Head Turns & Parallax (Adobe Character Animator Tutorial)
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- čas přidán 22. 06. 2024
- Character Animator has the ability to move your facial features around as you turn your head. The main two methods for this are the Head Turner behavior, where you draw up to 7 different views separately, and the Face behavior's parallax parameter, where you move various elements in different directions and speeds to create a sense of dimension. It takes a little bit of work to get either working well, but either direction will help your characters feel less flat and more expressive.
0:00 Intro
1:15 Head Turner
17:30 Parallax
29:15 Which Should You Use?
Download the Turner Bros. example files here: okaysamurai.com/puppets
More Head Turner Examples:
On the CH App Home Screen: Ninja, Dr. Applesmith, Stardust.
On adobe.com/go/chexamples: Digital Puppets Animal Pack, Brooklyn Buddies, Red Monster 3D, Maddie, Samurai Steve, Wendigo
On okaysamurai.com/puppets: Turner Bros, Clay, Wilk, Acquavella, Seth, Walker
More Parallax Examples
On the CH App Home Screen: Footy, Sticky.
On adobe.com/go/chexamples: Bluster, Sports Team
On okaysamurai.com/puppets: Turner Bros, Linden, Leeta, Dude
Download Character Animator: www.adobe.com/products/charac...
Get free puppets: adobe.com/go/chexamples (official adobe puppets) / okaysamurai.com/puppets/ (okay samurai puppet pack)
Check out the official forums: adobe.com/go/chfeedback
Share your creations on social media with #CharacterAnimator!
Subscribe on CZcams: czcams.com/users/subscription_c...
Twitter: / okaysamurai
Website: okaysamurai.com - Jak na to + styl
You are such an awesome teacher. I wish adobe had more teachers like you.
Been using Character Animator for 5 years and I learned everything I know from this channel and thanks to these tutorials I finally uploaded my first animation! Thanks Dave!
Same here recently i started learning animation few weeks back and i have started a youtube channel which is related to horror stories animation... i have made 1 video just by learning animation from dave... his videos are really very helpful....
@@muckmuck2905 2 months ago i picked up Ch, Ai, Ae from scratch, and additionally Au and Ps that i had minor experience with. I am now working on the 4th episode of my own self made animated show,aside from random animations im also posting. And it's all thanks to Okay Samurai. No one else.
Excellent, Dave! This answers a question I had about characters having the ability to turn their heads. Thanks again.
Your tutorials are simply the best. You're such a good teacher. Thanks alot. You've made animation a possibility for alot of us. This is amazing!❣
You are the best teacher anyone could wish for. Thank you so much for everything you're doing
What elegant, seamless tutorials.
oh my god..a new video from you...that makes my day...watched and rewatched all of them for learning.....very cool..thanks a lot
Choices choices! Both have their own charm. Love it! TXS Okay Samurai
That's amazing!
I’ll give it a try!
Thank you for making good movies on CZcams all the time.
Thank u soo much dave! Never seen such a helpful designer ❤
You are a amazing teacher, the way you explain is fantastic, so clear, straight forward, loves to learn from your channel.
This is amazing, such a powerful software. I can't wait to build my own character. Thanks!!
This is great, thank you so much for the tuts !
This is probably my favourite feature. Thank you
Had no idea about parallax - super cool! Thank you
I've been hunting through your videos and am looking for a tutorial on how/if bodies can rotate in Character Animator? Do you have anything like that you could point me towards. i.e. when head turns quarter of the way, the body also turns. Thx
This is an older video with some outdated UI but the basic idea is the same: czcams.com/video/ofA7JFYfLlM/video.html. Nowadays I would just include the body with every tagged view position, or add a second head turner behavior to the body.
Thanks for this amazing tutorial! Just a quick question: Do you need a good GPU for really complex character rigs or is CPU/RAM the main factors?
Both are kinda important. That being said, I feel like with anything video related you can never have too much RAM!
@@okaysamurai Thank you my sempai!
Hi Kurie 😀
@@Dramadonia LOL hi FAM! You are here to learn this amazing software too? uwu can't wait
The more layers/assets are in your PSD the more ram you want!
Amazing tutorial as usual!
