Controlling a character with triggers
Triggers are one of the most powerful concepts in Adobe Character Animator. This tutorial walks you through creating a diverse range of triggers, including hand positions, looping fireballs, and blink cycles.
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1 Build basic triggers
Build simple triggers and a swap set.
Introduction
A trigger in Adobe Character Animator CC is simply a way to show or hide a group or layer.
If I want this robot to have a heart animation appear on his screen, clink his claws together or even open up his entire face to reveal a hidden computer screen this is all done through triggers.
Trying basic triggers in record mode
Open the example TriggerBeginnerLesson.chproj file and in the Project panel, double click Scene 1 - Basic Triggers.
This should open the scene in Record mode.
Let's experiment with these simple triggers first and then we'll show how they were made.
Press the 1 key on your keyboard and a yellow light appears in the top circle.
Let go and it disappears again.
Press the 2 key and a blue circle appears below.
But when you let go of the key the blue circle remains.
Tapping the key again turns it back off.
In the third example pressing the 3 key makes three separate circles appear.
And finally, in the fourth example pressing 4, 5 or 6 changes the hand to a different position.
Let's see how these were setup.
Creating keyboard triggers and latch behavior
In the Project panel double click Puppet 1 - Basic Triggers.
This will open the artwork up in Rig mode.
In the lower left you should see the Triggers panel with the triggers that make the scene work already listed.
If you see the History panel instead just click the Triggers header to switch over to it.
To build the triggers from scratch ourselves let's remove the existing ones by selecting them all with Command A on Mac or Control A on Windows and pressing Delete.
In the Puppet panel if I toggle the visibility of the yellowlight layer by clicking the left eyeball icon I can see a yellow circle appear.
If we wanted this to be invisible by default and only show up when we press a trigger, we can just drag the layer into the Triggers panel which creates a new trigger associated with that layer.
If we click the keyboard column in the Triggers panel, type a 1 and press Return now pressing the 1 key on the keyboard will activate that trigger.
We can try this out by returning to Record mode by clicking it in the top Workspace bar.
And as expected it works.
When we press 1 the yellow circle appears.
And when we let go it disappears.
Let's click on Rig in the top Workspace bar to return to our trigger setup.
Now we'll do the same thing with the bluelight layer.
Drag the layer into the blank space of the Triggers panel and another trigger is made.
Then click the keyboard column and type in a 2.
Finally let's check Latch in the Trigger properties that show below.
Note that latch keys show with a filled background in the keyboard column to help differentiate them.
Return to Record mode.
Tapping the 2 key here will keep the trigger on not make it go away like the first trigger did.
This is called Latching.
And you can think of it like flicking a light switch on or off.
Making a trigger latched or unlatched is really a personal preference.
So, see what works best for your own puppet's and performance style.
Triggering multiple layers with a single key
Returning to Rig mode now we have three separate layers - greenlight, orangelight and redlight that we want to have appear in a single trigger.
To do this drag the greenlight layer into the blank space of the Triggers panel to create another new trigger.
While it's selected press Return to rename it.
I'm going to call it 3 Lights and press Return.
Then I'll type in a 3 in the keyboard column and check Latch below.
Now try dragging the orangelight layer in the Puppet panel on top of the 3 Lights trigger in the Triggers panel and you'll see it get added into the Layers list below.
So, a trigger can have as many layers as you want associated with it.
Let's add the last layer by dragging the redlight layer on top of the 3 Lights trigger and verify that it's been added to the list below.
Now if we return to Record mode and try pressing the 3 key we can see that all three circle layers are showing up at the same time.
Return to Rig mode, twirl open the Arm group and then twirl open the Hands group inside.
Sometimes when you trigger one thing you want to replace other things and have them disappear so only one piece of artwork shows up at a time.
Hands are a common example of this.
If you trigger a finger pointing you only want to see that not the other three positions.
Using swap sets to replace artwork
In Character Animator CC this is called a Swap Set To create a new Swap Set begin to drag the entire Hands group over the Triggers panel.
As you do this you'll notice a drop zone appear in the bottom asking if you want to make this into a single Trigger or a Swap Set.
This shows up anytime you drag a group into the Triggers panel.
If we made this a trigger it would simply show and hide the whole group just like the circles previously.
