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Using AI Tools to Speed Up Cartoon Animator Workflow

July 3, 2025August 27, 2025 Reallusion5 Comments

Animation is something we all love—but let’s face it, the time it takes can be daunting. What if you could achieve professional-level results in just a few days? In this article, I’ll break down how I created a polished, high-quality animated short by combining Cartoon Animator 5 (CTA5) with AI tools, using an eight-step workflow that blends the best of automation and human artistry. This is a repeatable pipeline you can apply to client projects, contests, or personal creations.

Mark Diaz / 2DAnimation101

Enthusiastic in both animation and teaching, Mark Diaz is the CEO and Founder of 2DAnimation101. He is a passionate online instructor. He helps beginners all over the world to improve in animation and drawing. He has helped more than 52,000 students worldwide.

Mark is a speaker of TED Talks, “Can anyone become a genius.” His versatile talents also made him a Short Film Director and Editor for Autumn Leave Films.

Follow Mark’s Latest Courses

Step 1: The Story Idea

Every great animation begins with a story. Without a clear idea, there’s nothing meaningful to animate. When I started, I had no concept in mind. To spark inspiration, I turned to AI. I used a prompt generator to brainstorm ideas, and from the list of results, one immediately made me laugh: Two women in a hair salon—one claims she found a miracle weight-loss cure. The twist? She disguises herself so that “if the cake can’t recognize her, the calories don’t count.”

The concept was simple, funny, and, most importantly, feasible to produce within a tight timeline. With that spark of inspiration, I began visualizing the setting and how the characters would interact.

Step 2: The Script

Once I had the core idea, I moved to scripting. I already envisioned the setting—a hair salon—so I grabbed a reference image and fed it into ChatGPT, along with a prompt describing the scenario. In seconds, ChatGPT produced a fully fleshed-out short script, including dialogue and scene progression.

To make production smoother later on, I also asked ChatGPT to add visual descriptions for each line of dialogue—this saved me time during storyboarding. The AI even helped me brainstorm names. I went with Wilma and Rita, names that were easy to remember and fit the light-hearted, retro vibe I wanted.

Step 3: The Storyboard

Storyboarding is where the animation starts to take shape. Using ChatGPT, I designed a detailed storyboard plan structured like a spreadsheet: character actions, dialogue, shot types, camera angles, and framing. ChatGPT helped fill out this framework based on my script, which I then organized in Google Sheets for easy reference. This process is speedy, and it helps us to create the storyboard way faster than before.

When it came to visualizing panels, I decided on a drawing style inspired by Kim Possible—simple but expressive. With AI’s help, I generated consistent character designs across all panels. Big tip for you: to ensure high quality, I upscaled each image using GigaPixel, so I could zoom and crop without losing detail. This gave me the flexibility to plan shots creatively while keeping visuals sharp.

Step 4: The Animatic

The animatic is the rough cut of the animation, where you can see me putting all the puzzles together. With the storyboard in place, I moved on to creating an animatic—a rough sequence that combines images, dialogue, and music to test the pacing and mood. I generated the voiceovers with ElevenLabs, trying out different voices until I found tones that matched the personalities of Wilma and Rita.

For music, I turned to Suno AI. I recorded myself humming a tune, and Suno transformed it into a full instrumental track—fast and surprisingly good! I also generated a second track purely from text prompts. Laying everything out in Premiere Pro, I aligned the dialogue, music, and storyboard panels into a fully-timed draft that gave me confidence to proceed.

Step 5: Production

To start, I prepared the assets, drawing custom mouths and eyes in Photoshop for better expression and lip sync. I extracted clean characters, backgrounds, and key props, focusing effort where it mattered most—like the hair salon scenes.

Next came asset preparation. While I experimented with AI-generated eyes and mouths, I quickly realized they lacked the consistency and expressiveness needed for proper lip sync. So, I manually created these in Photoshop, drawing multiple mouth shapes for dialogue and expressive eye poses for key moments.

I extracted clean character layers, isolated props (like the fridge door), and kept backgrounds on separate layers. I focused most detail on the hair salon scenes, where character expressions were critical, while simplifying backgrounds and props in other scenes to save time.

Step 6: The Rigging

With the assets ready, I moved into Cartoon Animator 5 for rigging. Thanks to clean PSD layers and using Reallusion’s Photoshop template, rigging was smooth. I rigged both Wilma and Rita for full facial and body control, and created functional props, like the fridge door that could open and close easily.

For simpler scenes, I skipped complex rigs—sometimes a character or object was treated as a prop with swappable parts. This kept the setup lean and focused on what was actually needed for the camera.

Step 7: The Animation

Here’s where the magic happens! I created one Cartoon Animator 5 project file for each storyboard panel—18 in total—so that I could work efficiently and avoid bloated project files. I exported individual audio clips for each panel from Premiere, brought them into CA5, and started animating.

The earlier rigging and prep work paid off—I could reuse assets, duplicate similar panels, and just tweak them as needed. For example, panels featuring Wilma in similar poses were duplicated and adjusted rather than animated from scratch. This approach saved hours while maintaining high quality.

Step 8: Putting it all together

Once all panels were animated and rendered, I returned to Premiere Pro, swapping out the storyboard panels for the finished animation. It was a simple matter of clicking and dragging. The result: a polished 30-second short with clear storytelling, smooth animation, and engaging audio.

The result? A fast, pro-quality animation created in days—not weeks. This pipeline lets you combine AI and Cartoon Animator for client projects, contests, or just for fun, delivering top-tier results at record speed. Make sure you try it yourself, and have fun with it!

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Learning

Free AccuRIG Versus CC Advanced AccuRIG

June 30, 2025July 21, 2025 WarLordLeave a comment

Rigging a character mesh was, in the past, a difficult and time-consuming task that was rarely enjoyable. It could take days to properly rig characters and setting envelopes or mapping vertices was anything but exciting. Auto-rigging became a thing but those pesky fingers were generally left out and none of them rigged a jawbone so that meant the fingers and jawbone were rigged in separate applications taking even more time.

