I've never made it a secret that I'm not crazy about the whole puppeteering aspect of CTA... Last night it caused me some grief.

While CTA is primarily an animation application, it can also be used to create some great still images as well. I was building still images last night for a work event, and I really needed to keyframe the character eyes, looking in a different direction than straight forward. This is true of a sprite based head, and a morph based head. So in all my still images, the characters are looking blankly straight ahead.

(Just so you know what I'm attempting to accomplish is a different frame being a different panel in a comic book. Characters pose and camera framing would be a different panel each page. So Frame 1 is Panel 1, Frame 2 is Panel 2, etc...)

My only real option is to use puppeteering to record segments, then find a frame within that animation that has the look I want/need. But it's also a PITA because I was hoping to have a different pose and camera framing per frame, then render out a sequence and I have my static.

If I could just keyframe the eyes (and mouth and head direction on a morph head) would allow me to overcome this.

Unfortunately, I'll probably end up doping this in a different application, but it sure would've been great to use some of the new features of CTA2...

If its a custom character you can set up the eyes so they have full articulation of the pupils. I'm not sure if they are keyable but I don't see why it shouldn't be. Every thing else seems to be so far. The pipeline white paper doesn't cover it but the standard documentation talks about setting up eyes that work that way.

Also, since you're a Puppet Producer user, be sure to grab the latest update it has the buttons to help configure the eyes that way


Ibis Fernandez   |   (available for hire)
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Professional Animator, Filmmaker | Creator of the highest quality (modular) G2 rigs for cartoon animator and developer of Toon Titan and Puppet Producer 
Author of Flash Animation and Cartooning: A Creative Guide
>>> be sure to check out http://toontitan.com for professional grade assets, templates, and custom tools for Cartoon Animator and more.

The articulation is for the puppeteering. Pupils aren't keyframable themselves, unfortunately.

wow, well its that's the case, then its definitely a feature that should be implemented.


Ibis Fernandez   |   (available for hire)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Professional Animator, Filmmaker | Creator of the highest quality (modular) G2 rigs for cartoon animator and developer of Toon Titan and Puppet Producer 
Author of Flash Animation and Cartooning: A Creative Guide
>>> be sure to check out http://toontitan.com for professional grade assets, templates, and custom tools for Cartoon Animator and more.

Thank you for the suggestion. This has been passed to the CTA team for consideration.

                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com