Worked just perfectly! Much thanks
You did it again! Thanks for the info! This is totally great!
OH YES! Mega tut! Thanks again homie!
Thanks man! Your videos are really helpful!
Thank you for this tutorial. This will really help.
I just asked about it on Facebook like, 2 days ago. Thanks so much dave!
You're the best Dave!
This is awesome. So much information.
Awesome! Love this
Amazing as usual
Haha! "The Turner Bros" i burst out laughing. Nicely done, Dave!
Great tutorial! Thanks!
Thank you so much for this video. It helps alot for my intended uses.
One little trick I found here (I apologize if this was addressed in another video) is that adjusting the head sensitivity can effect previous takes.
For example if I do a take with a head turn at 100% sensitivity, I can then up the sensitivity for smoother head turns. and like others it can be adjusted and key framed.
Your videos are the best for learning Adobe character animator 👍👍
Excellent, Dave!
You are such an awesome teacher 😍😍😍
awesome i was going crazy yesterday tryna figure this out!
Thank for this video!
love yours videos
Your awesome! That pretty much answers all my questions thank you! Time to get to work!
Great video! Thank you! Considering deviating a bit from my 3D stuff and adding some 2D animation to my channel - this (along with all the rest of your videos) is a great help!
Thank you! Very helpful
Thank you So Much!!!
Thank you so much
What a fantastic person u are mannnn thanksss alotttt for the useful info
great tut
Greatest Dave it's 3D work. Thank you for this Video 🤩🤩
Kindi nagio j
great work ... thanks
Amazing timing, I just finished the base for my first puppet. It looks really odd without being able to look left and right.
Thank you ! Dave.
I feel inspired!! Here is my new project!!
you are very nice teacher bro
I understand principles, but after opening complex doll I got bit owerhelmed… But your lessons placed everything to right spot. Thank you so much!!!
Work !!! thx
U r a gem
im exited to use that on my puppet
Thanks for the tutorial! Godbless - :)
Thanks for this! Don't know how I missed it in 20!
Thanks for this tutorial. I finished building my first puppet, but it's just a frontal view. I' gonna add the left and right profiles.
Love you
Realize this is a few years old and it is very helpful, but I would suggest doing a training video from start to finish. From building to the animating of a full body 180 degrees. Through the years of watching digital training videos, those are without a doubt thee best and most effective way for viewers to understand all aspects of it. A great example is Digital Tutors (they’ve been bought out and no longer there) and Andrew Kramer for After Effects. He sets the scene and begins from the very beginning and takes you through til the end. Just an idea. Thanks for all you do, your lessons are helpful.
Thank u sir...
I love you samurai
Hi, Thank you so much for the helpful amazing Tutorials, I was wondering if it's possible to have the head turn and some physics for the hair at the same time? :DDD
Yes, when you make head turns each with physics, they should all be running in the background regardless of which view you're seeing, so yes, that should work. It can be a bit of a performance hog though!
Very helpful Dave as always ! It makes me want to try a mix of the 2 techniques (smoothen larger headturns with parallax ?), what do you think ? Cheers from France !!!
Interesting! I haven't seen anyone do that yet so please let me know if you do. Another method someone was fooling around with after seeing this video was the Layer Picker behavior to swap between layer artwork at certain positions...I think there's a lot of undiscovered territory out there...
Another great tutorial! Thank you so much. Is it possible to do a tutorial for the body turns as well such as the arms and legs to make it look more natural? I have a puppet with arms and legs as well and it would look kind of awkward with just the head-turning but the body staying the same.
I talked about this a while back here: czcams.com/video/ofA7JFYfLlM/video.html. Basically you would apply the same logic of the head turner to the body, either via automatic stuff or through manual triggers. Of course, the body just pivoting never looks that great, so many people get around this by creating a 3-view walking character (covered in the Walking tutorial).
@@okaysamurai Thank you! I will have a look.
Hi I just finally got the Character Animator.
You are a very nice man......
YAY!!
Thank-you so much, I was looking for this video all day long and you uploaded it right now. Thanks for this and also is there any way If I have a question and can get it answered on twitter
You can always try reaching out @okaysamurai. The forums at adobe.com/go/chfeedback are an even better resource though!
