Adobe Character Animator 2026
Version 26.0.0.50 · Adobe Inc. · Windows 10 / 11 (64-bit) · ranked #171 in the library
Performance driven 2D animation, where a webcam and a microphone drive a layered puppet in real time so a head turn, a blink and a full lip sync land as you perform them rather than as keyframes you set afterwards.
Read the installation section below before you start. The order of the steps matters on this release.
About this release
Overview
Character Animator takes layered artwork and turns it into a puppet that responds to a live performance. The webcam tracks head position, eye direction, eyebrow raise and mouth shape, the microphone drives the mouth through phoneme detection, and the result records straight to a timeline as you act it out. What used to be a week of frame by frame mouth charts becomes a take you perform, review and re-perform until it feels right.
The puppet itself is built from ordinary layered artwork made in Photoshop or Illustrator. Layer names carry the rig: a group named for the left eyebrow becomes a controllable eyebrow, a set of mouth layers named for their phonemes becomes the visemes the lip sync engine cycles through, and origin handles set where a limb pivots. Because the artwork stays linked, a design change in the source file updates the puppet without rebuilding the rig.
On top of that sits the behaviour system. Behaviours are modular pieces of automation you attach and tune: physics for hair, tails and dangling parts, walk cycles that respond to direction, breathing idle motion, eye gaze that follows the camera or a target, and triggers that swap a hand pose, a prop or a whole expression on a key press. Recording is layered, so you can perform the face on one pass, the arms on a second and the triggers on a third, then send the finished scene to Premiere Pro or After Effects through Dynamic Link.
What it does
Feature breakdown
Live face and voice capture
Head position, rotation, eye gaze, blinks, eyebrows and mouth shapes tracked from a standard webcam, with lip sync generated from the microphone in real time.
Puppets from layered artwork
Build the character in Photoshop or Illustrator, name the layers to define the rig, and the source file stays linked so design changes flow through.
Behaviours and physics
Attachable modules for dangle physics, walk cycles, breathing, eye gaze, cycle layers and more, each with parameters you tune per puppet.
Triggers and swap sets
Bind hand poses, props, expressions and background changes to keys, and group alternatives into swap sets so one key cycles through a family of poses.
Layered recording and timeline editing
Record each element in its own pass, then trim, blend and adjust takes on the timeline exactly like any other clip based edit.
Dynamic Link and export
Send a scene to Premiere Pro or After Effects without an intermediate render, or export PNG sequences with alpha for use anywhere else.
Changed in this build
Version 26.0.0.50
- Improved lip sync accuracy on fast speech and on recordings with background noise.
- Face tracking holds better through partial occlusion, such as a hand passing in front of the mouth.
- New starter puppets added, each rigged with the full behaviour set as a reference for building your own.
- Timeline performance improved on scenes with many recorded takes and a long history of layered passes.
- Trigger panel reorganised with searchable groups and clearer indication of which key is already bound.
Installation
Follow these in order
- Disconnect from the network before running setup.
- Extract the archive to a local drive.
- Disable real time protection.
- Run setup as administrator and select your language.
- Let the install complete and close the installer window.
- Launch Character Animator, set your camera and microphone in preferences, then re-enable protection.
Release notes
From whoever packed it
- Webcam tracking quality depends far more on even lighting than on camera resolution. Light the face from the front before blaming the tracker.
- Puppet source files stay linked by path. Keep the artwork alongside the project when moving a scene between machines.
- The starter puppet library is bundled in this build. The online template browser is removed.
System requirements
Minimum and recommended
| Operating system | Windows 10 version 22H2 or Windows 11, 64-bit |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel or AMD quad core with 64-bit support, 2 GHz or faster |
| Memory | 8 GB minimum, 16 GB recommended for scenes with several puppets |
| Graphics | GPU with 2 GB VRAM and DirectX 12 support |
| Storage | 8 GB of free space plus room for recorded takes |
Questions about this release
Answered before you ask
- Do I need a special camera?
- No. Any standard webcam works, and the tracker cares about lighting and framing rather than sensor quality.
- Can I animate without performing?
- Yes. Every behaviour parameter can be keyframed on the timeline, and triggers can be placed by hand instead of pressed live.
- Does it need Photoshop or Illustrator installed?
- Only to edit the source artwork. The puppet itself runs from the linked file without either application present.
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