Been using Character Animator for 5 years and I learned everything I know from this channel and thanks to these tutorials I finally uploaded my first animation! Thanks Dave!
Same here recently i started learning animation few weeks back and i have started a youtube channel which is related to horror stories animation... i have made 1 video just by learning animation from dave... his videos are really very helpful....
@@muckmuck2905 2 months ago i picked up Ch, Ai, Ae from scratch, and additionally Au and Ps that i had minor experience with. I am now working on the 4th episode of my own self made animated show,aside from random animations im also posting. And it's all thanks to Okay Samurai. No one else.
I started learning 2d animation two months ago. I had so much time on my hands and did not really know what to do...this channel is a gamechanger for me. Much love from Kenya!
One little trick I found here (I apologize if this was addressed in another video) is that adjusting the head sensitivity can effect previous takes. For example if I do a take with a head turn at 100% sensitivity, I can then up the sensitivity for smoother head turns. and like others it can be adjusted and key framed.
Realize this is a few years old and it is very helpful, but I would suggest doing a training video from start to finish. From building to the animating of a full body 180 degrees. Through the years of watching digital training videos, those are without a doubt thee best and most effective way for viewers to understand all aspects of it. A great example is Digital Tutors (they’ve been bought out and no longer there) and Andrew Kramer for After Effects. He sets the scene and begins from the very beginning and takes you through til the end. Just an idea. Thanks for all you do, your lessons are helpful.
I've been hunting through your videos and am looking for a tutorial on how/if bodies can rotate in Character Animator? Do you have anything like that you could point me towards. i.e. when head turns quarter of the way, the body also turns. Thx
This is an older video with some outdated UI but the basic idea is the same: ruclips.net/video/ofA7JFYfLlM/видео.html. Nowadays I would just include the body with every tagged view position, or add a second head turner behavior to the body.
you said you would use a clipping mask for the mouths but when I created a clipping mask for the edge of the mouths it created a clip group that separated most mouth groups into their own paths which cannot be moved. less I want the edge of the mouths to show.
Yeah, clipping masks can be difficult to set up, so when in doubt, just delete the parts you don't want instead. Note you can also make a clipping mask inside CH instead of PS or AI, which could get around app specific masking issues.
Thanks for the tutorial. The auto parralax feature is amazing! Is there a way that you can use the hack on other body parts such as the torso or limbs as well to get a bit more dimensionality?
Unfortunately I think it wouldn't work too well as I think the extra Face behaviors you would need would most likely conflict with other behaviors and parts...but it's probably worth experimenting with simple art to see what's possible!
@okaysamuri Dave, i want to spend the hours and hours doing this each thing for my character. my question is is there a video showing before this one starts, how to set it up exactly how you have it with the exact layering? I originally made my character in moho, and i am going to export a png file of each image layer from there and transfer it into this software and do this exact thing. thank you so much :)
@@okaysamurai this is amazing! thank you my only question is since i already built the character and bones him in moho, i want to transfer it all to character so i can do the ai movements with face and body. Can you please tell me how to transfer it all is it possible to get the layers in perfectly so i dont have to re do it all. I am thinking just doing the face possibly for now in character . Thanks man so much
Thank you so much for this amazing tutorial. I created a puppet with a head turner, but wenn ich tilt my head, the head of my puppet is detaching. The head layer is not independent, but "frontal" "quarter" and "profile" are independent. is that the reason ? how can i solve it? thank you!
That should be okay...I would look at the Turner Brothers example file and make sure yours is set up the exact same way. Yeah, I would in particular look at independence because that's usually the culprit behind floaty heads. If the problem persists, please upload a screenshot, video, or your File > Export > Puppet file to the official forums at adobe.com/go/chfeedback so we can take a closer look.
Hello again dave im using CH 2020 and AI 2020 but im having problem opening the Puppet file on your website. its says "Error opening illustrator file "
Hmm strange. Which one is it? If you try the AI versions of Chad or Chloe on the home page do they work? There was a bug a while back about new Illustrator file formats but that should have been patched in the latest release...
Can a clipping mask be invisible for the puppet? When making the masked area shape solid and turing visibility off or opacity to zero, the mask doesn't function (as far as I can tell). Note: Using Illustrator to create puppet.
IIRC Illustrator has some issues with opacity and masking transferring over, I forget if the same is true of Photoshop or not. I think I got around this by either using blend modes (multiply on white mask) or really low opacity values? It's been a while so I don't remember but hopefully that gives you some ideas...?
Like I show in ruclips.net/video/7pgm_u4VkQk/видео.html - either add a Transform behavior to the head and use the controls on the right to keyframe head movements, or add a draggable tag to the head origin and drag it around. In CH setup the body will follow the head movements. If you want to move the body separately adding a draggable to the hips might be worth a try.
Thanks for the tutorial! I’m amazed how far I’ve come (which isn’t that far lol) in the last 2 months or so and it wouldn’t be without you and other vets on Reddit helping out. I’m about halfway through the vid but skimming through I don’t see anything relating to body. Are body shifts from left to right a thing or is that with triggers?
I don't believe I did an update video when body turns were added, but basically if you add view tags to body views, you can have them turns with your head as well. So inside my body group I would expect to see folders like Right Profile, Left Quarter, etc, each with repeated body elements for each turned view. I would say it's less common to have this controlled by the head and more likely to be used with swap set triggers.
Excellent information! I was thinking how we can merge this two techniques to make a head movement in 3 views with a little parallax in the head shape? thanks for all your knowledge and great class!
@@okaysamurai thanks a lot I´m going to check it, I dont want to abuse of your help but a little question; it´s possible to add keyframes (interpolation) in Character animator to head turns using triggers? thanks again.
You can add keyframes to anything you add the Transform behavior to. That being said, Transform can mess up things like head tracking, lip sync, eye movements, etc. if it conflicts with those behaviors, so in general we don't recommend doing this to facial features you want to do performance capture with.
I’ve been experimenting with head and body turns lately. still have a long way to go. since my heads are completley drawn differently, positioning and eye movements have been inconcistent. I plan to explore keyframing in face to move the head over a bit when I have to change bodies and eye gaze to fix the sensitivity of the eyes on each view. I was really excited to test this since It was used to make the mlp movie and I am trying to make similar puppets for a series I do. some scenes involve an MST3K style reaction like climate. this pivoting will really have the audience give off a decent natural look. i will say it would be helpful if I could use punctuation keys to do some triggering
Keyframing is great but sometimes it can run into conflicts with some of the other parts. For example, I think if you add Transform to the eyebrows they won't work with camera tracking anymore. There are a few areas like that - I would prototype with a simple stick figure type character and see if you can get the effects you want before applying it to a full featured character.
Hi first this the best channel I’ve ever seen cus I’ve learned a lot from him.I have a question I think making a character it’s really difficult for me now.I wanna know is it possible like to order the character you wanna use on your story and someone make all the drawings and then I use it in anime characters?
