Mixing Animation and Reality (Adobe Character Animator Tutorial) 

That's fantastic to hear! Thanks!

CH saves automatically. It will be saved as part of your project, on the left side of the start screen. You can also export your puppet with the share icon in the upper right and choose "puppet."

Haha awesome, small world! The Dairy is the best!

Probably about 2 - 2.5 weeks to write and record the music, make and rig the character, shoot the footage, edit the video, animate the character, and add all the AE compositing.

Yeah my understanding of tracking is basically what I show here! I know there's so much more that is possible but I'm probably not the best one to share it.

Definitely, well you are a master in your category and that's more than enough! If anyone has any great links to share, please do so 😃 appreciates it in advance!

Good question about linking CH & AE characters...I checked out the video (great work as usual)! Yeah, this unfortunately isn't easy to do right now...I think your way of faking it might be one of the better ways to do it. I'm pretty sure there are a few ways to do it, but it's one of those things I'd have to sit down and experiment with to see what does or doesn't work...like I wonder if you could make the leash and collar in CH and then attach that to the dog in AE? Hopefully we can add better 4-leg walk support in the future as well, it's one of the most highly requested features.

Actually I was fooling around a little this morning and got a working quadruped inside CH, hope this helps a little. adobe.ly/37YLn82

@@okaysamurai Thanks Dave! I can only imagine .. once you ad Quadrupedalism into Ch I'm certain a new animal will be born! : I'm not just talking about being able to make 4 legged creatures walk. You'll be inundated with questions, You really need an assistant before you do this and if Adobe doesn't pay for someone to help you, I will be the first to advocate for you! :) As for your normal walk cycle, I don't feel like my Ladies walk like a True Lady yet... I'm grateful I can rig them in Ch and set them to do the walk cycle, and I can add Hip sway, but it's like they walk without an 'Easy Easy' and despite the changes I make, I can't make them look feminine enough Would love your teams help with this! In summary, I feel all tutorials for Ae and Ch are built for men, and male walk cycles. I'm not trying to be a feminist hahahaha, I'm just trying to animate my female characters.... I know you've done a lot of female puppets in Ch (which I'm extremely grateful of)...but I very rarely see other females animating their characters and the ones I've seen are normally working on male characters. I'm not pointing fingers, I just want to animate my characters the way they should be animated. In a more feminine style... A million Thank You's Dave!!! Honestly if it weren't for you my world would be looking a lot more 2D... I tried more than once getting into animation until I came across your tutorials. You not only helped me start working in animation, you are my all time hero!

Excellent feedback - I will forward your message to the team!

Not currently - you can't import video into CH (yet). I would do this in PR or AE instead.

@@okaysamurai i hope you add it soon! I need to move my characters in a real time map :P Thanks for answering

Sorry to be offtopic but does someone know a trick to get back into an Instagram account..? I somehow lost my account password. I love any tricks you can give me!

@Achilles Duke Instablaster =)

@Jaxton Jase Thanks so much for your reply. I got to the site thru google and I'm waiting for the hacking stuff atm. Takes a while so I will get back to you later with my results.

Yes! Jessica Neistadt sometimes uses a character I made for her in exactly this way! ru-vid.com/show-UCrQH1Xtic1yyeCcusrhUsng

There unfortunately isn't an easy way to do this outside of sharing the whole project for people to open in CH. We have seen some interactive displays where people make the CH scene fullscreen and do something similar. For the web though, you would probably be better off exporting a PNG sequence of a walk loop and importing that into something web-friendly. We would like to do more of this in the future though!

Check out the Linden puppet from okaysamurai.com/puppets and emulate him exactly - notice how the arm, guitar, and hand are set up in particular, and how dragging moves both the hand and arm.

Great question. So inside CH there's no way to do this unfortunately - we don't allow for video import (yet). One method I've seen is exporting the audio and key stills from Premiere or wherever they're editing, and then placing those as background objects in CH so you can approximate where those touch points are. There's probably a way to do it live using OBS or some other streaming software too, even if only as a monitor system while recording in CH. But the (admittedly lazy) way I normally do it is just do my CH puppet solo and approximate where I might be looking/pointing, composite in PR or AE, and then go back to CH to make specific time adjustments if need be.

