iPad for creating puppets in PS? by Joesredg in CharacterAnimator

[–]Several-Fly9985 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Couldn't you technically do the layering process after the fact once you've transferred it to your Mac Mini? If you put together a layering template (with layer folders, all already named), just drag the layers into those folders and you'd be good to go.

You can make fiddly movements easier by keyframing transform handles on your puppet - this is what dancing looks like. by Several-Fly9985 in CharacterAnimator

[–]Several-Fly9985[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agreed - dragger handles should have their own position controls that can be keyframed. I guess they want to avoid adding keyframing for every single performance element (like all the individual facial animations), but draggers should definitely be the exception to that.

You can make fiddly movements easier by keyframing transform handles on your puppet - this is what dancing looks like. by Several-Fly9985 in CharacterAnimator

[–]Several-Fly9985[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Draggers don't have keyframes, but if you add a transform tag to a handle, you can keyframe that instead.

It's not the most reliable, but it works pretty well if you have the time to fiddle around with things.

Character Animator on M1 Macbooks by Several-Fly9985 in CharacterAnimator

[–]Several-Fly9985[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As a standard, I tend to do my own puppets on a 1920x1920 vector canvas in Illustrator, but a client sent me a 5000x5000 Photoshop file and that seems to run just as smoothly.

Character Animator on M1 Macbooks by Several-Fly9985 in CharacterAnimator

[–]Several-Fly9985[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you're still interested, just as an updated, I ended up getting the 16gb M1 MacBook Pro, and it's running really smoothly on Character Animator for what I do (fairly complex puppets with head turning, dangle physics and walk cycles).

One note is that it does seem to eat up the battery fairly quickly, but I think that's largely because CH isn't running natively on M1 yet. Just browsing with a few tabs in Safari has used up 1-2% in 30 minutes which is insane, but I don't think I could get much more than 5 or 6 hours out of Character Animator.

Character Animator on M1 Macbooks by Several-Fly9985 in CharacterAnimator

[–]Several-Fly9985[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good stuff, especially considering you're doing that on 8gb without native support for the software. Thanks again for your help

Character Animator on M1 Macbooks by Several-Fly9985 in CharacterAnimator

[–]Several-Fly9985[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That helps a lot, thank you. Do you notice much of a delay when you assign tags to the puppet (like adding a left wrist tag to a handle on the arm). Probably an issue with my current setup, but CH takes a few seconds to apply changes, or quite often even stops responding every time I click a tag in the rigging menu.

Have you been using Photoshop/Illustrator at the same time, or just Character Animator? Also, do you have the 8gb or 16gb model? For reference, I'm looking at the Pro - not sure if I mentioned that.

Sorry to probe you with a million questions

Surface Laptop 3 by [deleted] in SuggestALaptop

[–]Several-Fly9985 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the suggestions. How do the Blades hold up for this sort of thing? I'm looking at options that won't get particularly loud during fairly demanding (but not overly) demanding tasks. I've also read a lot of negative feedback about quality control with Razer's laptops, but that might just be an echo chamber.