Create expressive animation with facial motion capture.

Bring a cartoon character’s face to life with real-time facial motion capture and automatic lip sync using Adobe Character Animator.

Try for free

Use your own facial expressions to make a character talk.

With a human face and a laptop, you can easily create a video with an animated character. Performance capture technology in Adobe Character Animator works with your computer’s microphone and camera to create a powerful lip sync and facial motion capture solution. Face tracking applies your facial data to an animated character, called a puppet, as you move your head and talk.

Predesigned characters in Adobe Character Animator

Start with a predesigned character.

Choose a preloaded puppet from the Character Animator home screen to explore facial motion capture. Then watch it come alive as you move.

Create a customised avatar from a template.

Choose a simple character from the home screen and then edit their facial features. You can even copy and paste features from one character to another.

A man using Adobe Character Animator to animate a character

Sync with uploaded or live video and audio.

Line up the puppet’s face with yours during live video, using markerless facial capture. Speak into your computer mic and the puppet will lip sync in real time or upload prerecorded audio for your puppet to mimic.

Adding realistic hair movement to a character in Adobe Character Animator

Add realistic details like hair movement.

Choose what moves on your character and how, in tandem with the facial animation, using the capture system’s Physics tools to apply gravitational laws.

Design a high-quality animated face from scratch.

Quickly toggle between Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator and Character Animator to create a unique character of your own. This innovative facial motion capture software is integrated with Photoshop and all of Creative Cloud to make the design process flow.

Adobe Character Animator integrations with Photoshop and Illustrator

App integration makes facial edits easy.

Select your puppet and go to Edit › Edit original to open your character in Photoshop or Illustrator. Changes you make there will automatically carry over into Character Animator.

Adobe Character Animator in-app tutorials

Let helpful in-app tutorials guide you.

Visit the home screen of Character Animate to explore animation production tutorials, exciting new features and fun customisable characters.

Animate a sample face with motion capture data.

Re-create movement intuitively. Character Animator’s beginner-friendly tools are also advanced enough for professional animators. Your puppet will mimic the movement of your eyebrows, nose, mouth, pupils, head, voice and more.

Choose it:
Double-click a predesigned character from the home screen in Character Animator.

Check it:
Be sure your laptop camera and microphone are enabled in the app. Check for your face and sound waves to show up in the Camera & Microphone panel.

Sync it:
Turn your gaze forward and click Set Rest Pose under Camera & Microphone to apply tracking points to your face.

Record it:
Use the Record and Stop buttons to record a clip of the character mimicking your facial motion and voice as you move and talk in real time.

Export it:
Save your project. Then click File › Export to transform your scene into a video file.

Follow along to start animating faces.

Check out helpful tutorials to get rolling on face capture — from designing a cartoon face one feature at a time to walking through entire character animations, limbs and all.