Since 2015, when Reallusion introduced Character Creator, we have been able to leave behind the manual rigging allowing the application to take care of the technical work. We had characterization where we could match enough bones to map out a working skeleton from an existing non-Reallusion character, but AccuRIG gave us a powerful auto-rigging tool to animate our character meshes in little time.

There are two versions of AccuRIG. A free stand-alone version that can be downloaded from the Actorcore website and CC Advanced AccuRIG that is integrated into Character Creator. Both are powerful auto rigging tools that share the same basic functionality with the Advanced CC version having more powerful tools such as Optimize or Decimate and Show/Hide mesh among other features.

What We Can Do in Both Free AccuRIG and CC Advanced AccuRIG

Automate rigging in five steps with free Actorcore AccuRIG
Load Character, Check Model, Body Rig, Hand Rig and Check Animation guide us through the process of setting up and rigging the mesh. CC Advanced AccuRIG has a similar user-friendly process to achieve the same result.
Rig all types of Humanoid (Bipedal) character meshes
This includes just about any mesh that can be considered bipedal. This opens up the possibility of imaginative characters like tree people, rock golems, living statues and whatever else our creative minds can come up with. It does not even require four limbs as we can mask missing limbs out.
Auto-Rigging and Manual Refinement
Not only does the free AccuRIG provide automatic rigging, but it also allows us to modify that rigging. We can check animation and if we find something wrong, we can go back and make corrections to marker (joint) placement and reskin.
Joint Masking
The concept is simple. It turns off bones of our choice which prevent them from accepting any motion. This allows us to freeze one bone or an entire section of bones from moving. If left active, these bones outside of the mesh can cause unwanted distortion as they will still influence some of the mesh. The bones run in chains (hierarchy) and these chains of bones can be selectively masked either in groups or single bones. This makes for a versatile tool that can rig any number of anthropomorphic characters that may not have all the limbs or fully functional limbs. Kai has a great tutorial on How to Mask Unused Body Parts… that goes into more detail over at Reallusion Courses.

Left Advanced CC with body masked for rigidity. Right Free CC with neck masked (Black equals masked).

Free Actorcore AccuRIG

This free auto-rigger includes:

Ability to use Low, Mid or High Poly Mesh
Polycount is no longer an obstacle as both versions work with many different types of meshes from low poly to high poly count. It may take a bit longer to map those high poly meshes but it maps high to low with equal precision.
Preserves Volume
AccuRIG preserves volume to control mesh collapse in areas where extreme movement is common.
Twist Bones
Twist bones allow joints like wrists to twist without collapsing. Without twist bones lower poly meshes would collapse at some point. Twist Bones cover most joints that bend more than other parts and whose normal range is extreme.
Finger Rigging
From 0 to five fingers either version of AccuPOSE can rig most hands and fingers (including knuckles) and provides easy to use markers to correct any occasional finger rigging errors.

Download the free Actorcore AccuRIG

Actorcore Free AccuRIG Quick Tutorial

CC Advanced AccuRIG

The more advanced AccuRIG in Character Creator has all the features of ActorCore Free AccuRIG, the easy rigging steps, marker placement, volume protection, and twist bones. Being part of Character Creator, CC Advanced AccuRIG has access to the the advanced features of Character Creator like InstaLOD Polygon Reduction, Mesh Editing, Bone Adjustment, Automatic Skin Weighting for clothing, Proportion, Spring Bones and many more advance, pro level features such as those below.

Select Hard or Soft Rigged Mesh

In CC Advanced AccuRIG we can select which parts of a character are soft or hard rigged. Soft is any mesh that has to move with the body during animation like clothing. After Advanced AccuRIG is finished, all other meshes become accessories attached to the character instead of skinned as cloth to the character.

In the case of a ring on a finger, the ring can be either skinned as cloth or unskinned and attached as an accessory. However the ring can distort when skinned with the character when the fingers are moved. An accessory would move as one object on the finger instead of part of it. Kai has us covered on this topic with a short tutorial on rigging multi-mesh characters.

Adjust Bones and Proportion using X, Y, Z Values

These more valuable tools not available in the free version. We can adjust the bones and bone proportions after skinning. This can be done to correct posture or limb penetration into the body. We can also lengthen bones after skinning to make limbs longer but keep in mind the mesh that is skinned to that bone or bone chain will move with it. This is very useful in the right situations.

Show/Hide Mesh for Accurate Editing with Mid-Point

As referenced in the above Rigging Multiple Mesh Characters section and tutorial, we can use the Scene Manager to select meshes that are to be accessories and hide them. This allows us to skin only the soft meshes like the body and clothing ignoring the hidden meshes which will become accessories. This eliminates the need to remove accessories before skinning the character body and clothing. We can then select Midpoint Placement in the AccuRIG menu if not already selected. This allows for a more accurate placement of markers/bones in the mesh.

Ready for Physics, Skin weight, Proportion Editing in Character Creator

Characters auto-rigged with the Advanced CC version are prepped for physics, automatic skin weighting and manual skin weight editing. As mentioned earlier, we can also edit the proportion of bones and skinned mesh after we’ve finished rigging if without having to jump back into AccuRIG again.

Left: Skin Weighting by AccuRIG and editable. Right: Physics weighting for cloth.

Optimize or Decimate with RLBone

There are a lot of options out there for character meshes but unfortunately, not all of them work well in the iClone ecosystem. This eliminates a lot of useful iClone pipeline tools. Equally unfortunate is the fact that a lot of these third party meshes carry a high polycount that might not work as efficiently as possible within iClone or its pipeline. The good news is the features of Advanced CC AccuRIG and Character Creator can make these third party characters iClone ready converting them to more accurate RL Bone skeletons with skinning and compatible with all aspects of the iClone ecosystem while preserving the facial bones of the original character.

