I have a picture of a man in the T-Pose on a white background that I loaded by clicking the create character button.
It automatically brings up the add bone window. I was able to place bones without any problem. I went to preview
and tried rotating the bones which of course rotated the entire image. I checked the manual and it said to pin down
the parts that you don't want to move. I pinned the left side of the head and also the torso below the left arm and again
tried to rotate the left arm. No improvement. Did the same exact thing. The manual said to use the mask too to remove
unwanted parts of the image. There is no mask tool on the add bone windows nor could I find it.
Went to youtube to find a tutorial but could not find one that doesn't assume you already got it down just want to see
what else the presenter has come up with. I also found what should've been the tutorial I'm looking for but even though
it was titled Cartoon Animator 4 it was using CTA3.....so no use...Long story short can someone point me to a detailed
beginners tutorial how to get rigged and how to create and save animations for the beginner where it is assumed
the user knows pretty much nothing.  

Check this out ... page 3 onwards.
https://forum.reallusion.com/416885/Newbie-having-serious-issues-with-CTA4-not-doing-what-the-tutorials-do?PageIndex=3


YouTube Tutorials Here

So I cant just load a figure I have to cut it into pieces? Then I have no idea how to load all those pieces into one frame.
I thought that the Pro version meant I didn't have to use an external program like the pipeline which appears
to be required to make your own characters. Guess I should not have bought this program and I feel it is misrepresented.
Thanks anyways.

Use the sprite editor to bring in the body sprites.


YouTube Tutorials Here

Oh...ok I can fumble around and see what I can figure out. I do appreciate you taking the time to help me out
but it's not a bad idea for a tutorial for absolute begginners who don't have the pipeline version.
So will it be possible to create and save my own animations? I don't want to be limited to the builtins
and to tell the truth I don't see how you use the built ins anyways.

Once you have done your own animation, use the COLLECT CLIP to save it.




YouTube Tutorials Here

Thanks. Apparently you don't use the sprite editor in tandem with the character editor since I loaded my tpose
and then found the sprite editor and it told me to choose a corresponding part but the only part was the complete figure.
So I'm back to square one how would I get several parts into the scene to begin with.
I'll snoop around for a tutorial video or something but my initial impression remains that this is not an easy to learn and use program.

I found a video for CTA3 to use a G3 Dummy then replace all the parts with the layer manager.
It seemed to go well till I tried to preview and it was completely unuseable. Then I tried using the sprite editor
and the result was also unuseable. some bones didnt attach to each other and the ones that would
actually rotate were detached from the body. How anybody makes their own characters is beyond me
Reading the forum I see this is pretty much the same for a lot of people. I'm on the fence about refunding.
I'd like this if it worked well enough and it didn't cost much money for what it is supposed to do
but if it's way hard to get it to do that....disappointed...

I believe you did it all wrong.
It is actually quite easy to assemble a cartoon character in CA4.
Once you grasp the basic idea, everything else will go smoothly.


YouTube Tutorials Here

The "basic idea" of skeletal animation is you attach bones to an image that when moved or rotated
cause the image to respond in kind as to location and angle in my own words)
What happens in CTA4 is by doing that to a single image you need to place the bones very carefully
to avoid awkward rotations. If you use separate images for each body part they will NOT be connected
to each other. I followed that video exactly but did not get the correct result.. so I went back to using a single image
and got crude but not real bad results till I saved a few frames and took them into my own animation program
and found out that even after using the mask tool in CTA4 the resulting frames had merely changed the mask area
to match CTA4s screen color and in my program when I did a floodfill you could still see the masked areas as big chunks
This is not because I did something wrong or don't understand, it is because CTA4a masking system doesn't create actual transparency.
Or if it does the frame captures don't at any rate. I'll keep hacking away at it for now. I realize it's hard for you to help
without seeing what I'm doing step by step