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Discussion on Character Promo Kit

Discussion on Character Promo Kit

4.87 (61 ratings) 4.87 stars
Cart 1,197 sales

148 comments found.

I am trying to edit the file but I am having great difficulty. I am sitting on a PC with an intel core i5 at 5.6GHz processor and a 8gb RAM. However I am having great difficulty editing the content since the graphics are moving really slow. Is it the hardware? Or am I missing something?

The textures was already unchecked but the workflow is reaaaaallyy slow…

Hmm.. What version of After Effects are you on? Also have you tried working in “quarter” resolution? And do you only experience slowness with this project?

Maybe this can help you speed up you AE: http://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/improve-performance.html

I haven’t heard about slowness with this particular project though, so I’m not sure what it could be.

I am on AE CC. I checked your video tutorials and reseted to “quarter resolution” which made the workflow bette. Thanks for your help man!

Awesome! Great work. One request: more female characters!

Thanks! And your request is noted for the next update!

Doesn’t seem to work in CC or CS6, tried running the scripts and also tried putting them in the scripts folder directly, both didnt work.

Please read either this page. Or the ReadMe.txt

Basically, the “missing effects” error is nothing serious. Everything will still work accordingly. If you want to get rid of the error, you will want to check your permissions settings on your Windows or Mac OS. If you have a very tight security on your OS, it can restrain After Effects from running the scripts properly and thus giving you the error. Running Adobe After Effects as “Administrator” does seem to do the trick for most people.

If you still have any questions regarding this issue, feel free to ask.

Wow! Its a great! I was impressed. :)

Thank you!

Am I able to incorporate my company’s logo? I am new to After Effects. Are you able to give me a quick overview on how I’d do that? If I wanted your help in putting the presentation together, how much do you charge? Thanks!!

Hey thanks for your questions! Yes, you can easily incorporate your logo in the spots where you see the current “Envato” logo being displayed. This is being explained in a video tutorial and only takes a minute of work. If you want to go more advanced, you could incorporate your logo on the actual clothing of a character for example.

For your second question I would kindly ask you to drop me an email: info [at] motionvids.com

Thanks!

This looks amazing! I have two questions: 1) How are the characters made; Is it an editable comp, where I can change other aspects of the characters not included in the effects pane? Like if I wanted a custom hairstyle or something, is that possible? 2) I can’t seem to find if the characters are rigged, so you can make them do what you want or if they are preset for the scenes… can you explain that? If I wanted a character to run or kick something, is that possible?

Sorry for being so needy!

Hi Steve!

Thanks for your kinds words! And you are not being needy at all, I totally understand the need for questions.

Now to answer your questions:

1) The characters body parts are inside separate comps: Head, Torso, Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, Right Leg and Additional Face. Assuming you are proficient in After Effects and you know how to edit shape layers, then yes you could add in your own hairstyles and other facial/head elements. The other body parts you can also edit, but you’ll need to stay inside the pre-determined mesh space. So you can’t for example make the torso look fatter, but you can change the appearance of the clothes and add more elements to it while staying inside the mesh space.

Just turn all pre-made aspects off and you can use your own elements for the characters. Best way to do this is to draw your elements in Illustrator, import the .ai inside After Effects then right click the .ai layer and select “Create Shapes From Vector Layer” and bring that shape layer inside the desired body-part composition.

2) The characters are rigged with inverse kinematics so you can make them do anything. If you are skilled enough you can even make them fly like a superhero for example. I explain this briefly in a video tutorial. You can use both position and rotation values for both arms, legs, hips, torso and head. So this gives you endless possibilities to animate the characters yourself.

Hope this helps.

Just wanted to let you know that I purchased it and it worked perfectly! Saved a TON of time!!!

In case you want to take a look – here is the final video: https://vimeo.com/89156009

Thanks Marco!

Wow thanks Steve! What a nice story and how beautifully executed. Love how you got the hang of animating the characters and added in some new elements of your own that perfectly fit the style.

Thanks again for sharing. :)

Love your project!

Hey DjKremix, thanks again! Your second comment already, how nice of you :)

cute characters, love it . keep it up :)

Thanks jsnmidi! I will :D

awesome project, good luck with the sales mate :)

We can’t make them talk, can we?

Nope not yet. I was planning to update this in V3 but things got very busy and I couldn’t find the time. It is the number one thing to add to this template on my list, but at this moment I’m fully scheduled so I have no clue when I can start on Version 4 to be honest. Eventually it will come though.

hi man sooooo nice work

Can i make this character as an arabic guy from the gulf area wearing their native dress (Galabeya)

Thanks madopharm!

Currently, creating an arabic guy from the gulf area is not able with this template. Also I have tried multiple things with dresses but in the end it would always mess up the animation, so I still have to figure out a way to include these things.. For now it is unfortunately not possible.

You could add a kerchief or something to the head if you know how to do it yourself. I can also include it in the next update, but I can’t tell you when that comes.

Thank you, for your quick response. Sure I will do it. Many thanks again. best regards Senthil

Hi, You have done a fantastic job! Great work! I would like to know if you can do customized characters like, animals, birds, etc? If so, when we provide the character design and if you work for the set up for that customized character, what would be approximate charge for that?

I am very much interested on this and look forward to your answer. best regards Senthil

Hey senthiliv, thanks for the kind words! And yes I do customizations! Would you be so kind to email me this question to info [at] motionvids.com? We then can continue our discussion there.

Hi, I downloaded the zip file but I cannot open it… Could you help me with this issue please?

I managed to open it but now I don’t know how to install the program. I am a mac user by the way

Hi there! Could you please give me some more details on your situation?