With the character being RLBone compatible we can use the Optimize and Decimate feature to easily make clones of the characters at 7K and 800KB each. There is also a custom option to chose which optimization style and level serves you best.

If you are like most animators I know, you can never have enough characters. Leverage your existing library of third party characters and bring new life into old assets with CC Advanced AccuRIG and Character Creator.

CC Advanced AccuRIG Quick Tutorial

Try the Character Creator Free Trial today!

Which AccuRIG?

That all depends mainly on your needs and your budget. Both versions of AccuRIG can perform basic auto-rigging to get your character animation ready. The Advanced CC AccuRIG in Character Creator comes with many professional features that can greatly enhance your characters. We’ve covered some of them here but there are many more.

A big factor to consider is Facial Rigging. Free AccuRIG DOES NOT support or create facial bones. If this is required, then CC Advanced AccuRIG inside Character Creator is needed and can create facial bones including mouth and eyes.

While Actorcore AccuRIG is free there is a free trial available for Character Creator so you can try out both versions to see which best fits your needs. If you are budget constrained like so many of us are then the free version can certainly get you into the iClone ecosystem where you can start learning how to work with the tools.

Summary

I find old fashioned manual rigging to be a real creative buzzkill and a tedious process in many cases. It was nothing to take several days to a week to skin a character only to have it come back downline for either technical or creative revisions. Those pesky fingers could get to be a real pain depending on the character or creature. Bone envelopes could be the worst to deal with at times.

When Reallusion released Character Creator I immediately started creating characters again both with the default CC meshes and my own meshes from ZBrush and other tools. It was so nice to not have to even consider rigging other than the few minutes it usually takes to rig a decent mesh in Character Creator. I was far from alone as many other creators from newbies to veterans jumped on the Character Creator bandwagon over the years.

With the introduction of AccuRIG, both the free Actorcore and Advanced CC version, the idea of custom characters is not out of reach anymore. Almost anyone can rig a bipedal, anthropomorphic character with AccuRIG.

Why wait? Download the free Actorcore AccuRIG and give the Character Creator free trial a go to see what you’ve been missing if you are still manual rigging or have never rigged a character mesh before.

Besides… it’s fun seeing your characters come to life!

Tips

CC Advanced – Use Orthogonal View for Marker Placement
This allows for a more refined placement by keeping the viewport in the proper perspective for placing the joint markers.
Use both front and side views when placing joint markers
This allows for proper placement by viewing the joints from the front and side making the appropriate adjustments. Remember to Skin Bones again anytime you move or edit the placement of a bone.
CC Advanced – Frame Left or Right Hand when placing joint markers
This not crucial but rather an example of saving time to easy jump to each hand when placing the markers. It is so essential to have the marker placement right to avoid twisted joints which, while not often, can happen on models not in a good A or T pose.
CC Advanced – Remember to press the Bind Skin button after making joint edits
THIS IS A MUST, or your edits will be lost. If you move a bone or bones in CC Advanced, you must press the Bind Skin button before proceeding for the changes to be re-skinned. It doesn’t matter how many bones you move or edits you make as long as you remember to bind the skin again. This will soon become another rote function with enough experience.
In Free Actorcore AccuRIG we choose joint markers to activate the Mask feature. In Advanced CC AccuRIG we choose the bone to active the Mask feature.

Reallusion Courses

Actorcore Free AccuRIG Tutorials

Advanced CC AccuRIG Tutorials

MD McCallum – WarLord

Digital Artist MD “Mike” McCallum, aka WarLord, is a longtime iClone user. Having authored free tutorials for iClone in its early years and selected to write the iClone Beginners Guide from Packt Publishing in 2011, he was fortunate enough to meet and exchange tricks and tips with users from all over the world and loves to share this information with other users. He has authored hundreds of articles on iClone and digital art in general while reviewing some of the most popular software and hardware in the world. He has been published in many of the leading 3D online and print magazines while staying true to his biggest passion, 3D animation. For more information click here.

WarLord’s Worshop

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Product Release

Reallusion Unlocks Creative Potential with Trial Access to 130,000 Premium Assets

June 26, 2025July 14, 2025 ReallusionLeave a comment

Reallusion announces a major enhancement to its AI Smart Search, transforming how 3D creators discover, access, and apply content within iClone and Character Creator (CC). This powerful update delivers unmatched ease and accessibility, empowering users to elevate their projects without compromising flexibility or cost-efficiency in today’s fast-paced digital content landscape.

Access Best-in-Class Content with Ease

Fully embedded within the Reallusion ecosystem, the in-app AI Smart Search curates best-in-class content with exceptional accuracy, ensuring top standards of quality and relevance in every result. Whether searching for assets in animation, gaming, or virtual reality, its streamlined interface offers seamless navigation—making it a pleasure to explore Reallusion’s vast libraries of digital human assets. Users can easily browse over 30,000 clothing items, 5,500 pairs of shoes, 3,000 hairstyles, 23,000 professional 3D motions, and much more.

Unprecedented Accessibility with Try-Before-You-Buy

To eliminate waste and purchase regret, AI Smart Search introduces a groundbreaking feature: try-before-you-buy access to 130,000 premium assets from Reallusion’s Content Store, Marketplace, and ActorCore. Users can now evaluate content integration directly within their workflow, ensuring every asset aligns with project needs before spending a single cent.

Exclusive Rate for iContent Offers Unbeatable Value

Priced at just 30% of the standard goods, iContent is designed exclusively for image and video rendering within iClone and Character Creator. It offers an affordable way to access and build a mountain of assets optimized for AI-driven projects, pre-visualization, video production, and high-quality rendering.

iContent only requires upgrading to the Standard License when 3D export or pipeline integration is needed. Plus, upgrades can be made anytime by paying just the price difference — no hidden fees or extra charges guaranteed.