Hmm good question, I don't think I've tried this. But check out this technique that might help: www.reddit.com/r/CharacterAnimator/comments/1023swh/25d_effect/
Hello again :) do you have a video where you use paralax with a "pin tool" puppet that lets the hair dangle with physics while also implementing paralax?
I don't think so...the closest I've gotten was probably Leeta: ruclips.net/video/ezGbFqmyPG4/видео.html. She has face parallax but the hair doesn't move with it - that being said, she has a LOT of unique hair dangle settings.
Okay, here's my biggest issue -- my character is a penguin -- with no neck so either the body stays completely still when the head turns or the head disconnects from the body -- I tried to use Big Red as my guide, but I am STILL a newbie
Not having a neck shouldn't be a huge deal. The head and body are basically connected, so if the body isn't moving with the head, make sure the head isn't independent. With the Turner Bros example in this tutorial, if I took his whole head group and moved it down on top of the torso, the torso should still move along with it, so my guess is something in the rigging is disconnecting them. If it persists, please post a screenshot, video, or File > Export > Puppet (.puppet file) to adobe.com/go/chfeedback for more help.
Hi, I made a fox puppet in parallax and when I do left or right turns I set the head position values in positive and negative to make them come closer but when I do up and down with those values, the ears .. obviously, go in the opposite directions. Is there any way around this?
Yeah, personally I find the up/down parallax is way harder to pull off looking good. I really tend to rig for the left/right case the most, and if I really need up/down and I can't figure it out, I make a duplicate puppet that is cheating with up/down values to swap in when I need it.
I know that the head turns are supposed to be 1 but what if they are not? because the right quarter and profile for me is zero and 2, what should I do?
Hard to diagnose for sure but if you see that it means either your tagging is off or your behavior is placed incorrectly. Take another look at the example files and make sure you're following their setup exactly. If it persists, please post a screenshot, video, or File > Export > Puppet (.puppet file) to adobe.com/go/chfeedback for more help.
That sounds good in theory but doesn't work as well in practice as you'll still get jumpiness. A more common smoothing technique is to use cycle layers between head views to draw in a sequence of specific frames to move between, which works well (see the Brooklyn Buddies on adobe.com/go/chexamples as an example of this).
hello, i'm Marlon from the Philippines. Are you using CA 3.0 on this project. I'm having trouble with the +Frontal part, i cannot drag the head group to it. Oh, i got it. i should create a group not a layer, my thumbnails are different. Your layers show all the parts. oh haha. your using Illustrator my mistake! sorry Bro! Thanks!
Is it possible to apply triggers to parallax? I like the smooth head turns with parallax. But I don't. know if I can get a head turn recorded and associate a trigger with it, to initiate it during a recording session.
Yes, triggers still work - but only for specific elements, not for specific views like I show when recording head turns. I believe the Parallax example character has an eyelid close/open trigger, for example. Another thing you could do is make a bunch of recorded Face replays and add those to triggers - that should work too (you would just need to make sure you're arming all your face behaviors during recording, not just the main one).
Yes, if you tagged the body with frontal, profile, and quarter tags, it would also move (the updated behavior is now called Head & Body turner exactly for this reason).
I love your videos,, but I would love you can share with us a video where we can start from the beginning to the end, where we can add it to our youtube videos, it a little confused, I have learned a lot but a the time I m trying to share in my adobe pro video is really hard.
Hi sir....I learned a lot on your tutorials....and i appreciate it if you can make a tutorials whichis using your own pictures to animate with face, body movements and more hands gesture like waving, salute and clapping.... is it possible? Thank you..😊😊😊
Yes, you could certainly rig a character to do those things. For performance capture, you can't use your arms and hands (yet) - you have to use the dragger behavior and tags to move things with the mouse. Check out a character like Sirr or Willy on okaysamurai.com/puppets who have a lot of triggered arm movements to see what's possible with arms.
Hi! Excellent tutorial. I have a question. I have a pre rigged frontal view for my character with a bunch of personalized triggers and behaviours (and the artwork are not inside a layer group called +Frontal in Illustrator). If I go to Illustrator and create new layer groups (+Frontal / +Quarter etc), Character Animator refreshes the scene and I lose all my previous setup. Is there a way to maintain it while creating these new views inside Illustrator?
CH runs into issues when hierarchy or naming is changed. So if you add, move, or rename groups, it has a hard time keeping track of where the old stuff was. In general my advice is to try to add groups for all your various parts, even if they're blank/empty, and then fill them in with content as you go along. I also only do light rigging until I'm super set on the final artwork, where I'll move into more advanced triggers and whatnot.
Thanks for this great tutorial Dave. Whereas your example works fine with Illustrator, I tried to recreate it on my puppet based on blank (PS) and as soon as I put the whole face in the +Frontal layer group in PS, the eyes are stretched all over the place and I get a lot of rigging issues with the sad mouth. This happens to both my puppet and the original blank (PS version). Any workaround for this please ?
When retrofitting an existing puppet with different head views it's possible to run into some issues as CH tries to reconcile changes. Moving face contents into a new folder is one of those areas where CH is going to have trouble because it changes the root folder / hierarchy, and CH has trouble understanding where things moved to. Stretchy eyes and a wonky mouth seem to suggest that the face and lip sync behaviors can't quite figure out what to do with these contents, which in turn might mean that the Head Turner behavior is missing or not set up completely to compensate for all the views. If it persists, please post a screenshot, video, or File > Export > Puppet (.puppet file) to adobe.com/go/chfeedback for more help.
Most likely something has gotten double-tagged. I would check through your rig and see if anything got tagged twice. The Rigging Issues panel might help here: ruclips.net/video/U1iXFxbWm0c/видео.html
If you're seeing jiggly shoulders the head might be a little too sensitive? Or you could add fixed handles or sticks into the shoulders to keep them pinned down more.
Thanks for the video! Are there any tricks or tutorials to doing a full profile view and mouth behaviors? Particularly allowing the background to be seen while talking in profile view.
I haven't personally ever done this, but I think Wendigo from adobe.com/go/chexamples is probably a good one to take a look at for a true side profile view. I think the creator cut the mouth in half to give the effect like it was going off the edge.
Hii... How do you use alternative mouth set on parallax effect.... On the face behavior eyelids, eyes, nouse, and mouth are working fine but parallax isn't working on alternative mouth set when triggered... Do i have to use face behavior on altmouth to use the parallax effect....??
This is a tricky one. IIRC you have to add an extra face behavior to the second mouth and match the parallax setting from the first mouth...I think? Unfortunately it's not easy to do for >1 mouth, and I've run into this exact issue with my characters before, and I think I just skipped it for the alt mouths and hoped no one would notice. :)
Any TIPS For AVOIDING PIXELATION PROBLEMS WHILE COMPOSING ALL THE CH FILE IN PREMIERE PRO BECAUSE WHEN I ZOOM IN PREMIERE MY CHARACTER PIXELATES AND IN RENDER ITS AWFUL MY CHARACTER PS FILE SIZE IS 2500 by 3000 and BG SIZE is 1920 by 1080 and i render in hd
When your CH file links to PR or AE, it will export as its current dimensions. So if you have a 1920 x 1080 scene in CH, that's what will also show up in PR, regardless of how big your character file is. So, if possible, you should make your scene bigger in CH to fit your character at full res. You should never scale more than 100% in PR or AE with a CH asset or you will get pixels.
