Adobe Character Animator is a desktop application software product that combines real-time live motion-capture with a multi-track recording system to control layered 2D puppets based on an illustration drawn in Photoshop or Illustrator. It is automatically installed with Adobe After Effects CC 2015 to 2017[1] and is also available as a standalone application which one can download separately as part of a Creative Cloud all-apps subscription.[2] It is used to generate real-time 2D animations to produce both live and non-live animation.
Description
Character Animator imports layered Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator documents into puppets which have behaviors applied to them. The puppets are then placed into a scene, which can be viewed in the Scene panel and Timeline panel. Rigging is set up in the Puppet panel, though basic rigging is fully automatic based on specific layer names like Right Eyebrow and Smile. Properties of selected elements can be examined and changed in the Properties panel, including behavior parameters. Live inputs include a webcam (for face-tracking), microphone (for live lip sync), keyboard (for triggering layers to hide/show), and mouse (for warping specific handles).
Final output of a scene can be exported to a sequence of PNG files and a WAV file, or any video format supported by Adobe Media Encoder. Live output can be sent to other applications running on the same machine via the Syphon protocol (Mac only) or Adobe Mercury Transmit on both Mac and Windows. Scenes can also be dropped directly into After Effects and Premiere Pro, using Dynamic Link to avoid rendering.[3]
History
Character Animator was originally code-named "Animal".[4][5]
The following is the list of versions of Character Animator.
Ship Date
Version
Shipped with
Major features added
June 15, 2015
Preview 1
After Effects CC 2015.0 (13.5)
markerless face tracking; layered PSD & AI import; WAV & AIFF import; PNG sequence export; WAV export[6]
July 27, 2015
Preview 2
more accurate face tracking and lip sync; track reordering and snapping in the timeline; transparency grid; improved performance; bug fixes[7][8]
November 30, 2015
Preview 3
After Effects CC 2015.1 (13.6)
“sticks” to control rigidity of the puppet mesh, multi-touch gestures to control character limbs, the ability to share rigged puppets, increased recording flexibility, performance improvements[9]
keyframes, scene cameras, triggerable audio, motion lines, rigging issues pane, search filtering for tags and triggers[21]
December 9, 2019
3.1
trigger labels, search filters for project items[22]
February 19, 2020
3.2
keyframe time stretching, replays-related improvements, new keyboard shortcuts, automatic addition of corresponding behavior for Pin, Dragger, and Dangle tools[23]
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