Character Animator Tips & Tricks (February 2017)

[@SeñorJordan]

Wow I am so flattered you mentioned my channel! Thanks for the shoutout and all you do to help empower us all to dabble in animation (even when we have limited time, budgets and skill sets!) ;-) I'll keep sharing as I improve. I'm trying to draw in Illustrator now to reduce the pixelation but that's quite different from Photoshop, which I have more experience with! ¡Gracias!

[@okaysamurai]

De nada, keep up the great work! Another way to reduce pixelation is to just start with a larger PSD file size - if you know how big your closeups will be, start with that. I think your characters are simple enough that it shouldn't be too processor intensive with a larger file size.

[@BradPig]

Dave thanks so much for the mention and the review of my channel!!! It was awesome!! I will try to put subtitules in my next videos so you can understand what they said :)

[@okaysamurai]

My pleasure, sure thing - keep up the great work!

[@yoyoemmyjo]

I really appreciate that you're willing to include cross-over tips from other programs like After Effects and Audition. Sometimes when people create tutorials they consider other programs to be out-of-scope. Yours are immensely more helpful because they think in terms of the complete workflow. Thanks again!

[@okaysamurai]

Sure thing! This is great to know - would love to do some more advanced PS and AE tricks, so maybe I'll start throwing those into future episodes.

[@mak00ileven]

absolutely that would be excellent :) and much appreciated

[@pandapicks8286]

Hey, I'm also doing movie reviews with an animated character! I recently started experimenting with Character Animator to help me relieve some of the hard labor of lip syncing. While it is not perfect, it has really completed a lot of the heavy lifting for me and all I really need to do is fine tune the mouths in after effects. Great stuff!

[@okaysamurai]

Nice - great stuff! Next update will have way better lip sync editing in CH - stay tuned!

[@kgee3494]

i actually fixed my problem! i don't need help anymore with my puppet! thanks for taking the time to give my query attention!

[@okaysamurai]

Happy to help. :)

[@nathanwood2369]

I needed to figure out how to pick stuff up for my Ninja with his katana Thank you!

Shirley you have more important things to do! :D That is awesome DAVE!

[@okaysamurai]

Ha nice find. :)

[@mak00ileven]

i've been waiting for this and ill ask a few questions when I'm done watching the vid. Good Stuff

[@DigitalTShirtShop]

Cool stuff man. Your videos are very good. Very informative and you are very precise in your instruction and detail. I really like it. It's actually made me want to take the time to do this better. Maybe I'll get the kinks out and get my first animation loaded on KZbin.

[@gingerprince2062]

Nice Logo Change! Great Intro!

[@okaysamurai]

Yep, trying to up the production values a little. Thanks!

[@devilbrow2012]

I would love to see two new features implemented , firstly being more options for blend shapes for individual expressions , another feature would be to implement full body motions capture.

[@okaysamurai]

Agreed, I think both of those have been submitted at character-animator.ideas.aha.io so hopefully they'll see the light of day in the future.

[@fcm3d]

Argh I need to put out my stuff but I'm so scared it's not good enough. I love this program soooo much!

[@okaysamurai]

No harm in trying! Make an anonymous channel if you have to.

[@RichardSticky]

Thanks for the tips and all your work, being able to manipulate puppets with something like a gaming control would be great.

[@okaysamurai]

One of the devs has been working on a "gamer" behavior. Early days but very promising...

[@RichardSticky]

Microsoft's Project Spark was headed down this path with some really innovative ideas before they axed it.

[@okaysamurai]

Yeah! I played around with that. I'm loving Disney Infinity 3.0 now and am looking forward to Lego Worlds on XB1 later this month.

[@RichardSticky]

Best of luck to you and your team!

[@jdhitc]

thanks for the picking up object tip

[@cairogomes]

Awesome!

[@Letraderdudimanche]

Hello ! I'm à New KZbinr in France and I use character animator. There is so much possiblities... :-)

[@kgee3494]

I have an eye animation that is not working correctly at all. The files seem all put together in the right. I put a post in the adobe community but no response. I want to know what email I can send my puppet files to to see what the problem is. I don't know how or where to upload it in the forum nor do I want to. Where can I send my puppet exactly to get looked over and helped out?

[@dannerino]

This is the second time I've noticed something different. You used the dangle behavior on your blue robot by removing it from the top level group then adding it to the antenna groups. I still don't have the dangle option when I click the "+" to add a behavior. Is this something new in the version I'm using (1.5)? Great videos by the way.

[@okaysamurai]

Because this is an older tutorial, some things may have changed. In this case it's that you need to add the "Physics" behavior instead of the dangle behavior. Then you'll find the exact same Dangle controls inside physics.

[@KP9393]

The Princess Bride is a classic!

[@okaysamurai]

One of my very favorites.

[@difotme]

I really like the tutorials you do and I am a follower of your channel but I do not speak English, you will be able to do tutorials in Spanish, thanks for sharing your knowledge.

