Feature Requests

I love how you can edit trigger performances from within your timeline in CA (and even swap triggers), but I would love to be able to see and edit the timing of each discreet trigger frame from within the timeline. This would make syncronizing character trigger movements with keyframed props more precise and minimize unexpected timing results when you export your movie (given how loose the accuracy of the trigger playback is while editing in CA).

I want a feature with whichI can type in exact frame (e.g. 00:07:08:22)and move the playhead to that framejust like in AE and PR.   

I'm a newbie to Character Animator and I've succeeded in getting puppet to sync to an imported voice file on mp3.  But I want to use some mp3 voices that the character does not speak.  Yet when I import ANY voice file, the character speaks it, even if I have not clicked on the option to sync the characters lips to the voice.  How do I prevent the puppet from moving its lips to an mp3 voice?

This mainly applies to characters and rigs with the head-turner and/or other parallax behaviors enabled. There are two parts to this feature request.1) Please add the ability to preview and face track on multiple camera inputs at the same time on a synchronous subject (i.e. 2+ cameras front and rear, front and side, etc.)2) Allow for automatic switching of cameras based on face tracking such as if the main webcam loses face tracking or stops recording but the integrated webcam still has a clear angle of the subject. Or a tracking status indicator by camera to aid in calibration for multiple camera inputs, and to aide in manual camera switching.I have a use case where I would like to have a close-up cam for more detailed shots, however I often face 90* to a secondary screen to press controls or make adjustments to the scene. I continously lose calibration, but adding in a way to pause the tracking or quickly switch input cameras without having to go back to the camera panel to manually

It would be good if you could use multiple mics and cameras within 1 scene, this would be handy if you are creating a talk style show with a generic guest, we could use the audio feed to run the lip sync of a generic guest character while we continue to run the lip sync of our character at the same time. This could be done by bringing in a skype call and allowing the guest to control the character remotely

Presently the mouth shapes for "ah" and "oh" are inserted as still frames as determined by the speech file. How about we have intermediate frames for these mouth shapes? Like the transition from "ah" to "oh" could have just a few frames of transitionary shapes between these two (which we could upload ourselves). The program could then insert these transitionary phases in automatically depending on the order of the shapes. It would be very easy for the program to do this. It would make the whole thing look so much smoother, and if it worked, I think would be an absolute game changer.

After Effects has a relatively new system for track mattes where the heirarchy of the layer assigned to the matte does not matter. You can even move the layer around and the connection between them remains. And you can assign multiple layers to one matte. This functionality would have great use in Character Animator as a replacement for clipping masks which have to follow a precise, restrictive layer order. There's probably a more obvious example, but for a puppet with long eye lashes... If I could assign everything in the Left Eye group to be masked by the Face Background (edge of the face), except the lids, my puppet's lovely lashes could extend naturally beyond the face.

Can we import videos in Character Animator?

I've been mixing character animator with 3D scenes for years now. I still have to manually keyframe special props in AE to match characters hands, for instance. An example is character needs to throw an object in three dimensions, or a special effects layer needs to follow the hands and leave particle trails. Currently I have to add a null manually and keyframe over the imported CH artwork.  It doesn't even have to be natively brought in with the artwork. A simple "export handles to AE nulls" would do the trick.  thank you!

I am new to the programme. How do you trim or cut the timeline in animator once you have recorded something?

Hello everybody! I have been using Character Animator for a little more than 3 months now and I must say that I love it! It is by far the fastest way for me to animate my characters without losing time doing lip sync and body movements. I want to share with the developpement team some improvements that could be made for the future updates (hopefully they will be implemented!) First of all, I don't understand the zoom logic on the puppet track segment : When I hold the option and use my mouse wheel, it always brings to far to the right from where my mouse is. Audition is way better in terme of that : when you hold option, your zoom is centered on your current frame position, and when you hold command, your mouse position dictates where to zoom. Second of all, I haven't figure out yet if there is anyway to import puppet or psd/ai files that are stored in my Adobe Creative Cloud. If there is, it would be nice of you to tel me how, it could save me some storage space on

I need more mouth positions for my animations, which I can create, e.g. angry, furious, annoyed. At the moment there are only normal, surprised and smiling.Can you create more of these? Thanks a lot!

 Hello,I am Chhanda from Bangladesh. while doing my animation project I do cloth and assets as swap triggers, that time I feel If I could duplicate the existing triggers and add more elements Or delete something for changes then it will more fast and easy for us.

I composite CH characters in AE in 3-D. It is very difficult to syncronize non-character animator hand posititions, etc. in AE. Basically one has to keyframe by hand to track any part of a character's body. Example Sometimes the script calls for action sequences, and I have to fallback to characters rigged in AE. It would be super helpful to export a skeleton, or handles as nulls in AE. Seems like a pretty big oversight. Some things are just not suited for CH and must be done in AE.  thank you!

