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

Adjusting the rig in Character Animator

In the previous chapter, we went into Photoshop and made adjustments to a rig to make it more friendly for Character Animator. While this is the preferred way, you can make minor layer adjustments in Character Animator as well. This can be nice for quick fixes but lacks granular control. You can also change the PSD in Photoshop and the file will update in real time in Character Animator.

To see all this in action, let’s import our character first.

Importing Chaz into Character Animator

We imported a .svg file in Chapter 2, so we have some knowledge of how to import a character. Here is a refresher:

  1. Create a new project by going to File > New Project (or by pressing Ctrl + Alt + N or + + N). This will allow us to start with a clean slate.
  2. Save the project in a safe place and name it Chat_with_Chaz.
  3. Import Chaz_Host_v2.psd or the file you worked on in the previous chapter by double-clicking on...