[@okaysamurai]

I wish I spoke Spanish! For now your best bet is to turn on closed captioning and under settings change it to spanish. It's automatically generated for most of these so it's not going to be perfect, but it should help. Some of the main tutorials have "CC" icons next to them and should be correctly transcribed so they'll be more accurate.

[@4rjohny5]

thank you Dave, very helpful! =)

[@elmoriartyx477]

hey can i know please where did you get these puppets they are amazing just like your channel

[@okaysamurai]

I have links to all the creators in the video descriptions, but most of these are original works by the artists and probably not for free use.

[@five0antho860]

Hi! Love your work. Any idea when a syphon like support will be available on OBS for PC. What do you recommend doing if I want my character to have a transparent background on my stream via obs studio?

[@okaysamurai]

Thanks! PC support should be in the next released (date TBD). Right now people have been clever with making green backgrounds and keying them out with 3rd party stuff (I don't think OBS does that though)? But we hear you - it's coming soon.

[@randyhansra2318]

Question, how would you capture claymation characters in order to use character animator? the way Shmideo has in his video? Im sorry if someone already asked that question in the comments. Thanks in advance.

[@okaysamurai]

You would photograph each dynamic part individually and stitch them together in Photoshop. In the video I show a few of these shots he did with consistent lighting & a white background. And I'll be showing more examples of how to do this in future episodes.

[@thiagojspereira]

Thanks man, I'm brazilian and your videos have help me so much (sorry for my bad english 😊)

[@okaysamurai]

glad to hear it! good luck!

[@thiagojspereira]

I'm working hard to complete my project until next week. If you want, you can see it on my channel. My character will have different emotions. I'll let you know when I'm ready. I hope you can see it 😁

[@okaysamurai]

looking forward to it!

[@Chriptosher]

So I'm just looking to start out at doing this sort of animation! Complete rookie, where should I start? :)

[@okaysamurai]

Best all in one tutorial is currently kzbin.info/www/bejne/laTQfYuFebmXbLc.

[@UltravioletHeather]

I have the latest Character Animator installed but I don't have that Staple tool. I tried searching in Help - Staple tool and got nothing. How come your version has a staple icon?

[@okaysamurai]

The staple tool was how we *used* to attach things. Now it should be automatic! When an origin goes over another piece of artwork, it will auto-attach. For example, watch how I attach the arms in part 4 of kzbin.info/www/bejne/bXiudKpqm5aIqKs

[@jamesstone7341]

Hey Dave, love these tips & tricks videos, finding them very useful in my own project. I have a quick question if you could spare a second? I'm trying to get my character to drink a cup of tea after picking up a mug (as shown in this video), but the mug has to be above the head in layer order, whereas my character's arm is in the body layer. Is there a way to attach artwork from different layers so that they can be dragged together?

[@okaysamurai]

The easiest workaround would be to put the Body group above the head group - that's what I normally see people do. Otherwise yes, there are ways, like see the Cassandra example on the OKS puppets page - she has a separate background hair layer that is outside of the head and body but still moves with them. A similar setup could probably work for the arms?

[@jamesstone7341]

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly! Puppet is sorted and drinking like a caffeine addict now, cheers.

[@pep-o-butt672]

Hey, do you have a video about how did you make this camera-muppet animation? With your face and stuff>

[@okaysamurai]

Which character specifically do you mean? Or are you talking about Ernie in the I Don't Want To Live On The Moon music video?

[@how2ae]

Hello, thank you very much! Tip about picking up thing is great. I've stucked on making handshake between two persons. How do I connect them inside one scene and make some draggable point to control handshake?

[@okaysamurai]

Hmmm, for two characters I would probably want them as two separate controllable puppets so I have complete control over their movements. You would just have to fake a draggable handshake I'd imagine - I'd suggest adding markers (Timeline > Add Marker) to denote the points where you want the hands to meet, go up, down, etc.

[@how2ae]

Not a very handy method, but thank you anyway.

[@fisaljh]

Thank you

[@seeheargames]

Thank you always awesome

[@Sprinkledwithloveandwisdom]

The blue box indicating the Right Pupil Range is very large -- it goes way outside of the head. The left one is fine. This causes the right pupil to fly outside of the eyeball. Can you please tell me how to adjust that box? I'm very new to this and may find this to be a very silly question but I may pull out my hair if I don't ask. Thank you.

[@okaysamurai]

Usually this is because there's something extra in the artwork layer making CH think that the layer is bigger than intended . Maybe try deleting the Right Eyeball layer and re-add it to see if that helps? Anything called "Right Eyeball" or "Left Eyeball" will automatically get the pupil range tag.

[@Sprinkledwithloveandwisdom]

Okay Samurai Thank you!!! That worked! That was my assumption too, but rather than deleting the whole layer I just kept looking for a stray dot or something. I'm embarrassed to say how long I tried to figure this out and didn't think to delete the layer and start over. Lol! Thank you so much for your prompt and helpful response!

