Character Animator

If I sit perfectly still looking at the eyes of my character on the screen, they move. I have eye gaze off as I wanted more eye positions than the 9 the snap function allows. Sometimes it looks like the movement is due to me breathing (slight body movement, results in eye movement).  I have tried fiddling with lots of settings, but I cannot get it so I look directly at the screen without moving and the eyes stay still.What I would like for example is a threshold - ignore any eye movement less than X percentage. Is this possible?

When I select a layer in Rigging Mode I get a contoured yellow outline around the shape, but I also get a blue box defining, I guess, the larger area the layer fits in. However, sometimes these blue boxes are particularly large and seem to effect movement. For example, if I highlight my right leg, a blue rectangle appears that just fits around that leg, but if I highlight the left leg, I get a blue box that encloses most—though, oddly, not quite all—of the body layer. The left leg origin is within the shape of the leg and there are no other obvious handles, dangles or pins outside the shape. Both left and right leg are independent of the the Body and are arranged with the same hierarchy.I guess what I'm really asking is, could someone explain the blue bounding boxes to me?Thanks,Martin

I'm just trying to find out if this is because of the age of my Mac (specs below). I would like to bring my Character Animator scenes into Premiere and play them at full speed as quickly as possible; I'd even give up preview resolution. But they always seem to require a long, slow render before they'll play well at all. Is there a sequence setting that would be more native to the files I'm importing that would make them play nicer, faster? MartinEarly 2009 Nehalem MacPro4,1, 2 X 2.6 GHz Quad-CoreOS 10.11.6Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB system drive32 GB RAMATI Radeon HD 4870 GRFX CardBlackmagic Intensity Pro 4K, Driver: 10.8.2Adobe Premiere Pro CC 018, v. 12, Build 224Adobe Media Encoder CC 2017.1.2, Build 11.1.2.35Adobe Character Animator CC 2018 v.1.1.1Avid Media Composer v. 8.6.1

Every time I try to make edits to the artwork of a puppet in photoshop (like make a mouth longer) it does not update the rigged puppet. Instead it imports an unrigged duplicate of all the artwork with the new Ps saved information and sticks it into the existing puppet that is the same as it was before. I've had this happen on two different puppets. I use the same naming scheme as the example file provided on adobe's resources. I'm simply selecting the "edit original" option in the character animate menu and changing one small thing in a layer and hitting save. The "auto sync artwork" box is checked on the puppet.  I've even tried going back in history on the character animate file and then going back in history and the puppet and saving so it should be exactly as it was before and it still makes this duplicate when the Ch file updates.I did have a transform scale change in the puppet file(so the new artwork duplicate would import smaller), but I've tried putting the scale transfor

When I create a puppet with a "Left Pupil Range" group (which I hide - its just to control the range of the pupil), it gets tagged with the "Left Pupil Range" tag, which is good. However, if I also have a "Left Eyeball" group, it will also get tagged with "Left Pupil Range" as well (bad). This had me baffled until I noticed the duplicate autotagging (restricting the eyeball movement more than needed).  My suggestion is if there is a group called "Left Pupil Range", don't also tag the "Left Eyeball" group with the Pupil Range tag automatically.Oh, another one... "Left Pupil Range" gets autotagged with "Left Pupil Size" even though I have a "Left Pupil" group. Another little gotcha that stops eyes from moving by default. You have to remove the tag else the eyes won't move (because the pupil size equals the pupil range).

Bonjour à tous,J'ai un petit souci en ce qui concerne la bouche de mon personnage. En effet, j'essaye de lui appliquer plusieurs types de bouches (triste, confus, heureux) pour lui donner plus de crédibilité. Cependant, soit mon personnage se retrouve avec les 2 sets de bouche heureux et triste, soit seulement avec le set heureux. En regardant des tutoriels en anglais, j'ai vu qu'il fallait faire des modifications dans le panneau déclencheur appelé "Swap Set". Sa fenêtre se trouve juste à côté du panneau historique et porte le nom de "triggers", cependant ce panneau ne s'affiche pas, et je ne sais pas comment l'activer. J'ai la version beta 2017.

This is driving me mad, the left arm which sits slightly behind my character works fine and hinges from the shoulder. The right arm which is the top layer will not attach to the shoulder no matter what i do. I'm sure its something simple but ive literally spent all afternoon trying different things. The online tutorials mostly show an older version so doesn't completely apply to my problem. I really would be grateful for any assistance, regards, John.

Hello!I detect that some letters are pronounced different in English than in Spanish, for example Aa - A, Uh - U, And that I notice it in the movements of the puppet 's mouth, how can I improve the way I speak?Thank you!

I'd like to rehearse my trigger moves before I actually record them. I notice that triggers don't fire when just playing a scene, they only work when the scene is paused or recording.Ideally, I'd be able to run through the scene and practice my moves. I know a work around is to do it in record mode, then undo. A minor, but annoying workflow hiccup...Am I missing something? Is there a way to play through the scene and see the results of hitting triggers?

