I've spent a couple of days playing around with the application, and there are quite a few things to like, and a few things to dislike.

First the likes... First is the ease of animation, specifially using fully rigged characters and the library of actions/performances.  While surely not an extensive list of actions and performances, the included walk cycles are a real boon.  Using the 2 other 2D animation packages (ASP (Anime Studio Pro) and TBS (ToonBoom Studio)), one of the hardest aspects of those applications is in setting up the character and creating walk cycles.  So that inclusion in CTA makes animating much easier.  And being able to link and unlink props is also something that is a great advantage, for picking up items, carrying them, throwing them, handing them to another character.  Extremely useful.

The full body photo fitting is a neat feature, but it's not nearly as versatile as using the sprite based characters.  Certainly you can take an image and create a fully animatible character with little bit of effort, but unless you're using high quality images you're taking yourself (so the positioning is correct), it's difficult to get a really good looking character.  Most of them will be frontal views, and quite frankly a frontal view character isn't nearly as intereting or as animatible as a side view character. For a JibJab style of animation, it's adequate.

The facial fitting features for photographs, specifically for creating animatible faces and heads, is top notch.  But seeing as that's based on CrazyTalk itself, I have no qualms with it, as I've always been a big fan of CrazyTalk.

The interface itself is fairly clean, and user friendly with few exceptions.  Those exception would be the image centric dialog boxes, for masking, photo fitting, facial fitting etc... They're just too small.  If they were sizable or bigger, to give me more image viewing realestate, I'd be much happier...

But there are two glaring omissions I feel are necessary to be a bit more competitive with the other two applications.  And no, they don't include drawing features.  I already have a slew of drawing programs for both vectors and bitmaps, so the lack of drawing tools inside of CTA doesn't bother me in the least. No the first glaring omission is the ability to custom create a sprite based character.  I know of many people who like to draw their characters in pieces, and not having the ability to import these individual pieces and assemble them into a working character is a fairly large missing feature.  I suppose many people will have to assemble their characters, export out as an image and then go through the full body photo fitting process, but to many, that may seem like an additional unwarranted step. 

The other glaring omission, based on the first one, is the lack of different body styles for sprite based characters.  Again, since I cannot import nor create my own sprite based characters, I'm left with what comes with CTA, and I'm not overly impressed.  All the sprite characters and body styles are thin, very skinny.  I cannot use those same body parts to create a heaveset trucker, a Santa Claus, an office worker, a waitress, etc...  Using photo fitting, I could find image likes that and try to use them, then mix them up with the sprite characters, but they just look wrong.

While it is possible to edit individual pieces of a photo fitted body in an image editor, there is no such utility for the vector based sprite characters. Regardless of how many facial combinations you can create with the hair, eyes, ears, nose, and mouths all the sprite based characters will be very similiar in build and stature.

One of my biggest concerns for this product though is that RL will also recognize the limited body styles and shapes, and will release content packs that, like the iClone content packs, will be more expensive than they should be.  Of course, with iClone, the possibility for users to create their own characters and share them will be much more limited in CTA, since again, we cannot import nor create our own sprite based characters.

For an animation application, I like it.  For a character creation system, I'm not particularly happy with the offereings.  I hope that eventually RL will give us the ability to create, from scratch, full vector sprite based characters.

Just my $0.02...

I haven't been able to spend any time with my trial software, and I haven't been focused on using 2D for 2D anyway for a long time.

I find your comments very valuable!

Sure would like to see a response from Reallusion.

General Picture - animating now to life itself(tm)
Member of Content Wizards

So I guess this was some valuable misinformation. I thought Peter said that when CTA is released you will be able to create and import your own characters.

It's not exactly misinfoirmation, but neither is it complete.  You can import additional pieces, even as SWF, but you can only use them to replace the pieces on an already created character.  You cannot import a brand new character, piece by piece and assemble them and have them rigged.

So in theory, if you wanted to go through the steps, you could take a premade sprite based character, and replace every piece of it.  Of course unless your pieces are assembled and sized to match the premade character, it's going to be a long process.

It's something I've been messing around with, to find the most efficient workflow for it, and as of yet, all my results haven't been show worthy yet.  And I have limited time for experimentation, basically Saturday only, so it may take me a while to get back to it.

Thanks for your first impressions Veteran. I have been trying to get a sense of the capabilities of the software from the trial, but with very limited time to do so. I completely agree about the huge gap in capabilities with being able to develop/import your own character. I can see this being addressed in future updates/upgrades, but at the moment this is a bit of a deal breaker for me. I will continue to watch the progress of CTA, as I think it has enormous potential. But at the moment, I will stick with using CT6 for animating heads and hope there's another good price-point to update after further improvements have been made to the program.

Wizaerd is right about the glaring omission of making and using your own creations. This is a good start.........but! It really is frustrating when one can see the potential of a tool.( at this release it seems to be for 6th graders no aspersions on them they are great consumers.)

Ditto.

I don't agree here. I don't understand why everyone here says, that in CTA pro is not possible to create an own and unique sprite Character. And I do not think, that I'm really a NOOB in 2D animation.

It is important to know, how a "cut out animation" generally works, and how to prepare a sprite for the composing, and I don't mean the CTA Body creator thing.

I draw and cut my character in my drawing program.

I then put the pieces together with the composer sprite editor. I can rotate, place and rezise or delete, how I want it. It is easy to do, too.

I use the premade sprite "Black Dummy".
It is not only a guideline for the right rigging hierarchy, but also allowes to use the automatic puppet feature on my own character.

In addition to that, it is possible to create all creatures you can imagine (not only biped) with the prop Composer. In both cases I can build and manage the layers, the switch libraries for every limb piece (bone) in a grouping hierarchy, and also import them in very much formats and even movie clips.

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You'll notice that I had since added an additional comment stating the same basic thing.  It is still true you cannot import a complete character in pieces, and assemble it in CTA.  You can however go through and modify each and every part of a pre-made character (the "black dummy" is a pre-made character) that you have to go through and modify each and every limb, importing your exported pieces one by one, tediously I might add.  In the Sprite editor, click the limb, import the piece, size, rortate, and position as appropriate, close the sprite editor box, go the next limb.  As I have stated it is a very tedious process.  Even exporting the pieces out one by one can be tedious.

A better approprach would be to let users draw and/or create their characters and export as a whole (swf would be the best routine since they'd remain vectors as opposed to rasterized images, but suppose it can take PSD (photo shop files) too).  Put each piece on a pre-named layer (r_hand, r_forearm, r_bicep, etc...  using whatever RL names their default layers for their characters)  Then save/export that character as a whole, import as a whole, modify the pivot points for proper joint alignment, and boom done.

Ok, your suggestion is a little bit different in the workflow, however on the end for me with same resultat. I have first understand it is not possible to make own Creations in CTA Sorry englisch is not my language.


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