Facial recognition is one of the earliest skills that baby humans learn. Considering how important paying attention to faces is to our survival it is no surprise that computer vision researchers have put a lot of effort into this field of research. The applications of static facial recognition have gone from enabling digital cameras to improve the focus on multiple faces in an image to Facebook’s auto-identification of people in photo galleries. Face tracking is the ability to recognize the geometry of facial features in moving images and follow them despite changes in angle or lighting. Adobe’s new Character Animator app, announced today for its Creative Cloud service, uses advanced face tracking to create animated effects that are downright playful.

I first saw an early version of the app, code-named “Animal,” demoed as part of a high-profile collaboration with Microsoft MSFT -0.58% at Adobe’s MAX conference last October. The presenter showed how he could use the camera on a Surface Pro 3 Tablet to capture his facial expressions. He then applied these expressions in real time to a 2d graphic image of a spiky (though cute) red “animal.” This demo was part of the same session where Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe president and CEO Shantanu Narayen shared the stage to announce a partnership that involved giving a fully-loaded Surface Pro 3 to each attendee. (N.B. this did not include press attendees.)

Even more striking than the motion tracking was the ability to lip-synch the character’s mouth to the animator’s speech. Seeing all of this work so smoothly in real time—on a Microsoft tablet no less—was pretty breathtaking. The audience was wowed.


Six months later, Adobe has taken what seemed a cute tablet app and released it as a full desktop companion to After Effects, a key part of its first-rate video production toolbox. I recently sat in on a demo of Character Animator along with a bunch of other new Creative Cloud video features that Adobe is premiering at the upcoming National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in Las Vegas. Many of the new features improve the capture and sharing of sophisticated color looks, but Character Animator is my personal favorite.

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