Animated Character - Character Creator - to appear on a transparent background in Captivate 9

[trentp79423551]

Hi guys,

I am new to this whole world of Captivate, but am trying to develop a learning program for students with intellectual disabilities.

I want to create an animated character (in Adobe Character Creator) and have this put into Captivate, but appear on a transparent background.

Again, I have no idea how this would be accomplished or if it is possible?

Hopefully someone can help.

Really appreciate it.

[Lilybiri]

Captivate can only import mp4 (H264), no support for transparent background. I also dreamed about being able to do this, but at this moment there is no roundtripping with Character Animator shipped with AE. Synchronizing will be pretty tough as well?. Maybe log a feature request?

[Captiv8r]

I know Captivate can use a video file in FLV format with alpha channel. I'm guessing it's impossible for Character Animator to render that?

Assuming so, something you might consider would be to combine a third party product with things. For example, if you created your Captivate output as a video file and if you created your Character Animator product against a solid color background and used a unique color such as hot pink, you could use a third party product named Camtasia to combine the two video files. You would place the Captivate video on the bottom layer and the Character Animator video on an upper layer. The unique thing Camtasia brings into the mix is the ability to use a feature known as "Remove a color". So you could then sample the background of the Character Animator video and render it as transparent, showing the Captivate video behind it.

Hopefully that spawns an idea.

Cheers... Rick

[Lilybiri]

Rick, FLV works only for SWF output.

Presenter VideoXpress also has the functionality of greenscreen removing. Could be an alternative for Camtasia work flow described by Rick. However, since both Captivate and Character Animator under AE are Adobe products, my dream is to have an easier workflow than all those workarounds. Dreaming is not prohibited?

[Captiv8r]

I was very aware that the FLV would only work for SWF.

I'm going to have to challenge you on your statement about Presenter Video Express. It doesn't work in remotely the same way as the Camtasia approach. Sure, it can replace the background, but as I understand it, only when recording from the WebCam. And that's substantially different than having a recorded video where you are able to sample the background of an already recorded video and render it as transparent.

So I'm going to claim that it's not really possible to achieve the same workflow here. Kind of an apples and oranges sort of thing.

Cheers... Rick

[arashmaz]

Ok, I've got this working but only with Flash video. I managed it by using Adobe Media Encoder 6 that I still have installed on this computer. I just had to make sure alphas channel was ticked when published. It took me a while to find the alpha setting but worked fine.

If you're publishing to HTML5, obviously flash will be no good. But what you could do (I've not tested it btw) is use Animate CC, created a HTML5 Canvas document with transparent background, go to Window>Component then add the video component and browse to your Character Animator video.

Then publish it as an OAM file with transparency. Providing it lets you publish it with transparency, I'm not that knowledgable when it comes to Animate CC.