Animating in Adobe Character Animator (2018 Edition)

This video discusses the minor UI changes made since authoring this course.

With the Characterizer feature, you can record yourself and build a puppet using a series of styles. This is a great option if you want to jump in and animate without a lot of setup.

You can design animatable characters in many ways. In this course, we will be using a character designed in Procreate for the iPad Pro. I detail the layers that make up the character and show how to properly export for Photoshop editing.

To up your chances of creating a successful rig in Character Animator, we will spend time in Photoshop merging, grouping and renaming layers.

Independent Layers change how the overall rig reacts to animation. This is important when we want to isolate certain areas, such as limbs. We will learn more about Independent Layers as we move on. This video will show how to tag Independent Layers in Photoshop.

In order to have our eyes track properly, we will want to group and name the eye layers a certain way. While we can also set this process up in Character Animator, doing it in the Photoshop stage can save some time.

Like the eyes, we will need to set up the eyebrows a certain way to ensure all emotions are tracked.

At the start of this section we will take a moment to overview the Rig tab. That way, you know where everything is as we start to work.

Tagging is an important step. This is the process where we tell Character Animator which pieces of our character belong to which behaviors.

Pins are used to keep portions of our puppet in place. In this video, we learn how to attach pins to the body so we can bend from the waist.

While we won't record any animation until the end of the course, we will be going to the Record section a lot to test the rig. So here I will quickly overview the panels in this section.

Dragger handles, coupled with the Dragger behavior, allow us to drag and move any part of the rig we choose. But like pins, layer independence plays a big role in dragger functionality.

Sometimes moving and rotating areas of the rig can help with certain things, such as creating more believable bends for our arms.

By default, Character Animator creates a nice bouncy look to bent limbs. The Stick Tool allows us to refine this look, creating a definitive bend.

Bouncy hair, dangling props and wind simulation are but a few uses for creating Dangler handles in Character Animator.

Universal Behaviors can be used to control all aspects of the rig, save for the parts that have layer specific behaviors.

In this lecture you will lean how to apply layer behaviors to specific parts of the body. This will ultimately give you more control over how these pieces act.

In this video we look at how meshes wrap around layers and what you can do to correct small issues.

Triggers allow you to swap layers in and out with the press of a key. This lecture shows how to set up a standard trigger for some props.

Swap sets are advanced triggers which allow for multiple items to be swapped in and out at will.

Adding eyelids is a fairly straightforward process. Just as long as you put them into the eye groups and tag appropriately, you should be good to go!

With the proper layer ordering, tagging and behaviors, you can set up your camera to track head turns for the rig.

By setting up Handles a certain way, and applying the appropriate behaviors, you can create automatic motions that play on command or automatically, such as jaw drops and chest expansions.

Walk cycles can be automatically generated by tagging your body and separating layers appropriately.

The walk cycle behavior has several properties that can be altered and refined. This lecture goes over that process.

In this lecture, we begin the process of recording animation for our production.

In this lecture we learn how to record the talk action and show how visemes can be altered.

With Character Animator, you can import audio files recorded outside of the software and have it analyzed for quick and easy lip syncing.

In this lecture we learn how to work with multiple rigs on the timeline.

With Character Animator, you can import PNG sequences and have it sequence automatically for more varied animations.

Learn how to export your animations out in a variety of formats in this lecture.

My final thoughts for this course.