Adobe Character Animator

Adobe Character Animator
Developer(s)Adobe Inc.
Initial releaseJune 15, 2015; 7 years ago (2015-06-15)
Stable release
Version 22.5 / February 8, 2022 (2022-02-08)
Written inC++, Lua, JavaScript
Operating systemWindows 10 X64 only Version 1909 or later, MacOS 10.15 and later
TypeComputer animation
LicenseFreemium for Starter mode, trialware/software as a service for Pro mode
Websitewww.adobe.com/products/character-animator.html

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 and is also available as a standalone application which one can download separately as part of a Creative Cloud all-apps subscription. 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.

History

Character Animator was originally code-named "Animal".

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
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
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
June 21, 2016 (announced April 12, 2016) Preview 4 After Effects CC 2015.3 (13.8) visual layer tagging, improved lip sync, export via Adobe Media Encoder, Syphon support, Motion Trigger, Auto Blink
November 2, 2016 Beta 5 After Effects CC 2017 (14.0) dynamic link to After Effects and Premiere Pro, shareable puppet files, Cycle Pause tag, MP3 import, PNG sequence import, speed improvements
April 19, 2017 Beta 6 After Effects CC 2017 (14.2) automatic walk cycles, viseme editor, cross-platform live streaming output via Mercury Transmit, layer blending modes, workspace modes, additional languages (Simplified Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Korean)
October 18, 2017 (announced September 14, 2017) 1.1 part of Creative Cloud All Apps Controls & Triggers panels, MIDI support, pose-to-pose Face & Eye Gaze animation, audio waveform in the timeline, copy and paste of visemes into After Effects, auto-attach, clipping masks, Layer Picker, Fader, Collide & Dynamic tags, improved lip sync
December 11, 2017 1.1.1 minor UI changes and bug fixes
April 3, 2018 1.5 particle physics, scene snapshots, improved triggers UI, copy and paste takes and triggers, countdown before recording, custom Controls panel button art
October 15, 2018 (announced September 9, 2018) 2.0 Characterizer, replays, magnets, squashiness, shoulder and hip tags, history bookmarks
April 3, 2019 2.1 Character Trigger extension for Twitch, jaw movement based on visemes, search filtering for behaviors, UI polish
June 17, 2019 2.1.1 bug fixes
November 4, 2019 3.0 keyframes, scene cameras, triggerable audio, motion lines, rigging issues pane, search filtering for tags and triggers
December 9, 2019 3.1 trigger labels, search filters for project items
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
May 18, 2020 3.3 feedback button, markers over dynamic link, timeline search filter, audio track volume control
June 15, 2020 3.3.1 bug fixes, new icon
October 20, 2020 3.4 speech-aware animation, improved lip sync, limb IK, merge takes
February, 2021 3.5 timeline snapping options
March 10, 2021 4.0 new file format (faster, more compact, and resilient to corruption)
May 10, 2021 4.2 automatic damaged project recovery
July 19, 2021 4.4 native Apple silicon support, faster speech-aware animation
26 October 2021 22.0 body tracker, smart replays, head & body turner, updated examples
13 December 2021 22.1.1 puppet maker, transcript-based lip sync
8 February 2022 22.2 bug fixes
11 April 2022 22.3 bug fixes
9 May 2022 22.4 bug fixes
21 June 2022 22.5 Starter mode, Quick Export, Auto-swap and Leader/Follower behavior
17 October 2022 23.0 Motion Library
6 December 2022 23.1 Motion Library Strength parameter and Modernized GPU support

See also


This page was last updated at 2023-04-21 23:29 UTC. Update now. View original page.

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