Character Animator

I am a relative newbie to Character Animator, but I am finding it a very useful tool. However, I have been stuck on a problem for a couple of days that I can't seem to fix. My character will not walk right when pressing the right arrow key. The 'Frontal' view works, and the 'Left Profile' view works when the Left Arrow key is pressed. All tagging is the same from Left Profile and Right Profile. I was only experimenting with the function so the character is by no means the most complicated.I am pulling my hair out! Not sure how to attach a file to this post but would be happy to share. ThanksJamie

Hello!  I'm making characters that have a 3/4 view and thus the arm closest to the viewer would be above the "head" and "body" folders rather than within the body folder. In the "attach" menu there is no way to specify to attach it to body.  I'd like the option to parent/ attach to any part of a character- have the full list drop down.Similarily, I have hair that swings behind her neck, the final layer "background hair."  It needs to attach to the head but be located behind the body and swing in motion to the head.  An easy thing in AE but not sure how to get that to function here.Finally, I wonder if adjustment layers in PSD would function in ChAn.  This puppet has color/ saturation adjustment layers in her file but they aren't doing anything to ChAn. 

Duplicated a scene with nine puppets twice so I could separate them into different scenes. When I went to delete some of the puppets from the timeline, all the puppets disappeared from the timeline, but the recordings I made remained. And all nine puppets were still in the scene...couldn't delete them. I tried opening up the original scene, then opened one of the duplicate scenes--that's when I got this message

I understand that only stills can be used as backgrounds in Character Animator.  However, I have a motion graphic video that I want to Puppet to interact with / point to items on screen.  What would be the best workflow for timing for this?  Currently it's a two person process where we start the video and the animating at the same time and one person animates the puppet whenever the video person says to.  Is there a better way to do this?

When i'm editing movements in the timeline it sucks having to figure out which "Handle ()" is the wrist elbow finger tips. etc

I just downloaded "Maddy" for studying her walk cycle and I didn't change anything in her structure.By trying to move her around I noticed that the eye gaze doesn't function.Is this a bug?

In CA I'm trying to trigger the visibility of an alternate mouth layer. I have a Mouth group with the various phoneme shapes but I want to be able to trigger a different mouth and hide the Mouth group. I've tried everything I can think of--- putting the alt layer in its own group or not, putting it in the Mouth group, using the new Trigger panel, using the obsolete trigger panel... nothing is working! What am I doing wrong?

Hi,one thing that appears from time to time in the final release is the "invalid graph channel frame type" Error on completing a take. What does it mean?It seems to be connected to recording a take with webcam + keyboard triggers. If I do them one after the other it is fine. Any way to avoid it? Or any idea what causes it?Cheers,Johannes

Hi - I am trying to import my character into Screenflow 7 but can't find a way to get it happening.  Screenflow doesn't work with XML or the character file.Suggestions please?Thanks,Nicole

Hello everyone. I've been struggling with 2 puppets for a week now, even after watching tutorials and reviewing sample puppets. One of them moves okay, but she doesn't blink, and i clearly tagged blinking. Also, when I drag her arms, the whole body distorts. For some reason, the mesh of the arm includes the body, which is a separate group (and most meshes are contour). The second puppet has a table in front of her. Instead of moving just the head and part of the body, the whole picture kind of pivots, with only her head looking vaguely ok. At one point the table stopped moving, but after I switched to check one of the okay samurai puppets, it started moving with my head again. Her bg hair also stretches instead of dangling, but if I change the modifiers, it detaches fro the head. I attached the videos, and the puppets. Please help me locate and fix the problems, Im on a deadline for a university project. Here are the files: WeTransferUPDATE: Fixed mom's arms, they werent independent, b

CHARACTER ANIMATOR...I am having a problem importing a project in Character Animator: I have project 2 open and want to close it and open project 4. When I attempt to import project 4 and click on project 4 in the Adobe file, the program reopens project 2. Also, the Ch program will not let me open any other project, and it will not let me close project 2. I cannot close project 2 without shutting down the entire program. And then when I reopen the program, it reopens with project 2 teed up ready to go. I don't want to ever see project 2 again, but I fear deleting it in the file because the way the program is acting, it just might delete project 4 or anything else.

Every day you are providing great new Ch information on how to build puppets better and it's terrific. Thank you.My question is slightly elementary... what matters regarding the "EYE" layers symbol in Ai when importing into Ch?  Is there a simple rule regarding layers and turning them on or off in Ai before importing them into Ch? Does it simply define the opening image in Ch?For example, below, Alamasol's mouth has inconsistencies, some things with the eye on, etc. W-oo has all three layers lit, while Ah has only one of two. Does it matter? Will Ah work just as well as W-oo even though one of it's layers isn't chosen?Thanks for helping with this.Evan

I was looking into whether it's possible to create custom behaviours and found that this page states:"If you are interested in developing behaviors for your own use or for sharing with others, please contact us for the SDK. JavaScript knowledge is required."Unfortunately the 'contact us' link just takes me back to the support forum.  Does anyone know how I can get my hands on the SDK?