Whether or not the head turns work seems to be totally random. It doesn't seem to matter what I tag or what I set up, sometimes it will work and sometimes it wont. There is no way of of knowing if a puppet will work or not. You just have to keep tweaking things and hope for the best.
This shouldn't be the case, as hopefully you can see in this video where it works as expected. Make sure you are close to the camera and well lit. You can adjust the sensitivity inside the head turner settings as well to be more/less responsive.
Thanks very much for getting back to me, I really appreciate it. @@okaysamurai I should have added that I am talking about inputting pre-recorded video through AE rather than with the web cam. Even with the sensitivity up to 1.000 it still won't work. Everything else works. I am unsure whether to apply the head turn behaviour to the character or to all the head turns but I have tried all ways. Once again thatnks for getting back to me.
Ah okay, I haven't tested it with prerecorded video, just live webcam stuff. Usually I think it's best to put one head turn behavior at the root of the puppet. If it persists, please post a screenshot, video, or File > Export > Puppet (.puppet file) to adobe.com/go/chfeedback for more help.
@@okaysamurai Hi again. Re-head turns in character animator using data from AE. I found that making all layers live apart from eye blinks and all mouths apart from neutral can help. However, sometimes the data from after effects does not always contain lines with references to head turns and when there are none the head turns do not work. The generating of these lines containing head turn references does seem to be random but there must be something driving it.
Hi! When you use head turner, and rellocate the pupil, doesn't it break the eye behaviour? I remember I saw one of your videos where you explained how to make eyes, and at the time they needed to be on the center, and on a round eye to work correctly.
Yes, but surprisingly it's not as bad as you would think. If you want to fine-tune it, feel free to make a separate (invisible?) eyeball layer for each view if need be to help constrain them more. You could keep the eyes always looking forward - some of the example characters do that too - but I don't like that as much personally.
Great tutorial Dave! One thing that caused me pain is that when you combine head turner with parallax and watercolor texture (like Narrator Dave and Leeta), head turner cancels the texture clipping masks. (texture applied to all head positions seperately). The most I managed was to retain the head turner and parallax effects. I wonder if it's due to rendering issues inside Ch, or related to GPU (I do have a GeForce RTX card though), or it's because of Illustrator (It happens when I import my toons from Illustrator; haven't tested on a PS created toon yet). Can we convince you to make a tutorial where you combine all these behaviors and effects (i.e. head turner + parallax + texture)? :) I think combining all these would really bring the characters alive.
Thanks! Yeah I've never tried combining parallax and head turning, usually it's one or the other, but that's cool that you're combining them! As for why the texture clipping masks break - Illustrator clipping masks don't currently work with CH on import (lame), but you can manually create them inside CH with Puppet > Create Clipping Mask.
Hi, Thank you so much for the helpful amazing Tutorials, I was wondering if it's possible to have the head turn and some physics for the hair at the same time? :DDD
Yes, when you make head turns each with physics, they should all be running in the background regardless of which view you're seeing, so yes, that should work. It can be a bit of a performance hog though!
Another great tutorial! Thank you so much. Is it possible to do a tutorial for the body turns as well such as the arms and legs to make it look more natural? I have a puppet with arms and legs as well and it would look kind of awkward with just the head-turning but the body staying the same.
I talked about this a while back here: ruclips.net/video/ofA7JFYfLlM/видео.html. Basically you would apply the same logic of the head turner to the body, either via automatic stuff or through manual triggers. Of course, the body just pivoting never looks that great, so many people get around this by creating a 3-view walking character (covered in the Walking tutorial).
So, I just watched the IK video and setup my layers all inside a frontal folder in photoshop - If I want to make views like in this video - do I create another frontal folder within the +head folder?
Yes, but I would add the Head Turner behavior on the +Head group instead of the top level, or it might get confused with which views to use. I haven't personally tested this but I think it should work? Worst case scenario if you don't use the head hack thing it should definitely work.
Yes, body turns can be done with the same method. See the end of this video, which shows a free downloadable example of a body turn puppet: ruclips.net/video/hK-DjtiPzRs/видео.html
Can you please guide us how to change lightening effects like i want my scene and characters to be shoot at night time... how can i create night lightening in character animation
Hey Okay! You helped me out with some advise sometime last year which i am eternally grateful for. I wonder if you'd be so kinda again? - im trouble shooting audio coming from CH to OBS for live streaming -I have the ASIO driver on in CH but the sound is not replicated in OBS such like it would do in MME (Windows), I've tried various settings within the ASIO driver, installed NDI (to try that way), updated OBS with the ASIO counterpart, though non of this seems to work... it seems ASIO will only push sound through to either CH or OBS individually and not simultaneously... any ideas? (btw i have posted in the forum about this too ;)
Great questions, and audio support for streaming has always been a tricky area. In my experiments I've only done audio directly piping into OBS instead of routing from somewhere else. If the forum post doesn't get an answer, reach out to Dan Ramirez, who is an expert in this stuff. community.adobe.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/7589611
Usually this means for some reason the head turner isn't registering the views correctly. Normally we only allow one instance of each tag (right eye, left eyebrow. etc) to work by default, but that gets allowed one more time for each view you add. So if it's not working, most likely either the view thinks it already has another part tagged for it, or the head turner behavior is conflicting with something else (like the walk behavior, which also uses views). Hard to diagnose here - if it persists, please post a screenshot, video, or File > Export > Puppet (.puppet file) to adobe.com/go/chfeedback for more help.
Parallax is actually considered as part of Compute Head Movement For Speech. So if you run that on a face with parallax, it will compute parallax movement as well, which you can adjust before or after using all the associated parameters. Although, if you use multiple head tags like I show here I'm not sure how exactly it will work!
Fair enough! The program is insane (in the best way) as is, and it made it a breeze to turn our podcast into an animated series. Thanks, for everything!
I've been trying to work other characters like what you did but with a photoshop is better probably but to make my characters ether ways is to make the face on the camera to connect to the character that will be perfect.
You just save the file and go to File > Import in Character Animator to bring it in. CH doesn't have any drawing tools, it relies on external art files.
Great video! Thank you! Considering deviating a bit from my 3D stuff and adding some 2D animation to my channel - this (along with all the rest of your videos) is a great help!
Yes, Parallax only looks for one instance of each element - eyes, nose & mouth - so adding an extra mouth means it won't move. You may be able to get around this by adding an extra face & lip sync behavior to the second mouth, but I've run into this exact same issue before as well. Yes, I hope we fix this and make parallax easier in the future.
Dave, I designed 2 puppets with head turn, and they work, but when I move my head, the graphics blanks out and you see a white outline with the mouth, eyes and eyebrows. How do I fix that? Likely, my Photoshop file has an error in it.
