Hi everyone,
Apologies in advance if this is in the wrong forum or has been asked a hundred times. I couldn't find a link.  Do I need to have the Avatar Builder to use the various Toon Maker 1/2 & Monster Workshop packs or can they be used without?  Many thanks.
JG

You can it use without :)


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Avatar Builder is only needed to add props and/or add-ons to your character that you want to animate with the Avatar Controller widget.  The Toon Kits and Monster Workshop come with their own Avatar Controller widget that can be used to animate the characters facial expressions.

It's not easy to find the Avatar Controller once you've purchased the Toon Kits.  The Avatar Controller is found in the Scene Tab under Avatar Controller. 

The basic process to build a character is to load in a base character under the Actor tab/Avatar.  All the different eyes, noses and other pieces can be found as Accessories (though the limited number of pants, shirts and shoes are still available where you'd expect).  Drag the controller onto the stage, click your character and you should be able to animate various parts of the face with your mouse.

I find these packs to be great fun.  I hope this answers your questions!

Reallusion gave a live webinar or two about this pack - extreeeeemely insightful and arguably one of their best tutorials - on their channel: 



Pretty sure you'll love it. Very quick and easy to use. After watching it, I barely needed 30 minutes to whip up these chaps and throw the whole scene together with lipsincing - not counting the time it took to find the audio clips, instead of just recording my own voices and loading their mp3's into the facial animation tab:



But they're also excellent for making all kinds of weird critters... e.g. I used a Toonmaker nose and eyes, plus horns from the monster workshop and some standard primitives to make this friendly four-legged fellow - and made the rest of the toonmaker body invisible (for the critter, not the robot haha)... then rendered him as my new logo in iC6, using only standard settings for AO and just the native renderer (accessed by F10) as an alternative to indigo, and voila!... 

**love toonmaker**
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Anita, aka "Bleetz" the Toon Wrangler @ Tarampa Studios
SYS: Win 8.1,  64-bit, i7-4770 CPU @3.4GHz,  
32GB RAM, Intel(R)Graphics 4600 & nVIDIA GTX1060 TI 

Fabulous everyone. Thanks so much for the insights. The last four days have been a whirlwind of tests and focused studies finding my way through the interface. I am very excited to hear this about the Toon programs. Many thx.

PS Bleetz - I tried to click on your critter but no luck. Didn't have permission to view? Anyway. Thx for the links and the headsup.

Hmmm, how odd. That was posted on one of those new fancy-schmancy Google+ pages that were specially designed for artists and writers (allegedly) to help with a need for "whole world" accessibility in any language - and yet you're the 2nd to report back with that experience. I wonder what's up with it too now.

 




Anita, aka "Bleetz" the Toon Wrangler @ Tarampa Studios
SYS: Win 8.1,  64-bit, i7-4770 CPU @3.4GHz,  
32GB RAM, Intel(R)Graphics 4600 & nVIDIA GTX1060 TI