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

What You Need to Know Before Rigging and Animating

In order to ensure a smooth experience, we will first talk about the system requirements and how to download Character Animator. We will touch on the differences between the Starter and Pro versions of the app and make sure your equipment is compatible with Adobe Character Animator. Character Animator works differently from other animation apps in that you act out sequences using your webcam and microphone to record animation, so it’s important we have those pieces of hardware ready. Once your equipment is confirmed to be functioning, we can test some sample files out to get a handle on what the software is capable of. We will also take a look at Characterizer, an easy and fun way to quickly bring yourself into a scene.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

  • System requirements for Character Animator
  • Downloading Character Animator
  • Calibrating and setting a rest pose in Character Animator
  • Playing with sample files and Characterizer