I would love for The next iteration of CTA to have similar features to that of Anime Pro 10 where you can create your own custom rig out of any shape you like. This would help me immensely for when I want to create a character that is not in a humanoid form.

Another thing that would be awesome is if you could draw/alter a shape or character within CTA instead of making them in Illustrator or drawplus and then exporting them to CTA (where there could be problems in the transition because of the forced templates that we have to follow).

One more thing would be if there was some way to make the different angles not have that "snappy" feel to it when it changes from 0 Degrees to 45 Degrees for example.

I still love CTA2 though, and I only know that with the great minds working over at Reallusion that something amazing will be released in the CTA future!

Juan

Ibis has a video demonstrating making a custom 4 legged character in the prop composer that might be of interest to you. It doesn't involve a skeleton or bones per say, but uses good placement of rotation points and hierarchial layering of elements. You'll have to keyframe any animations you make, since you won't be able to use any of the canned motions, but you could create what you want and have it look somewhat ok. Personally, I'd just keep using the other software since it does everything you listed in your wish list...

Interesting, I'll check that video out. Thanks for the tip!

And yeah I know that Anime Pro has those functionalities but what attracted me to CTA was the incredibly fast learning curves for their softwares, they are by far the most user friendly programs I've ever used with undeniable possibilities for professionals as well.

Also the fact that you can import pre-made animations from other 3D softwares into 2D animations is very cool. I'm just looking forward to seeing just what else this company will come up with in the future!

I asked for this before the release of CTA2.

| Windows 11 64bit / iClone7 Pro / Headshot Plug-in / Character Creator v4 / Perception Neuron Profile for Motion LIVE 2D Plug-in/ CrazyTalk 8 Pipline / FaceFilter v3 PRO / Cartoon Animator 5 Pipeline/Serif DrawPlus X8 / 3DXchange 6 Pro / WidgetCast PRO / DP Animation Maker / PopVideo 3

I cannot fathom why someone with experience with a real 2D animation application, where everything and anything is animatible would take a step down to use CTA, then make feature requests to have features from the program they came from to the program they switched too. CTA has it's place, it really does but it's in no way comparable to the features and functionality of Anime Studio Pro.  Unless of course all you want to do is use RL assets.  You can build, rig, and start animating a character in ASP in less time than it takes to create the character in the flash (or drawplus) template and get it imported into CTA, then tweak the holy hell out of it to get it to work.  One of the reasons CTA has a faster learning curve is because it's severely limited when it comes to all aspects of 2D animations, as well as asset creation. (i.e. it doesn't have any real creation capabilities)

I can understand someone wanting these features you've listed, but to leave a program that has those features to come to a program that doesn't, then start requesting those features seems rather odd.

I don't have Anime Studio Pro but from what I saw on Youtube the animation process is not as simple as CTA.
Now if Anime Studio Pro had Kinect support that would be a game changer.

| Windows 11 64bit / iClone7 Pro / Headshot Plug-in / Character Creator v4 / Perception Neuron Profile for Motion LIVE 2D Plug-in/ CrazyTalk 8 Pipline / FaceFilter v3 PRO / Cartoon Animator 5 Pipeline/Serif DrawPlus X8 / 3DXchange 6 Pro / WidgetCast PRO / DP Animation Maker / PopVideo 3

Animation in CTA is only simpler because of the pre-canned animations, which rarely look good without massive amounts of tweaking, especially if using 3D animations.  But if you're actually "animating", it''s really no different than ASP.  And in some cases, it's even more difficult.  And there's more to animation than just character animations, and CTA is severely limited in that regard.

CTA is cheap enough that you can just use it for bipedal character animation and not miss any of the features that would make it shine by itself. The only problem I have is that its doesn't play nice nice with other tools. If it had swf output i could just do my character animation in CTA and import them into After Effect more easily without having to resort to uncompressed avi. Exporting as PNG sequences is provably the best option for use in AE but since the authoring environment is hard-coded at 30fps maintaining accurate lipsync is almost impossible, unless your willing to work with 30fps outside of CTA. Yuck.

PopVideo is pretty awesome, I love it but its a proprietary format that is not really supported by anything else outside the RL ecosystem. It would be great if RL could release some sort of driver or codec that would make this format compatible in After Effects or Premiere. It would solve a lot of issues.

I think RL should expand on the sdk to at least allow advanced users to create additional bones and IK chains. I think as long as a standard naming convention is followed it should be possible to create unlimited bone systems...

Like a third arm on a character would look like this...

x_arm3_0_0      x_arm3_0_0_pivot
x_arm3_1_0      x_arm3_1_0_pivot
x_arm3_2_0      x_arm3_2_0_pivot     x_arm3_2_0_nud

x indicates a custom sprite. it tells CTA to define a custom ik chain.
arm3 is the custom name you are assigning to that branch. (so you can see some human legible name in the cta timeline and scene composer)
the second number indicates the node position. (upper arm, forearm, hand, etc... keep adding a nodes for as many nodes as you need for your custom body part).
The third number, the angle. You would just have to redo this branch in every angle accounting for angle and keeping the naming convention consistent.

maybe add an extra _Upper_torso at the end of the first node to specify which is the parent body part.

I think if RL would leave something like this open ended it would allow at least the advanced users to create this this types of characters, And once they start being created the flash source files from the advanced users should be able to trickle down to the less experiences ones where they can make their own by just modifying the templates, as in the current workflow.








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.

+1
I have just make a side animation in CTA 1, because only this was needed for a Game
it wass not possible it do in so short time and without issue in CTA 2 .
Replace sprite with the black dummy is so easy in CTA1 

The Sprite  was in a specific Pose and CTA2  has twisted it too strange  , not so with the old CTA 1 Methode

I'm happy I have CTA 1 because CTA2 was not the right for the job .
And the best ever, I can it export als swf .
I hope CTA 3 get all nice features from both together again.


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you can make a single angle character in cta2 by just rigging the angle you need and importing it. Then you click the convert to multi-angle character from the menu. basically this will make it so your g2 character has the same sprites in all the angles, but you an only really get good animation from that one angle  I do this all the time when i only need one angle.


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.