What's new in Adobe Character Animator CC 2024 Build 24.0
Oct 11, 2023
- Adobe Character Animator's October 2023 release (version 24.0) includes stability updates.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2023 Build 23.6 (Aug 9, 2023)
- Custom Background in Starter mode:
- In Starter mode, use a custom image for the scene’s background. Select the Background button, select Custom Background (+), then select your image.
- Editable Replays:
- Modify a replay to adjust the timing of its takes or record new takes for it. Right-click a replay in the Properties panel, select Edit Replay, then modify the replay's takes in a temporary timeline. Select Save Edited Replay to save your changes and update all replay instances automatically.
- Select Takes Within or Overlapping Work Area:
- Select the work area bar to access two new commands to select takes within or overlapping the work area.
- Select Takes Within Work Area: Selects all takes (for all tracks) whose start and end times exist within the duration of the work area. Any previously selected takes are deselected first.
- Select Takes Overlapping Work Area: For both commands, any previously selected takes are deselected first.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2023 Build 23.1 (Dec 9, 2022)
- Modernized GPU support:
- Character Animator's December 2022 release (version 23.1) has improved performance when drawing content in the Scene and Puppet panels and rendering to disk by updating the GPU requirements from OpenGL to use Metal on macOS and DirectX 12 on Windows. Recent macOS systems support Metal. Windows systems with older GPUs might require updated display drivers to support DirectX 12.
- Starter mode and Motion Library:
- Starter mode: Visual (dashed) drop target now appears when attempting to drag a trigger into the timeline.
- Motion Library: Added a Strength parameter to control the influence of the behavior on the tagged handles.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2023 Build 23.0 (Oct 19, 2022)
- Motion Library:
- The new Motion Library in Character Animator enables you to animate your puppet quickly by choosing motion from a library of 350+ full-body character animations captured by professional motion actors.
- Starter mode:
- Starter mode is a free streamlined mode in Adobe Character Animator that lets anyone make quick animated videos. Record your face and voice performance, and then add various emotions and actions through an intuitive drag & drop interface.
- Quick Export:
- In both Starter and Pro mode, you can quickly export animations. Use quick export-to-export animations to animate directly in the H264 file. Adobe Character Animator's Starter mode is a free, basic solution that allows anyone to create short animated animations.
- Auto swap and Leader/Follower Behavior:
- Auto-swap lets you automatically switch between different artwork layers, like a hand or arm position, like your puppet moves. This allows your character to have a more customized, frame-by-frame look for certain elements mixed with real-time performance capture.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2022 Build 22.5.0.53 (Jun 22, 2022)
- Starter mode
- Quick Export
- Auto swap and Leader/Follower Behavior
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2022 22.4 (May 10, 2022)
- Adobe Character Animator May 2022 (version 22.4) offers the latest bug fixes.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2022 22.3 (Apr 12, 2022)
- Character Animator April 2022 (version 22.3) offers bug fixes, including Auto Blink no longer blinking quickly when the Blinks per Minute parameter was set to zero.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2022 22.2 (Feb 8, 2022)
- Character Animator February 2022 (version 22.2) offers bug fixes, including all previously known issues with Puppet Maker.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2021 22.1.1 (Dec 14, 2021)
- Puppet Maker:
- Puppet Maker is a fun and fast way to create diverse characters. No need to be an expert Photoshop or Illustrator user. Simply choose from a variety of character styles and customize them according to your need.
- Transcript-based Lip Sync:
- Powered by Adobe Sensei machine-learning technology, Transcript-based Lip Sync allows you to use transcripts to produce more accurate lip sync results.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2021 22.0 (Oct 26, 2021)
- Unified version numbers:
- With this release, the Adobe video and audio applications are aligning on version number 22.0. Major versions offer forward and backward interoperability between the Adobe applications so that users with any 22.x version can work with any other 22.x. Consistent version numbering will simplify updating and collaboration.
- Body Tracker:
- Live-perform 2D character animation using your body. Powered by Adobe Sensei, Body Tracker automatically detects human body movement using a webcam and applies it to your character in real time to create animation. For example, you can track your arms, torso, and legs automatically.
- Smart replays:
- Smart replays simplify the way you view and edit replays in the timeline. Replays triggered during recording in new scenes now appear as trigger bars, instead of multiple take bars, for a simpler, more compact, and easier-to-modify timeline.
- Head & Body Turner behavior:
- Head Turner behavior is now Head & Body Turner. You can now switch between groups, for example, different views like the front, quarter, and side/profile of a character, as you swivel your body left or right.