Direct Instant Purchasing Within the App

Instant purchasing arrives in AI Smart Search with seamless in-app payments using Direct Access (DA) Points. With just a few clicks, users can buy the assets they need instantly—without leaving the application—streamlining workflows and saving valuable time.

Reallusion DA Points offer a simple micro-payment alternative. Unlike credit cards or PayPal, DA Points can be preloaded into accounts for easy, verification-free purchases with no handling fees.

Embrace an Affordable Future of Creative Possibilities

AI Smart Search disrupts the traditional model of digital asset stores by enabling precise content discovery powered by machine learning. Whether searching with natural language, images, text inputs, or finding similar assets, it makes exploring vast libraries effortless. Users can try thousands of assets without financial commitment and use iContent for rendering, and upgrade to Standard licenses only when export or pipeline integration is needed.

This approach delivers fast access to high-quality designs, fueling creative freedom and efficiency. Ultimately, AI Smart Search marks another milestone in Reallusion’s mission of pushing the boundaries of modern creativity through seamless, intuitive, and empowering technologies.

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Featured Story

Studio-Grade Sync for Solo Creators: iClone Timecode in Action

June 19, 2025August 6, 2025 ReallusionLeave a comment

Manageable cross-tool workflow for frame-precise media timing

Nick Shaheen, a solo creator passionate about bridging the gap between vision and execution, focuses on streamlining character animation workflows across multiple tools. With Reallusion’s latest Timecode Plugin for iClone, Shaheen highlights how individual creators and small teams can now stay perfectly in sync—without the complexity or large overhead of a studio production.

Nick Shaheen

I’m Nick Shaheen, a radiologist by profession and a CG artist by passion. My journey into animation started in an unexpected place—medical illustration. Early in my career, I spent a fair bit of time creating motion graphics and anatomical visuals to help explain complex medical concepts. That experience taught me the power of visual storytelling and deepened my appreciation for animation as a way to communicate ideas dynamically.

Nick’s Instagram / YouTube Channel

The Everyday Challenge of Sync

If you work across softwares like iClone, Cinema 4D, and Premiere, you know the pain of keeping motion capture, voiceover, and live-action elements in lockstep. For smaller teams, there’s rarely a dedicated tech artist to wrangle assets — it falls on you. And when you’re combining body and facial mocap with pre-recorded audio, even a few frames of drift can kill the performance. Until now, my workaround involved manual clip nudging, makeshift slates, and guesswork. But that’s changed with iClone 8.53’s new timecode functionality.

Perfect Timing: Timecode Support in iClone

With the Timecode plugin, whether you’re capturing mocap with iClone Motion LIVE or importing timecoded data from other softwares, iClone can seamlessly embed, preserve, and even edit timecode directly in the timeline—ensuring precise alignment and easy correction. This enables frame-accurate sync of mocap, audio, and live-action plates across tools — eliminating manual tweaks and timeline drift.

Timecoded Workflow: iClone to Cinema 4D

I recently built a short animated musical scene — think Broadway energy meets stylized CG. Using Rokoko for full-body mocap and a pre-recorded voice track (AI-assisted), I needed tight, frame-accurate sync. iClone’s timecode export meant I could bring it straight into Cinema 4D with zero offsets. It freed me to focus on refining the emotion, not chasing timing errors.

The workflow is simple: switch your timeline view to Timecode in preferences, then right-click any clip with embedded timecode and choose “Align with Timecode” to instantly lock it in place. When exporting, make sure the timecode is baked into the FBX file. Whether you’re crafting a short film or blending CG with live footage, this gives even solo creators and small teams a professional-grade sync pipeline with zero hassle.

Finishing Touches for Perfection

The final polish came effortlessly thanks to iClone’s built-in features. AccuLips delivered precise, audio-driven lip sync, while AccuFACE brought expressive facial tracking into the mix. To refine emotional beats, I used Face Key to adjust brows, eyes, and mouth shapes with intuitive morph controls.

To finish it off, the Casual 20 Clothing Pack gave my character a clean, customizable look with multiple material options and morph-compatible designs — perfect for quick, professional styling without having to dive into Marvelous Designer.

Final Thoughts

For solo creators and small teams, iClone’s Timecode support isn’t just a convenience — it’s a workflow breakthrough. What once required manual syncing, endless adjustments, or external tools can now be handled natively, with frame-perfect accuracy. It brings big-studio precision to compact productions, letting creators focus on storytelling and performance rather than chasing down timeline drift. If you’re working across tools and juggling multiple layers of audio, mocap, and animation—this is the kind of update that transforms your entire pipeline.

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Learning

Animating Props for Beginners

June 17, 2025July 14, 2025 WarLordLeave a comment

When a new animator gets started it can be an overwhelming process just to learn the terminology. Experienced animators can sometimes forget how confusing and difficult it can be for beginners to wrap their heads around all the animation tools in just one package like iClone, and this doesn’t include POST work.

With this in mind I was recently reminded that not everyone sees how easy it can be to grasp the animation basics of simple tasks like moving an object across the screen. A lot of new animators haven’t even heard of keyframes or a timeline so it can be a very frustrating experience at first. In this article I will cover a few basic concepts with some short tutorials to demonstrate the various processes.

Prop animation can be just as important as character animation in terms of what it can add to a scene. A multi-object or skinned prop can be animated on the timeline with keyframes. In case you are completely new to animation, keyframes capture the state of the prop or character based on its transform-attributes like location, rotation and several other factors. While iClone does most of the work behind the scenes we still need to be familiar with a few basics.

Type of Mesh – Static or Animated

This is simple. If you right-click and there are no Perform Menu actions, then it is static. This doesn’t mean it can’t be animated. It just means it has no built-in motions. We can still animate it as a whole or in parts if those parts are separated or skinned to some sort of skeleton we can manipulate with the Animate Prop tools. Almost anything can be animated on at least the X, Y, and Z axis in most cases.

