See what’s new in Character Animator.
Character Animator CC
Characteriser
Create a stylized, animated character using a work of art, your webcam and Characteriser, powered by Adobe Sensei AI technology.
Replays
Choose your best takes and create a trigger that you can quickly re-use live or during your next recording. You can even adjust the length of your Replays trigger to fit your scene.
Magnets
Now your puppet can throw, drop, pick up items or interact with other puppets, like holding hands.
Addition to Physics for more flexible animations
Adjust the squashiness parameter in Physics behaviours to get your puppets to behave more like traditional cartoon animations.
Improvements to walk behaviour
Newly added right and left shoulder and hip tags make a three-quarter drawn character look better when walking.
History bookmarks
Create bookmarks while working on your project so you can return to previous versions and keep track of variations.
And more...
Also includes: improved Lip Sync quality powered by Adobe Sensei, the ability to import SVG and EPS files, better performance and an improved work area bar.
Character Animator CC
Improved trigger workflows
Manage layers containing triggers directly in the Puppet panel. More intuitively create a swap set or trigger using new ‘drop targets’ within the Triggers panel. Additional Triggers panel improvements allow you to see your settings, layers and conflicting triggers more clearly.
Improved Particle Physics
It’s faster and easier to add environmental context to your scenes by having particles build on top of each other, such as snowflakes or bricks that accumulate and collapse in a pile.
Scene snapshot
Compare and align shots of a character easily using Scene Snapshot, which acts like an onion-skin display to give you a frame-by-frame reference so you can do things like align a character’s hand between takes.
Countdown to Record
A new three-second countdown ensures that your characters are in the right pose before recording starts.
Controls Panel improvements
Customise the Controls Panel to look and work the way you want. Record buttons are now in the panel so you don’t have to go back to the Properties panel. And you can switch from Layout to Perform mode with a double-click.
Improved behaviour management
Add behaviours directly from the Puppet panel for simplified animation workflows. Remove all existing behaviours on a puppet in one step and apply new rigging behaviours to give your puppet the exact abilities you want.
Timeline improvements
Re-use your best takes between puppets and projects. All types of takes can be cut, copied and pasted between puppets and projects.
More in-app template puppets
New styles, from hand-drawn to stop-motion and added behaviours, including a Chicken Blaster puppet with a physics-enabled playground, will get you up and animating in no time.
Keyboard shortcut editor
View shortcuts associated with menu commands, tools and more and customise keyboard shortcuts to suit your animation workflow.
And so much more
Also includes: Improvements to the UI, better quality control when working with Adobe Illustrator files, Scene Frame export and JPEG support for puppets and cycles.
See full release notes ›
Character Animator CC
New Triggers panel
Show, hide, swap or cycle through different parts of your puppet with your keyboard or MIDI device. The new Triggers panel gives you one place for all your triggers and an easy, intuitive way to move your characters. Toggle triggers on and off or create swap sets to quickly change hand position or cycle between outfits.
New Controls panel
The new Controls panel makes performing easier and more visual. It displays triggers and puppet properties as buttons and sliders — you don’t have to remember a key command to trigger movements or swap layers. It automatically generates button designs from your artwork. And it’s saved with your character and can be shared with others.
Eyebrow and eye animation improvement
Added rotation and movement to eyebrows gives you more expressive characters, from worried to angry to surprised and more. And a new Snap Eye Gaze feature gives you more control of pupil movement.
See how it works ›
Pose-to-pose animation
A new pose-to-pose option smooths out the transitions between your character’s poses for a hand-animated look. Control the amount of smoothing and how long to hold each pose.
New behaviours: Physics, Layer Picker and Fader
Trigger a specific layer in a puppet or group with Layer Picker. Fader lets you hide or show specific parts of your puppet. New Physics behaviours include Collision, which enables your puppet to run into and bounce against environmental elements or another puppet.
Better aligned audio
Waveform displays give you a visual method for aligning audio and you have roundtrip support with Adobe Audition CC.
Better lip-sync accuracy
Mouth shapes match more accurately to corresponding sounds with the new lip-sync algorithm using Adobe Sensei technology. Lip syncs (including edits) created in Character Animator can be copied and pasted into Adobe After Effects CC.
See how it works ›
Rigging and UI enhancements
Import clipping groups from Adobe Photoshop CC, edit more precisely on your timeline and connect puppet parts with automatic stapling.
MIDI device controls
Control your puppet with a MIDI device, not just your mouse and keyboard.
And so much more
Also includes: Improved walk behaviour that supports the bending of toes when walking, visemes that can be edited using keyboard shortcuts and more.
See full release notes ›
Character Animator CC (Beta)
Walk cycles
Make your character walk by simply tagging its legs, arms and body in a single profile pose. Choose strides like Walk, Run and Sneak and they’ll automatically adapt to different leg lengths and step speeds. Feet touch down at ground level whether your character walks in place or across the scene.
See how it works ›
Viseme editor
Make the mouth shape of your puppet correspond more precisely to recorded or pre-recorded audio and easily fix lip-sync mistakes.
Live streaming on Facebook or YouTube
Send your character to an external device or second monitor using Mercury Transmit, which now supports both Mac and Windows. Connect to streaming applications to broadcast your character on Facebook Live or YouTube Live or use multiple machines to output multiple characters that interact with each other in a live production.
Blending modes
Workspaces
Move through the animation process with four workspaces that give you the tools you need for each step of the way. Use Start to design your puppet from a template, Rig to animate your puppet, Record to create voiceover and movement and Stream to create professional live output.
Puppet mouth improvements
Simple animated mouths are now more expressive — they widen according to the loudness of your voiceover and you can rotate the jaws clockwise and anticlockwise.
Support for more languages
Character Animator now supports Simplified Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Korean.
And so much more
Also includes: Improved Dangle and Cycle Layers behaviours, easier puppet duplication, additional puppet templates and more.
See full release notes ›