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

Adding more character actions

While we added some basic face and head animations to Chaz using the webcam, the alien is only currently being lip-synced. With the alien’s gaze, emotion, and body language being static, the animation is less engaging. Luckily, we can go back in and add some actions, breathing more life into the conversation.

Adjusting the alien’s gaze

Setting the alien’s pupils to look at Chaz will give the character and the scene a bit more depth:

  1. Go back to the Rig tab and double-click Alien_Guest_v2 in the Project panel.
  2. Click once on the 3-4th Head layer.
  3. Using the + icon on the bottom right, add a new Eye Gaze behavior.
Figure 11.10: You have many options with Eye Gaze

Figure 11.10: You have many options with Eye Gaze

  1. Now, go to the Record tab.
  2. Click Alien_Guest_v2.
  3. Locate Eye Gaze [3-4th Head] and expand it to reveal its options.
  4. Ensure only Keyboard Input is set to record. This will allow us to control the pupils using...