Character Animator

I have a puppet sitting in a chair behind a desk.The puppet's layers are ordered below the desk to be able to make him walk behind it and sit down.I want to be able to put my puppet's arms on top of the desk to "work at his pc", but naturally the arms go behind the desk due to the layering order.I tried to create an extra set of arms that are layered on top of the desk, but I can't seem to deactivate the original arms or "invert" the trigger to make the arms disappear.Any tips would be appreciated!

Hi folks, I had a nice walk to the left all going on, puppet turned - with some in between animation - but then when I tagged the other side it's all gone wrong and I can't figure it out. When I turn to the right now I have just a head and when I turn to the left I have nothing. Any help appreciated, this is driving me crazy!

Does anyone know of a program that can convert video of people into animated objects. ie... If i have a video of a human walking, it will convert that video into a dog walking like how the character animator/iphones animoji works. How they mimic ones facial expressions, I was looking for a program that could mimic a a body movement into a animal movement from a predesigned 3d/2d model. Rough animation movements are fine.

I'm new to Character Animator and I'm not sure why the record screen is blank.    

Hello, I am trying to match arm movements in the Record timeline. I can get the arm movements perfect for my right arm, but I can't match the movements easy enough in my left without a ton of trial and error. Is there anyway to copy and mirror the animation from one arm to the other, to get them to sync up? My goal is to have a character wave his arms, but together in the same movements. Thank you!

What would be the most elegant way to record a talk show type scene where the two particpants are far apart? The best I can come up with is to have the two computers independently run character animator with syphon on and record the video conference off something like skype or MS teams...but that gets two uneven sized windows...not the daily show type setup I'd like. I've read the howtos here...but they would seem only to work with comptuers in the same room or they don't seem to support 2 puppets in the same scene. Application: I'm teaching at a uni in the Netherlands. For one of my classes I created video annotations for each of the powerpoint slides using character animator (the red monster is great). Students go through the deck at their own speed and the clips are 30 secs to 5 mins long...good for short attention spans. For a class in the fall there are 2 of us who teach...and we play with each other in front of the class. We want to be in the scene together. Oh...and we don'

Hi, I'm a little confused as to why I'm unable to install version 3.2. I'm trying to work on a project that involves animating a rig built in Illustrator (which I have the most recent version of) however I can't seem to do so. The rig appears in the 'rig' section but not the 'record', which is odd. I'm in the UK, I have no idea if this could be the reason I cannot update? I'm also not sure if it's the fact that I don't have 3.2 for me not being able to correctly open the illustrator rig?Any help would be much appreciated, cheers.

There seems to be a lot more activity here recently as more people are trying out the software. Some of the problems are hard to solve via forum posts and screen grabs. Nothing like sharing a puppet, opening it up, and trying to solve the issues. But I thought it could be interesting for others to watch/suggest/ask live. We could do a Google Meet or similar where people are welcome to join and bring problems, share screens, share puppets and we debug and just chat about techniques live. Would people turn up if a call was organized? Would people be willing to share their puppets to use to debug live? Or even just show off their work for a few minutes and answer questions on how they did it?

Hey guys. Is't been 3d day already I'm trying to find solution. Probably you'll see something I missed.I'd want the puppet to walk left and right by pressing arrows. And it does but with left arrow it works as a normal swap set and all the rest position dissapear unlike right arrow shows standing frontal and walking profile positions at the same time. It helps when I delete the swap set for the body positions and just turn off quarters but I'd need possibility to switch between body positions without starting walk behavior. Also I untagged right quarter as right quarter because when it is tagged somehow it starts to use walking behavior for quarter and not for profile. The problem doesn't occure for left part. I'm totally confused. It's all set up the same but works different.In case you'll be so kind to look through the puppet you can find it here  

have been having issues with the recording being a lot different than what I actually do during the recording session when it comes to puppets tagged with the dynamic tag. I have my own puppets set up that are not functioning correctly, but to make sure it wasn't my puppet having rigging issues, I downloaded the basics physics puppet from Adobe to demostrate, so that the set up of the puppet wouldn't be the issue.And here is a video of my screen as I record and play back.You can see my actions as I record, but when I go back to view, it's totally different than what I wanted recorded. I uninstalled and reinstalled CA right before filming that just in cast there was a glitch in my update. Is that's what supposed to happen when I record? It really makes no sense to me why it doesn't record my actions as I move the draggable item. (Note: If I turn off the dynamic tag, but leave collide and draggable attached, it will properly record the scene, but I really need the dynamic tag to work)

Hi, everyone! I made lip sync track for a puppet that had one mouth set. Then I edited the character, and added an alternative sad mouth set. Then I created a swap set from those mouthes. As I press the designated key it switches the alt mouth on. And it works while I talk via camera. But when I play my pre-made lip sync track, it doesn't stay alt, it goes as usual. When i stop playimg, and trigger the key, mouth changes accordingly. Press play again, and it goes to default despite my pressing and holding the key.  Example file here What am I doing wrong?(

Hey! I'm new to Character Animator and this may be more simple than I thought. I was wondering if there's a way to attach just the mouth presets onto a still Photoshop image. I'm trying to create some minimalist videos and for a lot of my shots I just need the mouth to be moving while the "character" is just a picture. Any ideas?