Why is Everything Moving?

It’s happened to a lot of us, including yours truly, and still does from time to time. What I’m talking about is when you add a prop or number of props to the scene and then you play it back… some or all of the props will seem to disappear or move back to the point of import or origin, then slide over into place when as the scene plays.

What happened was simple and can become an annoying and irritating habit. In this scenario, when we added the new prop or props, we did not return the playhead to the start of the timeline. This creates a motion that starts at frame one even on static props. The prop then slides across the scene to the point where you placed it as the animation plays out.

The simplest way to stop this is to RETURN THE PLAYHEAD TO THE START OF THE TIMELINE BEFORE ADDING ANY PROPS.

There is also an easy way to remove this unwanted and inadvertent motion by moving the playhead down the timeline to a point where everything is in its proper place then selecting the affected props and right clicking to choose Remove Object Animation.

Keyframes

This topic cannot be covered enough until you completely understand the concept. We can consider keyframes to be markers that show us where we made changes to a prop’s location, orientation or other attributes. It not only marks the location on the timeline it also provides a visual aid for us to know where to make edits or insert new edits.

I also want to familiarize you with the basics of Curve Presets before we get into moving long distances with a prop. Curves can be considered a more middle to advanced tool but the curve presets are already set up and can be utilized very easily by beginners even if you still don’t grasp what a curve is. Below is a quick primer on using Curve Presets to add more than just steady movement. It will demonstrate how we can get various effects from just applying the presets to the existing keyframes. If you are more adventurous then you can try out the Curve Editor but it is not a beginners level tool. Here is a link to the Curve Editor: Getting Started tutorial in iClone 7 when it was introduced. It wouldn’t hurt to take a look at that tutorial as not every beginner struggles with the curve editor.

In the case of moving a prop from Point A to Point B, we need to make sure there is a keyframe at the BEGINNING and ENDING of the movement. This will make the prop move along until it reaches the ending keyframe.

To accomplish this, we use the basics of movement:

set a keyframe (if there already isn’t one) where the box is located at the START of the movement.
Move down the timeline whatever number of frames are required, then move the box to the desired location. This will set up a motion between the keyframes generated by iClone that move between the starting and ending keyframes. In the early days of animation these were called tweens as they filled in all the frames “in-between”.
We can speed up the motion by SHORTENING the distance between keyframes, transversely we can slow down the movement by LENGTHENING the distance between keyframes.

One practical example of this is something like a Sci-Fi speeder racing across the desert. It’s a very simple animation with no moving parts on the speeder.

Pivot is Very Important

The importance of the pivot location cannot be stressed enough. If, for example, you want a door to swing open and closed but the pivot is in middle then the door will revolve around that pivot instead of the proper side of the door. We can edit the pivot with the Pivot section of the Modify menu.

There is a preset diagram of pivot points we can click on for front, middle or back in nine directions. This will place the pivot point in the chosen location within those parameters. We can also edit the pivot manually with the Edit Pivot button in the same Pivot panel of the Modify menu. This will activate a 3D-Gizmo to move the pivot to your desired location.

Saving Custom Perform Motion

We can also add our own custom motions with the ability to edit the menu when needed. There is a line on the Timeline for collecting and saving our motions. As mentioned earlier there is (with the prop selected) a right-click Perform menu that controls any built-in motions and allows us to use our own custom motions. If there are any motions listed in the right-click Perform menu then the prop already has some motion embedded and we need only to click on one of those motions to add them to the prop. To add our own custom motion take a look at the short video below demonstrating how we use the Collect Clip feature on the timeline to collect and save the motion either to the Perform Menu or other locations.

Props on a Path

Paths are another essential tool for beginners to get an object to move from Point A to Point B. They work with all sorts of props like cars, hot air balloons, even characters but a path is particularly good with aircraft and objects like our Speeder hovercraft.

We can easily create a path by point and clicking in the workspace to place path points. We can manipulate these path points in terms of space between them, rotation and other orientations.

In its simplest form we start on frame 1 with the object attached to the first path point then we move down the timeline however many frames are desired or to the end and use the same Path eyedropper tool to select the path point. From here the path will fill in with a visual reference for easy scrutiny or editing.

Scaling a Prop in Real Time

Another simple effect that beginners can use right away for fast animation is scaling to change the scale of the prop in one or the other axes. We can make a prop larger, smaller, flatter, wider and taller. When you set a keyframe at both ends of the animation we can capture the scaling in real time as the video plays out.

Animating Prop Diffuse Color

This is an often-overlooked feature when learning iClone. The Diffuse Color can be keyframed and anytime an attribute can be keyframed it can be animated. In the case of the Diffuse Color, it means the colors blend over time to change from one color to another.

Visibility

This is yet another easy-to-use setting that can toggle visibility of the entire object on or off. It works the same as the previous tutorials except we will use visibility under Display – Visible in the Display menu of the modify tab.

Summary

While we have covered many attributes of animating a prop, in reality we have only scratched the surface of what can be done. These are the very basics of keyframe and timeline-based animation. I have used very basic scenarios to keep things simple and straightforward, but these techniques apply to almost all props.

We have covered how to keyframe the movement of an object, embed the custom animation and save it for future use. We haven’t covered all attributes, but we can do that at another time as this should be plenty to consider when you are just starting out.

I realize there is a lot to take in when setting out on this animation journey and like any other occupation or hobby it takes time, patience and practice. Don’t start with complicated scenes. Animate simple projects like the ones in this article and you will start to come to grips with what we can do with a powerful animation tool like iClone.

We haven’t covered Prop Puppeteering as that will take an entire article by itself, and these basics can be put it immediate use by beginners. Also keep in mind that the hyperjump example was far from the most sophisticated jump-in but it serves the purpose of learning while providing something that can actually be used. Give it a try, then improve it. You might be surprised at what you’ve learned.