Instead we'll drag over Create Swap Set.
Now we have a group in our Triggers panel that includes its layers as separate triggers.
In a Swap Set which ever trigger has the filled in finger icon will be the default - the first thing you'll see when the scene loads.
You can easily change this by clicking another finger within the Swap Set, but we'll stick to keeping it on the default trigger for now.
Next, we can enter keys for each other trigger.
I'm going to use 4 for Point, 5 for Peace and 6 for Palmswap.
Note that we didn't add a key to the default.
And that's because it will automatically get triggered when another trigger ends.
Back in Record mode we can see that pressing 4, 5 or 6 changes the hand position by swapping one piece of artwork at a time.
Here are a few final helpful hints.
Organizing, combining, and managing triggers
First there are actually four ways to create triggers - dragging and dropping into the Triggers panel, clicking the plus icon to make a blank trigger and then dragging artwork into it, clicking the Triggers column next to a group or layer or right clicking any group or layer to get several trigger creation options.
Second you can easily consolidate triggers by dragging them on top of each other.
So, if I wanted the blue circle trigger to also trigger the yellow circle I could simply drag the yellow trigger on top of the blue one and the layer contents are combined below.
You can also drag triggers around to reorganize them or take them in or out of Swap Sets.
Finally clicking a layer in the Triggers panel will highlight it in the Puppet panel.
And clicking the finger icon in the Puppet panel will highlight the trigger it's associated with.
If a group or layer is connected to more than one trigger it will get a small arrow next to the trigger icon and clicking it will allow you to select one of its multiple triggers.
Those are the fundamentals of using triggers in Character Animator CC.
And any puppet you download you can take a look at how they set up their Triggers panel.
Triggers help add emotion, expressiveness and an element of surprise to your characters.
So, try experimenting with them and watch your creations come to life in new ways.
What you learned: Build basic triggers in the Triggers panel
Triggers can show or hide groups or layers when a key is pressed.
Dragging groups or layers into the Triggers panel will create them.
Latching is a way to keep a trigger in an on or off state like a lightswitch.
Swap sets are a special trigger group where only one asset is swapped in at a time.
2 Triggering behaviors
Make triggers that also start behaviors.
Introduction
In Adobe Character Animator CC, when a group added to a trigger has a behavior associated with it that behavior also gets triggered, giving you several ways to greatly expand the expressive possibilities of your characters.
Open the example TriggersBeginnerLesson.chproj file
Exploring example triggers that activate behaviors
and in the Project panel double click Scene 2 - Triggering Behaviors.
This should open up the scene in Record mode.
We will play with these examples first and then make them for ourselves afterwards.
Pressing the 1 key shows a short explosion trigger and 2 reveals a looping fireball animation.
Both of these have the cycle layers behavior associated with them which allows you to build on-demand frame by frame animation.
Pressing 3 fades a green circle in and out because a Fader behavior has been added to this group.
Pressing 4 causes a chicken to fall from the sky and bounce on the ground.
You can also drag and throw him around with the mouse or fingers on a touch enabled display.
This shows that artwork and physics tags can also be triggered to drop into place and be subject to the laws of gravity and bump into any other collidable objects.
Pressing 5 shows a multipart cycle layers animation.
At first the animation pauses when the stem grows but pressing 5 again will complete the cycle and make the flower bloom.
Pressing 5 again a couple of times will reverse the process.
This is an example of pause layers which are tagged to pause a frame by frame animation midstream.
Finally, pressing 6 makes the character raise his right arm and another press lowers it.
This also uses the cycle layers behavior and triggering poses like this is a common technique.
Rebuilding triggers in rig mode from scratch
In the Project panel double-click Puppet 2 - Triggering Behaviors to open it in Rig mode.
To start building the Triggers panel from scratch, let’s remove the existing triggers by selecting them all with Command + A on Mac or Ctrl + A on Windows and pressing Delete.
Let's take a closer look at the Explosion and Fireball groups.
Each is a sequence of layers
Triggering animations with cycle layers behavior
one for every frame of the animation.
In the Behavior column we can see that each of these groups has a behavior associated with it.
If I select the Explosion group and scroll down the Properties on the right I can see it has a Cycle Layers behavior which was originally added by clicking the + button.