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How can I sit down in a chat and talk with someone from product. I have been using CA since prerelease and am very vested in its success. I have alot of very valuable suggestions from an engineering standpoint and from a animator/user standpoint. I would love to be heard. Who can I speak to? It would take forever to write up all the feature requests and bug reports and would love to offer my time for free.  

I'm fining that as I create more complex puppets the most time consuming thing is making sure I have the same behaviour settings across multiple profiles (Head turns, Walk cycles etc). If it was possible to add colour labels in the same way you can with triggers it may help with organisation and streamline the rigging process. For example some cycle layers in a mouth can be the same so it would be good to see at a glance with colour rather than clicking in each one. Please see attached. 👍

As far as I can tell, if you have Frontal and Right Profile the puppet will not switch from frontal to the profile when you use the arrow key. You have to create Left Profile as well for the flipping from “Frontal” to “Right Profile”. If the right profile is the default (like walkbot), then walking works. So it is not the walk behavior that seems to be the problem, but rather the code to decide to flip from the default profile to the walk direction profile refuses to work without Left and Right profiles both defined (and rigged sensibly).I think it makes sense to allow Frontal with only one profile. Puppets can walk backwards if the other profile is not defined - and this works pretty well! So allow only one of the two profiles to be defined, allow it to flip from frontal to the side profile, then make it walk forwards/backwards based on which arrow key was pressed.

Many times the automatic lip sync function does a great job at making the mouth move with the audio track.Sometimes the automatic process is horrible, and has to be corrected manually.Very often the following happens:1. I need two or three visemes in a 7-frame space in the timeline.2. I right-click and add the first viseme in the sequence, and it fills the entire space where I actually need three visemes.3. There is no way to disconnect the newly added viseme from the following one and shorten it to the proper length, so I can insert the next two visemes. The inserted viseme glues itself to the following viseme.Please reduce the length of inserted visemes to two frames, and let the user decide how long it needs to be.(Or create a way to separate two visemes that are glued together.)

Can he timeline navigation be more consistent with AE or Premiere please? Be great if we could drag over the time line and have the timeline"zoom" interface element in the same place. Also, to be able to change the colour of the takes and layers on the timeline as with AE and Prem would be more than handy. It's all a little confusing and difficult to work in at the moment.

I am a professor of art with an MFA in animation specifically. I need to see more examples provided which reflect the competency in figure drawing we encourage students to aspire and practice. Currently, that is not reflected in the examples provided. Additionally, where diversity is portrayed, diversity includes age. By restricting your examples to those that depict generally teenagers and children, you send a message we in art programs in art schools and colleges let alone education and the motion picture industry are trying to change. Individuals and companies are judged by actions vs words. This is one area the CH design team needs to improve. Suggestion: consult your UX folks. This is a key concept in usability engineering right now.

It would be very helpful if we could bundle certain behaviors together - like in a group or folder that can be turned on and off at once - so that we could arm/disarm behaviors more easily. For instance if you have multiple head turners applied to different views, and want to turn them all off at once, or if you want to bundle lip sync, eye gaze, and face behaviors so that you can disarm them when working with the draggers, then disarm draggers and arm those behaviors for recording.

I have been exporting only work areas via Media Encoder, but there is some communication issue between Ch and Me where my puppets' shoulders are bunched together in the resulting files.* So I went back to what I think is the risky function "Trim Scene to Work Area," which consists of actually deleting all your work except the work area and then undoing that--if you don't get sidetracked or there's a crash before you get back to undo it. 1) Is there a way to recover takes or a previous version of ONE SCENE within a project without wiping out all your work progress in other scenes that you've made since that version? 2) Can we please have an "Export>Work Area" function to simply bypass all this? Thanks. *Ch to Me issue examples in attached images.

Hello,So I spoke with an agent regarding this, and there is no resolve. If you are using your default internal microphone, Ch will, by default, record in stereo. You can hear both left and right when you record. If you are using an Audio Interface with a studio mic,  Ch will record in STEREO, and you can only hear out of one side. When you record in Audition, you can EASILY change this by selecting MONO recording. You can also do this in Premiere. If you can please update to where you can easily change the default recording from Stereo to MONO this would be pretty useful. Thank You

I have been working with Character Animator for 4 months now, currently trying to make a video with The Professional puppet in Puppet Maker. The rigging for this puppet is not adequate for walking or the motion library. If I use motion library to make it walk, it leans backwards like it is going to fall over, or sometimes it floats up into the air when it is not walking. If I use the walking behavior to make it walk, with the head independent the head rises up above the neck, if I make the head dependent the head distorts and becomes unusable. The neck and head handles have to be tweaked as well, before the puppet can be used. So, for the video I am making now, I have eliminated the walking. I spend more time trouble-shooting Puppet Maker puppets than I spend recording tracks.Just FYI, I downloaded a couple of free sample puppets from a non-Adobe puppet website, and they worked perfectly 100% if the time without me going into Rigging a single time. Would it be possible for someone