See what’s new in Character Animator.

Check out all the latest features in Character Animator CC. You’ll always have access to new features and updates as soon as they’re released.

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. 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
Enhance your puppet's appearance by controlling how a layer interacts with the layers beneath it. Highlight eyes, shade body parts and more using blending modes created in Photoshop CC.
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 ›

Character Animator CC (Beta)

Faster, easier puppet creation
Get speedier response times when rigging complicated puppets and merge mouths, heads and other puppet parts from multiple Photoshop and Illustrator files to create quick mashups.
Enhanced workflow between Creative Cloud apps
Puppets update faster thanks to better round tripping performance between Character Animator and Photoshop and Illustrator. Dynamic Link improvements eliminate intermediate rendering between Character Animator, Premiere Pro and After Effects.
Streamlined recording and editing
Do more targeted editing now that keyboard trigger recordings are grouped by key. Plus, you can scrub through the Timeline faster.
Character Animator learning tools
Get up to speed on Character Animator basics with a built-in interactive tutorial that launches at the click of a button.
Share via Creative Cloud
Easily export, import and share your puppets via your Creative Cloud folders when you format them as .puppet files.
Support for more asset types
Import PNG sequences and SVG files from Adobe Animate CC to use in your Character Animator projects.

Character Animator CC (Preview)

Simpler character movement
Now you can quickly tag puppet layers and record multiple takes of a character’s movement. Plus, control how each child moves with its parent using new Weld, Hinge and Free puppet attachments.
Motion trigger and auto-blink behaviours
Drag your characters across the screen and they’ll automatically animate according to how you move them.
Export real-time animations
Send live feeds of your animations over the air via any Syphon client.
Adobe Media Encoder export
Export your scene to any format without intermediate rendering using Adobe Media Encoder.

Character Animator CC (Preview)

Multi-Touch support
Use your fingertips to animate a character’s limbs and record the movements on a touch display.
Expanded language support
The Character Animator interface is now available in German, Japanese and French, as well as English.

Character Animator CC (Preview)

Animate your 2D artwork
Bring your Illustrator or Photoshop characters to life by using simple keyboard actions and automated features to track your facial movements, record voiceover and trigger body movements. Edit your artwork in Photoshop or Illustrator and it will automatically update in Character Animator.
Characters that match your mood
Capture your facial expressions and emotions with your webcam. You can then control the position, scale and rotation of your character’s facial features with your webcam, voice and keyboard.
Automatic lip-sync
Character Animator automatically captures your voice and mimics your mouth movements for effortless lip-syncing. All you have to do is speak into your microphone.
Trigger expressions with your keyboard
Make your characters as life-like as possible using simple keyboard actions that trigger blinks, wrinkle lines and more.
Make characters breathe
Automatically add realistic breathing motions and even control breaths per minute.
Realistic mouth movements
No need to create additional mouth artwork in Photoshop or Illustrator. Just open and close your mouth in front of your webcam to make your character’s mouth move and talk.
Restrict movement
Specify which parts of your character move and which parts stay still to make it stretch or bend in realistic ways.
Easily animate limbs
Use your mouse to make your character wave or move by dragging one limb away from the rest of the puppet.
Secondary movements
Make your characters more life-like by having multiple parts of their bodies react to their surroundings. Simulate wind blowing through hair, earrings dangling, wings flapping and more.
Add particle effects
Set the scene by using Particle Mode to generate falling snow, rain, cannon fire and more.
Create multiple takes
Record a puppet’s performance and play it back on the Timeline. Place multiple puppets in your scene and record separate tracks of dialogue for each one. Each puppet instance appears as a track item that you can trim or shift in time.