Editing hand movements

[taylormadecomix]

Hello Everyone. I am attempting to animate my first character and I captured a performance that I like, but my puppet moves from one pose to the next very slowly. Is there a way to speed up my puppets hand from rest position to a point position for example? I thought I could just manipulate the duration for each draggable move on the timeline like I do in After Effects. No luck so far.

[alank99101739 · Accepted solution]

I don't think you can adjust the "speed" / duration of takes (and yes, it would be useful). There is another trick you can do that sometimes works however. It is not the same, but if it gives a good enough result...

First, select the current take in the timeline. Put the playhead in the middle of the segment you want to adjust. The pick "Edit / Split" from the menu. This will end up with two rows for the take (the stuff before the split point and the stuff after the split point). Drag the second take to the left (the higher row on the screen) so the hand movement ends where you want it to end. Trim the left edge of the upper take to start and the start of the hand movement on the lower track (grab it and drag it left or right as required). You should see the lower take row get greyed out where the upper row "overrides" the lower take.

Then the fun bit - blend the top take. You do this by selecting the upper take, then if you look closely there is a little square in the top left corner of the take bar. Drag that little square to the right. You should see a nice curve appear and that section of the take below will become active. What it does is take a weighted value between the position in the lower take and the position in the upper take. 

Its not quite the same as speeding up the movement, but it might get you close enough.

[taylormadecomix]

Oh. Wow. Thanks for the tip. I thought I was going crazy, because I figured they had to be a way to control it since CH feels so similar to AE. Hopefully we will gain that ability one day in an update. Thanks again.

[oksamurai · Accepted solution]

There currently isn't time remapping, but I highly recommend checking out slo-mo recording, clicking the little numbers next to the record button. This will let you record at slower speeds, which will play back faster later - great for arm takes in particular.

[taylormadecomix]

I will try the slo-mo recording. Thanks. Do you think that some kind of time remapping feature is possible in a future update? Is this a frequently requested feature?

[oksamurai]

I've seen the request a few times, yes. Nothing to announce right now, but never say never!

[taylormadecomix]

Fingers crossed. BTW-The slo-mo recording is a great work-around. Thanks again.

[alank99101739]

I created https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911317-character-animator/suggestions/45213934-allow-the-pl... if anyone wants to comment or vote on a few feature for this. I wrote up how I think it could work. There were some other feature requests that seemed close, but not 100% the same.  It can be annoying where you have a really nice recording, but you want part of it just that little bit faster.