Check and make sure the visibility (eyeball icon) is on for all relevant layers in all views. My guess is the background layer for each view might be off if all you're seeing is the eyes, mouth, etc. If the problem persists, please upload a screenshot, video, or your File > Export > Puppet file to the official forums at adobe.com/go/chfeedback so we can take a closer look.
@@okaysamurai Thanks, Dave. You were right. It was late (after 12 midnight), and I forgot to turn on one of the face views after aligning the eyes and mouth in another view. I recorded the video anyway, and it worked okay. I did a short video with my designs of an Alan Tudyk puppet (Resident Alien) and Giorgio Tsoukalos (History channel) with face turns. If you've seen it, it's silly. But, I'm having fun.
Cycle layers is meant as a way to add frame by frame animation. So I could make a group called Fireball, have 5 layers inside it of the flame flickering, and add the Cycle Layers behavior to the group to move through the sequence. The Triggers tutorial talks more about this: ruclips.net/video/WzYJbZYhxmk/видео.html
Hey, i couldn't find any good tutorial for laughing animation.... how do you make a character Lough.... "Tull the cat" puppet has a laughing trigger but is there any other/better way....??
Thanks for breaking this down! Im curious though... Is there a way to get the features to move dimensionally (like you did, squishing the eye in Head Turner) while using the Parallax feature? I know how to do this in After Effects with Duik but I'm intrigued by Character Animator's speed... can the 2 programs talk with each other?? Like, can I use an AE character rig in CA? That would be *chef's kiss* ideal.
hey dave it doesnt work in chproj file after i save some thing i needed to change from psd file. like eyeball. i just dont want it to move around the eyeball edge. but when i change in psd and save, still doesnt work. why ?
If the sync isn't working, first make sure you are editing the correct file. Do something extreme and clear like adding a red box layer and see if that syncs. If it doesn't, you're editing the wrong original artwork file. If it does, then that seems like a bug - if the sync box is checked in the right properties it should always auto-sync when you make a change.
Hey Dave can you help me with this, "For instance I want to have two or more characters talking in a same window how can it be done like with a audio of two person talking, wont a puppet will take the audio of another puppet if the audio is merged with the puppet. And if I get different audio then won't it be miss matched." Hoping for your reply. N at last U r the best 👍
This is how I set it up: ruclips.net/video/VhCKD5vl848/видео.html. I'll record and edit the audio as separate tracks, then export those out separately for each character. Then bring in one at a time into CH and do Timeline > Compute Lip Sync for the correct selected puppet. Delete the audio track, bring in the other, and repeat the process for the other character. Now you can bring in a final mixed version of the audio (complete with background music, fx, etc) and it will all line up.
Thank s for another Great tutorial! Any idea why the body of my puppet disappears when I turn on HEAD TURN? I tried with 2 different puppets and have similar problem. The head is turning but I don't see the body.
Check out the Turner Bros example - my guess is that you have your Body in a different hierarchy where it's changing when the head changes. Head turner is going to swap between whatever is in the different tagged views. Body needs to be separate from those so it won't get swapped out.
We recommend PSD or AI layered files. A still image will be limited in what it can do because in general you want all you different parts to be on separate layers so they can move independently.
OpenGL errors can be complicated - please search for them on adobe.com/go/chfeedback and you'll see several potential solutions. If not, please post your error message there for more help.
Been using Character Animator for 5 years and I learned everything I know from this channel and thanks to these tutorials I finally uploaded my first animation! Thanks Dave!
Same here recently i started learning animation few weeks back and i have started a youtube channel which is related to horror stories animation... i have made 1 video just by learning animation from dave... his videos are really very helpful....
@@muckmuck2905 2 months ago i picked up Ch, Ai, Ae from scratch, and additionally Au and Ps that i had minor experience with. I am now working on the 4th episode of my own self made animated show,aside from random animations im also posting. And it's all thanks to Okay Samurai. No one else.
I started learning 2d animation two months ago. I had so much time on my hands and did not really know what to do...this channel is a gamechanger for me. Much love from Kenya!
You are such an awesome teacher. I wish adobe had more teachers like you.
Loved this technique, it's perfect for what I need. THANK YOU!!
I understand principles, but after opening complex doll I got bit owerhelmed… But your lessons placed everything to right spot. Thank you so much!!!
One little trick I found here (I apologize if this was addressed in another video) is that adjusting the head sensitivity can effect previous takes.
For example if I do a take with a head turn at 100% sensitivity, I can then up the sensitivity for smoother head turns. and like others it can be adjusted and key framed.
Realize this is a few years old and it is very helpful, but I would suggest doing a training video from start to finish. From building to the animating of a full body 180 degrees. Through the years of watching digital training videos, those are without a doubt thee best and most effective way for viewers to understand all aspects of it. A great example is Digital Tutors (they’ve been bought out and no longer there) and Andrew Kramer for After Effects. He sets the scene and begins from the very beginning and takes you through til the end. Just an idea. Thanks for all you do, your lessons are helpful.
What elegant, seamless tutorials.
You are the best teacher anyone could wish for. Thank you so much for everything you're doing
you are such a good person i don't have any word to thank, wish you the best
Halp! Lol. 23:07 I saw these just once (and even tinkered with them), but haven't been able to find them again... I've tried everything! Am I dumb? :P
I finally found it agaom. I had to click the TIMELINE. :) Phew.
Excellent, Dave! This answers a question I had about characters having the ability to turn their heads. Thanks again.
I've been hunting through your videos and am looking for a tutorial on how/if bodies can rotate in Character Animator? Do you have anything like that you could point me towards. i.e. when head turns quarter of the way, the body also turns. Thx
This is an older video with some outdated UI but the basic idea is the same: ruclips.net/video/ofA7JFYfLlM/видео.html. Nowadays I would just include the body with every tagged view position, or add a second head turner behavior to the body.
Your tutorials are simply the best. You're such a good teacher. Thanks alot. You've made animation a possibility for alot of us. This is amazing!❣
Your videos are the best for learning Adobe character animator 👍👍
This is probably my favourite feature. Thank you
Had no idea about parallax - super cool! Thank you
you said you would use a clipping mask for the mouths but when I created a clipping mask for the edge of the mouths it created a clip group that separated most mouth groups into their own paths which cannot be moved. less I want the edge of the mouths to show.
Yeah, clipping masks can be difficult to set up, so when in doubt, just delete the parts you don't want instead. Note you can also make a clipping mask inside CH instead of PS or AI, which could get around app specific masking issues.
Amazing timing, I just finished the base for my first puppet. It looks really odd without being able to look left and right.
You are a amazing teacher, the way you explain is fantastic, so clear, straight forward, loves to learn from your channel.
This is amazing, such a powerful software. I can't wait to build my own character. Thanks!!
Choices choices! Both have their own charm. Love it! TXS Okay Samurai
Came here from your reddit post, now Imma try making a pixelated vtuber lol
Thanks for the tutorial. The auto parralax feature is amazing! Is there a way that you can use the hack on other body parts such as the torso or limbs as well to get a bit more dimensionality?