@@okaysamurai Alright I will try, thanks for the reply
Great tutorial Dave! One thing that caused me pain is that when you combine head turner with parallax and watercolor texture (like Narrator Dave and Leeta), head turner cancels the texture clipping masks. (texture applied to all head positions seperately). The most I managed was to retain the head turner and parallax effects. I wonder if it's due to rendering issues inside Ch, or related to GPU (I do have a GeForce RTX card though), or it's because of Illustrator (It happens when I import my toons from Illustrator; haven't tested on a PS created toon yet).
Can we convince you to make a tutorial where you combine all these behaviors and effects (i.e. head turner + parallax + texture)? :) I think combining all these would really bring the characters alive.
Thanks! Yeah I've never tried combining parallax and head turning, usually it's one or the other, but that's cool that you're combining them! As for why the texture clipping masks break - Illustrator clipping masks don't currently work with CH on import (lame), but you can manually create them inside CH with Puppet > Create Clipping Mask.
I love your teaching sir make more video on adobe illustrator and adobe character
God bless you
Hi! When you use head turner, and rellocate the pupil, doesn't it break the eye behaviour? I remember I saw one of your videos where you explained how to make eyes, and at the time they needed to be on the center, and on a round eye to work correctly.
Yes, but surprisingly it's not as bad as you would think. If you want to fine-tune it, feel free to make a separate (invisible?) eyeball layer for each view if need be to help constrain them more. You could keep the eyes always looking forward - some of the example characters do that too - but I don't like that as much personally.
Hi first this the best channel I’ve ever seen cus I’ve learned a lot from him.I have a question I think making a character it’s really difficult for me now.I wanna know is it possible like to order the character you wanna use on your story and someone make all the drawings and then I use it in anime characters?
Yes! Check out the talented creators at pages.adobe.com/character/en/third-party.
Thanks for this great tutorial Dave. Whereas your example works fine with Illustrator, I tried to recreate it on my puppet based on blank (PS) and as soon as I put the whole face in the +Frontal layer group in PS, the eyes are stretched all over the place and I get a lot of rigging issues with the sad mouth. This happens to both my puppet and the original blank (PS version). Any workaround for this please ?
When retrofitting an existing puppet with different head views it's possible to run into some issues as CH tries to reconcile changes. Moving face contents into a new folder is one of those areas where CH is going to have trouble because it changes the root folder / hierarchy, and CH has trouble understanding where things moved to. Stretchy eyes and a wonky mouth seem to suggest that the face and lip sync behaviors can't quite figure out what to do with these contents, which in turn might mean that the Head Turner behavior is missing or not set up completely to compensate for all the views. If it persists, please post a screenshot, video, or File > Export > Puppet (.puppet file) to adobe.com/go/chfeedback for more help.
Thanks for breaking this down! Im curious though... Is there a way to get the features to move dimensionally (like you did, squishing the eye in Head Turner) while using the Parallax feature? I know how to do this in After Effects with Duik but I'm intrigued by Character Animator's speed... can the 2 programs talk with each other?? Like, can I use an AE character rig in CA? That would be *chef's kiss* ideal.
Not yet, but I agree - that would be incredible. I would love for more AE & CH interaction, fingers crossed for the future.
Thanks for the video! Are there any tricks or tutorials to doing a full profile view and mouth behaviors? Particularly allowing the background to be seen while talking in profile view.
I haven't personally ever done this, but I think Wendigo from adobe.com/go/chexamples is probably a good one to take a look at for a true side profile view. I think the creator cut the mouth in half to give the effect like it was going off the edge.
@@okaysamurai Thanks. I will check it out!
cooool
Came here from your reddit post, now Imma try making a pixelated vtuber lol
Hi Dave,
Thanks for the video :) I tried making a character with multiple head states walk, but the walk cycle couldn't detect the head - just wondering if this is possible? The issue was fixed once I reverted back to just having 1 head state.
I would check out Walker on www.okaysamurai.com/puppets/ - that is the best / most simple example we have of a character with walking and head turns. Usually the issue is that the two behaviors fight over the tags since they're using the same ones, so you have to be careful how you set the character up. If the problem persists, please upload a screenshot, video, or your File > Export > Puppet file to the official forums at adobe.com/go/chfeedback so we can take a closer look.
