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juliahinez
juliahinez
Known Participant
February 25, 2018
Question

Please add a feature: pre-timed effects

  • February 25, 2018
  • 10 replies
  • 3162 views

Hello! I am loving Adobe Character animator, and I'm making a cartoon with it (and After Effects.)

One thing that would help IMMENSELY is the ability to have certain things like WIND and GRAVITY effects turn on at a certain point in the timeline without having to let go of your character. I'm doing some complex characters with multiple keyboard inputs, but I notice that it usually won't accept more than 2 at a time (having effects set to turn themselves on after a pre-set number of seconds of recording would be SO awesome).

Having a gust of wind go through the scene is very fun, but having my character go back to neutral so I can turn it on during the scene isn't fun at all.

Please respond! Is this possible? Is this maybe already a feature I can't find anywhere?

Thanks!!!

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10 replies

alank99101739
alank99101739
Legend
February 26, 2018

Hi! You can record over a scene multiple times to add additional tracks. So you can do one effect at a time. You can even set the record speed to 50% or 25% to make it easier to time.

For something like wind or gravity, I did an effect where the hair blows out on the face at a certain time. I just did a rough recording of the change (you just “arm” the gravity or wind setting). If you record longer than you need, you can just grab the ends of the bar in the timeline and trim it back. I often start recording, set the value to what I want, record for longer than I need, then trim off the start and move it to the position I want - that is, I don’t try to record everything exactly - I use the timeline window to move things around to the right times. Dragging on the other hand I tend to try and record exactly as editing is not really possible.

If you record the same effect twice, the newer recording overrides the older one. So sometimes you need to trim the start/end to merge multiple recordings properly.

Note: I often record one or two keyboard triggers at a time, then go back and record some other triggers, then use the timeline to do fine tuning of the timing.

alank99101739
alank99101739
Legend
February 26, 2018

In case useful, here is my timeline for a scene. I caused "wind strength" to go strong for a short bit to cause the hair to blow out. (Don't ask me why my "Roasted" was so complicated - overkill probably. I was trying to tweak so you can see the eyes through the writing as it zoomed in.  "Surprised" was keyboard trigger for the eyes to open up wider.

Here is the final effect (without the "Thud" sound effect). (Hopefully this animated GIF works here...)

alank99101739
alank99101739
Legend
February 26, 2018

Sorry, I found another scene with a much simpler timeline - probably a better example. The other one was the first one I ever tried, so had lots of mess I never cleaned up. Note this one I used the mouse to spike the wind up and down with the mouse, so the recording looks longer, but its just a quick spike of wind to align with the stamp hitting the face and "thud" sound effect. So in this case it was a true recording. Other times I do a solid wind recording then trim it back. Whatever works.

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