Animation is having a major moment. At a time when live-action content is challenging to produce, animation allows us to create without restraints and with nothing more than our imagination, no matter what is going on outside. As such, artists are using Adobe Character Animator to accelerate traditional animation workflows, capturing performances in real-time, and even livestreaming animation.
New features and workflows have been added to Character Animator to make the animation process more efficient. As of today, many of the new features coming later this year are now in public Beta. These include:
Speech-Aware Animation, which uses the power of Adobe Sensei to automatically generate animation from recorded speech and includes head and eyebrow movements corresponding to a voice recording. Developed by Adobe Research and previewed at Adobe MAX in 2019 as Project SweetTalk, on Mac OS this feature currently requires 10.15 or later.
Limb IK (inverse kinematics) gives puppets responsive, natural leg motion for activities like running, jumping, tug-of-war, and dancing across a scene. Limb IK controls the bend directions and stretching of legs, as well as arms.
Timeline organization tools include the ability to filter the Timeline to focus on individual puppets, scenes, audio, or keyframes. Takes can be color-coded, hidden, or isolated, making it faster and easier to work with any part of your scene.
Lip Sync, powered by Adobe Sensei, has an improved algorithm and machine learning to deliver more accurate mouth movement for speaking parts.
Merged Takes allows users to combine multiple Lip Sync or Trigger takes into a single row, which helps to consolidate takes and save vertical space on the Timeline.
Pin Feet has a new Pin Feet When Standing option. This allows the user to keep their character’s feet grounded when not walking.
Set Rest Pose now animates smoothly back to the default position when you click to recalibrate, so you can use it during a live performance without causing your character to jump abruptly.
Character Animator is available for download via the Creative Cloud desktop application and includes an in-app library of starter puppets and tutorials for new users as a free trial.