Manual

Creating A Perform List

MD McCallum – WarLord

WarLord’s Workshop

Featured Story

How to Create a Game Ready Character Hexblade Anathema: From Original ZBrush Model to CC4

June 13, 2025July 14, 2025 ReallusionLeave a comment

Francis Lamoureux

Hello everyone, my name is Francis Lamoureux, and I’m a junior character artist. My most recent professional experience was at Larian Studios, where I worked as an intern for four months. During that time, I discovered Character Creator 4 (CC4) through social media and immediately saw the high potential of Reallusion’s software. I spent time watching many excellent tutorials because I wanted to integrate CC4 into my pipeline to create a game character, which I eventually did.

I ended up developing a workflow that suits me well, and I’m really grateful to Reallusion for the opportunity to share it with you. This workflow consists of six main steps:

Transfer a custom mesh onto a CC4 base mesh topology
Create the high-resolution model, the low-resolution model, and textures for clothing and accessories
Use GoZ to create clothing from the character’s outfit
Clean up the skinning results
Simulate physics
Export to your preferred rendering engine

The first step is entirely optional if you begin your project using the CC4 base mesh. However, before my collaboration with Reallusion, I had already started sculpting the face and body without the CC4 topology. So I had to find a way to transfer my custom sculpt to a CC4-compatible base mesh.

You can find my portfolio on ArtStation.

Step 1. Transform the custom 3d mesh into a CC4 base topology

So, let’s say you’ve sculpted a face in ZBrush and want to convert it to a CC4 topology character to take advantage of all the software features. To transfer your mesh to a CC4 topology character, you’ll need Headshot 2.0, which can be found in the Plugin section of CC4 in the Reallusion Hub. It’s a wrapping tool, and like any wrapping software, the CC4 base mesh will be wrapped around your custom sculpt. But there’s more to it: it also automatically generates a body, eyes, mouth interior, teeth, tongue, lashes, and more, all based on CC4 topology.

Once the custom head information is transferred and attached to a CC4 base mesh, you can use the GoZ tool to send your character back to ZBrush and wrap the CC4 character body around your custom body sculpt. All the details from your custom sculpt can be transferred to the CC4 base mesh using Project History or the History Recall brush.

Step 2: Create the high-poly, low-poly, and textures for clothing and accessories

Once the custom face and body information had been transferred to a CC4 topology character, I took a break from CC4 to finish the high-resolution models of the armor, clothing, and accessories. I also completed the low-resolution versions (including the hair) and created all the textures.

Step 3: Create cloth assets from the premade garment models using GoZ

For this step, I imported the low-resolution parts of the character’s clothing into the same ZBrush scene that contains the GoZ CC4 character. Then, piece by piece, I linked the clothing back to the character using GoZ. By selecting Create Cloth in CC4, the software generates these parts as new assets and automatically transfers the character’s skin weights to them. This is a powerful feature that significantly speeds up the process of animating and posing a fully clothed character.

Once all clothing elements have gone through the previous steps, you’ll end up with a fully custom clothed character that shares the CC4 topology. By doing this, you unlock all the benefits of the software, such as blendshapes, facial and body animation, motion capture compatibility, advanced materials, and asset integration. The possibilities for creating different faces and body types are endless, making it especially efficient for generating a wide range of NPCs. For example: a bulkier version, a thinner version, a taller or shorter one.

You can also use the Morph tools to easily create various facial variations.

Step 4: Clean up skinning results

To achieve cleaner deformation results, you may need to adjust the skinning — especially if the low-poly mesh imported from ZBrush is complex.

Fortunately, CC4’s skinning tools are quite user-friendly compared to other software. In my case, I didn’t need to spend much time on this, as CC4’s auto weight transfer handled about 90% of the work. However, there were areas, like the bag and scabbard, where I needed to manually refine the skin weights.

In the image, you can see that some vertices on the bag are being influenced by multiple bones, causing unwanted stretching when the character walks. To fix this, I selected the affected vertices, selected the hip bone, and clicked the “1” button to assign 100% influence from the hip bone to those vertices.

I applied the same process to the scabbard, adding a bit of smoothing to create a cleaner transition along the belt. (Side note: I used the visibility toggle to manage the different layers of clothing. While all clothing items were rigged using the Create Cloth function, some parts were hidden to maintain the proper layered appearance.)

Step 5: Simulate physics

Once you’re satisfied with the character’s skinning, it’s time to test the physics simulation. Start by browsing Reallusion’s animation assets and drag an animation onto your character to observe how the clothing behaves during movement.

To control which areas are affected by the simulation, you’ll need to import a black-and-white texture map. I exported a JPEG of the UV layout from Maya and painted a weight map in Photoshop (white areas will be simulated, while black areas will remain static).

Next, enable the necessary checkboxes for simulation. You can adjust settings to fine-tune the results until you’re happy. There are multiple presets available as starting points.

Here are a few key parameters you can experiment with:

Distance between the simulated mesh and the collision volumes
Distance between the simulated mesh’s vertices
Wind force and direction

To avoid clipping issues, you may need to add collision volumes to the character.

Lastly, in the Global Physics Settings under Project Settings, make sure to enable Rigid Body and Soft vs Soft Collision to achieve the best results.

Adding collision volumes is quite simple:

Select the character and click on Collision Shape.
Make sure both Collision On/Off and Activate Selected Part are enabled (with a body part of the dummy selected).
Choose the appropriate collision shape for the selected part.
Adjust the position and scale directly in the viewport until you achieve the desired effect.

Then, play the animation to see how the collision volumes interact with the simulated clothing.

Step 6: Export to your preferred render engine

Export settings will vary depending on the purpose of your project. Personally, I use Marmoset for rendering, so I export everything in FBX format, except for the simulated parts of the character. For those simulated elements, I export them as Alembic (.abc) files so that the simulation data carries over into Marmoset. This ensures the physics-based motion remains intact even outside of CC4.