Unfortunately I think it wouldn't work too well as I think the extra Face behaviors you would need would most likely conflict with other behaviors and parts...but it's probably worth experimenting with simple art to see what's possible!
Haha! "The Turner Bros" i burst out laughing. Nicely done, Dave!
Thanks for this amazing tutorial! Just a quick question: Do you need a good GPU for really complex character rigs or is CPU/RAM the main factors?
Both are kinda important. That being said, I feel like with anything video related you can never have too much RAM!
@@okaysamurai Thank you my sempai!
Hi Kurie 😀
@@Dramadonia LOL hi FAM! You are here to learn this amazing software too? uwu can't wait
The more layers/assets are in your PSD the more ram you want!
oh my god..a new video from you...that makes my day...watched and rewatched all of them for learning.....very cool..thanks a lot
Thank you for this tutorial. This will really help.
Awesome tutorials as usual but am having issues loading the turnerbros puppet
on Character Animator 2020
They were built in versions 3.3, so make sure you have the latest. If it persists please let me know what error message you see.
@@okaysamurai Thanks a bunch for the quick response...it means a lot . Would try it out
That's amazing!
I’ll give it a try!
Thank you for making good movies on RUclips all the time.
Well When is CH 2021 RELEASING?!
Nothing to announce yet.
Thanks for this tutorial. I finished building my first puppet, but it's just a frontal view. I' gonna add the left and right profiles.
Thank u soo much dave! Never seen such a helpful designer ❤
Your awesome! That pretty much answers all my questions thank you! Time to get to work!
So hey can you change the shape of an asset between head views in the parallax process, or not?
For head turns yes, for parallax no.
You are such an awesome teacher 😍😍😍
@okaysamuri Dave, i want to spend the hours and hours doing this each thing for my character. my question is is there a video showing before this one starts, how to set it up exactly how you have it with the exact layering? I originally made my character in moho, and i am going to export a png file of each image layer from there and transfer it into this software and do this exact thing. thank you so much :)
Yep, I make a character from scratch in this tutorial: ruclips.net/video/hK-DjtiPzRs/видео.html
@@okaysamurai this is amazing! thank you my only question is since i already built the character and bones him in moho, i want to transfer it all to character so i can do the ai movements with face and body. Can you please tell me how to transfer it all is it possible to get the layers in perfectly so i dont have to re do it all. I am thinking just doing the face possibly for now in character . Thanks man so much
I'm not 100% sure, but if you can export out from Moho as a PSD or AI file, then those are the main layered filetypes that Character Animator uses.
Hi Okey samurai how can we add in betweens in head turns. Pls can u make a video on that
Try this: ruclips.net/video/XyadaFYYGb0/видео.html
Thank you so much for this amazing tutorial. I created a puppet with a head turner, but wenn ich tilt my head, the head of my puppet is detaching. The head layer is not independent, but "frontal" "quarter" and "profile" are independent. is that the reason ? how can i solve it? thank you!
That should be okay...I would look at the Turner Brothers example file and make sure yours is set up the exact same way. Yeah, I would in particular look at independence because that's usually the culprit behind floaty heads. If the problem persists, please upload a screenshot, video, or your File > Export > Puppet file to the official forums at adobe.com/go/chfeedback so we can take a closer look.
Hello again dave im using CH 2020 and AI 2020 but im having problem opening the Puppet file on your website. its says "Error opening illustrator file "
Hmm strange. Which one is it? If you try the AI versions of Chad or Chloe on the home page do they work? There was a bug a while back about new Illustrator file formats but that should have been patched in the latest release...
Can a clipping mask be invisible for the puppet? When making the masked area shape solid and turing visibility off or opacity to zero, the mask doesn't function (as far as I can tell). Note: Using Illustrator to create puppet.
IIRC Illustrator has some issues with opacity and masking transferring over, I forget if the same is true of Photoshop or not. I think I got around this by either using blend modes (multiply on white mask) or really low opacity values? It's been a while so I don't remember but hopefully that gives you some ideas...?
Hey,How can i bend my puppet body left n right without webcam?
Like I show in ruclips.net/video/7pgm_u4VkQk/видео.html - either add a Transform behavior to the head and use the controls on the right to keyframe head movements, or add a draggable tag to the head origin and drag it around. In CH setup the body will follow the head movements. If you want to move the body separately adding a draggable to the hips might be worth a try.
I love your teaching sir make more video on adobe illustrator and adobe character
Thanks for the tutorial! I’m amazed how far I’ve come (which isn’t that far lol) in the last 2 months or so and it wouldn’t be without you and other vets on Reddit helping out. I’m about halfway through the vid but skimming through I don’t see anything relating to body. Are body shifts from left to right a thing or is that with triggers?
I don't believe I did an update video when body turns were added, but basically if you add view tags to body views, you can have them turns with your head as well. So inside my body group I would expect to see folders like Right Profile, Left Quarter, etc, each with repeated body elements for each turned view. I would say it's less common to have this controlled by the head and more likely to be used with swap set triggers.
Excellent information! I was thinking how we can merge this two techniques to make a head movement in 3 views with a little parallax in the head shape? thanks for all your knowledge and great class!
Yes, I've seen some examples of this and it works great.
@@okaysamurai thanks for respond, maybe you can say me where i can search? thanks a lot for all your effort and great class
I can't remember where I saw it exactly, but it was probably Digital Puppets: ruclips.net/user/digitalpuppets
@@okaysamurai thanks a lot I´m going to check it, I dont want to abuse of your help but a little question; it´s possible to add keyframes (interpolation) in Character animator to head turns using triggers? thanks again.
You can add keyframes to anything you add the Transform behavior to. That being said, Transform can mess up things like head tracking, lip sync, eye movements, etc. if it conflicts with those behaviors, so in general we don't recommend doing this to facial features you want to do performance capture with.
I’ve been experimenting with head and body turns lately. still have a long way to go. since my heads are completley drawn differently, positioning and eye movements have been inconcistent. I plan to explore keyframing in face to move the head over a bit when I have to change bodies and eye gaze to fix the sensitivity of the eyes on each view.
I was really excited to test this since It was used to make the mlp movie and I am trying to make similar puppets for a series I do. some scenes involve an MST3K style reaction like climate. this pivoting will really have the audience give off a decent natural look.
i will say it would be helpful if I could use punctuation keys to do some triggering
Keyframing is great but sometimes it can run into conflicts with some of the other parts. For example, I think if you add Transform to the eyebrows they won't work with camera tracking anymore. There are a few areas like that - I would prototype with a simple stick figure type character and see if you can get the effects you want before applying it to a full featured character.
@@okaysamurai well the puppet I got doesn’t have eye brows so yea. But I’ll look into it.
Hi first this the best channel I’ve ever seen cus I’ve learned a lot from him.I have a question I think making a character it’s really difficult for me now.I wanna know is it possible like to order the character you wanna use on your story and someone make all the drawings and then I use it in anime characters?
Yes! Check out the talented creators at pages.adobe.com/character/en/third-party.
Can keyboard/mouse triggers (instead of camera control) be set-up for Parallax movements?
