Creating a finished Video with several Scenes

[LuthigR]

Hey guys

Im completely new to Character Animator and watched several tutorials by now, went through the different Adobe projects to get started but I couldnt really find something to answer my question:

When you open Adobe Character Animator CC, there is a project called "Getting Started". As far as I can see, this is a project put together by several individual scenes all put together into one 3min timeline. And as far as I can see, the software to put all the scenes into one big sequence is still Adobe Character Animator (since the tutorials on youtube suggest that the individual scenes should be imported into After Effects).

Now my question is:

-What is the recommended workflow? To create individual, automated scenes, load them all into After Effects, organise them and then render them?

-Just create the Character Animation in the Character Animator software and create several compositions in AE instead of several finished scenes in CA?

-Not use After Effects at all (unless you wanna add AE specific effects) and put the finished sequence together in Character Animator?

In the "Getting Started" project, the finished sequence was all put together in Character Animator, but I cant find a way how to add several individual scenes into one big one. If Nr 3 in my list is recommended (doing everything in Character Animator), how can I do that? So far, Im able to create my own individual scenes.

Thanks

Best,

Val

[alank99101739 · Accepted solution]

I don't think there is a "right" and "wrong" answer - it depends on what you are trying to do. Personally I have settled on the pattern of doing as much as I can in Character Animator (Ch) and avoid using the other programs because my laptop is not that powerful. I found After Effects (AE) too slow. So if I must use it, I do. Otherwise I try to use Ch.

I then export each scene as a separate movie file and stitch them together in Premier Pro where I add a bit of titling, sound effects that span scenes, etc. I have a 10 minute episode I am creating, which can take 4 hours to render on my laptop. So exporting one scene at a time allows me to edit and rerender an individual scene.

If you computer is faster, then you might find the AE and PR etc work great. Keyframing in AE is much better than in CH for example. But I put up with CH because its faster for me (less wait time). I only use AE for the tricky scenes.

But if you can create scenes completely in CH, then there is no need to use AE. If you can compose a single scene with your whole cartoon in CH with no need for PR, then there is nothing wrong doing that. I just found I needed PR to trim a few frames from the start of scenes due to puppets doing weird things at times when using draggers (the arms jump around a bit at the start sometimes). So I use PR because of a need.

Oh, to create one big scene from smaller ones, create a new empty scene, then drag the other individual scenes from the project panel into your new empty scene. Scenes can contain other scenes on the timeline. Its pretty easy to do, and i often do this as well for a quick preview (even though I later export each scene as a separate movie file and assemble it all in PR).

[LuthigR]

Thank you very much for the detailed answer!