I'm in the process of creating a pilot for an animated kids TV show based around a band of humanoid-sharks that play in a rock band.I made this short video to start trying to get to grips with Character Animator and iron out the flaws before I start on the job of animating our full length pilot episode.I'd appreciate any feedback anyone has. I'm currently using Photoshop as my base though I'd like to transfer the characters to Illustrator and learn how to get the lines in the characters a bit less sketchy (they were drawn by a comic book artist)ThanksPride of Aberdeen Awards Acceptance Speech - YouTube

After using the zoom dialogue box in the bottom right, is there way to pan? Similar to zooming then pressing the space bar in Illustrator (and many other Adobe programs)

Hi,I'm working with character animator and after effects together, but Ae, every 5 minutes, lost the connection with dynamic link. I'm working with 8 characters and I don't understand why i have to re-connect them all every time. It's hard, i can't connect all together but one by one and he changes independently the place of my characters. Please i need help it becomes a long long long job

I am sure I saw this in a tutorial, but am now having trouble finding it.I would like to apply an animated puff of smoke or sparkles or something right at the point I switch in and out of a trigger. For example, I'd like my puppet to change outfits in the middle of a scene and would like it to happen with some sort of alla kazaam sort of effect. Can I tie something to him to make this happen?Martin

I moved around files and renamed puppets in an attempt to get organized, now all my puppets (from the 'open recent' list at least) open like this?

Say i animate a puppet in a wide then want to hard cut to a close up of him continuing the action. There's currently no way to do this. please add this feature!

ive been having some issues with slowing down of the RAM preview and rendering, and i want to know if theres any work-arounds, or do i need to upgrade my ram? I made a video showing the issue and what ive done to try and make the program run better, but i wanted to ask you guys before i go out and buy more sticks of ram... and will buying more ram even make a difference. Thanks in advance for any information you can give me, -AndrewHeres the video- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8x6uccAJA4&feature=youtu.be

Hello,I have a puppet which I created out of the standard "new puppet in Photoshop". The default layers Chest, Draggable Right Hand.....Fixed Left Foot seem to do nothing, and are empty. I'm havnig a prticular problem with fixing the feet - I do not want my character to walk around, so need to keep the feet planted firmly in one place, but when I animate the character, the whole puppet floats around a bit. These shape layers do not show up in Character Animator at all.Anyway, if I create a new project with the default lbue guy puppet, his feet remain stuck to the floor, despite there being no Fixed modifiers.So basically - how can I fix my puppet's feet to the floor?

Hey guys, I feel like I have this happen too often, I update parts of my puppet and then it makes me re connect everything to the rig from scratch. which would be fine, but different parts act up differently every time. last time the arms didn't function right. this time its the eyebrows and blinking. the blinking only works if I really squeeze my eyes together then it registers a blink. not sure if there is a way to lower the strength I've tried with blinking strength but it seems it only works when recording, which I never do. as for eyebrows, they don't respond to mine at all, although they are tagged properly. one thing I did notice was that there are handles on both sets of brows. no idea why, but I click them and delete them, and they keep popping back up, they won't let me remove them, and it may be the reason for the issue. my character can go without using his eyebrows while I stream. I just need a solution at some point. Let me know if you guys have any ideas. Attached is a s

I am trying to work out the optimal way to use Character Animator, After Effects, and Premier Pro. It works, but it is extremely laggy (initially scrubbing plays audio but no images - after rendering and scrubbing for say 10 mins, I get one frame in 10 appearing during playback. The more I do the better it gets, but every edit of the master files seems to flush any caches. What is the best way to link the products up with good preview performance?I am on a dual core i7 Skylake processor with 16GB RAM, SSD, Indtel 520 graphics chip - a Microsoft Surface Pro. Not the best, but not bad either.What I current do is I have a Character Animator scene. It displays properly in Character Animator. I drag and drop the scene object from Character Animator UI into the Premier Pro project to set up dynamic linking. (I do not drag across the PNG files.) It appears in the Premier Pro project, showing its dynamically linked. I place the clip on the Premier Pro timeline. I start playing - I can hear the

, I’m very confused about recording walk Cycles.When I record take 1 of a walk cycle, if I record a take 2 of a different walk cycle a little farther away on my timeline...It erases the take 1 walk cycle that I previously recorded Even though it is on another part of the timeline what am I doing wrong?

I've made a few simple puppets, so I'm starting to get the hang of it. However, today I made a puppet in Illustrator and the guy's eyes are going in opposite directions when using the webcam for eye gaze. I've double checked all the tags and made sure they are correctly connected to the head. The only thing I did differently with this puppet is that I used a mask over the eyeball, so that the gradient remained perfectly circular.