All our main products, iClone 8, Character Creator 4 and Cartoon Animator 4 (CTA4) will allow you to create animated projects and characters. They are all standalone products that do not need anything else to work. However, some files can be shared between the different products such as sending characters between CC4 and iClone 8.
Please let me explain a little about each product.
iClone 8 and Character Creator 4 are 3D animation packages and
Cartoon Animator 4 is a 2D animation package. A good way to think of the difference is to consider iClone like viewing a sculpture, where you can view it from a full 360 degrees, whereas CTA4 is like viewing a painting where you view from fixed angles.
iClone 8 and CC4 use 3D models. Characters can be lifelike humans or more cartoon type characters. You can use the included characters & props, or you can purchase additional content packs to increase your library of content. Many free models are also available. For more advanced users we have additional plugins for purchase including full body and facial motion capture plugins, a curve editor, PopcornFX and Iray rendering.
http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/In addition to
iClone 8, we now have the new
Character Creator 4. CC4 allows you to create an almost unlimited number of custom characters with different clothing, hair and accessories. It comes with a small selection of morph sliders and clothing, but you can expand this by purchasing additional morphs, clothing and hair.
In addition, you can also buy plugins such as the advanced AI driven 'Headshot' plugin which can create ultra-realistic characters from just a single high-quality photo.
Please see below for much more on Character Creator.
http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/character-creator/default.htmlIf you don't have any animation or 3D modelling experience, you may like to consider
Cartoon Animator 4. CTA4 provides an exciting new approach to traditional 2D animation with innovative new tools for animating your characters. In addition, we also have a facial motion capture plugin called Face3D which allows you to capture facial animation for your characters using just a standard webcam (requires separate purchase). With CTA4 you can use any photo or drawings for your characters, props and scenery. A large number of pre-made characters & prop packs are also available to purchase.
As this is a 2D product, your characters bodies will not animate quite as realistically as those in iClone, but if you are looking for a more cartoon like style then CTA will be ideal.
https://www.reallusion.com/cartoon-animator/default.htmlI hope this helps give you some guidance. Please do feel free to post any other questions below.
:)