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

Cleaning up PSD layers

This last step may not apply if the art was drawn in Photoshop itself, but outside apps, such as Procreate, seem to import each layer of the .psd at canvas size as opposed to just what the artwork requires. While in most cases, this will work in Character Animator, some actions, such as moving the pupils and viewing custom controls, may have issues.

To test this, see the following:

  1. Locate Worried under +Right Eyebrow for 3/4th Head.
  2. Select the Move tool (V).
  3. Use Ctrl or + A to select the artwork in the layer.
  4. Use Ctrl or + T to activate the Free Transform Tool option.

You will see that a selection area forms around the artwork:

Figure 3.50: The Worried eyebrow is the only artwork being selected

Figure 3.50: The Worried eyebrow is the only artwork being selected

Press Enter to deselect the eyebrow. Click on Neutral under +Right Eyebrow and follow the same steps as before. You should see that the selection area doesn’t hug the eyebrow, but rather...