Fun, fast, diverse character creation for everyone. No need to be an expert Photoshop or Illustrator user. And no need for rigging skills. Choose from a variety of character styles. Then with the simple interface start customizing the character by picking hair styles, skin tones, accessories, and much more, and seeing your character react to your movements and voice in real time. Creating a custom puppet using Puppet Maker Open Character Animator (Beta). Click the Puppet Maker tile or Make a puppet button on the Home screen or choose File > Open Puppet Maker. In the Style section, select the puppet’s base style. Move the mouse pointer horizontally across the style’s thumbnail (i.e., hover scrub) to view some of the possible looks that you can create. In the Customize section, choose different looks for the puppet, or click Randomize to try a random combination of looks. In the Play section, preview how the puppet moves and changes appearance using its available controls. These controls will also be available in the generated puppet. View and interact with the puppet at any time in the preview area. Move your head and body in front of your webcam, talk into your microphone, and for puppets that support Dragger even drag in the Preview area with your mouse or finger on a touch display. Press trigger keys for available controls in the Play section. Click Generate. A puppet with the selected style and customizations is created and added to a new scene ready for you to control and record a performance – no need to rig the puppet at all! If you want a puppet with a different appearance, just open Puppet Maker again, make new selections, then generate a new puppet. Refreshing the preview area and controlling camera and microphone Along the bottom of the Puppet Maker window are controls for refreshing the preview in case you want to reset a character’s swaying hair or other parts controlled by physics, for calibrating the camera to a starting pose for face and body tracking, and for turning on or off the camera or microphone. Adding new styles (templates) to Puppet Maker Puppet Maker comes with a small set of built-in styles or templates, but you can add new Puppet Maker templates to add to the available styles for new puppets. These Puppet Maker templates are .maker files on disk. They will be available from Adobe and third-party puppet sellers in the future. To add Puppet Maker templates, do any of the following: Choose File > Import, then select one or more .maker files to add. Double-click the .maker file in Finder (macOS) or File Explorer (Windows). In a Finder (macOS) or File Explorer (Windows) window, navigate to your user Documents folder, then into the Adobe > Character Animator (Beta) > Puppet Maker subfolder, and then drag one or more .maker files into the Puppet Maker subfolder. Importing or double-clicking a single .maker file automatically installs the file into the Puppet Maker subfolder, opens Puppet Maker, and selects that .maker file’s style in the Style section. If you copy .maker files into the Puppet Maker subfolder on disk, the templates will appear in the Style section the next time you open Puppet Maker. Troubleshooting If you have multiple camera sources and the character isn’t responding to your movements, the wrong camera might be selected. Close the Puppet Maker window, then select the preferred camera in the Camera & Microphone panel’s menu. We plan to provide the camera selection menu in the Puppet Maker window’s controls in a future Beta build. If the character’s mouth doesn’t change as you talk into your microphone, check that you have the preferred default audio input. Close the Puppet Maker window, open the app preferences (Character (Beta) > Preferences on macOS, Edit > Preferences on Windows), then selected the preferred device for Default Input. Known issues and limitations Puppet Maker is still in development. In this first public Beta version (v22.0.0.7), please note the following: Puppet preview updates are slow right now: Changing styles or customize options can take up to a few seconds to update the preview. We’re working to make selection changes more responsive in a future Beta build. What we want to know We want to hear about your experience with Puppet Maker: What are your overall impressions? Are you able to customize and create a puppet that meets your needs? How do you think you might use Puppet Maker in your work? How can we improve Puppet Maker? Also, we’d love to see what you create with Puppet Maker. Share your animations on social media with the #CharacterAnimator hashtag. Thank you! We’re looking forward to your feedback. (Use this Beta forum thread to discuss Puppet Maker and share your feedback with the Character Animator team and other Beta users. If you encounter a bug, let us know by posting a reply here or choosing Report a bug from the Provide feedback icon in the top-right corner of the app.)

Adobe Employee

Question

Feature Focus: Puppet Maker

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
June 29, 2021
24 replies
6339 views

Fun, fast, diverse character creation for everyone. No need to be an expert Photoshop or Illustrator user. And no need for rigging skills. Choose from a variety of character styles. Then with the simple interface start customizing the character by picking hair styles, skin tones, accessories, and much more, and seeing your character react to your movements and voice in real time.

Creating a custom puppet using Puppet Maker

Open Character Animator (Beta).
Click the Puppet Maker tile or Make a puppet button on the Home screen or choose File > Open Puppet Maker.
In the Style section, select the puppet’s base style.
Move the mouse pointer horizontally across the style’s thumbnail (i.e., hover scrub) to view some of the possible looks that you can create.
In the Customize section, choose different looks for the puppet, or click Randomize to try a random combination of looks.
In the Play section, preview how the puppet moves and changes appearance using its available controls.
These controls will also be available in the generated puppet.
View and interact with the puppet at any time in the preview area.
Move your head and body in front of your webcam, talk into your microphone, and for puppets that support Dragger even drag in the Preview area with your mouse or finger on a touch display. Press trigger keys for available controls in the Play section.
Click Generate.

A puppet with the selected style and customizations is created and added to a new scene ready for you to control and record a performance – no need to rig the puppet at all!

If you want a puppet with a different appearance, just open Puppet Maker again, make new selections, then generate a new puppet.

Refreshing the preview area and controlling camera and microphone

Along the bottom of the Puppet Maker window are controls for refreshing the preview in case you want to reset a character’s swaying hair or other parts controlled by physics, for calibrating the camera to a starting pose for face and body tracking, and for turning on or off the camera or microphone.

