How to manually tilt head without webcam?

[DoomStein]

I was wondering if there is a keyboard trigger or something along those line to control head tilt without the use of a webcam. I am still fairly new at this program, so I have not found all of the shortcut keys yet. At any rate, I do not currently have a webcam to use for head tracking purposes so if there is a way to manually control this it would be immensely helpful. Also, just to clarify, I am on Windows with Adobe Character Animator CC Beta 5.

Dustin

[CoSA_DaveS · Accepted solution]

You can use the Transform behavior's Rotation property to tilt the head by applying Transform to the Head group: select it in the puppet panel and click on the "+" button in the properties panel. This gives continuous tilt control via mouse, but it's not yet triggerable via keyboard. For a key-trigger head tilt, create the tilted head in PS at the same level as the normal head and assign a keyboard shortcut to it along with Hide Others in Group enabled (select it in the puppet panel and see these options under Trigger section in the properties panel). Then, when hit the trigger key, it will show the tilted head and hide the regular head.

Combined with Cycle Layers, you an animate into the key-triggered tilt. DaveW covers this in some of his tutorials, but I don't know which exactly: Character Animator Tutorials

[DoomStein]

Thank you! The rotation in the Transform behavior will work for recording for now until I get a webcam since you can record all the different animations separately.

[MilenaTos]

Hi! I tried this but the transform option is by deafault disarmed in the record mode. Is there any way to record the mouse or keyboard initiated head tilt or does it HAVE to be with camera. I am animating over soemeone else's voice and being a bad actor I can't get it right 😞

I feel that I fave much more control over the character using keyboard or a mouse