Character Animator

I have an animation that has multiple takes synched to playing musical instruments but I am creating hundreds of individual takes... is there anyway to merge these different takes into a single "take" timeline rather than new ones?

Hi All, Created my puppet (Photoshop), and imported the desk from the clay sculptered dinosaur (free example puppets).  In the character animator timeline, the desk is on top of my puppet however I cannot see my puppet in the scene? I assume this has something to do with the desk's background, however I removed all layers (bar the desk) in photoshop. Please assist - Can this be altered in photoshop possibly, as I can only see 'edit original'.  Thank you

Hi. So... this is kind of a newb question, but I created my puppet from scratch in Illustrator without using a puppet template. This was because I am new to most Adobe products and couldn't figure out a way to create shapes/paths in illustrator without it becoming it's own layer. Long story short, everything works great when I import it into Character Animator but I want to have multi-frame visemes for my puppet and currently the character only has single frame visemes and looks quite choppy at times. How do I do this in Illustrator? For context, I created 'layers' by grouping the different parts and then dragging them into the appropriate folders. However, I can't create anymore sub layers in Illustrator because they are already grouped together. ex)+puppet   +Head   +Mouth       Ah (cannot add anymore layers preventing me from making it multi-frame)

Hey all, I have a client who wants South Park style 'real head' character designs for one of his clients (probably the most famous example is the Saddam Hussein character concept). The nutcracker jaw would be perfect but the SP character's head moves up and down and the jaw stays fixed,  Is it possible to do this in Character Animator?

3 'view' character of bumble bee, left, standing, right, all 3 views show up in scene...have designated left right and standing tags file attached Why do all 3 show up at same time...I am using the 'draggable' feature to move the bee around the sceneThanksMark

I know the Character triggers for Twitch have been disabled due to updates from Twitch.  As I understand the problem, every time Twitch updates its service, the integration breaks.  Anyway, I was wondering if Character Animator could be integrated with IFTTT (IF This Then That).  It's mostly used for smart home integration, but it is compatable with parts of Twitch's livestreams (typically to change colors of room lighting on a webcam or something).  Anyway, if Character Animator could let us set up triggers via IFTTT integration, we could make our own rules for Twitch integration... or make our puppet wave hello when we start our smart dish washer... not sure why, but there are a lot of opportunities for creatives to use the software in fun ways with IFTTT.The other benefit from a development standpoint is that Twitch maintains their integration with IFTTT, it's not up to the Character Animator team to maintain integration with Twitch.  I don't know what requi

Hi all, I have this problem with the cycle layers head movement i'm trying to recreate form the Character Animator Tips & Tricks (October 2017) video. ( Character Animator Tips & Tricks (October 2017) - YouTube )In this video Lynne Mitchell created a cycle layer head movement for some smooth head turns. Now i have this problem where the head turns smooth when i look to the left or right, it runs trough te cycle layers as it should. But when i look straightforward again it pops back, without the going trough the cycle layers. I did check the Forward and Reverse box but it doesn' t runs trough the cycle layers again when i look straightforward again. Does anyone know how to solve this problem?

Dear brothers in arms of animation warfare, especially on Youtube,   I would like to know how to mimick that choppy stop motion animation style of South Park, which are: The head movement when the character is speaking & The entire puppet movement when the character is walking   Please share your tips, tricks & hacks. A video would be very great and muchly appreciated!   Sorry for my bad english.   Sincerely, Ben   Title edited by Mod

I have two independent but overlapping shapes creating the illusion of two objects in a stretchy cloth bag.  On the two shapes is one image in a different layer (the image on the bag).  Is there a way to fix the image to both shapes so that the image will stretch/warp/distort as those shapes move/dangle?  I tried applying multiple "fixed" handles over both shapes, but the image only seems to follow the origin of the group (the group the image is set to "Attach To"), rather than distorting as the shapes move. Thanks!

I have a character that is sitting at a desk staring strait at their side. See below image. All I want him to do is lean forward in his chair. I've been using Character Animator for a few months now, and this has stumped me. No matter what I do, he just won't do it. Either his head and arms doesn't move with the body or both the desk and chair rotate with him. If I put a draggable point, it bends and warps pixels all weird. It seems like this would be super simple but how would you rig him to simple lean forward while still mainting funtionalality of head nodes and arm movements. I have the hands and head working nicely but if I want movement in that torso, everything just goes crazy.   Any help is appreciated. 

How can i use more trigger shortcuts? Normaly i can use the normal keys like "a,b,c,..." etc. But the triggers are limit to the number of keys.But can i add the other shortcuts like shift+x or control+v keys like or ?,.§, etc..?i can't wrangle it.Whats the trick? Thank youDavid

How can I make the jaw move with the mouth movements?  I did it before, but I forgot what I did.  I don't believe this is the same as the nutcracker jaw. I don't want a separate jaw/mouth, just having the jaw move when the mouth moves. I know it's possible because, again I've done it before.  Thanks!