Adding new styles (templates) to Puppet Maker

Puppet Maker comes with a small set of built-in styles or templates, but you can add new Puppet Maker templates to add to the available styles for new puppets. These Puppet Maker templates are .maker files on disk. They will be available from Adobe and third-party puppet sellers in the future.

To add Puppet Maker templates, do any of the following:

Choose File > Import, then select one or more .maker files to add.
Double-click the .maker file in Finder (macOS) or File Explorer (Windows).
In a Finder (macOS) or File Explorer (Windows) window, navigate to your user Documents folder, then into the Adobe > Character Animator (Beta) > Puppet Maker subfolder, and then drag one or more .maker files into the Puppet Maker subfolder.

Importing or double-clicking a single .maker file automatically installs the file into the Puppet Maker subfolder, opens Puppet Maker, and selects that .maker file’s style in the Style section.

If you copy .maker files into the Puppet Maker subfolder on disk, the templates will appear in the Style section the next time you open Puppet Maker.

Troubleshooting

If you have multiple camera sources and the character isn’t responding to your movements, the wrong camera might be selected. Close the Puppet Maker window, then select the preferred camera in the Camera & Microphone panel’s menu. We plan to provide the camera selection menu in the Puppet Maker window’s controls in a future Beta build.
If the character’s mouth doesn’t change as you talk into your microphone, check that you have the preferred default audio input. Close the Puppet Maker window, open the app preferences (Character (Beta) > Preferences on macOS, Edit > Preferences on Windows), then selected the preferred device for Default Input.

Known issues and limitations

Puppet Maker is still in development.

In this first public Beta version (v22.0.0.7), please note the following:

Puppet preview updates are slow right now: Changing styles or customize options can take up to a few seconds to update the preview. We’re working to make selection changes more responsive in a future Beta build.

What we want to know

We want to hear about your experience with Puppet Maker:

What are your overall impressions?
Are you able to customize and create a puppet that meets your needs?
How do you think you might use Puppet Maker in your work?

How can we improve Puppet Maker?

Also, we’d love to see what you create with Puppet Maker. Share your animations on social media with the #CharacterAnimator hashtag.

Thank you! We’re looking forward to your feedback.

(Use this Beta forum thread to discuss Puppet Maker and share your feedback with the Character Animator team and other Beta users. If you encounter a bug, let us know by posting a reply here or choosing Report a bug from the Provide feedback icon in the top-right corner of the app.)

Feedback

This topic has been closed for replies.

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A

Anez Bull

Participant

Hello,

I want to congratulate you first, for the excellent work you are developing. This future update will help me to make an idea that I have in mind much easier, but I was wondering; referring to all the character style options that are going to be designed. How editable are they going to be? And I don't mean just the change in the shape of the nose or mouth. I'm talking about choosing a style and that same enlarge the face, putting expression lines, wrinkles, thicker lips, made the burder lines thicker or thinner. Maybe combine styles? ... What I mean is if we could edit in Photoshop or Illustrator the avatar we chose based on the Character Animator file without affecting its functionality? ... Well ... I don't know... is too much? ... I just thought how much freedom is the plan? ...

Thank you for reading

oksamurai

Community Manager

Yes, so once you click that Generate button, you will get a normal CH puppet that includes the PSD file (Puppet Maker only works in Photoshop for now). So you can go back and make edits just like CH currently works and it should be fine (as long as you don't mess around with the basic structure too much).

DNLD

Participant

Hi,

Very cool feature! It would be great if it also worked with illustrator files. A vector based template instead of pixels/rasterized would fit very nicely in my current workflow:D

Kind regards,

Donald

E

elld20373292

Participant

Hello Team.this is a huge step forward with the Puppet Maker. My suggestion is to focus on things that need more of customization importanc. Example: pants shorts are simple and don't need a lot of styles. SHirt logo designs( example Browse: to add own designs) and adding more face shapes are very important . IN any case thank you for this.

S

Smart Ears

Known Participant

Played around with the puppet maker a little bit -- I really like it. However, would love to see a couple of things: a) children!!! I work with children and their parents, and its been a struggle getting 'kid' puppets. b) I tried the full body character style, but once I generated the puppet, I tried to scale the size of the puppet in character animator, and it scaled the whole scene. Is this what should happen? I wanted the puppet to be smaller relative to the background, but for some reason the whole panel was being scaled. c) I was able to make several characters with different features -- as you said in the video - more styles will make it even more flexible. One feature that would be terrific is to be able to draw something and directly import it into puppetmaker - I would love to have this feature as it will make character animator accessible to younger children I work with - in addition to me of course. Thanks for such a wonderful dynamic team working on character animator!!!!!!

S

Smart Ears

Known Participant

In my post, when I said 'draw' and import, I meant draw on paper!

CommonTime Productions

Participant

Hello! This is a really cool new feature 🙂 Our 6-year-old granddaughter uses apps on her phone that have these kinds of character builders and I can see how incredibly useful this will be to make the adobe apps all-inclusive to the younger audience. Kudos to all that worked this out. Looking forward to getting to use it and we are planning to use a cartoon avatar for an upcoming music recording series based on the younger audience. We will post a short video showing some of the test puppets we are gonna play with. The feature of being able to create our own puppet art and upload all our choices to be ready for one of the puppet builds will be really helpful. Great work Adobe!

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