Character Animator

I recently created this Character in Illustrator and wanted to bring it to live now. Since I have had absolutely no experience with this I started with Character-Rigging in After Effects. After hours and hours I then gave up to use Ae and moved over to Character Animator. I already understand the basics of Ch, however the task to let the character perform a pull up seems pretty complex to me. The first problem is that the character is drawn from a slightly sidewards angle and therefore the right arm needs to be in front of the head. If I follow the basic structure of a puppet (head and body separately in a +"character name"-group) the arm is behind the head. Also I can't fix the hands on the bar and let the rest of the body move around freely without glitching.If you could maybe tell me how I should structure the body and where to put the Bones, Draggers, ...And is there any way to stop a shape, for example the arms, from stretching?Thanks for your answers!Felix

Hello,I've looked everywhere and tried everything but I cannot adjust the walk cycle built in behaviors in Character Animator. Is there a way to adjust for 3/4? I figure what's happening is that it's default is a side profile character so my right front arm is pulling way forward. I've tried sticks as well. I know I can't be the only one this is happening to lol. Any help would be greatly appreciated.Thanks, Gayle

Hello,I have a puppet with the arms set to the standard rigging. Origin at shoulder, upper and lower bones, draggable handle, mesh set to Contour, etc.I have also created a number of sets of arm movements organized in cycle layers groups and each are triggered separately via keyboard keys. All of these are in groups along with the R Arm within the "Right Arm" group, within the "Body" group. When I record, the draggable arm is very difficult to control and does not bend  without great effort, if at all.  When I remove the cycle layers groups from the Right Arm group all is fine and the arm works great. My problem is when the cycle layers triggered arm groups are outside of the Right Arm group I can't "Hide Other Layers" and therefore the R Arm remains visible when I trigger the cycle layers groups. Any tricks, tips?  THANKS!First set up allows arm to bend fine but the R Arm can't be hidden.              Seco

Hello everyone! I have one problem with importing video files in Character Animator, I searched on the internet but couldn't find the answer and I hope you can help me. The problem is that I don't know how should I export file from Premiere Pro or After Effects to Character Animator. The file I'm trying to export from Premiere Pro is just one minute of my screen recording. The best I was able to do is export as PNG file (and then I would get 2000 images that takes 1GB) and import it in Character Animator but then I wouldn't be able to control the video. For example When I press pause or I place the video to start from 30. seconds it would just start from the begining and it wouldn't react to pause or any other command. I know that I can make it reversed and import the puppet to premiere pro but then I'm not able to synchronize puppet's movement with the screen recording. Hope someone can help me. Cheers

Hello People,I really need your help (studied the youtube video and everything.)Basically, my pupils wont move. I have tagged them correctly, tried it with folders with both +Left Eye and Left Eye. I really cant figure this out. I would really appreciate any help.Thank you

Hello! I'm dragging scenes into PPro and editing them with wildly different degrees of success! After I get them lined up, I use 'render and replace' or nothing would ever get done because the dynamic link takes an extremely long time to update or not at all. Sometimes it works if I send the CA scene to media encoder, render it out with a transparent background and import it into CA. Sometimes that doesn't work. Now I have a piece that's been rendered and replaced but refuses to be keyframed?? Can you help?The good news is, when it does work it's wonderfully easy and expressive, and the resolution issues I was having before seem to be resolved!

Having some weird head warping issues. I've been using the Maddy puppet as reference and I think my rigging seems fine - but I can't pinpoint as to why the mesh keeps messing up. Thanks guys! Love what you're doing adobe team! Harold.puppet - Google Drive Harold.psd - Google Drive

After much time animating my figure in Character Animator when I view the layer in my AfterEffects it is soft. Will it continuously rasterize? Do I have to rescale my figure in Character Animator?Thanks - Pete

While in the program and in the record section my camera keeps turning off.  The light on my monitor is on indicating that my camera is on but the preview window doesn't show an image my character isn't moving.[Moved from the non-technical Lounge to the specific Program forum... Mod][Here is the list of all Adobe forums... https://forums.adobe.com/welcome]

I've got my puppet walking (one direction only so far—got more drawing to do) and I see his shirt is sticking to his butt in one place as if I've got a pin stuck there. I can't find anything on any layer that's causing this, though I've had similar issues before. Is there something I might be overlooking in tagging or the like?Martin

Searching 'blink' here brings up a million things, but I couldn't find this one. My apologies if this has been covered ad nauseam. I will happily read any thread I'm directed to.If I have Track Item Behaviors/Face/Blink Eyes Together deselected both of my eyes blink, but, of course, not together. And it really looks creepy. But if I select it, only the left one blinks. I have been searching the layers and tags like crazy and I just can't see anything that is set up differently between left and right.Martin

My main issue has been figuring out the logistics of what the software is trying to tell me. I have watched hours of videos but as the software develops things change. So my main question is, is there an up to date overview of the UI and what it is telling you. And more importantly why.I literally just figured out the the green circle only shows up if you have auto selected. I know I do not work for Adobe but it seem like this is very complicated. I used to do UX and one of the things I preached was modularity. It allows so much more flexibility and limits redundancy. An arm and a leg are the same thing so really all you need is bones and joints (err sticks and anchors).The software is pretty darn cool i just cant figure out the theory behind it. Like I want this character to be grabbing a podium So logic would dictate that I could attach the hands to a podium and perhaps have a magnet handle that can be turned on or off or snap (if the hand gets close to the podium). It just seems to

I am setting up a new character in Character Animator, and came across a weird problem.I have the sticks set up on the body level (see image 2).  When I go to preview mode, there appears to be a "rip" or "cut" in my artwork (see image 1).  There is no seam in the actual artwork; the neck is a solid shape.  The torso is a separate solid shape.Any help in figuring out why this is happening would be great.