Final Thoughts

This was a small glimpse into my workflow and how I integrate Character Creator 4 into it. CC4 offers a fun, fast, and intuitive way not only to bring your characters to life but also to experiment with variations in animation, facial features, silhouettes, and more. I’m truly grateful for the opportunity to share this pipeline with you (special thanks to Reallusion for making it possible). I hope you found it helpful. And if you haven’t tried Character Creator 4 yet, I highly encourage you to give it a shot and see how well it fits into your own creative process.

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Antareus Studio Reinvents Graphic Novel Production with iClone and Character Creator

June 12, 2025June 18, 2025 Reallusion1 Comment

Bringing Historically-Inspired Stories to Life as Digital Comics

Antareus Studio demonstrates how Reallusion’s Character Creator and iClone are not only powerful animation tools, but also exceptional solutions for creating graphic novels and cinematic storyboards. They are also offering a free download of their latest graphic novel.

Adolf Navarro – Antareus Studio

Antareus Ltd. is a creative studio originally founded in 2011 by Adolf Navarro and Izara Masie. Specializing in digital storytelling, the studio produces graphic novels, CGI animations, 3D content, visual effects, and children’s TV series. Utilizing advanced tools like Reallusion’s iClone and Character Creator, Antareus delivers high-quality digital content efficiently. In addition, Adolf Navarro develops a wide range of high-quality assets for the Reallusion Content Store, contributing to the creative resources available to the Reallusion community.

Adolf’s content on the Reallusion Content Store

Michael Mandaville

Michael Mandaville is a writer, filmmaker, and activist known for the Citizen Soldier Handbook series. He has worked as a Line Producer and Unit Production Manager on films like Taken, Havoc, and American History X. He has directed short films and documentaries, including Guards of Honor, and authored novels such as Stealing Thunder and A Cold Death. Mandaville holds degrees from USC and UC Santa Barbara and began his film career at age five, inspired by his aunt, a Hollywood script consultant.

Films Michael has previously worked on

WWII Reimagined as an Online Graphic Novel

Their latest project, Operation Cobra: The Burma Incident, is a WWII-era graphic novel following a squad of American soldiers on a rescue mission in the Burmese jungle. The story takes a supernatural twist, introducing an ancient hidden threat. To ensure historical authenticity, Antareus Studio collaborated with Hollywood producer and WWII expert Michael Mandaville (The Taken Trilogy), who provided guidance on accurately portraying the China-Burma-India theater.

Download the Graphic Novel for FREE — Ends July 6th, 2025!

Antareus Studio and Michael Mandaville have made the complete novel available for free download to the Reallusion community.

Building Characters with a Powerful Character System

Antareus Studio used Character Creator to design all characters for the novel, most of whom were fictional. However, they also created realistic versions of historical figures such as General Joseph Stilwell and Colonel Frank Merrill. Using the Headshot Plugin and a few reference images, the team achieved impressive likenesses.

Character Creator also allowed them to import and apply custom clothing and accessories in FBX or OBJ format. Characters were optimized for performance, with high-resolution versions for close-ups and low-polygon alternatives for crowd scenes or background use.

Cinematic Scene Composition with iClone

The team sourced assets from Reallusion’s Content Store and Marketplace, as well as external platforms like TurboSquid and Sketchfab. These models were imported into iClone or Character Creator for use in building complex scenes.

Key features of iClone used in the process included:

Customizable character poses and facial expressions
Dynamic camera framing and angle exploration
Real-time lighting and particle effects
Easy repositioning of props and characters

Animations could also be applied and paused at any frame, allowing the team to capture natural, expressive poses quickly.

Comic Style Visual Pipeline

Once scenes were finalized, they were rendered in iClone and stylized using ON1 Effects and Photoshop Elements. The final comic elements, including text bubbles and visual overlays, were added using Inkscape—a free vector graphic tool.

This approach provided:

Consistent character design and scene continuity
Easy updates between scenes (e.g., persistent damage, costume changes)
High-quality visuals for both close-ups and wide shots

Each panel built upon the last, enabling quick updates and maintaining storytelling flow.

Storyboarding and Previsualization

The workflow also proved ideal for storyboarding film and television productions. With full-scene renders and accurate framing, iClone allowed directors to visualize shots as they would appear in live-action, including actor positions, lighting setups, and camera timing.

Scenes, including virtual cameras, could be exported to Unreal Engine for use in virtual production. This reduced asset duplication and helped minimize post-production costs by reusing storyboard elements in final compositions.

Previsualization for Netflix series, The Night Agent

In Conclusion

Antareus Studio demonstrates that Character Creator and iClone go far beyond traditional animation. They serve as complete creative platforms for visual storytelling—delivering intuitive workflows, professional-grade results, and cost-effective pipelines. Whether crafting graphic novels, cinematic storyboards, or previsualizations, creators gain the flexibility and control to bring their visions to life—without relying on large production teams.

Download the graphic novel for free until July 6, 2025

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How Art Camp used iClone & CC4 in Indochine’s La Belle et la Bête

June 6, 2025July 21, 2025 Reallusion2 Comments

Art Camp Studio: A Hub of Creative Excellence

Santiago Carrasquilla – Founder | Creative Director of Art Camp

Art Camp is a New York–based creative studio founded in 2016 by Santiago Carrasquilla and Jos Díaz Contreras, devoted to crafting immersive experiences through video, animation, and design. Guided by the mission to “reach hearts, feel deeper, reach differently, and hear in new ways,” Art Camp approaches each project as a fusion of emotional depth and technical precision.

The studio has collaborated with an impressive roster of clients, including Thom Yorke, U2, and Stefan Sagmeister, as well as global brands like Nike, Telfar, and Hermès. Their work blends artful storytelling with cutting-edge digital techniques, continually pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in visual media.

