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| Anime Amee Avatar in Cartoon Animator 5 is available for free in the Reallusion Marketplace. |
I explored quite a number of applications but I couldn't really find one that I was able to adapt my avatar to. It was possible but the applications that could do it were either too basic or too complex, with poor documentation, requiring more time and expertise than I had.
Since then, Reallusion introduced their Puppet Stage to Cartoon Animator 5, and as far as I'm concerned, it rocketed past the competition as the best, most featured, and easiest to use software for VTuber's who want a 2D avatar, in any art style they can dream up. You're not limited to just Anime characters anymore.
What is the Puppet Stage?
Puppet Stage is specifically targeted at live streamers who represent themselves through cartoon avatars - commonly referred to as VTubers. Typically many of these people are gamers who have an avatar character on screen as they play their games.
Cartoon Animator gives you a stage window for your avatar, that is ideally suited to running through broadcast streaming software like OBS, so you don't see the rest of Cartoon Animator's User Interface.
2D Characters can be animated with multiple methods including live motion capture plus keyboard and mouse triggers.
It works with any G3 based character (Cartoon Animator's Standard Character format) which you can create from scratch, with your own artwork, or select one of thousands of free and paid characters created by Reallusion and independent developers from the Reallusion Marketplace.
What's most impressive is, once you have your character positioned on the stage, you can apply a free live stream Puppet Stage template profile, and you're all set up ready to stream. Just connect Cartoon Animator to your streaming software. No other VTuber software is that simple.
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| My Anime Ameee Avatar set up on Cartoon Animator's Puppet Stage with the basic Puppet Stage Profile, including Face Motion Capture. |
Of course you can make your own Puppet Stage profile, completely from scratch, which does have more of a learning curve. However you can do a lot with all the pre-made content and animations. It's conceivable that the only thing you'll want to fully customize is the artwork for your avatar.
Cartoon Animator 5's Puppet Stage Key Features
Motion Capture
Cartoon Animator's Motion Capture features all work with Puppet Stage. The Motion Live 2D Plugin is free but you will need to pay extra for a motion capture profile depending upon the level of motion capture you need.
The cheapest option is face motion capture through your webcam, which is fine to get you started. If you have the budget (and an iPhone) the iPhone face motion capture profile is far more responsive. Don't waste time with your webcam if the iPhone profile is an option for you. The difference is quite dramatic.
If you have the budget for various hand and full body mocap devices then you likely have the budget for the profiles needed to drive them. Check out the link for compatible devices.
Motion Pilot
Puppet Animation has always been a feature of Cartoon Animator but it became even more powerful with the introduction of Motion Pilot, a system that lets you easily program one, or even an entire flock of characters, with specific movements, that you can trigger or directly control with your mouse.
An obvious example for Puppet Stage is the ability to set up a walk cycle for your avatar, that you can trigger and control where your avatar walks on the stage using the mouse. Motion Pilot will handle the speed of the walk cycle, the direction, and where the character walks based on your mouse movement.
Camera Control
Another new addition to Cartoon Animator is the Multi-camera system that lets you set up standard and tracking cameras that you can switch between with a key press. Effortlessly switch between a close up of your avatar talking, to a wide shot when you're returning to game play, and even follow your avatar as they walk around.
Separate Body and Face Animations, or Combined
Quickly put together a whole deck of keyboard triggered motions from Cartoon Animator's pre-made motion library, or animate your own. Trigger just face, or just body motions, that can be mixed and matched, or trigger full character perform motions.
Keyboard triggers can be set to play once, loop continuously, or be controlled by mouse movement.
Auxiliary Animations
Animate props, emotional accents, swap out backgrounds and more. If it can be animated you can likely add it to the stage via a keyboard trigger to augment your character's environment and performance.
Flock Animation
Want to have a sequence where six or seven butterflies enter the scene and fly randomly around when you hit a trigger? Flock animation can make that happen. You can also have them fly in formation and follow your avatar around, if that's what you want too.
Free 30 Day Trial
While Cartoon Animator isn't free software you can get a free 30 day trial that is fully functional and includes Motion Live 2D plus the webcam motion capture profile (keep in mind the iPhone profile is much better if you have an iPhone and the additional budget).
If you decide to buy, it's a one time purchase. You only pay for full version level upgrades, and even then you get it discounted. Intermittent upgrades and bug fixes are free (and Reallusion are known to release major feature upgrades in between full version upgrades).
While your initial purchase may be for your VTuber ambitions, you're also getting a very powerful animation studio that would allow you to create complete animated shorts of your avatar in their own web series, if that's something you might like to try.
Not to mention the sheer amount of ready made content available in Reallusion's Marketplace. You could literally have a different avatar every day. Don't forget to take advantage of the many free characters developers make available too.
Beginners Start Here
If you're completely new to Cartoon Animator and want to get started with the absolute basics of making and animating your first character check out my free course at Make Animated Cartoons Free Course. The character you create will be quite simple but it will work with Cartoon Animator's Puppet Stage.
For a free tutorial showing how to set up a completely custom Puppet Stage from scratch, including how to add auxiliary animations, watch my @AnimLife video Master Cartoon Animator 5: Add Emotions and Effects to Puppet Stage Characters - Auxiliary Animation.
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