Hmm good question, I don't think I've tried this. But check out this technique that might help: www.reddit.com/r/CharacterAnimator/comments/1023swh/25d_effect/
I just asked about it on Facebook like, 2 days ago. Thanks so much dave!
Hello again :) do you have a video where you use paralax with a "pin tool" puppet that lets the hair dangle with physics while also implementing paralax?
I don't think so...the closest I've gotten was probably Leeta: ruclips.net/video/ezGbFqmyPG4/видео.html. She has face parallax but the hair doesn't move with it - that being said, she has a LOT of unique hair dangle settings.
Okay, here's my biggest issue -- my character is a penguin -- with no neck so either the body stays completely still when the head turns or the head disconnects from the body -- I tried to use Big Red as my guide, but I am STILL a newbie
Not having a neck shouldn't be a huge deal. The head and body are basically connected, so if the body isn't moving with the head, make sure the head isn't independent. With the Turner Bros example in this tutorial, if I took his whole head group and moved it down on top of the torso, the torso should still move along with it, so my guess is something in the rigging is disconnecting them. If it persists, please post a screenshot, video, or File > Export > Puppet (.puppet file) to adobe.com/go/chfeedback for more help.
Hi, I made a fox puppet in parallax and when I do left or right turns I set the head position values in positive and negative to make them come closer but when I do up and down with those values, the ears .. obviously, go in the opposite directions. Is there any way around this?
Yeah, personally I find the up/down parallax is way harder to pull off looking good. I really tend to rig for the left/right case the most, and if I really need up/down and I can't figure it out, I make a duplicate puppet that is cheating with up/down values to swap in when I need it.
I know that the head turns are supposed to be 1 but what if they are not? because the right quarter and profile for me is zero and 2, what should I do?
Hard to diagnose for sure but if you see that it means either your tagging is off or your behavior is placed incorrectly. Take another look at the example files and make sure you're following their setup exactly. If it persists, please post a screenshot, video, or File > Export > Puppet (.puppet file) to adobe.com/go/chfeedback for more help.
im exited to use that on my puppet
Imagine setting those five head turns and adding parallax on top of that to smooth out the turns.
That sounds good in theory but doesn't work as well in practice as you'll still get jumpiness. A more common smoothing technique is to use cycle layers between head views to draw in a sequence of specific frames to move between, which works well (see the Brooklyn Buddies on adobe.com/go/chexamples as an example of this).
hello, i'm Marlon from the Philippines. Are you using CA 3.0 on this project. I'm having trouble with the +Frontal part, i cannot drag the head group to it. Oh, i got it. i should create a group not a layer, my thumbnails are different. Your layers show all the parts. oh haha. your using Illustrator my mistake! sorry Bro! Thanks!
Is it possible to apply triggers to parallax? I like the smooth head turns with parallax. But I don't. know if I can get a head turn recorded and associate a trigger with it, to initiate it during a recording session.
Yes, triggers still work - but only for specific elements, not for specific views like I show when recording head turns. I believe the Parallax example character has an eyelid close/open trigger, for example. Another thing you could do is make a bunch of recorded Face replays and add those to triggers - that should work too (you would just need to make sure you're arming all your face behaviors during recording, not just the main one).
@@okaysamurai That's a neat idea. I will associate triggers to record Face replays. Thanks for that really powerful tip.
Worked just perfectly! Much thanks
Left side for puppet and right side for puppet interchanged
Note it's the puppet's left and right sides, not the left and right sides of the screen.
Isn’t there any way to match the different head angles with different body angles? I’m trying it but looks like it breaks my puppet
Yes, if you tagged the body with frontal, profile, and quarter tags, it would also move (the updated behavior is now called Head & Body turner exactly for this reason).
I love your videos,, but I would love you can share with us a video where we can start from the beginning to the end, where we can add it to our youtube videos, it a little confused, I have learned a lot but a the time I m trying to share in my adobe pro video is really hard.
The "Build Your Own Character" or "Complete Workflow" sections on character.adobelanding.com/tutorials/ might help you there!
Thank you 👍🏻
Hi sir....I learned a lot on your tutorials....and i appreciate it if you can make a tutorials whichis using your own pictures to animate with face, body movements and more hands gesture like waving, salute and clapping.... is it possible? Thank you..😊😊😊
Yes, you could certainly rig a character to do those things. For performance capture, you can't use your arms and hands (yet) - you have to use the dragger behavior and tags to move things with the mouse. Check out a character like Sirr or Willy on okaysamurai.com/puppets who have a lot of triggered arm movements to see what's possible with arms.
Hi! Excellent tutorial. I have a question. I have a pre rigged frontal view for my character with a bunch of personalized triggers and behaviours (and the artwork are not inside a layer group called +Frontal in Illustrator). If I go to Illustrator and create new layer groups (+Frontal / +Quarter etc), Character Animator refreshes the scene and I lose all my previous setup. Is there a way to maintain it while creating these new views inside Illustrator?
CH runs into issues when hierarchy or naming is changed. So if you add, move, or rename groups, it has a hard time keeping track of where the old stuff was. In general my advice is to try to add groups for all your various parts, even if they're blank/empty, and then fill them in with content as you go along. I also only do light rigging until I'm super set on the final artwork, where I'll move into more advanced triggers and whatnot.
@@okaysamurai I see. Thanks for the answer!
Amazing tutorial as usual!
Thanks for this great tutorial Dave. Whereas your example works fine with Illustrator, I tried to recreate it on my puppet based on blank (PS) and as soon as I put the whole face in the +Frontal layer group in PS, the eyes are stretched all over the place and I get a lot of rigging issues with the sad mouth. This happens to both my puppet and the original blank (PS version). Any workaround for this please ?
When retrofitting an existing puppet with different head views it's possible to run into some issues as CH tries to reconcile changes. Moving face contents into a new folder is one of those areas where CH is going to have trouble because it changes the root folder / hierarchy, and CH has trouble understanding where things moved to. Stretchy eyes and a wonky mouth seem to suggest that the face and lip sync behaviors can't quite figure out what to do with these contents, which in turn might mean that the Head Turner behavior is missing or not set up completely to compensate for all the views. If it persists, please post a screenshot, video, or File > Export > Puppet (.puppet file) to adobe.com/go/chfeedback for more help.
if in the properties menu i have teh number 2 instead of number on one of the heads, how can i fix it?
Most likely something has gotten double-tagged. I would check through your rig and see if anything got tagged twice. The Rigging Issues panel might help here: ruclips.net/video/U1iXFxbWm0c/видео.html
how do we get the puppets to stop having jiggly shoulders when their head turns?
If you're seeing jiggly shoulders the head might be a little too sensitive? Or you could add fixed handles or sticks into the shoulders to keep them pinned down more.
Thanks for the video! Are there any tricks or tutorials to doing a full profile view and mouth behaviors? Particularly allowing the background to be seen while talking in profile view.
I haven't personally ever done this, but I think Wendigo from adobe.com/go/chexamples is probably a good one to take a look at for a true side profile view. I think the creator cut the mouth in half to give the effect like it was going off the edge.
