FAQ: What happened to the Character Trigger extension for Twitch?

[Jeff Almasol]

Streaming live to Twitch and other social platforms with Character Animator, or using a Character Animator-driven puppet as an overlay for your recordings, is a great way to add a new dimension to your feeds and performances. You can do this with all versions of Character Animator. However, the rollout of a new extensions UI from Twitch is not compatible with the Character Trigger extension that allowed Twitch viewers to pay with Bits (Twitch virtual currency) to trigger animation in a Twitch broadcaster’s performance. As a result, the extension, as designed, is not usable and has been removed from Twitch. The corresponding in-app UI (“Twitch Integration preferences”) will still be visible in the Preferences pane of 2.1 and 2.1.1 versions of Character Animator, but will no longer function. This only impacts the Character Trigger extension. We hope you will continue to enjoy streaming with Character Animator over Twitch and we will continue to develop features that enrich  projects in this format.

Learn about streaming live Character Animator to Twitch or any live-video platform

[Nedal4d]

TV-animal friends

[DigitalBeach]

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[DigitalBeach]

Is this feature completly dropped?

What was the usage rate on this extension?

Feeling very skeptical about contuining to invest time, energy, and money into Character Animator to just see features and development vanish.

Should I just add Character Animator to the list of failed and mismanaged applications from Adobe?

[alank99101739]

I don't stream to twitch, but do stream to YouTube. On YouTube what you do is get a separate software package (like OBS Studio) to mix all your video streams with overlays etc, then stream one video stream up to YouTube. YouTube does not attempt to support all the different methods. I use NDI or Syphon out of CH into OBS (I am actually using Ecamm Live at the moment on the Mac) then stream that result up to YouTube.

I think the problem is the platforms keep making changes. Integrating deeply with the platforms means each time the platform changes something, the software breaks. Using NDI or Syphon protects against such breakage by agreeing on a standard integration.

So it may be a less deep integration is now supported, but it may mean that CH will be protected better by upcoming platform changes that would have broken the CH application each time they make a change.

That is my guess anyway. I dont work at Adobe or have any special insider knowledge. But it seems to be how YouTube works too - get software to do the clever stuff and just use YouTube as a streaming platform (not a mixing deck).

[@danbrownbear]

How do you use Character Animator in ECAMM? I got CH to work on Zoom through NDI. (I'm on a mac). I have not been able to get the alternate camera/video feed to appear in the ECAMM video options. Thanks

[@danbrownbear]

After some research, it looks like "virtual camera feeds" are only available in Ecamm Pro.