What Peter meant was that you can create any kind of animation with all the free characters and resources you get with CTA5.
To create custom characters and props you obviously need 3rd Party software.



CTA5, Iclone 7, 3D Exchange Pro, Character Creator 3, Popcornfx plugin, Zbrush, Blender, Vue 2014, Adobe cc suite, Spriter
Homebuild Workstation (Pretty old now but still working great) Win 10, Intel i7 950, 24 GB RAM DDR3, Gigabyte x58a-ud7 motherboard, AMD R9 390 sapphire 8GB VRAM.
Official Website  Reallusion Store  

Hi FrameKrafts,

I agree CTA 5 is an animation software with limited resources.  You can great basic animations with their resources but you need music, sound effects and other resources from third parties to create entertaining videos.  What is your opinion on the market place?  

Thanks for commenting

Not so. With the huge library of characters and props packs available you can still create movies without using any 3rd party software. Even custom characters can be created using content from packs alone. For example the new "Dynamic Character Designer" pack includes a large library of facial parts and hairstyles which allow you to create an unlimited number of unique characters. In addition, with CTA5's new colour grouping features you can change the colour of everything as well without needing 3rd party tools.

The important point is that even if you have zero artistic skills you are not excluded from CTA5 and can still bring your creative ideas to life.


                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

I agree with Peter 100%.   There is a huge library of characters and props packs available to purchase that you can use to create movies without using any 3rd party software.  So yes, you can create animations or movies without 3rd party software. Some assets also come included with cartoon animator.

I think what other users here are pointing out is that Cartoon Animator is dependent on external PSD and now SVG editors to create custom characters with different looks.  

When purchasing Character Creator add-ons available for Cartoon Animator, they will all have kind of the same look. You can tell they were done in Cartoon Animator using their assets.  Also, someone else may produce a movie using the same characters and your movies will not be that unique in terms of assets and characters.  I personally don't like the look of a lot of the characters available to purchase.   I would rather create my own with the look I want.  

But that's what Cartoon Animator is about, for non-animators or people that can't draw.  At least a big percentage of the users.  But this doesn’t make Cartoon Animator a bad choice for creating animation movies, it’s just different.  Animated movies can be created with assets.

It would be nice is to have an internal drawing vector editor so that we don't have to use other external editors or at least use them as an option if you want to.  Like the Moho animation app has.  The way layers in PSD files are used to create custom characters can also be improved for easier use and implementation.

I do like that we now have more options to choose from like Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, Clip Studio Paint, etc.  At least that’s a very good thing.  But I will still like to see the dependency of external editors to be minimized like in the Moho app.

In terms of other third party apps, that happens with all software if you are creating pro type of films. For instance, I also use DaVinci Resolve, Apple Motion, and Logic Pro to beef up my animations and make better compositions and for adding nice effects and transitions.  This is essential to create good movie animations for me. 

We all have different needs.   But I do agree with Peter and other users as well.  We at least need to minimize the dependency of external PSD and SVG editors in Cartoon Animator and improve the way custom characters are created.

I have added the idea of an inbuilt graphics editor to the Feedback Tracker. Vote up if you like the idea. Graphics Editor - Feedback Tracker (reallusion.com)

Voted

CTA5, Iclone 7, 3D Exchange Pro, Character Creator 3, Popcornfx plugin, Zbrush, Blender, Vue 2014, Adobe cc suite, Spriter
Homebuild Workstation (Pretty old now but still working great) Win 10, Intel i7 950, 24 GB RAM DDR3, Gigabyte x58a-ud7 motherboard, AMD R9 390 sapphire 8GB VRAM.
Official Website  Reallusion Store  

VOTED!

I am not saying the character packs and other items available in-store cannot be used. Reallusion has done a marvelous thing and that is they created a whole ecosystem around their products with the store packs.

I have myself used the frog model from the store for the animation movie I created in iclone7 four years back. But not every asset can be used. I create game art packs for a living and I think I will put up a few of the characters I created on the Reallusion store under 2D art as well in the future.



But as you said, to create unique characters and animation we will need to use 3rd party software. It is not a bad thing.

You will always get all kinds of users - professionals, newbies, and hobbyists. CTA5 just have to cater to them all.

CTA5, Iclone 7, 3D Exchange Pro, Character Creator 3, Popcornfx plugin, Zbrush, Blender, Vue 2014, Adobe cc suite, Spriter
Homebuild Workstation (Pretty old now but still working great) Win 10, Intel i7 950, 24 GB RAM DDR3, Gigabyte x58a-ud7 motherboard, AMD R9 390 sapphire 8GB VRAM.
Official Website  Reallusion Store