Hi! Excellent tutorial. I have a question. I have a pre rigged frontal view for my character with a bunch of personalized triggers and behaviours (and the artwork are not inside a layer group called +Frontal in Illustrator). If I go to Illustrator and create new layer groups (+Frontal / +Quarter etc), Character Animator refreshes the scene and I lose all my previous setup. Is there a way to maintain it while creating these new views inside Illustrator?
CH runs into issues when hierarchy or naming is changed. So if you add, move, or rename groups, it has a hard time keeping track of where the old stuff was. In general my advice is to try to add groups for all your various parts, even if they're blank/empty, and then fill them in with content as you go along. I also only do light rigging until I'm super set on the final artwork, where I'll move into more advanced triggers and whatnot.
@@okaysamurai I see. Thanks for the answer!
Thanks for the tutorial. The auto parralax feature is amazing! Is there a way that you can use the hack on other body parts such as the torso or limbs as well to get a bit more dimensionality?
Unfortunately I think it wouldn't work too well as I think the extra Face behaviors you would need would most likely conflict with other behaviors and parts...but it's probably worth experimenting with simple art to see what's possible!
hello, i'm Marlon from the Philippines. Are you using CA 3.0 on this project. I'm having trouble with the +Frontal part, i cannot drag the head group to it. Oh, i got it. i should create a group not a layer, my thumbnails are different. Your layers show all the parts. oh haha. your using Illustrator my mistake! sorry Bro! Thanks!
I’ve been experimenting with head and body turns lately. still have a long way to go. since my heads are completley drawn differently, positioning and eye movements have been inconcistent. I plan to explore keyframing in face to move the head over a bit when I have to change bodies and eye gaze to fix the sensitivity of the eyes on each view.
I was really excited to test this since It was used to make the mlp movie and I am trying to make similar puppets for a series I do. some scenes involve an MST3K style reaction like climate. this pivoting will really have the audience give off a decent natural look.
i will say it would be helpful if I could use punctuation keys to do some triggering
Keyframing is great but sometimes it can run into conflicts with some of the other parts. For example, I think if you add Transform to the eyebrows they won't work with camera tracking anymore. There are a few areas like that - I would prototype with a simple stick figure type character and see if you can get the effects you want before applying it to a full featured character.
@@okaysamurai well the puppet I got doesn’t have eye brows so yea. But I’ll look into it.
Hey Dave can you help me with this, "For instance I want to have two or more characters talking in a same window how can it be done like with a audio of two person talking, wont a puppet will take the audio of another puppet if the audio is merged with the puppet. And if I get different audio then won't it be miss matched."
Hoping for your reply.
N at last U r the best 👍
This is how I set it up: czcams.com/video/VhCKD5vl848/video.html. I'll record and edit the audio as separate tracks, then export those out separately for each character. Then bring in one at a time into CH and do Timeline > Compute Lip Sync for the correct selected puppet. Delete the audio track, bring in the other, and repeat the process for the other character. Now you can bring in a final mixed version of the audio (complete with background music, fx, etc) and it will all line up.
yay!!!!!!!!!!
Hey I have a huge problem! I am working on an animation at the moment, followed your tutorial and all of that, but my program doesn't accept negative values. So I can't figure out a way to make the hair in the back and especially the ears work. Is there a way I can mirror the movement in a different way?
Hmmm...if negative values aren't working that's a bug - please let us know what's up at adobe.com/go/chfeedback. Do you get an error message or anything when you try to do it? Note not all values let you go negative, but the ones I show here definitely should...
@@okaysamurai Hey thanks for the answer! No, I don't get an error message. It'll simply go to 0 when I type in '-50' for example. I checked again and noticed that there are other values that let me go to negative, f.e. transformation attributes and the tilting of eyebrows. I still have the 2018 version though. However, there is no way I can update it at the moment as my Mac has problems to finish the latest system updates (which I need to upgrade Character Animator to a newer version). Maybe that's the problem? But yeah, it'd be great if there was another way to move the hair and the ears in the different direction as I need the animation done by this week ;3;.