I’m not entirely sure but what you mean by “I don’t know how to install the program”. Does that mean you have trouble installing the scripts or does that mean you haven’t installed Adobe After Effects yet? Inside the project you can start up the .aep file which will open in Adobe After Effects. From within this program you can edit the entire template to your liking. If you are entirely new to this, meaning you have no previous experience in After Effects, I would strongly advise you to first learn the basics of the program before trying anything.

Hello, here is one Problem, Would you please let me know how can I add 2 different characters in same scene?

Please check the #3.5 Creating Your Character [with Version 2] video tutorial in the “Basic” folder. Or you can re-download the file and check the video tutorial in the V3 Folder. There I quickly show you how you can make children characters. You can do this with every character by just dragging on of their animation composition in the scenes and animating them in.

It works. :) Thanks so much for the quick support and co-operation.

Hi, I am having trouble modifying characters. For instance, when I open up character 2 and its controller, when I change features, nothing of the character changes. When I dig down to the head itself, turning layers on and off does not work, only the one that is already activated (hair for instance). What am I doing wrong?

Turning on/off layers manually won’t work and this is because of the expressions enabled to their opacity values. This is done to keep character creation simple from the character creator menu’s.

From my side, it seems you are changing the appearance for Character Creator 2 in the Main Controller 2 but are viewing a different Character Creator or it might be the other way around. Hard to say since I can’t watch with you.

Please make sure when you double click a Character Creator (1,2,3,4 etc) composition you select the associated “Main Controller (1,2,3,4 etc)” for it. This shouldn’t be too hard since the associated “Main Controller” is actually inside the Character Creator composition it belongs to.

Another possibility is that you might have accidentally clicked on the lock switch at the top of your Effect Controls window. This way you might have locked the “Character Creator” effect which is applied on the “Main Controller 1” layer. Now when you select the “Main Controller 2” the Effect Controls window shows you the “Character Creator” effect but this is still the one for “Main Controller 1” since it was locked. So you’ll need to unlock that lock in order for it to show the corresponding “Character Creator” effect.

Hope this is not too confusing. Hit me up on Skype or sent me an email if you still have problems figuring this out – check my profile page for contact info.

Please check here for a visual reference to the lock I’m talking about: http://imgur.com/BHLiBRG.png

I am not having success with getting the scripts to work. I go through the installation process, restart After Effects, then try to open the main file and it keeps giving me the same 14 plugins missing message. What could be causing this? I am using this for a client, a project due in two days. I am in Windows 7 Professional and a Creative Cloud member, all software up to date.

Thanks in advance!

Are you by any chance on a different language version in AE? French, German??

The scripts are not mandatory. You can go along and edit your template all the way, the only thing these scripts do is make sure you don’t get that 14 plugins missing error. Meanwhile the template will still work a full 100%. So you can go ahead and continue for your client, the only thing is that the error message will maintain each time you boot up your .aep.

I’m working on a fix for CC and non-english AE users as we speak.

Sorry for the inconvenience caused!

Awesome response time, very impressive. Thank you.

No, I am in English, but being up to date with CC and hitting that error message I would never have dove in to see if the effects worked in spite of it.

Again, kudos to your excellence.

Thanks!

Thanks for your kind words!

Can you please verify that you are running AE as “Administrator” when running the install script?

If you are not an administrator and have strict permissions set then the script will not be able to do the installation and in many cases no errors about this will occur since the system simply fails and does not give an error. This is mainly a Windows issue but can also occur on Mac.

Hello, I am using windows 7 and AE 6. I installed successfully the fonts in C:Windows/Fonts.

But when I open After effects template file it say some fonts are missing. But after opening after effects…I saw those fonts.

do you have any idea please?

Hi, Again knocking you. :) Would you please let me know how can I add 1 more character in same frame. Suppose I like to add John and Kara in same frame. Thanks so much for all of your support and co-operation.

Please check the #3.5 Creating Your Character [with Version 2] video tutorial in the “Basic” folder. Or you can re-download the file and check the video tutorial in the V3 Folder. There I quickly show you how you can make children characters. You can do this with every character by just dragging on of their animation composition in the scenes and animating them in.

It works. :) Thanks so much for the quick support and co-operation.

I want to buy this video, I think it’s great. The only thing is I’d like to see maybe a document or even something online with a list of all the scenes you have included (with maybe screenshots – for example the globe with a plane flying round it and then another example of the female sat on a desk). I’d also like to see an image list of all the image icons/graphics that you can choose from (for example theres one of some cash and theres one with a wallet in there too). I don’t know, maybe you might have this already somewhere from when you was developing this (I know it might be a lot to ask for) but I’d love to see it if possible and then I’d know for sure if this is the video template that’s perfect for me rather than a different one. Thanks

Haha I’m sure it was just me forgetting that it was a satellite rather than a plane, rather than your drawing skills. It’s an amazing video and I love it. Any chance you could email something to me so I can see what these screen shots of the scenes are? It doesn’t have to be anything put together perfectly or anything, just so I can use it as a reference point to plan my video (otherwise can’t risk being in a position where there’s not the right scenes for the storyline of my video – im really rubbish at video editing so would be stuck if that was the case). I will drop you an email via your website (stating my Envato username) so you can email me on there (that’s if you can anyway). If not then im running short on time so will have to go for a plan B option :(

Thanks again mobuk for your kind words. I have send you a reply to your email. :)

I have uploaded screenshots of all the scenes on the main description page. Some scenes exist out of multiple text animations, so not all screens are shown because some of them simply only exist out of texts as you can see in the preview video.

Hi,

Is it possible to change the character’s expression ?

Thanks

Not yet! It is on the list of things to be added in Version 3, I want to animate the eyebrows and add in at least 4 different mouth shapes to play around with.

I have just updated this template to Version 3 but still have to add this feature, and I am going to in version 4. It realized that adding expressions to all character is way more work then I initially though. But eventually I will do it :)

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