[@drewallen813]

Thank you so much for all these tutorial videos! You've really helped me a ton. Here's a hopefully quick question about puppets and holding props. I'm trying to attach a toothbrush to a girl's hand and have her lift it to her mouth and brush her teeth. Problem I'm running into is this...I need the toothbrush to be on a layer above her head so that it doesn't go behind her head when she lifts it to her mouth. So I can't put the toothbrush in a sublayer with the arm because the arm layer is under the head layer. That make sense? :) Any suggestions?

[@okaysamurai]

Swapping the body and head groups might be your best bet. So +Character > Body, Head. Usually we recommend the Head first, but you're totally fine to swap them. You could also have separate extra groups that show up above/below the main groups - see Cassandra at okaysamurai.com/puppets/, who has a separate background hair group.

[@drewallen813]

I'll give it a shot. Thank you for the quick reply!

[@mcandler_the_unscottish]

I created a character alongside the default puppets provided. Everything looks good but while the default puppets arms bends in spaghetti like along X,Y- clockwise, my puppets arm bends in a Z or comes forward-ish meaning they can never wave. When I add the stick tool to make it bend better, it acts as if its pinned with only skin being pulled. I have screenshots of this which could perhaps explain my predicament better that I can inbox somewhere. Its making me miserable. HELP!!

[@okaysamurai]

Can you post screens in the official forums? If you can share your .puppet file and link it there from a shared google drive / dropbox / creative cloud link, that would help too: forums.adobe.com/community/character-animator/overview

[@milad2050]

Hi Your channel is Amazing I wanna know what is your system so the programs run this fast? Thank you

[@okaysamurai]

I'm just using a 2012 Macbook pro.

[@milad2050]

I see. I have a 2015 Macbook pro but the program runs so slow. What are the processor and Memory?

[@okaysamurai]

My Processor: 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7, Memory: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3. Our minimum specs are the same as After Effects, if that helps.

[@juansebastiansolano]

Hey love ur videos!! Could u make a walk cycle tutorial? Using Adobe Character Animator?

[@okaysamurai]

Working on a walking robot now actually! Yes - will take me a while but soon.

[@juansebastiansolano]

Awesome man thanks!! Been using ur tutorials for some animations i do for work, used to use After effects but this is so much easier than keyframing!!

[@TruLeeMusic]

Hey i Recently got the adobe sweet and have been character building in character animator and photoshop but recently whenever i go to record in character animator my guy dissapears ? Any advice ? Btw your videos are awesome.

[@okaysamurai]

If this is only happening with one puppet, probably a "hide others in group" or blink setup issue I'm guessing. If all puppets, probably a bug, file here: forums.adobe.com/community/character-animator/character-animator-bug-reports

[@TruLeeMusic]

Figured it out! thank you! Im going to have many more questions as i continue on. Thanks for responding !

[@Fikoks]

hey Okay can you help me... so me and my friends are making a short film for fun and i used one of your carecters and a massage popped up saying: OpenGL steup failed --- the Scene panel will likely be blank. Updating your graphics card driver may fix this issue.See adobe.com/go/ch_opengl for detals

[@okaysamurai]

Did you follow the tips on the link? Those are all our known solutions to OpenGL issues. Is it just one puppet in particular or all of them?

[@juansebastiansolano]

Hi i have one question when i export the PNG sequence and import it into AE the resolution of my character is terrible, and i cant set to rasterize continuously like i would with a AI file. Any recomendations?

[@juansebastiansolano]

Never mind thanks, Fixed it.

[@Leonicer]

I love this program so much but my audiofilse are verry laggy and not sync. :/

[@okaysamurai]

Imported audio or live? Imported audio files shouldn't lag at all...can you share an example?

[@Leonicer]

Okay Samurai Okay Samurai I try to record my screen and send it to you tomorrow or on saturday... Thank you for your quick response :D

[@NotSerious]

Something should happen when you click "Character animator loves you" haha

[@BrandonWalowitz]

Did using + before a layer group become obsolete?

[@okaysamurai]

No, you can still do that in your PSD or AI. Because only groups can be independent currently in CH, we still recommend doing that in your PSD or AI file wherever you can. If you give a layer a + in those, it will automatically become a group on import. This is something we hope to fix in the future.

[@BrandonWalowitz]

Thanks!

[@enigma6643]

that blue robot looks like very stylized Daniel Radcliffe

[@kathyf123]

I downloaded and installed this, but it wont load. *Sigh*

[@okaysamurai]

System requirements are here: helpx.adobe.com/adobe-character-animator/system-requirements.html. If still running into issues, file a bug report at forums.adobe.com/community/character-animator/character-animator-bug-reports.

[@kathyf123]

Thanks. I found the problem. The program doesn't like it if you are using more than two monitors. I unplugged one of them and it worked fine.

[@Ricardo-ns5hl]

Well... you didnt explain what the fuck to do if the eyes are not working correctly

[@okaysamurai]

See kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z6aWZWepapd0hqs for a more dedicated tutorial on eyes.