The parameters below inform us how this sequence of layers is going to react.
They'll Start When triggered, go in order from the Bottom to top, Advance Every 1 frame and only Cycle Once.
And that makes sense for an Explosion animation.
We just want it to happen once and disappear.
We also want to make sure that On Trigger End is set to Let cycle finish.
Otherwise the animation might stop mid-explosion if we stop the trigger early.
If we select the Fireball group and view its Cycle Layers behavior, it is pretty similar except this one moves from the Top to bottom and is a looping animation, so Cycle is set to Continuously.
To create a new trigger for the Explosion, drag the group into the Triggers panel and release it over the Create Trigger area, then do the same thing for the Fireball group.
Add a 1 and 2 in the keyboard column to trigger these.
Moving on let's select the greenlight group which we can see has a Fader behavior associated with it with a Duration of 3 seconds.
We do the same thing as before to make this fade in and out on demand.
Drag the group into the Create Trigger area.
I'll set this key to 3 and also check Latch below, so I don't have to keep holding the key down to see the full fade effect.
Triggering physics, fader effects, and dynamic motion
If I select the Chicken group and view the right properties I can see that he has been tagged with the Collide, Dynamic and Draggable tags and a Physics behavior has been added to him.
I'll make sure Start is set to When triggered so he doesn't fall immediately and Bounce Off Scene Sides is checked, so he'll respond to the edges of the scene instead of falling off into a bottomless abyss.
Again, to make the trigger, I’ll drag the Chicken group into the Create Trigger area, assign a 4 key to it and check Latch.
The final two groups flower and armraise each has a Cycle Layers behavior just like the Explosion and Fireball did previously.
There are a few small differences.
The flower has two layers in it sequence tagged as Cycle Pause meaning when the sequence reaches those layers it will pause until triggered again allowing the animation to play out in smaller parts instead of all at once.
The group’s Cycle Layers behavior also has Forward and Reverse checked so it will move in the opposite direction when it reaches the end of the cycle.
I'll drag the flower group into the Create Trigger area and assign a 5 key to it.
The armraise group is an example of a common character animation technique,
Using pause, forward, and reverse for pose-based triggers
animating in and out of a specific pose, because Forward and Reverse and Hold on Last Layer are both checked, this trigger will play the animation and hold on the last pose, in this case a raised hand and then reverse when triggered again.
To create my final trigger, I'll drag the armraise group into the Create Trigger area, assign a 6 key to it and check Latch below.
If I return to Record mode now we should see each of the triggers work as expected when I press the 1 through 6 keys.
So, adding behaviors to triggered groups opens up a lot of fun possibilities from frame by frame animated sequences to falling chickens.
Try experimenting with these in your own creations and see what extra actions you can add to your characters.
What you learned: Make triggered behaviors
If a group has a behavior, that behavior will be activated when triggered.
The Cycle Layers behavior lets you make on demand frame-by-frame animations like explosions, fireballs, growing flowers, or arm raises.
The Fader behavior will fade artwork in and out when triggered.
The Cycle Pause tag pauses an animation sequence until it gets triggered again.
3 Face triggers
Add triggers to a character’s face.
Introduction
One of the most common areas to add triggers into your creations with Adobe Character Animator CC is a character's face.
Even just a few simple triggers can greatly expand the emotional range of your puppets.
Exploring face trigger examples in record mode
Open the example TriggersBeginnerLesson.chproj file and in the Project panel double click Scene 3 - Face Triggers.
This should open the scene in Record mode.
If your webcam and microphone are on in the upper right corner you should immediately see the character following your movements and lip-syncing with your voice.
If you press the 1 through 9 keys, you'll see the face react in a variety of ways. 1 does a simple blink, while 2 animates a blink over several frames, 3 makes the eyes look happy, and 4 reveals a half-lowered eyelid, 5 replaces the mouth with a confused squiggle, 6 replaces the entire upward curving happier mouth set with a sadder looking downward curving set.
Finally, 7 and 8 add props to the face, with 8 also triggering a poof animation as a transitional element.
Double click Puppet 3 - Face Triggers
Building manual blink triggers with swap sets
to open it up in Rig mode.