@@okaysamurai I think I've got a workaround. I'm still a noob with CA but I took a screenshot of my tutorial and then placed it as a layer underneath my puppet, that way I can direct eye movement or gestures to certain areas of the canvas and use the audio as cues as to when and where I need them. So hopefully, when I complete my takes, I can then import the video and my performance into Premiere or After Effects, and (fingers crossed) it should match up pretty well. Also, one more question. Is there a way to simply flip my character horizontally? Not a real head turn but just flip everything so I can have the character look left or right? I was assuming so since every Adobe product I use has a "flip horizontally" or "transform-reflect" function for artwork but I can't seem to find it in CA? Does it have one?

Nice glad you figured out a workaround. For flip there's not a simple one button way, but you can go into Transform > Scale X and keyframe a 1-frame flip that way by changing it from 100 to -100.

Yes, Animate should have a transparency export option - at worst you should be able to do a PNG sequence. CH can do this as well.

@@okaysamurai thank you so much!

Yep, you can edit his Photoshop or Illustrator file by selecting the puppet in the Project panel in CH and clicking the PS or AI icon that appear in the bottom of the panel. Any changes you save in those programs will auto sync with CH!

Ok awesome! Much appreciated

Yep! That's pretty standard AE fare, you would just make a mask to isolate the visible part of the character. Look up AE masking tutorials on RU-vid and you should be set!

See Sirr on okaysamurai.com/puppets, who has a stick you can have appear in his hand. This is how you would set this kind of thing up, with a swap set trigger.

A handle can't get added to the timeline by itself, it will need a recorded behavior to control it. So for example, when I add a draggable handle, if I record myself dragging that handle, its performance will show up in the timeline.

In Character Animator, try File > Export > Video with Alpha via Adobe Media Encoder.

I'm not too familiar with Toon Boom, but if you can export as a PSD or AI file, then yes, you could have your characters also work in Character.

Yep! As long as you export as a PSD file you can use whatever you want to make the character.

Not currently, you would need to dynamic link and go to Premiere Pro or After Effects for that.

I'm only covering Character Animator on desktop for now!

Hmmm, this might happen in in-app preview but shouldn't happen for the final render. If it is that's an issue - please post a screenshot or video to adobe.com/go/chfeedfback and we'll try to help you more.

I like this guy a lot: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-P7gi1D_dMTM.html - watch all the triggers they do with him, very cool.

You don't want to export from CH, you just want to import the CHPROJ file into Premiere directly and you shouldn't see a black background.

Things will appear in the timeline only if they change. So if you don't drag it at all, nothing will get recorded. If you are moving it and it's still not showing up, let us know at adobe.com/go/chfeedback.

You'll need to update to CH 2020. This character uses the new walk behavior that was not in previous versions.

@@okaysamurai thanks :)

Take a closer look at this character or the even simpler Martin from okaysamurai.com/puppets - that's the guitar setup you should follow. You need the back arm, guitar, and hand all in the same folder just like them. IIRC if the guitar is independent but the hand and arm aren't, the hand and arm will follow each other.

I talk about it a little bit here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-28oHGKEWflk.html

@@okaysamurai Awesome!

Typically I do all my character animation in (surprise)...Character Animator, editing in Premiere Pro, and final compositing in After Effects. I find that gives me the most flexibility. But now that CH has keyframes and cameras there's a lot more you can do in CH itself. So I guess it just depends on how complex you want the final product to be!

@@okaysamurai thank you

Yes, if Krita can save or export as a layered PSD or AI file, they could work in Character Animator or After Effects.

I don't believe you can input your CH livestream into PR unless you recorded it and have a video file. The most common workflow is what I show here - record a performance in CH, import your .chproj into Premiere, and now you have it as an asset you can do whatever you want with.

Generally when you export a video, transparency will show up as black unless you use very specific formats. This is why we recommend doing the dynamic link treatment shown here, where you don't export anything and your character just shows up without a background.

Yeah I hear you! I hope we can do more with this in the future.

No, I only made him in AI. You could copy and paste his layers into Photoshop if you wanted - a little tedious and manual, but it's possible (that's what I did to make Chad and Chloe from the homescreen convert from AI to PS!).

@@okaysamurai Thanks for the reply, I will try that, wouldn't the puppet rigging have to be re-done if I did that. I will give it a go, thanks again