Ah that might be it - I was using the 2020 version for this tutorial. I'm struggling to think of an alternative way to do things. Head Turner is probably a more reliable way in older versions to add dimensionality to your characters.
@@okaysamurai alright! Might do that then
Great video! I apologize if you’ve covered this, but is there a trick to adding a head turn to a character that also has a walk behavior? When I rig my character, I end up with a bobbing head and a stationary body. I’m sure it’s user error.
Yes - it's tricky but possible. Check out Walker on www.okaysamurai.com/puppets/ who does exactly this and copy his organization.
@@okaysamurai You’re the best. Thank you!
Hello Okay Samurai, I would like to ask a question, would it be possible to create a puppet with all the face profiles (Parallax) including up and down and also the body movement profiles in one file only? If yes, I would like to ask you to make a model available, I am having difficulties in creating something like this!
Yes, technically it's possible to include that all in one file. Parallax is one of those areas we hope to improve more in the future - there is only so much you can do with it today, and you might be running into some of its limitations. The best example I can think of is Sticky from the home page of the app, who has a parallax face and can walk as well.
Awesome! Have you ever tried this with a whole body?
Yes! czcams.com/video/ofA7JFYfLlM/video.html
Hey Dave! Thanks for your tutorials, you are awesome!
Look, I have a problem: so I made 9 head turn positions for only left to frontal view cause I wanted to achieve the smooth movement. I assigned triggers from 2-0 keyboard button to each and each position works perfectly for itself with the features inside (eyes, lips, jaw etc...). I also have 9 positions of bangs that are attached to the character which is actually the same artwork layer copied nine times and shifted, and I assigned the same triggers (from 2-0) as the belonging head position. Works well for each position separately. BUT when I record the same way you did on 16:50 and play the recording, it doesn't work :(. The bangs and the head(s) are not synchronized and in fact I have a feeling that it skips most of the heads completely. I tried to render (export) and it's the same problem. Any idea why's that happening and how to fix it?
Hmmm, that's a tough one. Theoretically it should work. One guess is that because there are so many heads and physics simulations, things are running slow and potentially missing certain inputs. But even so, adjusting them in the timeline should allow you to achieve the smooth feeling you're looking for. If the Turner Brother example file is working for you and your custom one isn't, that is my best guess. If the problem persists, please upload a screenshot, video, or your File > Export > Puppet file to the official forums at adobe.com/go/chfeedback so we can take a closer look.
This doesn't seem to apply exactly to the new Head and Body Turner behaviour... The neutral mouth is moving but the other mouths only stay in the frontal view position. Have you run into this issue or have I done something wrong!? I'm using the frontal group "hack" you relayed from Digital Puppets as well. Any help appreciated!
Ok so my glasses are really making the eye tracking difficult. Any thoughts on that? How do glasses wearers make accurate eye movements?
We have a lot of glasses wearers on the team - best advice is to be close to the camera and try to reduce glare as much as possible. If the view is clear/clean enough it should work well. For recordings I usually use the keyboard inputs for eye tracking instead - that's the most accurate way I've found to get precise pupil movements.
Hey Okay! You helped me out with some advise sometime last year which i am eternally grateful for. I wonder if you'd be so kinda again? - im trouble shooting audio coming from CH to OBS for live streaming -I have the ASIO driver on in CH but the sound is not replicated in OBS such like it would do in MME (Windows), I've tried various settings within the ASIO driver, installed NDI (to try that way), updated OBS with the ASIO counterpart, though non of this seems to work... it seems ASIO will only push sound through to either CH or OBS individually and not simultaneously... any ideas? (btw i have posted in the forum about this too ;)
Great questions, and audio support for streaming has always been a tricky area. In my experiments I've only done audio directly piping into OBS instead of routing from somewhere else. If the forum post doesn't get an answer, reach out to Dan Ramirez, who is an expert in this stuff. community.adobe.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/7589611
@@okaysamurai Cheers Dave! muchly appreciated :)
Halp! Lol. 23:07 I saw these just once (and even tinkered with them), but haven't been able to find them again... I've tried everything! Am I dumb? :P
I finally found it agaom. I had to click the TIMELINE. :) Phew.
Hello again :) do you have a video where you use paralax with a "pin tool" puppet that lets the hair dangle with physics while also implementing paralax?