To start building the triggers from scratch remove the existing ones by selecting them all with Command A on Mac or Control A on Windows and pressing Delete.
Let's start with the blinks.
The Left and Right Eye groups each have a layer tagged as Left or Right Blink meaning when you blink in the webcam the character will blink as well.
But sometimes you may want a little more manual control over a blink which is where Triggers come in.
The blink actually replaces other eye elements like the pupil and eyeball.
So, I'm going to make a new swap set by clicking the + button in the Triggers panel, selecting Create Swap Set and pressing Enter to rename it to Blink.
Now I’ll press + and select Create Trigger and then do it one more time to create two trigger states inside the swap set.
I'll rename them to Blink On and Blink Off making Blink Off the default by clicking the finger icon next to it and entering a 1 key for Blink On.
Now I can drag in the appropriate layers for each trigger.
For Blink On I'll drag the Left Blink and Right Blink layers on top of it, which I'll see get added to the trigger in the Layers list below.
Then for Blink Off I'll drag in all the parts I want the Blink to replace which includes each eye’s Lids group, Pupil group and Eyeball layer.
I can select them all at once by holding down Command on Mac or Control on Windows while selecting each one and drag them all over together, once for the left eye and again for the right eye.
This should add 6 elements to the Layers list below.
If you can't see them all just drag the divider line up a little bit.
The next few triggers are a little easier to set up.
The Animated Blink actually doesn't replace anything,
Creating animated blinks and eyelid state triggers
it just covers up the eyes because we still want to see the eyeball and pupil behind the lids as they open and close.
So, I can drag in the Left Eye’s Animated Blink group over the Create Trigger drop zone and then drag the Right Eye’s Animated Blink over top of the newly formed trigger to add it.
Finally, I'll enter 2 for the keyboard trigger.
The Lids group in each eye has a Happy and Half open state which I can setup in the same way.
Drag one layer into the Triggers panel to make a new trigger with it and then drag the other layer over top of it to trigger both lids at the same time.
Now you could have these all as separate triggers and assign them the same key and it would still work but I'd recommend consolidating your triggers whenever possible.
You can always drag one trigger into another one to combine them, so when I'm done I should now have new Happy and Half triggers each with 2 Layers in their list below and assigned to the 3 and 4 keys.
For the Mouth we need a Swap Set
Using swap sets to trigger mouth variations
to determine which mouth or set of mouths to show at any given time.
So, I’ll click the + icon to create a new Swap Set and call it Mouths.
First, we'll drag the main mouth group into the new Swap Set and click the finger icon to set it as our default.
Then in the Alternatives group we can Shift-select Confused and SadSet and drag those into the Swap Set as well.
But we have one more step and that's to also drag the Alternatives group itself into these last two triggers.
Sometimes other behaviors can override your triggers.
In this case the lip-sync behavior can cause the normal Mouth group to show up when you're talking.
So, this just ensures that this entire Alternatives group will replace the normal Mouth group resolving any potential conflicts.
To finish out the Swap Set I'll give a 5 key to Confused and a 6 to SadSet and make them both latched.
Finally let's add the prop triggers.
Adding facial props and transition animations
I can drag the Beard layer in first, add the 7 key to my newly formed trigger, check Latch and then drag the Moustache group in as well, so everything gets triggered together.
I can drag the Shades layer in, give it the 8 key and check Latch to add sunglasses to my puppet but I also want the Poof transitional animation to play when they come on or off.
So, in this case, I don't actually want to add the Poof to this trigger because I need it to play when the trigger shows and hides, instead I'll drag the Poof cycle layers group into the Create Trigger area, also giving it the 8 key but keeping Latch unchecked.
If I return to Record mode now I have an expressive dynamic face.
Thanks to these new triggers.
Even simple and subtle triggers for the eyes and mouth can have dramatic effects.
Any artwork can be triggered at any time, so the possibilities are endless, and you can do whatever fits your own character and style.
Try experimenting with these triggers in your own creations and have fun.
What you learned: Trigger facial features
Adding triggers to a face gives more expressive possibilities for the eyes, mouth, and other features.
Swap sets replace parts with other parts, like a blink replacing the pupil and eyeball, or a sad mouth replacing a happy one.
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Props like beards or sunglasses can appear or disappear through triggers.
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