Why can't I see the staple tool with the rest of the tools in rig mode?Thanks in advance for any ideas provided.Chad Bear

Is there any way to set a puppet pose as a home position to return to after a sequence? As an interactive developer I'm looking for a way to play animation more procedurally. The ability to export data would be awesome. I'd love to play a certain animation based on a condition and then return home to achieve a seamless transition.I saw the pose to pose feature, but I'm not sure that addresses the issue. Any advice is appreciated! Thanks.

Hi guys, I’ve just tried exporting from character animator to the media encoder - each time it says ‘error’???? It usually works fine with all other adobe programs. Please help! Regards, John.

Hi all, So I made my puppet and one of the eyes just disappears or is near to being closed, and I am not to sure how to solve it? I'm using a character animator cc

Is there a clean way in the current version of Ch to work with large puppet files in PhotoShop or Illustrator then Save As and scaled down to a smaller file and import that smaller one into Ch and then make revisions to the large file (in Ps or Ai) and get it to incorporate the external edits in Ch?I've tried to do revisions in Ps and then Save As the already functioning smaller file, overwriting it in the process, but I end up with all sorts of glitches​ when Ch incorporates edits. This seems like it would be a killer tutorial if such a workflow exists and a great feature if it doesn't.Martin

I've got a workflow wherein I edit really large puppet files in PhotoShop, Save As, scale down and then import the smaller, more processor-friendly file into Character Animator. That works fine except when I want to make revisions, I'd like to make them to the large Ps file then save it with the exact same name as the smaller file (saving over the previous version) and then have Ch incorporate those changes as if it's the same file it has been working with.I've been able to make revisions to the smaller file in PhotoShop and see those happily incorporate. But when I try the large file to small file and then incorporate path, Character Animator shuffles the grouping folders wreaking all sorts of havoc.So, to illustrate, here is a partial layer structure in PhotoShop:Here's how it translates in Character Animator:Note that the Right leg folder has moved to the top, but still contains the Right arm layer. This is not a renaming of the folder—the tags for Right leg are still applied, only

Hi I"m having an issue where my character will not use a few extra mouth swaps I made for mad and sad (not ah, d, eh mouths). Is there a trick for there alternate mouths in the new version?Also i'm struggling with the eyebrows which used to be easy to trigger any tips on videos for those? My facial expressions using the webcam aren't strong enough.I'm using CH CC (non beta)Puppet I'm using is here: Yanni.puppet - Google Drive Thanks in advanced

Is there a way to rearange the layer order in the Character Animator timeline?  I want to swap a puppet's position to be in front of another puppet.Thanks!

I am looking for a recommendation for a midi device. I am on a tight budget, but I would like to get something that will be useful and not feel limited. Thank you.

Hello there,since yesterday I have a big Problem with Ch. If I load an audiofile into the Program, it crashes if I put the audiofile into the timeline and want a playback. Or if I try to lipsync from audio. I try different audiofiles, but the issue is with all of my audiofiles, even with files, I used earlier without problems or crashes. Without any audiofiles in the timeline, the character do everything I want without crashes.What can I do?ThanksRafaelEdit: Now the program chrashes even if I want to activate the Microfon. Is there an Issue with the Sound?Edit again: Now is working with CH impossible. The Program crashes in every situation, even if I want to load an example from you...And once again Edit: I figured out, that there is a Problem with my Soundcard. I use a Behringer XENYX Q802 USB Audio interface and after I pluged out the Device and startet working in Ch, ther are no problems. Without Sound I can do lipsync and animations. I also can do playback so often I will. But only

I am having a go at using collisions to throw a paper ball at someone's face and have it bounce off.  My first challenge is I cannot work out how to get the collision to work on my fairly complicated person puppet - it just goes right through. If I try "collide" tagging other simple puppets, it works fine. I worked around it by putting a collidable puppet behind my person puppet - it's good enough.But I want the person to react on their facial expression, which means getting the timing right. At present as soon as I reset the scene the object starts dropping, so I cannot start playing the scene to work out if the timing is right. Is there a way to do this?(I am going to try using a particle cannon next, so I trigger the paper ball within the scene. Hopefully that will sync the two up. But wanted to know if I am missing a better way to do this.)

I am currently attempting to animate an AI character. For some reason the characters right eye stretches when moving the face. Also when I blink, the characters right eye warps and moves the whole right side of the face. The left eye works just fine. Any ideas?