Couple of questions regarding the art prep work in Adobe Photoshop specifically and how it translates to the latest version of Adobe Character Animator: 1/Regarding pen tool ‘origin’ points in Photoshop to indicate pivots - should the layer be set to 1% opacity? Or should the layer visibility be turned off, or both? Or are 'origin' points even needed? 2/Does a ‘mesh’ background element need to be created in photoshop to set the boundaries contours of the character, or does that just happens automatically from the collection of various parts in a folder in Character Animator? If it is recommended to be created in Photoshop, any tips on what makes a good working mesh, and what the visibility should be (visible? 1% opacitiy)? 3/In Photoshop, is there a way to indicate whether a layer trigger should ‘latch’, and also if there’s a way to indicate a ‘make sharable’ element in the folder tree, like there is with the '+' symbol to indicate independency? 4/What keys can be s

Hoping there might be a fix to an issue I'm having in the rigging view, where clicking the 'eye' icon next to layers makes the art disappear from the preview window.  The art is there, it's just not displaying. What's even more weird, turning one layer on in the head makes the eye icon next to the body disappear and vice versa.  Have tried reimporting and restarting the program, and it still won't keep the visibility.  I'm sure it's something simple but can't for the life of me figure it out. Thanks in advance for any guidance! 

When using draggers for a jointed arm, sometimes you need to be careful to extend the arm out sideways or else the arm joint might flip the wrong way. (There is probably the "right" way to do bones to minify this...  happening. My best strategy so far is to try and perfectly line up the two arm bones, then add a dragger for the elbow to use in emergencies.)For example the following shows left and right hands with draggers ending up in the same position, but the one on the right move straight upwards and resulted in the arm flipping inwards.The easy work around is to move the dragger in an arc from lower to upper position, so the arm extends out straight. But I find getting this arc right hard to do still. If you go out too widely, the arm will distort and stretch.You don't get distortion staying close to the body because of the bones. Bones dont allow compaction of the arm where the bone is. However they still allow stretch. Is it possible to turn off this stretch? Or define a mes

Hi Everyone, I am new in Character Animator. I followed the tutorial of Samurai and he explained everything well. The only problem I have right now is the body when walking it is squished along with the arms. Also, I don't know how to fix the weird deformation on my elbow. You can see below. https://youtu.be/7GltiYEHN1k Puppet is on this link https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7opzrrcu5hdqzlz/AABbZMmwc7ArXjvUifQHRnU5a?dl=0

This is my first time making a puppet in character animator based on a design I created in Illustrator (usually I use photoshop but this time I wanted to work with vectors). I followed the sample Illustrator character model and made sure that I didn't have any extra independent layers that were throwing the movement off. Yet I still have two problems... 1. The head tilt doesn't look natural.  In the past with similar looking characters that I made in Photoshop, the head tilted without any warping in the neck. I also noticed that when I tilt the head, the body moves slightly... I'm not sure why that is.2. When I move other parts of the body, the whole character moves. As you can see in this video, when I move the arm, the entire body tilts with it, like it is on a hinge. I tried making the arm independent, but then it wasn't recognized in the mesh (even in contour mode). Then when it isn't independent, as it is now, the draggable is moving the entire body with it.Here is a screensh

Hey guys, why is the head of my character doing this? Any fixes? Thanks!!!

Hey Everyone,So here is my video test with a new character.https://youtu.be/baczSHDOH2k  The right arm has a fixed pin but is still kind of wonky to say the least. I can't get it to actually strum across the guitar when I'm recording.I'm also wondering if this could be related to origin point?Attached is the image of where the origin point currently is but I have no idea where to correct this. I can see the location in rig but nothing I've done can move it. When I record I have to move X to something like 2500 to get the character in the recording window.I'm doing some digging here but have hit the wall today.If this is a good place to feature request I'd love to see something pop up in rigging issues that say "Hey, you're doing good but you are way off center, etc"

Everything else on the puppet functions as it should but he won't strum. Nothing in rigging issues mentions the arm so I'm at a loss for what to do next. Imported straight after I downloaded. No tweaks to the character of any kind 

hello my mouth character isn't moving rhith can anyone help ??

I believe this is a bug, but I am not sure. I am trying to give my character a permanent shadow when his arm crosses his body, so I thought I could accomplish this with a clipping mask, but here is the result: The shadow just turns into an outline. Here are the layers:  I have tried many different layer combinations and different work arounds. I even made a second "ghost" arm over the real arm, but the clipping mask still didn't funtion correctly and only showed the shadow ON the arm instead of in the torso. So is this a bug, or just a limitation? I have been going crazy over this.

I am new to this, I will readily admit it. I have spent hours looking through tutorials and researching online, but to no avail. It quite honestly might be something extremely basic, but I cannot get the ai file rigged correctly when importing it into CA. Either I end up with a detached head, or one that warps with any movement, the pupils won't track and head doesn't tilt properly. Any assistance and/or guidance would be greatly appreciated. I can't seem to upload the file here either, so I am linking it on Dropbox.Illustrator File: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nos7m16jannqvnr/First%20Puppet%20copy.ai?dl=0Puppet File: https://www.dropbox.com/s/092iyuv9l43bt76/First%20Puppet.puppet?dl=0  

Hello guys. Perhaps there's a workaround for this and I haven't figured it out yet. I need my character's arms to bend like the picture of this red suited character, and all I'm getting is what you see on the other image. I've tried making the forearm without lines so the lines of the other arm part fill that void but...no. Any ideas?

I created my charcter from scratch and I can't seem to get the eyes to work, the eyeball of my characters right eye and the left eye would just stay fixed and not move whatsoever, the only movement I can get is when my left eye is in its blink state in which it stretches out of proportion. Im new to character animator so I'm really not sure