This post will concentrate on the character animation tools that are available for After Effects. There are several tools available, some of which come with After Effects. We’ll explain in detail what each tool does so you can choose the best one for your needs.
1. Rubber hose 2:
The term “rubber hose animation” comes from a 1920s-era technique for character animation. Rubber hoses were used to give the character’s arms and legs a wobbly appearance in this method.
When the first plugin was released in 2015, we became aware of rubber hoses for the first time. We wrote a whole post titled “Review of the Rubber Horse Character Rigging Plugin.” The original plugin’s ease of use was one thing we liked about it. The Rubberhorse engine is designed to be simple without a lot of features. It was about animating points on shape layers with excellent built-in tools to improve the animation’s appearance.
There are advanced hose styles included in the Rubber Hose 2. You can now manipulate even more fascinating body parts. In Illustrator or Photoshop, you can attach hoses to layers and save presets for later use.
2. DUIK:
DUIK is one of the most comprehensive character animation tools in After Effects. It is currently in version 15, and a 16th iteration is currently in development. It started as a basic animation tool in 2008 and has since evolved into one of the industry’s leading standards for character manipulation and animation.
Version 16 was also funded, allowing for further development of the most recent version. DUIK is completely free to use, so you might be wondering why crowdfunding is necessary. Therefore, if you use DUIK, please think about supporting a crowdfunding campaign or donating to the developer.
There is a lot more to DUIK than this article can cover, but let’s start with the basics. The tools available in DUIK’s scope menu can be used to manipulate and animate characters. Autorig, a feature that automatically generates straightforward rings for many characters, is one of these tools. Autorig has joints for the head, arms, and legs. You can begin immediately by adjusting the anchor points to match your character.
The DUIK website has a lot of video tutorials and courses because of the depth of DUIK’s functionality. Additionally, they are all free. However, you can purchase a printed copy of the DUIK 15 User’s Guide if you’re a voracious reader.
3. Sliders and joysticks:
Even though its name suggests an arcade or burger joint, this plugin is a very useful one for character animation and manipulation. It’s important to note that joysticks and sliders can be used for cool motion graphics animations in addition to character animations before we get into it.
In addition to being a useful tool, joysticks and sliders are a fun way to make animations feel like you’re playing a game. A series of poses form the basis for how the joystick works. A “joystick” is used to perform extreme up, down, left, and right poses.
A joystick is only a control that slides a point on a container like a joystick. The plugin will tween poses to produce a smooth character animation when the user does this. By simply moving the joystick around the box, moving the item to the left, then to the center, you can perform a letter search after linking the item.
4. Puppet Tool 3:
Puppet Tools is a script for After Effects; it should not be confused with the After Effects-integrated Puppet Tools. However, the fact that it is made to work with After Effects features and make them easy to use is why it is called that. Here’s how:
A collection of built-in features for manipulating characters are the After Effects puppet tools. However, other tools are available because this is difficult to use. As opposed to stopping the AE Manikin instrument altogether, Greg Gunn, maker of the Manikin Devices scripts, chose to make it more helpful and clearer.
The Pins to Nulls function is Puppet Tools 3’s most important feature. The Puppet AE tool pin in the layers dropdown will be transformed into a null layer because of this. You can easily move each null layer by dragging it or using the position handles to move it.
5. Character Animator from Adobe:
For some time, Adobe has been developing its character animation system to make character animation simpler than ever. Preview builds that you can play have been included in the most recent AE releases. Character Animator Beta is also included in the most current version of After Effects. This indicates that it is almost ready for widespread use and may find widespread acceptance among animators.
To animate your character’s face, Character Animator makes use of facial recognition technology to imitate your webcam movements. First, import your layers and set up your character’s rig with the built-in tools. You can animate the face with unique facial movements or move the appendages using mouse controls once your character has been rigged. Their movements can be recorded in real-time if desired.
With an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, Character Animator is included with After Effects for free. A monthly subscription to After Effects (with Character Animator) costs $19.99, while a monthly subscription to Creative Cloud in its entirety costs $49.99.
Character animation is something you might want to learn if you use After Effects a lot. In addition, the character animations are very entertaining. But it can also be a lot of pain, and most of that pain will go away if you use the tools above. When making your next character animation, look at all of them.
