furrows between the eyebrows. There are five layers which define the layer range, so when it is working correctly the effect is quite effective.The problem is that Ch doesn't seem to understand what the range of my real eyebrows are. I can't get the extremes to register reliably, and sometimes Layer 1 will be replaced with Layer 5 — the complete opposite end of the range.Is there some parameter to adjust that will make Ch more sensitive to the top and bottom of my eyebrow's range during performance capture?

Hello:Characher Animator v4 Build 45MAC: 2.9 GHz Intel Core i9, 32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4 Newbie to CHUsing a purchased puppet & rig - Puppet is going offline before I can record animation.I am adjusting colors in the dynamic symbol library but now messing with layers. ERROR MESSAGE:Incorporating external edits failed for “/Users/colleenparquette/Documents/Adobe/Character Animator/Character Animator Build Merv 2/CH Media/Gathered Media/Albertwithlimbs.ai” Auto-Sync with Artwork will be disabled.Unable to render a 32771 x 829 image I am pretty sure this is a memory issue but I'm flying blind & can not tell how I can fix this. Any thoughts appreciated.  THX ~ C.  

Above the traditional Head and Body group, I have an extra Frontal group tagged as a Head and with Face behavior. This is to control the body with that Face behavior and to allow for more head tilt*. But this extra Head tag confused Body Tracking and produced a pronounced judder effect when my puppet moved--looked like she had the caffeine shakes. This was with only Body Tracker and Limb IK armed. Unarming the extra Face behavior did not fix it. Neither did unchecking Body Tracker's tracked handle of Head--this only nailed the Frontal Head to the background. What fixed it was temporarily removing the Head tag from Frontal. [Other extra Head tags below the actual head group didn't cause issues.] *As demonstrated by okaysamurai...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p05NNzb0lzo&t=749s

I want the torso to be fixed in place and for the head to be able to move without distorting. My current setup causes the head to float. please help

This is more of an annoyance than anything.  I build my characters onto the Illustrator file that came with one of the premade character puppets, using it as a kind of a template with the mouth visemes, etc., already in place. For some reason, once I started doing this, the knife and lasso tools (possibly others) don't work on my shapes when working in that Illustrator document.  Try to slice with the knife tool, nothing slices.  Try to select with the lasso tool, nothing selects.  I can copy the shapes onto a new document and the tools work normally.  So there's some kind of setting in that document that I would like to turn off.  Any gurus know how to do this?  Anything to save time. Thanks in advance!

Just upgraded to macOS Monterey. No problems with Photoshop, but some weirdness with CH. Strangely, all these issues disappear after clicking and saving between PS and CH a few times. But at first, the menu bar at the top of CH (File, Puppet, etc.) will not click open, and neither will behavior settings.

I do not know how to restore the default settings?Raul

I'm looking for in person lessons for Adobe Character Animator located in San Fernando Valley in Califorina. Does anyone know of a afilliate program with Adobe where I'm located? I'm having trouble finding anything online. Thank you very much in advance. 

Hi all! I'm having a little trouble getting my Zhongli character profile's eyes to track. When I look to the side, the entire eye appears to squish up or move the head, depending on what I tag as independent. I can DM the files to anyone who can help! 🙂

Hey! I recently made three character rigs for a client. The first rig (Kim) worked perfectly for them. However, on the other two rigs (Didi & Lilo), they are experiencing some issues:> Arms flail wildly during walk cycle> Eyes look off during blinking The biggest issue is that for me, these errors don't show up and I can't reproduce them. I've asked the client to use the same version of Character Animator as me, but that doesn't change anything. I've sent the puppet files as well as the entire project files, but that also doesn't help. I've tried to compare the rigs and see what could possible make Kim work and Didi/Lilo not work, but I haven't been able to find any solution. Here is a video of issues with the arms present for the client: YouTube Here is a video of issues with the eyes and arms present for the client: YouTube Here is a video of the issues NOT being present for me: YouTube And here are the puppet files: Google Drive  Doe

It would be useful to be able to associate an angle for the deformation of jaw handles. This angle would be relative to Head Tilt, so it would add a clockwise or anti-clockwise vector to the existing -180º vector of Jaw movement. Add the Manual Jaw Adjustment available to visemes to these handles, and we'd have a useful and robust new tool for managing facial expressions.Use cases:• Cheek deformation (in or out) for sounds like "Ee" and "Woo."• Actions like chewing, whistling, holding breath, smiling widely.• A wider range of possible jaw movements for highly stylized faces or profile faces.• Micromovents of ears, nose, etc. to give a face more dynamic aspect.Some of these effects can be achieved with current rigging, but the effects are not always predictable and sometimes a Cycle Layers is required to achieve the desired effect even though the look desired is really just a deformation of existing geometry.I think this feature would be particularly useful for Parallax rigs.

Hello! I'm testing the Character Animator Body Tracking on the Hopscotch Puppet and I can't get rid of the annoying flickering for the legs or arms. I've tried multiple ways to eliminate the problem, but nothing worked, such as reducing the Tracked Handles to only the head, the wrists and the heels or eliminating the Dragger Behavior. What should I do? Anyone having this issue? I have to mention that I was wearing a light green (lime green) hoodie and my furniture is yellow & orange. Is it possible that the contrast between my hoodie and the environment to be the problem? Any suggestion is greatly appreciated.

Is there anywhere I can download pre made cycle layers?I need to compose some scenes but I don't really draw, so it would be really usefull to find some things like fog, magic dust, stars, hearts, etc

Hey everyone, I'm working on an episode of a cartoon with lots of characters and one complex (animated) background -- all vector. I inserted all the audio and did all the lipsync so it's currently around six and a half minutes long. I started recording dragger movements for the different characters and CH keeps freezing and crashing. I guess that this is probably because my scene is too long so I'd like to split it into smaller parts, but I don't want to have to redo the audio and lipsync. Is there a way to split one scene into multiple usable parts? And what other things can be causing the crashes and how can I fix that? (I'm pretty sure it's not my computer.) Thanks!

I've followed the Bodytracker set up video and worksheet (thanks @okaysamurai) and checked out other rigs, but I'm struggling to woprk out why my character's arms aren't working. Any ideas?

I'm brand new to Character Animator and I'm having difficulty diagnosing a problem. Eye gaze tracking has stopped working for my puppet. Blinks and eyebrows work, so I know the software is recording my face. "Eyeball Right" and "Eyeball Left" are assigned to no-stroke/no-fill ellipses behind each pupil."Pupil Right" and "Pupil Left" are independent and assigned the appropriate pupil tags. Is there something obvious I'm missing? Thanks.

Any good starting tutorials for VERY VERY beginners?

Hey all, I am making a sample character for a project I am working on. The character's head isn't moving with the rest of the body when I activate the walk cycle. I have tried renaming the head layer, and changing the attach style. As far as I can tell, the origin point for the head doesn't want to move when I select it. Has anyone come across this? Thank you!Kenny