Questions

After following the instructions on this very helpful post I was able to make eyelid animations work for my starter puppet. (How do you get Eyelids to animate for squinting and blinking? ). I've noticed that my puppets pupils warp as the eyes are closing but I would rather they stay the same size under the mask.Bonus question: Is it possible to have eye lashes on a blinking puppet? It seems that without a blink layer, my fully closed eyes just disappear completely.

Hello,I have a quick question: does a puppet necessarily have a folder for the head and a folder for the body?I'm asking because I have an idea for a new puppet where the head and body are made up of a single shape. With the handles, I would then define the head in the upper area and the body in the lower area.Is Ch right to do so? Has any of you had any experience with it?Many Thanks!!!Gabi

I'm a songwriter of children's songs. Some of my characters (puppets) leave during verses and then reappear for choruses. Besides creating a second puppet, is there an easy way for a puppet to disappear and then reappear?

I'm actually a pianist with access to a lot of midi keyboards, and many years of practicing, so I have quite a lot of co-ordination in my fingers. I'm fairly new to CA and am learning to create movements to my children's songs that I've composed.My questions-1. What are the advantages of using a midi-keyboard vs. a regular computer keyboard or a stream deck?2. How do you program a midi keyboard to make movements, etc.?3. What size of midi-keyboard is optimal?  All of mine are 60+ notes and large.Thanks for all the information.

It is to be crazy. No sooner have I solved a problem than the next .....Now I've tried the head rotation of my puppet with webcam. Unfortunately, the body does not move.I have already searched the forum for this topic. But all the solutions did not help me. Also the videos of Oka Samurai did not help me in this case.When I remove the "+" in "Front", "Right and Left Quarter" and "Right and Left Profile", the head deforms. If I put a "+" on torso, an error message will come.The handle head is connected to the body, the individual head views also. I have already shifted the Handel several times upwards and downwards. But that does not help either.What did I overlook?PS: So that the first thread of mine is not too long, I make now for new problems on new threads. Screenshots of this puppet (and problems) can be read here:Several problems: head, arms, walking, stage

My puppets arms will not move when he is walking.  I have each arm independent and I've made sure the Attach To is set to Auto and I've tried both the Weld and Hinge Attach Styles. I can move them by dragging them but they just won't move when walking. I've also tried the Arm Swing, Arm Angle and Elbow Bend settings and still nothing. I'm out of ideas.

Hi everyone, hope you're all well.I'm looking for some help with issues I'm experiencing with Character Animator (I'm a new user of the CA software, but have pretty good knowledge of other Adobe apps).Here is what I am trying to do:I'm making a video in AE and using CA for a puppet with lip synced narration within the video.Here are the problems I encountered:Initially I used dynamic link and everything worked fine, the CA project imported effortlessly and I carried on with the project, however after saving and closing everything the next day CC returned an error saying that the "HEAD" file within the "Ch Data" folder of the CA project could not sync (note that prior to creating the dynamic link the CA project was being opened and modified with no issues for several days).When I went back into AE I was given an 86::1 error that AE could not find the CH project. Meanwhile the CH project stopped opening altogether and started returning this error:I figured with was some human error or dy

Every so often a question comes up on problems with dynamic linking. An alternative strategy is to export video files and load the files into PP or AE, but if its just a puppet (not background) you need to export preserving transparency information which most media formats do not support. I just put together a blog post Exporting Adobe Character Animator Videos with Transparency – Extra Ordinary, the Series which describes the steps to export videos with transparency preserved in case of use to anyone. Its not that hard, but there are a couple of steps that are not so obvious.

Hi. I've tried searching with no luck. Is there some .ai or .psd file that contains ALL possible layer tags? The templates provided are fairly limited right? I've found this page:Prepare artwork in Adobe Character Animator But it seems to be missing stuff as well, since it doesn't include anything about pupil range which I've seen mentioned elsewhere.Has anyone made a .ai or .psd templates that has all possible tags?Thanks!

Hi, I'm new to character animator. My puppet is set up with triggers to switch poses. In one of my views (left profile), the head was disappearing as if it were expecting a front head (none existed in that view). I realized that some of the head layers for my left profile view were not named/tagged correctly, so I renamed and retagged them, but the behavior is still not working. The body flips but there is now only a 3/4 left view that is perpetually blinking and no profile view (though there is no more phantom front head). The heads are shareable - not sure if that is related. The unique views are left profile, left 3/4, front, right 3/4, and right profile.I cannot share the artwork as it's under NDA, but please let me know if you have any insight on how to solve this.Thanks!

Hello, is there any way to apply the single selected handle to a second physics behavior?It's about the following: I would like to move earrings once. They should give left and right. Then I want to move hair. But they should swing up and down. One can not adjust both in a behavior physics, so I would like to divide that. So far I have not found a way to do that. Is there any?

Hello, I have several problems and hope someone can help me.This is my first puppet (created in Illustrator) and I'm still at the beginning with the settings. I have set all the handles, for that I have used "Maddy" as a template.HeadUnfortunately, the head does not move when walking. He stays rigid in one place. As with the puppet "Maddy" I have the handle "neck" attached to the head. But it does not work.ArmsWhen walking the puppet, the shoulders are rocking up and down and not staying in the right place on the body. Maddy has the "R Arm Stagle" and "L Arm Stagle" on the body. I think that keeps the shoulders in the right place. But how do you make these handles? I can not find anything at the levels. In addition, the movement of the arms looks very funny.WalkingWhen walking the puppet, the knees are distorted quite funny. I have already moved the handle "knee" and changed the stiffening but unfortunately it does not help.StageThe stage is too small. Is it possible to change the size

Im not talking about the puppet, just an object like a table or something.Is there a way of moving it slowly from one side to another ?