Hello everyone.  The arms of my character seems to react in slow motion to the draggers. I don't know why. I've been testing it with and without ArmIk behaviors but it does not seems to work. Any Help?

Hello, I'm just getting to know Character Animator and I was following all of Okay Samurai Tutorials on YouTube, and when I reached the "Replays" tutorial I noticed that there is a difference in the Arm IK panel. I couldn't fix the elbow problem because there isn't an activation button next to the Reverse bend check.   Please check the attached screenshot below.    Is the problem with the version I'm using or is there a new technique for it? because even when I check the boxes next to them there is no change to the elbow bend issue.  Waiting for your reply.   Regards, Maryah 

Hi! I'm recieving this error code that stops the "record" screen from updating in real-time. It hasn't crashed the program, but it did stop it from saving properly initially. It happens whenever I select a new layer, it's non-destructive, but it does get in the way, and will stop me from being productive.If anyone understands this error please help! -Paul

I hope the attachment explains it all.

Please help me figure this out so I can save my project file! While adding some finishing touches to my rig, randomly, the images from the .psd files began showing up like this inside of character animator: I keep receiving this error: Internal error code: (457558034:248+18)I don't understand what "attempt to index a nil value" means nor do I know how to fix it, and I don't believe it is a memory issue, but here is what it looks like:My photoshop document is only 3.4MB.Here is a link to my project file. Please help me figure this out so I can save my project file! P.S. - Besides this problem, this program rules! You guys have done wonders for me, and I'm grateful! -Ryan HayesImaginal Studios 

Say I make a waving hand and then the hand moves to the chest like when you introduce yourself. Then I realized the movement to the chest after the wave is not really good, but the waving hand is very good. I know I can do a second take and then make a transition. But here's a problem, because I am going to take another live data, the arm and the hand return to the rest A initial position. That makes me unable to project the position after the waving hand to make a continues movement of the hand to the chest. My question is how can I have something like "inbetween" in the traditional frame by frame animation? Hope you get what I mean Thank you!

Hi, Can someone please help me with this error code please? When I open the CH project this errormessage appear:                            Error!Internal error code: (36040884:256+17) attempt to index field '?' (a nil value)i created the artwork in adobe illustrator. But it would not let me open the file in Character animator. Any sort of feed back would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

In certain recordings I would like to sync, or visualize arm movements to make both arms move about the same speed and height to each other. Say I want to record an "I want to give you a hug" scene and have both arms come up with the motion of an open arms for a hug.. I only have one mouse to move one arm at the time. On the second recording I can't view the first recording of the first arm, so recording a second arm movement to make it match with the first arm movement is not that exact.  Is there a way I can work around this?  

I got a character that was working pretty good, but I modified one picture on the psd files and suddenly I coudln't exchange the hands of the charenter anymore.  I reuploaded the original psd files from the character and still doesn't exchange hands.  Is there anything else I can do to be able to exchange the hands of this character? Check out video below.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkCRsaHgkQk  

I have been having issues with the recording being a lot different than what I actually do during the recording session when it comes to puppets tagged with the dynamic tag. I have my own puppets set up that are not functioning correctly, but to make sure it wasn't my puppet having rigging issues, I downloaded the basics physics puppet (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-7uTIfXW8E) from Adobe to demostrate, so that the set up of the puppet wouldn't be the issue.And here is a video of my screen as I record and play back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb62xnQbbtYYou can see my actions as I record, but when I go back to view, it's totally different than what I wanted recorded. I uninstalled and reinstalled CA right before filming that just in cast there was a glitch in my update. Is that's what supposed to happen when I record? It really makes no sense to me why it doesn't record my actions as I move the draggable item. (Note: If I turn off the dynamic tag, but leave collide and draggabl

How to copy a dragger movement from one part of the body to the other so it will have a same movement? Say a clapping hand, how to only have one arm moved, and then copy that movement to the other arm so it will have a same movement? When I move it one by one, often the movement is not synchronized, such one arm is lower than the other, or one is already moving while the other hasn't, etc... Thanks!

Hi everyone! Could you share what you use, or how you get smooth arm movements? For instance, I am trying to make my character wave, but when I use my mouse, it takes forever for me to make it look normal. I plan to buy a waicon tablet and maybe that will help me. Has anyone had experience using a waicon tablet with Character Animator?

I've enabled the walk function on my puppet but her hair and hat behind her hair do not move, even if I have tagged them as Face. Any suggestions? Please see the video attached.  Thanks! https://vimeo.com/412543410