Max2015 – Animating Characters with Fuse (preview) and Photoshop CC

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The announcement at Max 2015 revealed the new integration pipeline between Fuse (preview) CC and Photoshop, powered by the Creative Cloud Sync. The objective of this integration is to simplify the creation of a custom and unique character in Fuse, then use Photoshop CC to apply smooth animations to your character.

To make a new character, start out in Fuse and select a head.

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Wizard process will walk you through adding other components like arms, worse and legs.

 

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Each step enables customisation of that part, i.e. local definition of each part, in the case below, waist, stomach etc.

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Textile wizard allows adding other elements to the character, like hats, facial hair and other clothes.

 

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With an ability to custom the colour and texture of each element.

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Once the character is ready, it can be saved as a .muse file, as well as sent to Creative Cloud for processing. Whilst the character is on it’s way to CC it will be automatically rigged for animation. As you can see below, the character will seamlessly be inserted into the Photoshop libraries panel, for each access within Photoshop.

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There will be a notification from the Creative Cloud desktop application when the character has been rigged and ready in the library panel.

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It can then be dragged across into any active canvas, ready for applying the animations or blending into a 2D scene.

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Below show the new character in the scene, ready for placement. It can be moved around the ground plane, as a regular object. Also notice the black skeletal framework overlaid onto the character.

 

 

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Any available animation can be applied by just selecting it from the properties combo box, each selection will result in the application to the model on the screen. You can see below, that the character  is now sat on the floor. This animation sequence will take the model from a sitting position to a standing position.

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It’s also possible to apply facial expressions, by selecting the face icon and the correct expression required.

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To finish up, a back ground can be added (from below i’ve pulled it in from Adobe Stock and licensed it), then move the lights around to mimic the shadows which would be created by the sun.

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The whole process took less that 5 minutes from creation of a custom character, to rigg it and then apply animations and blend into the background.

We hope you have lots of fun with the Integration of Fuse and Photoshop for placement of characters in your 2D scenes.

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