Hey guys! Thanks for checking out my thread and trying to help.I have a strange problem, to be honest i am new to all this but still i couldn't find any reasonable solution.What is happening - Whenever character closes hes mouth (when they disappear) black dot appears on forehead of the character.I will upload image to show you what i mean.When he is talking it's all good  : When he is making a break this happens : Thanks!

When I enter a different value (say 20%) for Camera Strength under Eye Gaze for the Item Behaviors, after I refresh or make a little change, it reverts back to 100%This also happens for Head Position Strength and Head Scale Strength (that I'm aware of) What's going on here and how do I keep the values that I enter from changing back to default every time I refresh?

HI,I'm having a hard time importing my CH project into AE with the new updates (note--it used to work fine before). Having read your other posts, I have made sure both programs are the most up to date. I am now using dynamic link as every time I try using the PNG files and the .wav files the audio doesn't line up with the puppets mouth no matter what I have tried (this used to work in the past both manually and capturing the script which I see is no longer an option). I have tried this with two separate projects. When I import the dynamic link now, AE has crashed a few times and the the times it doesn't the whole system runs so slowly and often freezes that I can't work with it. Suggestions? Thanks for your help. M

Hi! I am so excited about character animator! Great work here! I've wanted to follow along with its development for the past year but unfortunately I have been busy with other work and am only just now getting started. I know there have been rapid developments and deprecations though, so I'm wondering: where is the best place to start? Are the manuals/user guides being kept up to date with each new release? Should I instead begin with oksamurai's youtube videos first? From the beginning or only the recent vids? Other tut vids? Any advice for getting caught up would be much appreciated. I'm hoping to avoid watching a lot of videos/reading tutorials only to find out they are speaking of deprecated features or techniques.​​Thanks!

I've been encountering a weird quirk with my characters when setting up a walk behavior. It's like the whole puppet shifts down too far in relation to its standing position. Originally even the feet would be pushed lower in the frame, until I fixed them in place. Anyone know what could be causing this? Thanks in advanced!

I'm getting kinda frustrated with my puppet. I want her to blink and move her eyebrows while walking, but I can't seem to make it work. Is it even possible? I tried to copy from "Maddy" the photographed puppet of an older tutorial, but she doesn't blink either.There's "Walk" on McGirlface (see below), "Eye Gaze" on each of the three profiles and "Headturn" on each Head-Group. Only the "Default"-Profile works, because I didn't set any direction for it. In the other Profiles she only blinks, when the head is turned into the "Left" position. If I put "Left Quarter" above "Left" it only works in "Left Quarter", so it only works on the top Headgroup. What can I do now to make her blink and move her eyebrows regardless of the head position?

I created a character on illustrator, very detailed, my problem is that nothing is even moving, or moving correctly, or placed in the same spot as the source image, or in the right layer. It seems as if it wants me to modify the existing layers rather than let me create my own layers. I would rather not make the mouth from scratch 10 times. Photoshop doesn't work for me since it wants to blur my character and turn everything green. So far I've even tried remaking the character piece by piece and assigning parts. That didn't work either...I then tried using just the mesh, but it won't let me edit besides say here is where this and that is. The tutorials do not seem to cover this nor do YouTube help videos. How do I place a character and overwrite the images they use on illustrator?

First time here, probably super-noob question:I edited the original .AI file of a character, and after saving I lost most of the work I did in character animator (I knew this could happen if I change the name of the layers - which I did - so I expected it).I adjusted everything but the nose is not showing up when I am acting my character (it shows in the "rig" tab, it doesn't show in the "record" tab). When I try to select the layer of the nose to edit it, some other layers are selected.Here's a link to an image​ of what I see when I select the NOSE layer Here the "tree" of the layers​, which I have created respecting the naming you suggest in a page in the forum. Thank you very much,Alessio

I'm started to work on creating different eye expressions for a couple characters in Photoshop to use in Animator for a Youtube video. However although I've seen tutorial videos that show how to create the character face and making different mouth's for the different sounds. When it comes to eyes, the only videos I've seen show static eyes, where only the eye brow and pupil move and that's mostly done automatically by Animator by using its settings. Except I want to have extremely expressive eyes for my character. But I also don't want to waste my time creating a variety of expressive eyes, if they'll be useless in Animator.So I'd like to know if Animator can be used to change and morph a basic set of character eyes to show a variety of expressions and if so how do I make use of such a feature? Or do I indeed need to make individual sets of eyes to show elaborate expressions to use in Animator?

Hi!I am having a very frustrating issue. When I'm trying to launch Character Animator on my PC it will just get to the starting screen and while I can see the starting screen I can't interact with it and it freezes until it shuts down automatically without any error message.I have tried to uninstall and reinstall several times. I have also tried to use the earlier versions. I have also tried to run every version as administrator but it makes no difference. I am just trying to start a blank project so there shouldn't be any problems regarding the program having to process some old files from an earlier project.I can use Character Animator without any problems on my iMac which is on the same network.Hoping to get some help so I can solve this issue relatively fast!

This is my very first time creating an animated character. I basically used the default BlankFace.psd file and created a face background and a neck-and-shoulders. When I don't use the neck-and-shoulders, the character animates just fine. However, when I add the rest of the character, there's distortion near the eyes, and the head doesn't stay connected to the neck.How can I fix this? Thanks!

I would like my layers to remain their original but simply have joints (bending points) that don't stretch or manipulate the layer's properties. Thank you in advance.