This is honestly pretty nifty.
Adobe has just announced Character Animator 3.3.1, a major update to its desktop app, which allows users to combine Photoshop and Illustrator layers to create animated puppets. The program now offers Speech-Aware Animation as well as Lip Sync in its beta preview.
Adobe has offered the following comments:
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. More and more artists and studios are turning to Emmy-Award-winning Adobe Character Animator to accelerate traditional animation workflows, capturing performances in real-time, and even livestreaming animation.
The update offers the following new features:
- Speech-Aware Animation uses the power of Adobe Sensei to automatically generate animation from recorded speech and includes head and eyebrow movements corresponding to a voice recording.
- 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. Toggle the “Shy button” to hide or show individual rows in the Timeline.
- Lip Sync, powered by Adobe Sensei, has an improved algorithm and machine learning to deliver more accurate mouth movement for speaking parts.
- Merge 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.
Users can snag the latest beta version of Character Animator through the Creative Cloud Desktop app. A free trial version is available for new users with a puppet library and multiple tutorials.
Character Animator 3.3.1 requires macOS 10.13 High Sierra or later to install and run.
If you’ve had a chance to play with the beta and have any feedback to offer, please let us know about your experience in the comments.
Via 9to5Mac