NDI camera input for remote actors

[Elvis Deane]

Hello,

I've been successfully using Character Animator puppets in Zoom meetings and live streams, but I'm looking to try something different for a live event and so far I've had no luck.

An actor I'm working with has a fairly old computer that would not run Character Animator well. With that and the state of the world today, my hope was that I could pull in his signal through a live stream (most likely Vmix Call), and send his webcam audio and video to Character Animator via NDI.  This would let his face and voice drive the animation, but let my computer handle the processing.

Has anyone done this?  So far I've tried it on both my desktop and laptop, and while I can see Newtek NDI as an input option in CA on one of the systems, when I select it, I just get the ol' "Waiting for camera".  Character Animator also just doesn't seem to see things like the OBS virtual camera, just the hardware camera, which foils my backup plan of running a recorded video of the actor to drive the animation.

[k_oshiro]

I used a translation software to convert Japanese to English.

Your attempt is great!

Have you ever used the OBS_Studio virtual camera?

(1) We have pre-recorded footage of the actors. (ZOOM real-time video is also fine)

(2) Load it into OBS and display it.

(3) Turn on the virtual camera in OBS.

(4) Use Adobe CharacterAnimator to change the webcam to the OBS virtual camera.

(5) The puppet will move according to the video image.

If you have the actor's video, you can ask the actor to act in another location.

Give it a try.

Thank you.

https://youtu.be/5B9j-yN2sZU

[Elvis Deane]

Hi,

Thank you, I followed what you did, but OBS virtual camera is not available.  I even tried the old OBS VirtualCam plugin as well, but Character Animator only sees my hardware cameras (CamLink, and a USB camera), and NDI (which stays on Waiting for Camera).

I tried on two computers again, and uninstalled and reinstalled OBS, NDI Tools, and Character Animator trying to get it to work.  I wonder if the OBS virtual camera just does not work on the Windows version of Character Animator. 

[Elvis Deane]

Are there any Windows users who have managed to get a pre-recorded video played back into Adobe Character Animator?  If so, what software did you use to do that?

[k_oshiro]

I'm a Mac user, so I don't know about Wibdows environment.
I'm sorry I can't help you.
We'll wait for responses from other Windows users.

I hope it'll go well.

Thank You

[Elvis Deane]

Are there any Windows users who have managed to get a pre-recorded video played back into Adobe Character Animator?  If so, what software did you use to do that?

[Dan Ramirez]

Hi Elvis. Right now NDI Virtual Input is not working on Windows, it is working on Mac, but that's not going to help you. We've got an internal bug on that. I'll check on its status. 

For recorded video, we've had success with ManyCam on both platforms, but I haven't tested it in a while. I personally use Wirecast for sending videos to CH with their virtual cam, but I'm normally on the Mac so would need to verify Windows functionality before recommending that solution. 

I'll check out OBS. It's possible the same thing blocking NDI Input is blocking OBS's virtual camera. 

[Elvis Deane]

Thanks Dan, I really appreciate all this information!  I can confirm that ManyCam does still work on Windows.  Not only that, I'm able to route an actor coming in from Vmix Call into ManyCam, and then into Character Animator, so my original hope of doing this live can work this way.  It would be great not to have to use this extra step, but I'm glad to there's a workaround for now.

[Huge Larry]

Thanks, Elvis, for leading me to the ManyCam solution.

I can verify that ManyCam is working for me on Windows 10 with the latest version of Character Animator as of today.

I first tried OBS, Wirecast and ManyCamLite, but none of those worked.

I'm really hoping that Adobe eventually adds the feature to drive Character Animator from video clips, because I worry about things like ManyCam installing some crapware.

[New User 262631968twk]

Same here. Character Animator doesn't recognise my webcam or OBS virtual cam but it picks up ManyCam for some reason?

[Dark24231748fh0g]

I appreciate you pointing me in the direction of the ManyCam solution, Elvis.

As of today, I have been able to verify that ManyCam is working on Windows 10 with the latest version of Character Animator.

As a first attempt, I tried OBS, Wirecast, and ManyCamLite, but none of those worked.

It would really be nice if Adobe were to add the ability for Character Animator to be driven from video clips, since I'm worried about things like ManyCam installing some sort of junkware.