I don't think so...the closest I've gotten was probably Leeta: czcams.com/video/ezGbFqmyPG4/video.html. She has face parallax but the hair doesn't move with it - that being said, she has a LOT of unique hair dangle settings.
@okaysamuri Dave, i want to spend the hours and hours doing this each thing for my character. my question is is there a video showing before this one starts, how to set it up exactly how you have it with the exact layering? I originally made my character in moho, and i am going to export a png file of each image layer from there and transfer it into this software and do this exact thing. thank you so much :)
Yep, I make a character from scratch in this tutorial: czcams.com/video/hK-DjtiPzRs/video.html
@@okaysamurai this is amazing! thank you my only question is since i already built the character and bones him in moho, i want to transfer it all to character so i can do the ai movements with face and body. Can you please tell me how to transfer it all is it possible to get the layers in perfectly so i dont have to re do it all. I am thinking just doing the face possibly for now in character . Thanks man so much
I'm not 100% sure, but if you can export out from Moho as a PSD or AI file, then those are the main layered filetypes that Character Animator uses.
Excellent information! I was thinking how we can merge this two techniques to make a head movement in 3 views with a little parallax in the head shape? thanks for all your knowledge and great class!
Yes, I've seen some examples of this and it works great.
@@okaysamurai thanks for respond, maybe you can say me where i can search? thanks a lot for all your effort and great class
I can't remember where I saw it exactly, but it was probably Digital Puppets: czcams.com/users/digitalpuppets
@@okaysamurai thanks a lot I´m going to check it, I dont want to abuse of your help but a little question; it´s possible to add keyframes (interpolation) in Character animator to head turns using triggers? thanks again.
You can add keyframes to anything you add the Transform behavior to. That being said, Transform can mess up things like head tracking, lip sync, eye movements, etc. if it conflicts with those behaviors, so in general we don't recommend doing this to facial features you want to do performance capture with.
Hey there Dave! I'm new to character animator and I'm excited to start using my model for VTubing! However, I'm having an issue using parallax with multiple mouth swap sets.
I have a default mouth that is the top layer and it works fine with the parallax effect. However, when I switch to my sad mouth set, it lipsyncs just fine, but it doesn't parallax at all. I compared the two layers and they have the exact same settings on each. I've been digging through forums and haven't found a solution yet. It seems like a common issue a couple of people have run into... It's like the sad mouth set it's registering as mouth because it's being used by the first default one. If I switch the layer order, the sad mouth gets the parallax, but the default one doesn't anymore.
Any help would be appreciated!
Yes! I've run into this before too, in fact I think my character Linden on okaysamurai.com/puppets still suffers from this. The issue is that the Parallax from the Face behavior is only looking for one instance of the mouth. So if you add a second mouth, it doesn't care about that and will ignore it. I think the workaround would be to somehow package the second mouth inside a new separate group that you add a second Face behavior to, and that way you will have a second parallax control to deal with it. It's a tricky / hacky setup I know - I wish we had better internal parallax controls. Let me know when you get your character set up, would love to tune into a stream!
@@okaysamurai thank you for the quick reply! I've seen people putting the mouth under the nose parent group and the parallax technically works, but the movement is too strong on the mouth, so it's a little unnatural... I think I'm going to just turn off parallax for now and maybe add it back on if it ever gets fixed! Really close to debuting this model live, so I hope you can tune in when I do! :)
@@okaysamurai maybe a good thing to add would be a view from the back of the head. Like if the character is facing away from camera.
I can’t seem to find an answer to that.
Hello again dave im using CH 2020 and AI 2020 but im having problem opening the Puppet file on your website. its says "Error opening illustrator file "
Hmm strange. Which one is it? If you try the AI versions of Chad or Chloe on the home page do they work? There was a bug a while back about new Illustrator file formats but that should have been patched in the latest release...
Imagine setting those five head turns and adding parallax on top of that to smooth out the turns.
That sounds good in theory but doesn't work as well in practice as you'll still get jumpiness. A more common smoothing technique is to use cycle layers between head views to draw in a sequence of specific frames to move between, which works well (see the Brooklyn Buddies on adobe.com/go/chexamples as an example of this).