Book Image

Real-Time Animation with Adobe Character Animator

By : Chad Troftgruben
Book Image

Real-Time Animation with Adobe Character Animator

By: Chad Troftgruben

Overview of this book

Adobe Character Animator is a power app for non-animators that provides easy rigging and easy-to- understand tools that enable you to create entertainment or business videos in no time. This guide to Character Animator gives you a comprehensive overview of the app, helping you learn the entire process—from importing a character designed in Adobe Photoshop to animating a sequence. Complete with background art, multiple character rigs and Character Animator project files, this book will show you how to animate a scene in Character Animator from start to finish. Starting with a character PSD from another artist, you’ll organize and condense the file to prepare it for rigging and animation. From there, you’ll systematically rig the character while exploring advanced behaviors and triggers to animate a complex scene that takes advantage of the app’s best features. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to create appealing animations in Character Animator for any purpose.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Part 1: Preparing Character Art for Rigging
5
Part 2: Rigging Character Art for Animation
11
Part 3: Animating and Refining Your Scene

Summary

When it comes to creating walk cycles, Character Animator makes the process simple, so long as you have your rig properly tagged. If your rig appears to not function correctly during the cycle, be sure to double-check check all the tags have been accounted for. It’s also important to keep the limbs independent from the body. Finally, remember that once you have set up the cycle, you can customize it in several ways to fit the personality of the character. Mixing animations with preset cycles is also easy to do and edit once in the Record phase. You will find that working with these cycles can save you a lot of time!

In the next chapter, we will start the process of animating our sequence by using Chaz, another puppet, props, and a set or scene for our characters to interact in.