- New and updated example puppets:
- This release introduces new and updated example puppets (Chloe, Tull, Bongo, Footy, Ninja, Thorne, and Heather) with body tracking.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2021 4.4 (Jul 20, 2021)
- Native Apple silicon support:
- Character Animator now runs natively on Mac systems with Apple silicon, which offers improved performance and greater energy efficiency.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2021 4.2 (May 11, 2021)
- Automatic recovery of damaged project files:
- Damaged project files due to reasons such as power loss are now automatically recovered. Recovered files are renamed and a fresh copy is saved in your system.
- Note: Automatic recovery works for project files created in version 4.0 and later.
- Drag files onto the Home screen:
- Files can now also be imported into a project by dragging them onto the Home screen (Welcome panel).
- Work Area updates:
- A scene’s work area can now be moved and trimmed during playback.
- Setting the start of a work area after its current end time, or the end of the work area before its current start time, now shifts the work area to the playhead.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2021 4.0 (Mar 10, 2021)
- New example puppet:
- Hopscotch the Frog is a new example puppet in the Home screen with posable limbs.
- New robust project file format:
- This release introduces an updated project file format that is more resilient to power loss and file-syncing conflicts.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2020 3.4.0 (Oct 20, 2020)
- Speech-Aware Animation:
- Animate a Photoshop or Illustrator puppet with just an audio file. Powered by Adobe Sensei, any puppet’s head and eyebrows comes alive with a simple voice track and Character Animator will automatically generate movements and expressions helping to create fast easy animations.
- Limb IK:
- Animate character arms and legs with responsive natural movement when the rest of the body moves. Ground detection and the ability to pin limbs give you more control. Make your character jump, dance, bend, squat, and much more.
- More accurate lip sync:
- Get a better lip sync with improved Adobe Sensei machine-learning technology. With a deeper understanding of spoken words,, see a significantly more accurate result.
- Timeline improvements:
- This release brings to you additional search filter options, and the ability to hide and group takes to streamline your animation workflow. Use Sequence Takes to arrange takes on the timeline.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2020 3.3.1 (Jun 16, 2020)
- Provide feedback:
- Use the Provide Feedback button in the header bar to connect with the product team and fellow Character Animator users.
- character_animatorwhatsnewmarkers
- Markers via Dynamic Link:
- Markers in a Character Animator scene now appear in other applications (e.g. After Effects) using Dynamic Link.
- character_animatorwhatsnewtimelinesearch
- Timeline search filter:
- Filter the Timeline panel based on a search term. character_animatorwhatsnewaudiotrackvolumecontrol
- Audio track volume control:
- Control each audio track’s volume level independently in a scene’s timeline.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2020 3.2.0.65 (Feb 20, 2020)
- Keyframe time stretching:
- You can now expand or compress a group of keyframes to retime an animation while retaining their relative times.
- Replays related improvements: This release of Character Animator introduces the following updates related to replays:
- You can use the search filter in the Properties panel to search for replays.
- Replays that are not assigned to a trigger now appear in orange.
- Automatic addition of corresponding behavior for handles:
- If you use the Pin, Dragger, or Dangle tool to create a new handle and the puppet doesn’t have the required behavior (Handle Fixer, Dragger, Physics), it’ll be added for you automatically.
- New keyboard shortcuts:
- This release introduces the following new keyboard shortcuts:
- Keyframe time stretching
- Zoom the scene or puppet to fit within the viewable area of the Scene or Puppet panel
- Zoom to fit shortcut for zooming the selection in the Timeline panel
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2019 2.1 (Apr 8, 2019)
- Top new features:
- Improved puppet rigging experience:
- Get animating faster than ever with better puppet rigging, making it easier to apply behaviors, search through many layered puppet rigs, and tag puppets more quickly within your established workflows.
- New jaw movement with Lip Sync and improved Nutcracker Jaw:
- Now a character’s jaw can automatically move in conjunction with their lip-synched, editable mouth visemes, for additional impact. You can also compute Nutcracker Jaw movement from scene audio.
- New Example Puppets:
- Get started using Character Animator with two new in-app example puppets, which you can use as-is or as a foundation for your own designs.
- Character trigger extension for Twitch:
- Now people using Character Animator to stream on Twitch can offer their viewers unique ways to interact with them, and further monetize the stream, through Character Trigger.
- Improved Lip Sync:
- Sensei has learned to produce better quality automatic lip sync, reducing the impact of noisy audio.
- Improvements to Characterizer:
- Improvements to Characterizer, including faster user interaction, three new styles, and better looking results.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2018 2.0 (Oct 16, 2018)
- Characterizer:
- Create a stylized, animated character using a work of art, your webcam, and Characterizer, powered by Adobe Sensei AI technology.
