Did you know you can control your puppet’s face not only with your live behavior but also with pre-recorded videos? Well, I just recently found about it and I am extremely excited about it. It opens up a door for so many new ideas and possibilities.
The Main Idea
Using pre-recorded videos for facial performance in Adobe Character Animator is a relatively simple process, but has to be done externally in Adobe After Effects. You will need to analyze facial behavior in your video by following a few simple steps and then copying it to your puppet.Â
This process will require you to use both Adobe After Effects and Adobe Character Animator. However, no prior knowledge in Adobe After Effects is required. We will walk you through all the required steps.
What Will You Need?
Adobe After Effects and Character Animator
You will need After Effects * to track and copy facial performance from the video. If you don't have it installed, you can download it from the Adobe Creative Cloud Pack * which Adobe Character Animator * is also a part of.
A Puppet
If you don't have your puppet, you can download a puppet from the Puppets section on our website.
Follow the next 6 simple steps and your character will follow the facial behavior of the actor in your video.
Step 1: Find/Make Your Video
To apply video performance to your puppet’s faces you will first need to have a video. You can record yourself, record an actor, or download a video from one of the video stock websites.
Video Stock Websites:
To have good results with copying facial performance from a video to a puppet it is best to work with a face closeup video in high resolution. Also, you will get better results if, in the first frame of your video, the face is facing straight forward and has a neutral expression.
Step 2: Open AE and Import Your Video
- Create a new Project in After Effects.
- Import your video.
- Select the video in the Project Panel, right-click on it with your mouth and select ''Create New Composition from Selection''.
Step 3: Create a Mask Around the Face in the Video Layer
- Select a pen tool and draw closely around the face while the video layer is still selected to create a mask over it.
You can also use an ellipse tool to draw a mask around a face.
Step 4: Use Face Tracker
- Open the 'Tracker' Tab.
- Select 'Face Tracking (Detailed Features)' for the Method.
- Press Play (on the Tracker Panel).
- Wait! (After Effects now analyzes your video, recognizes the faces, and creates track points and key-frames for different facial elements).
- Find a neutral pose in which the performer looks forward without deforming any facial elements like eyebrows and mouth and click set rest pose.
- Now you can copy the facial performance by clicking on the 'Extract and Copy Face measurements' button.
Step 5: In Ch Create a New Scene that Matches the Frame Rate of Your After Effects Scene
- Create a new scene in Character Animator. It is best to match the frame rates of your Character Animator and Adobe After Effects scenes.
- Bring the puppet/puppets into the scene.
Step 6: Paste the Tracking Data Onto Your Puppet
- Select your puppet or several puppets in the Timeline.
- Go to Edit->Paste.
Congratulations!
Your puppet is now following the facial behavior from your video.
You might want to adjust different parameters like head tit strength, head scale strength, head turner, etc. to better match the behavior in the video.
Now What?
Now when your puppet’s facial behavior is controlled by the pre-recorded video you might want to use a pre-recorded audio for the lip sync. Follow these simple steps and make your puppet talk using a voice over.
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Do you know if this works with the latest versions of Adobe? (AE 24.5 and CH 24.2)
I’ve tried several times on several different puppets and pasting the data does not seem to do anything. If I try pasting into a blank word document the data is there, but for whatever reason CH isn’t not reading it. Do I need a webcam connected to make it work? or to change any of the arming toggles from “Camera Input”
Dylan Hi, You are right. I just checked and it seems that the process does not work as expected in the newest versions of Adobe AE and Ch. I will try to find a solution for this.
Thanks for the walk through. I have tried to copy my data and after effects just locks up. there must be a limit on what you can copy which is unfortunate. I wish there were another way to bring this data in.
Angie Hi,
Sorry to hear you are having issues with this.
I am not sure about the max length of the copied video. I will try to find that info.
There is always an option to divide one big video into a few shorter ones and copy the data from each of the tracks.
As for right now, Adobe Ch does not support importing videos directly into the software, so this is the only way I know of to copy data from a video to Ch. However, this software is in constant development, so hopefully, there will be a straightforward way to do this in the future.
I’ve tried to do this now about 5 times. If you lose your place in the directions there is no way back, you have to start again from the very beginning. Whenever I copy the face measurements and then try to paste them it doesn’t work, then when I get back to Ae, that option is gone and there is no way to get it back except to begin again from scratch. If you could just explain how to get the Tracker panel to give that option again it would really make a big difference in terms of whether it’s possible to follow the tutorial or not. I am grateful this is here but I guess I have to keep seeking for more help because I can never make it from beginning to end.
Heidi Hi,
Sorry to hear you are having issues following the tutorial.
This might seem like a complex process but actually, after you do it several times it will become very easy.
Once you finish tracking the facial data and set the “Rest Pose” you need to click the “Extract and Copy Facial Data” Button. It has to be done right away and pasted to your puppet in Character Animator Just after that.
You say you are not able to paste this data. I am not sure why can that be… Is the puppet in your scene selected when you paste the data? It has to be selected.
You can paste the data to as many puppets as you want. You just need to copy and paste the data from After Effects to Character Animator once. Then to use the data once again, whenever you want just copy the animation tracks from one puppet to another ( It is done just by selecting the tracks and the regular copy –>paste options).
Hope it helps…
You have to click back on the mask you created to get the “set resting pose” and “copy..” option.