Hi all I've been teaching myself Adobe's products for the past year and a half and by far character animator is my favorite. Unfortunately my artwork and rigging leaves a lot to be desired. My strength would be more in after effects and compositing. I'm curious if anyone out there wants to team up to work on something. I've been making fun of the NFL in most of my videos but would like to do something more original. Shoot me an email if you are interested [email removed in accordance with forum rules]    www.shooterandthestache.com

Sorry for the unclear question. I was not sure how to phrase it...I don't really use CA to capture live performance, but it seemed like it may be a useful tool to create animations.This is my first go with recording in the timeline after setting up my puppets. I noticed that every pass of a recording whether real-time or step recording results in a a new take layer for each trigger used. I thought my workflow would be adding triggers step by step. For example, I have a trigger to raise brows. I step record this trigger exactly where I want it to be across the timeline. If the character raises brows 15 times... I end up with 15 layers of takes (if I step record or try to record real-time in multiple passes)! It makes quite a visual mess of the timeline. Is there some better way to do such a step-recording type of workflow? Or a way to consolidate takes into one take? I basically would like to see all triggers in the same row. Kind of how a video or audio timeline would work. I know I ca

Hey, easiest thing to do is check this link Character Animator puppet twitching during record - YouTube I've recorded a draggable behaviour on a sub-puppet arm, but all I want is a static 'hold in place' position to begin with.  However, when I play back the recording there is a slight twitch in the puppet's hand.  What is happening maybe? How could I fix it?CheersPhil

Hi! Just upgraded to the new full-fledged version, and although I can see my puppet in 'rig' mode, I'm suddenly getting a blank screen in 'record' mode

Just wanted to see if anyone else is experiencing a lot of freeze-ups in Premiere Pro 2018 when working with Character Animator 2018 1.1.1. I've got a Premiere project with Dynamic links and PNG imports from Ch and I keep locking up. I haven't had a chance yet to see if it is one or the other of those file types or if it's that I'm working in 60fps, but figured I'd post here to see if anyone else has this experience.MartinEarly 2009 Nehalem MacPro4,1, 2 X 2.6 GHz Quad-CoreOS 10.11.6Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB system drive32 GB RAMATI Radeon HD 4870 GRFX CardBlackmagic Intensity Pro 4K, Driver: 10.8.2Avid Media Composer v. 8.6.1Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018, v. 12, Build 224Adobe Media Encoder CC 2017.1.2, Build 11.1.2.35Adobe Character Animator CC 2018 v.1.1.1

I've added the nutcracker jaw behavior to a character and it works fine using the camera but after disarming the camera and microphone, dragging a WAV file into my timeline, selecting the puppet, and then choosing "Compute lip sync with audio file" the jaw does not move. I can see in the timeline that the lip sync worked, but no jaw movement on playback. I've tried it with demo puppets downloaded from this site as well and can't get it to work with those either. 

HiI have been messing around with Character Animator for about a week and i was more interested in making my character walk and run rather than just starting with the basic of facial expressions. I have successfully made my character walk but while recording him walking and running, i am experiencing a little problem.When i try to record my character walking, it records with no problems. But when i play the recording back it always starts walking from the center and then goes out of the frame while other facial expressions and hand movements are still playing, but all outside the frame. How can i tackle this problem ?

Hey All,I think I might have screwed things up. Working on a project on a dropbox with two separate machines. There is no backup. Looked at some of the other threads under this category and wasn't able to find a solution that seems to fit. So... there's a obviously a conflict in the object directory. Is there anyway to fix this?It's ironic because I just went through the command 's' checky messages in Adobe Character. If you haven't tried it keep pressing the hotkey for save and you'll find a series of jokes. I also promise to use save as for versioning in the future. Especially after doing a TON of work on the project.

Hey All,I've working on a puppet with multiple head poses. In each head pose there's a swaps set for different mouths and eyebrows and triggers (like glasses). For each head I build a unique swapset and trigger.Basically, I end up with a TON of what feels like redundant swapsets and triggers. Which takes forever to setup, which is fine... but when I'm in record mode it gets  a little more challenging/confusing.For instance. I have a glasses on and off swap set for each of the 5 head positions. When I'm recording there ends up being 5 layers of glasses on and off. Add to that the mouths and hands etc etc... there's a TON of layers. It becomes really hard figure out whats what when you go in and edit the performance.Is there a better way of doing this? What are your techniques/strategies for organizing tiggers and swapsets?

I'd like to set up a 3 way walking puppet similar to the Maddy, but with the exception that it could remain still in a left or right profile instead of reverting to the frontal profile.My first attempt was to use have 5 groups, Frontal, Right Profile, Left Profile, Right Profile Walking and Left Profile walking and then just use a swap set with latches. It doesn't seem to work though.Is it possible to do it with just 3 layers? Ie Could Maddy stop and face left?

Is there an actual way possible to control your whole character or just the triggers, using your XBox or any other windows compatible gaming controller?Because if we can, that would be extremely cool and easy!

My puppets are working well, but my puppet's eye Pupils seem a bit sluggish.  Is there a way to make them a little more active without changing another control?

I'd like to be able to have my puppet start far away and then, while recording, gradually move him closer to me while staying in the center of the frame. Currently, as best as I've been able to figure out, I have to work both the Scale and Position Y Transforms at the same time to achieve this. I think a Z Transform would address this. There may well be a way to do this one already that I simply haven't figured out (true, I suppose, of all my requests). If so, please forgive me.Feature Request: A very simple Z axis Transform so you could resize without losing position.Martin

Actually, I'd like this across all of Adobe's products and if it already exists, I'd love to be shown how to implement it. It is often a very valuable sorting feature.Feature Request: A sortable column that shows when a Puppet or Scene was first introduced into the project.Martin

I like to make notes to myself describing what a scene or puppet is about.Feature Request: an editable column in the Project window that allows me to type whatever I'd like.Martin

I'm working in PhotoShop with a puppet that is 2400 x 4800 pixels. Even after cleaning it up and merging whatever can be merged and throwing away whatever can be spared, this is a 182MB puppet (it was 384 before I threw away reference layers). That really slows down my computer. So before importing, I duplicate it and make a smaller version. This works fine, but I would like the software to do it.Feature Request: An import option that scales down the PhotoShop or Illustrator file to a selected pixel size that would still link back to the original, larger file via Edit Original.Martin