@@okaysamurai Thanks. I will check it out!
Hii... How do you use alternative mouth set on parallax effect.... On the face behavior eyelids, eyes, nouse, and mouth are working fine but parallax isn't working on alternative mouth set when triggered... Do i have to use face behavior on altmouth to use the parallax effect....??
This is a tricky one. IIRC you have to add an extra face behavior to the second mouth and match the parallax setting from the first mouth...I think? Unfortunately it's not easy to do for >1 mouth, and I've run into this exact issue with my characters before, and I think I just skipped it for the alt mouths and hoped no one would notice. :)
love yours videos
Any TIPS For AVOIDING PIXELATION PROBLEMS WHILE COMPOSING ALL THE CH FILE IN PREMIERE PRO BECAUSE WHEN I ZOOM IN PREMIERE
MY CHARACTER PIXELATES AND IN RENDER ITS AWFUL MY CHARACTER PS FILE SIZE IS 2500 by 3000 and BG SIZE is 1920 by 1080 and i render in hd
When your CH file links to PR or AE, it will export as its current dimensions. So if you have a 1920 x 1080 scene in CH, that's what will also show up in PR, regardless of how big your character file is. So, if possible, you should make your scene bigger in CH to fit your character at full res. You should never scale more than 100% in PR or AE with a CH asset or you will get pixels.
Can you add head turn to characters made in photo shop or is it only available to characters made in Adobe illustrator?
Photoshop should work the exact same as I show here with Illustrator! No difference.
Thank you so much for this video. It helps alot for my intended uses.
Whether or not the head turns work seems to be totally random. It doesn't seem to matter what I tag or what I set up, sometimes it will work and sometimes it wont. There is no way of of knowing if a puppet will work or not. You just have to keep tweaking things and hope for the best.
This shouldn't be the case, as hopefully you can see in this video where it works as expected. Make sure you are close to the camera and well lit. You can adjust the sensitivity inside the head turner settings as well to be more/less responsive.
Thanks very much for getting back to me, I really appreciate it. @@okaysamurai I should have added that I am talking about inputting pre-recorded video through AE rather than with the web cam. Even with the sensitivity up to 1.000 it still won't work. Everything else works. I am unsure whether to apply the head turn behaviour to the character or to all the head turns but I have tried all ways. Once again thatnks for getting back to me.
Ah okay, I haven't tested it with prerecorded video, just live webcam stuff. Usually I think it's best to put one head turn behavior at the root of the puppet. If it persists, please post a screenshot, video, or File > Export > Puppet (.puppet file) to adobe.com/go/chfeedback for more help.
@@okaysamurai Hi again. Re-head turns in character animator using data from AE. I found that making all layers live apart from eye blinks and all mouths apart from neutral can help. However, sometimes the data from after effects does not always contain lines with references to head turns and when there are none the head turns do not work. The generating of these lines containing head turn references does seem to be random but there must be something driving it.
Hi! When you use head turner, and rellocate the pupil, doesn't it break the eye behaviour? I remember I saw one of your videos where you explained how to make eyes, and at the time they needed to be on the center, and on a round eye to work correctly.
Yes, but surprisingly it's not as bad as you would think. If you want to fine-tune it, feel free to make a separate (invisible?) eyeball layer for each view if need be to help constrain them more. You could keep the eyes always looking forward - some of the example characters do that too - but I don't like that as much personally.
Great tutorial Dave! One thing that caused me pain is that when you combine head turner with parallax and watercolor texture (like Narrator Dave and Leeta), head turner cancels the texture clipping masks. (texture applied to all head positions seperately). The most I managed was to retain the head turner and parallax effects. I wonder if it's due to rendering issues inside Ch, or related to GPU (I do have a GeForce RTX card though), or it's because of Illustrator (It happens when I import my toons from Illustrator; haven't tested on a PS created toon yet).
Can we convince you to make a tutorial where you combine all these behaviors and effects (i.e. head turner + parallax + texture)? :) I think combining all these would really bring the characters alive.
Thanks! Yeah I've never tried combining parallax and head turning, usually it's one or the other, but that's cool that you're combining them! As for why the texture clipping masks break - Illustrator clipping masks don't currently work with CH on import (lame), but you can manually create them inside CH with Puppet > Create Clipping Mask.
Hi, Thank you so much for the helpful amazing Tutorials, I was wondering if it's possible to have the head turn and some physics for the hair at the same time? :DDD
Yes, when you make head turns each with physics, they should all be running in the background regardless of which view you're seeing, so yes, that should work. It can be a bit of a performance hog though!
Another great tutorial! Thank you so much. Is it possible to do a tutorial for the body turns as well such as the arms and legs to make it look more natural? I have a puppet with arms and legs as well and it would look kind of awkward with just the head-turning but the body staying the same.
I talked about this a while back here: ruclips.net/video/ofA7JFYfLlM/видео.html. Basically you would apply the same logic of the head turner to the body, either via automatic stuff or through manual triggers. Of course, the body just pivoting never looks that great, so many people get around this by creating a 3-view walking character (covered in the Walking tutorial).
@@okaysamurai Thank you! I will have a look.
So, I just watched the IK video and setup my layers all inside a frontal folder in photoshop - If I want to make views like in this video - do I create another frontal folder within the +head folder?
Yes, but I would add the Head Turner behavior on the +Head group instead of the top level, or it might get confused with which views to use. I haven't personally tested this but I think it should work? Worst case scenario if you don't use the head hack thing it should definitely work.
@@okaysamurai Thanks a heap! I'll try that.
Sir, can we please use same methods to create body turner behavior?
Yes, body turns can be done with the same method. See the end of this video, which shows a free downloadable example of a body turn puppet: ruclips.net/video/hK-DjtiPzRs/видео.html
Can you please guide us how to change lightening effects like i want my scene and characters to be shoot at night time... how can i create night lightening in character animation
Check out the "Triggers" tutorial on this channel, lesson 2 talks about Cycle Layers which could be used for a lightening effect.
Greatest Dave it's 3D work. Thank you for this Video 🤩🤩
Kindi nagio j
Omg the potential with this. I can make a video like into the spider verse artstyle. Does this software have body tracking too or is it just face?
Currently just face tracking, but we know body tracking is one of the top user requests. Stay tuned...
Hey Okay! You helped me out with some advise sometime last year which i am eternally grateful for. I wonder if you'd be so kinda again? - im trouble shooting audio coming from CH to OBS for live streaming -I have the ASIO driver on in CH but the sound is not replicated in OBS such like it would do in MME (Windows), I've tried various settings within the ASIO driver, installed NDI (to try that way), updated OBS with the ASIO counterpart, though non of this seems to work... it seems ASIO will only push sound through to either CH or OBS individually and not simultaneously... any ideas? (btw i have posted in the forum about this too ;)
Great questions, and audio support for streaming has always been a tricky area. In my experiments I've only done audio directly piping into OBS instead of routing from somewhere else. If the forum post doesn't get an answer, reach out to Dan Ramirez, who is an expert in this stuff. community.adobe.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/7589611
@@okaysamurai Cheers Dave! muchly appreciated :)
For some reason the eyebrows and eyes are not activated at the left or right angles, when rotating what could it be?