- Replays:
- Choose your best takes and create a trigger that you can quickly re-use live or during your next recording. You can even adjust the length of your Replays trigger to fit your scene.
- Magnets:
- Now your puppet can throw, drop, pick up items or interact with other puppets, like holding hands.
- Addition to Physics for more flexible animations:
- Adjust the squashiness parameter in Physics behaviors to get your puppets to behave more like traditional cartoon animations.
- Improvements to walk behavior:
- Newly added right and left shoulder and hip tags make a three-quarter drawn character look better when walking.
- History bookmarks:
- Create bookmarks while working on your project so you can return to previous versions and keep track of variations.
- And more:
- Also includes: improved Lip Sync quality powered by Adobe Sensei, the ability to import SVG and EPS files, better performance, and an improved work area bar.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2018 1.1.1 Build 11 (Apr 3, 2018)
- Improved trigger workflows:
- Manage layers containing triggers directly in the Puppet panel. More intuitively create a swap set or trigger using new ‘drop targets’ within the Triggers panel. Additional Triggers panel improvements allow you to see your settings, layers, and conflicting triggers more clearly.
- Improved Particle Physics:
- It’s faster and easier to add environmental context to your scenes by having particles build on top of each other, such as snowflakes or bricks that accumulate and collapse in a pile.
- Scene snapshot:
- Compare and align shots of a character easily using Scene Snapshot, which acts like an onion-skin display to give you a frame-by-frame reference so you can do things like align a character’s hand between takes.
- Countdown to Record:
- A new three-second countdown ensures that your characters are in the right pose before recording starts.
- Controls Panel improvements:
- Customize the Controls Panel to look and work the way you want. Record buttons are now in the panel so you don’t have to go back to the Properties panel. And you can switch from Layout to Perform mode with a double-click.
- Improved behavior management:
- Add behaviors directly from the Puppet panel for simplified animation workflows. Remove all existing behaviors on a puppet in one step and apply new rigging behaviors to give your puppet the exact abilities you want.
- Timeline improvements:
- Reuse your best takes between puppets and projects. All types of takes can be cut, copied, and pasted between puppets and projects.
- More in-app template puppets:
- New styles, from hand-drawn to stop-motion, and added behaviors, including a Chicken Blaster puppet with a physics-enabled playground, will get you up and animating in no time.
- Keyboard shortcut editor:
- View shortcuts associated with menu commands, tools, and more, and customize keyboard shortcuts to suit your animation workflow.
- And so much more:
- Also includes: Improvements to the UI, better quality control when working with Adobe Illustrator files, Scene Frame export, and JPEG support for puppets and cycles.
New in Adobe Character Animator CC 2018 1.1 Build 184 (Oct 20, 2017)
- New Triggers panel:
- Show, hide, swap, or cycle through different parts of your puppet with your keyboard or MIDI device. The new Triggers panel gives you one place for all your triggers and an easy, intuitive way to move your characters. Toggle triggers on and off or create swap sets to quickly change hand position or cycle between outfits.
- New Controls panel:
- The new Controls panel makes performing easier and more visual. It displays triggers and puppet properties as buttons and sliders — you don’t have to remember a key command to trigger movements or swap layers. It automatically generates button designs from your artwork. And it’s saved with your character and can be shared with others.
- Eyebrow and eye animation improvement:
- Added rotation and movement to eyebrows give you more expressive characters, from worried to angry to surprised and more. And a new snap eye gaze feature gives you more control of pupil movement.
- Pose-to-pose animation:
- A new pose-to-pose option smooths out the transitions between your character’s poses for a hand-animated look. Control the amount of smoothing and how long to hold each pose.
- New behaviors: Physics, Layer Picker, and Fader:
- Trigger a specific layer in a puppet or group with Layer Picker. Fader lets you hide or show specific parts of your puppet. New Physics behaviors include Collide, which enables your puppet to run into and bounce against environmental elements or another puppet.
- Better aligned audio:
- Waveform displays give you a visual method for aligning audio, and you have roundtrip support with Adobe Audition.
- Better lip sync accuracy:
- Mouth shapes match more accurately to corresponding sounds with the new lip-sync algorithm. Lip syncs (including edits) created in Character Animator can be copied and pasted into After Effects.
- Rigging and UI enhancements:
- Import clipping groups from Photoshop, edit more precisely on your timeline, and connect puppet parts with automatic stapling.
- Control surface support:
- Control your puppet with a MIDI device, not just your mouse and keyboard.
- And so much more:
- Also includes: Improved walk behavior that supports the bending of toes when walking, visemes that can be edited using keyboard shortcuts, and more.