I am brand new. I have a cartoon character of a rhino that I want to animate. It is currently in a JPEG format. I want it to act similar to the onion in the existing actor panel. In reading what I can find, there is talk of using an illustration program, of using a flash generating program or of upgrading to Pipeline version. Does anyone have suggestions? Thanks

Wayne,

concerning CTA2:
if you are familiar with Flash or Draw plus, the Pro and the Pipeline version of CTA2 will help you to create
your own unique character of the rhino and integrate this character into CTA2.

But you should be able to draw the single components of your rhino. That means 10 angles of every single
body sprite - really a lot of work.  May I say: really horrible for a hobbyist like me.....

Concerning CTA 7:
if you are a hobbyist and you are not able to use of the drawing and developing options in CTA2
by using the drawing software like "Flash" or "Draw Plus"...

,,, in this case I can recommend you the software "CrazyTalk 7".

Here you can cut out the face of your rhino and make it speak and interact with the viewer.
Really cool, but the body of your rhino stays an immobile JPG,

If you need your rhino-character to be full animated (body and head) and working in CTA2,
and you cannot develop the rhino by yourself, in this case I have the following advice for you:
contact one of the developers and animators here in the forum and ask them for their price to
create this for you.

I did it this way. It was not right a pleasant price but I am very satisfied with the result.
A pro stays a pro......

You would need at least the Pro version of CTA2 to do what you want.
The Pipeline version adds the ability to use the Flash/DrawPlus template to import everything at once rather than each body part piece by piece,  angle by angle.
In the case of the Onion character, keep in mind that the same image was used for all angles for the head, body, legs and arms so that is was much simpler to construct than a normal character who usually has different images for each angle. Depending upon what your character is like you might be able to reduce the number of body part images by using the same image for multiple angles.

You would need some type of Photo Editor (Photoshop, PhotoPlus, etc.) to break up your image into the different body parts and to trim and touch up as needed.

If you haven't seen it yet, here is a link to the tut on creating the Onion character "Basic Character Body Creation"

Jeff



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