Usually this means for some reason the head turner isn't registering the views correctly. Normally we only allow one instance of each tag (right eye, left eyebrow. etc) to work by default, but that gets allowed one more time for each view you add. So if it's not working, most likely either the view thinks it already has another part tagged for it, or the head turner behavior is conflicting with something else (like the walk behavior, which also uses views). Hard to diagnose here - if it persists, please post a screenshot, video, or File > Export > Puppet (.puppet file) to adobe.com/go/chfeedback for more help.
This was a great help! Thanks! Is there a way to compute parallax? Similar to "Compute Head Movement from Speech"?
Parallax is actually considered as part of Compute Head Movement For Speech. So if you run that on a face with parallax, it will compute parallax movement as well, which you can adjust before or after using all the associated parameters. Although, if you use multiple head tags like I show here I'm not sure how exactly it will work!
Great! I’ll play around with that. Thanks, man!
Sorry! One more question. Is Head Turner also part of the Compute Head Movement? It feels like it would be a digital-miracle if that’s the case.
Sadly no (not yet at least).
Fair enough! The program is insane (in the best way) as is, and it made it a breeze to turn our podcast into an animated series. Thanks, for everything!
I've been trying to work other characters like what you did but with a photoshop is better probably but to make my characters ether ways is to make the face on the camera to connect to the character that will be perfect.
Photoshop and Illustrator should both work great for this.
@@okaysamurai Perhaps I am making sputnik from astroblast and I'm trying to group it and it should work with into the Adobe Character.
@@okaysamurai Hi do you know how to copy the character from Photoshop and paste into the Adobe Character?
@@okaysamurai Here's mine looks sta.sh/0se0g7djhw1
You just save the file and go to File > Import in Character Animator to bring it in. CH doesn't have any drawing tools, it relies on external art files.
do you have tutorial for the mouth animation? thank you
Yes: ruclips.net/video/sc9S65Zn9XQ/видео.html
Great video! Thank you! Considering deviating a bit from my 3D stuff and adding some 2D animation to my channel - this (along with all the rest of your videos) is a great help!
Parallax strength doesn't work right when you have a mouth swap set. Can Adobe team fix that in a future update?
Yes, Parallax only looks for one instance of each element - eyes, nose & mouth - so adding an extra mouth means it won't move. You may be able to get around this by adding an extra face & lip sync behavior to the second mouth, but I've run into this exact same issue before as well. Yes, I hope we fix this and make parallax easier in the future.
@@okaysamurai Thanks for the reply... I really love the software by the way... Makes animation really easy
Dave, I designed 2 puppets with head turn, and they work, but when I move my head, the graphics blanks out and you see a white outline with the mouth, eyes and eyebrows. How do I fix that? Likely, my Photoshop file has an error in it.
Check and make sure the visibility (eyeball icon) is on for all relevant layers in all views. My guess is the background layer for each view might be off if all you're seeing is the eyes, mouth, etc. If the problem persists, please upload a screenshot, video, or your File > Export > Puppet file to the official forums at adobe.com/go/chfeedback so we can take a closer look.
@@okaysamurai Thanks, Dave. You were right. It was late (after 12 midnight), and I forgot to turn on one of the face views after aligning the eyes and mouth in another view. I recorded the video anyway, and it worked okay. I did a short video with my designs of an Alan Tudyk puppet (Resident Alien) and Giorgio Tsoukalos (History channel) with face turns. If you've seen it, it's silly. But, I'm having fun.
16:25 Is "cycle layers" an option to help govern speed?
Cycle layers is meant as a way to add frame by frame animation. So I could make a group called Fireball, have 5 layers inside it of the flame flickering, and add the Cycle Layers behavior to the group to move through the sequence. The Triggers tutorial talks more about this: ruclips.net/video/WzYJbZYhxmk/видео.html
Hey, i couldn't find any good tutorial for laughing animation.... how do you make a character Lough.... "Tull the cat" puppet has a laughing trigger but is there any other/better way....??
The Tull way is the best method I've tried. It's just cycle layer triggers, which I talk about here: ruclips.net/video/WzYJbZYhxmk/видео.html
@@okaysamurai thanks....
Thanks for breaking this down! Im curious though... Is there a way to get the features to move dimensionally (like you did, squishing the eye in Head Turner) while using the Parallax feature? I know how to do this in After Effects with Duik but I'm intrigued by Character Animator's speed... can the 2 programs talk with each other?? Like, can I use an AE character rig in CA? That would be *chef's kiss* ideal.
Not yet, but I agree - that would be incredible. I would love for more AE & CH interaction, fingers crossed for the future.
hey dave it doesnt work in chproj file after i save some thing i needed to change from psd file. like eyeball. i just dont want it to move around the eyeball edge. but when i change in psd and save, still doesnt work. why ?
If the sync isn't working, first make sure you are editing the correct file. Do something extreme and clear like adding a red box layer and see if that syncs. If it doesn't, you're editing the wrong original artwork file. If it does, then that seems like a bug - if the sync box is checked in the right properties it should always auto-sync when you make a change.
@@okaysamurai ok dave. Its fix now
Hey Dave can you help me with this, "For instance I want to have two or more characters talking in a same window how can it be done like with a audio of two person talking, wont a puppet will take the audio of another puppet if the audio is merged with the puppet. And if I get different audio then won't it be miss matched."
Hoping for your reply.
N at last U r the best 👍
This is how I set it up: ruclips.net/video/VhCKD5vl848/видео.html. I'll record and edit the audio as separate tracks, then export those out separately for each character. Then bring in one at a time into CH and do Timeline > Compute Lip Sync for the correct selected puppet. Delete the audio track, bring in the other, and repeat the process for the other character. Now you can bring in a final mixed version of the audio (complete with background music, fx, etc) and it will all line up.
Thank s for another Great tutorial! Any idea why the body of my puppet disappears when I turn on HEAD TURN? I tried with 2 different puppets and have similar problem. The head is turning but I don't see the body.
Check out the Turner Bros example - my guess is that you have your Body in a different hierarchy where it's changing when the head changes. Head turner is going to swap between whatever is in the different tagged views. Body needs to be separate from those so it won't get swapped out.
@@okaysamurai great! Thanks so much! I will check it out
Can I use any image ( like an nft or still image) or does it have to be created on photoshop?
We recommend PSD or AI layered files. A still image will be limited in what it can do because in general you want all you different parts to be on separate layers so they can move independently.
Hey,i worked on a project on ch and now when i open the ch proj it shows the error of open gl and i hv no data in my proj what to do
I M STUCKED!
OpenGL errors can be complicated - please search for them on adobe.com/go/chfeedback and you'll see several potential solutions. If not, please post your error message there for more help.
This is great, thank you so much for the tuts !
awesome i was going crazy yesterday tryna figure this out!