For the music video La belle et la bête by French rock band Indochine, Art Camp explored the expressive language of movement from two angles: a folkloric-inspired dance sequence and a contemporary choreographic interpretation. Working in 3D, they created a wide array of environments—from minimalist spaces to surreal, dreamlike landscapes—paying meticulous attention to lighting, camera angles, and cloth simulation to achieve a near-live-action realism.

To power their rapid 3D production pipeline, Art Camp used Character Creator and the Headshot plugin to craft photorealistic digital doubles, iClone for scene layout, animatics, and motion cleanup, and ActorCore for retargeting dance mocap data from Reallusion’s content store. This workflow enabled the team to generate and animate characters in a matter of hours—streamlining production while maintaining creative flexibility under tight deadlines.

“ Our goal was to achieve a realistic aesthetic, with careful attention to lighting, camera angles, and cloth simulation, so that the scenes would feel almost as if they had been filmed with real people.”
Santiago Carrasquilla – Founder | Creative Director of Art Camp

Project Overview: Indochine’s La belle et la bête

Over the years, Art Camp has collaborated with illustrious clients such as Thom Yorke, U2, Stefan Sagmeister, and major brands like Nike, Telfar, and Hermès.

For the French rock band Indochine, Art Camp crafted the music video for La belle et la bête, exploring “the language of movement” through both folkloric and contemporary dance.

By working in 3D, the team built environments ranging from minimalist studios to surreal dreamscapes. With a focus on realistic lighting, camera angles, and cloth simulation, they aimed to evoke the feeling of live-action film.

Reallusion Tools: Powering Rapid 3D Production

Art Camp’s 3D pipeline centered on Reallusion software, which accelerated every stage of production:

Character Creator & Headshot 2 plugin for photorealistic digital doubles
iClone 3D animation for scene layout, animatics, and motion cleanup
ActorCore for retargeting dance mocap data (notably from Reallusion’s content store)

These tools allowed the team to scan, generate, and animate characters in hours rather than days, preserving artistic flexibility under tight deadlines.

Meet the Team: Faces Behind the Video

Santiago Carrasquilla (Director & Co‑Founder): leads creative direction, blending immersive visuals with narrative flow.

Flor Monza (Flopa) Argentinian illustrator and 3D artist.

Jonnatan Paz (El Profe): Technical Director from Cali, Colombia.

Why Character Creator Was Key for Digital Doubles

The process began with a facial scan of lead dancer Rhea using the Headshot plugin within Character Creator (CC), which allowed us to automatically generate a base geometry for her head. From this base, the team adjusted facial and body sliders to match choreography-driven expressions.

From there, we used Character Creator to refine the details, achieving an increasingly accurate likeness.

“Character Creator stood out for being very intuitive and easy to use, which allowed us to quickly focus on the artistic work without getting bogged down in complex technical processes.

The vast number of morph sliders it offers—both for the face and the body—was key for sculpting specific details and achieving a truly customized representation.”
Flor Monza (Flopa) – Illustrator and 3D artist

This method eliminated traditional sculpting time, delivering clean geometry ready for mocap and rendering.

This level of control turned the process into a nearly artisanal craft. Another fundamental aspect was CC’s flexibility to export characters to other industry-standard programs like Clo3D, Cinema 4D, or Blender, while maintaining rigs, textures, and skinning data intact. This significantly streamlined our workflow across different software.

Inside the Real‑Time Pipeline: From Mocap to FX

Retargeting in iClone was a fundamental part of the pipeline. We used the motion layer to adjust and refine the movements whenever necessary, and the best part was being able to preview each dancer’s mocap animation in real time.

“Using many Reallusion tools significantly optimized and improved our workflow. Character Creator and iClone let us focus on choreography rather than technical hurdles.”
Flor Monza (Flopa) – Illustrator and 3D artist

Another huge advantage was the ability to create ultra-fast renders directly in iClone, allowing us to review takes immediately and quickly select the strongest segments to export to Cinema 4D and Houdini for the final scenes. This real-time workflow not only saved us countless hours of processing, but also made it easier to make creative decisions on the fly, significantly simplifying and accelerating the entire production process.

Overcoming Hair, Cloth, and Motion Capture Challenges

One of the biggest challenges on this project was coordinating multiple complex technical aspects, such as hair and cloth simulations, handling large file sizes, and achieving precision in motion capture. We were able to overcome these challenges thanks to strong organization and clear project management.

“We faced incredible challenges—cloth simulation, hair physics, dozens of characters—but every step was rewarding. Working with Indochine was a pleasure.”
Jonnatan Paz (El Profe) – Technical Director

Costumes, designed in-house, were simulated in CLO3D, then exported as Alembic caches. Despite working with 60 GB simulation files, careful resource optimization kept the project on schedule.

“Simulating scarves and socks separately solved collision issues. Clo’s Alembic export ensured smooth integration into Cinema 4D.”
Jonnatan Paz (El Profe) – Technical Director

Within the team, there is a culture of trust and openness that allows anyone to immediately communicate if a task becomes too complicated or if support from other members is needed. This active collaboration dynamic helped us anticipate issues, quickly redistribute resources, and keep the workflow moving at all times.

Mocap sessions took place at New York’s ZeroSpace, where three dancers recorded folk and contemporary routines. The FBX files were imported into iClone, which automatically retargeted the data to the Character Creator rigs.

In iClone, layered motion cleanup fixed any intersections or jitter. Real-time playback enabled rapid iteration on camera blocking and timing.

“iClone allows for layered motion cleanup if any body parts intersect with the character, ensuring the movement remains smooth and accurate.”
Flor Monza (Flopa) – Illustrator and 3D artist

Additionally, embracing a flexible planning approach—where we could adjust priorities without losing sight of final deadlines—was key to solving technical challenges without sacrificing the creative quality of the project.

Large-Scale Simulations: Houdini for Crowd & FX

For sequences featuring confetti or “papel picado,” Art Camp turned to Houdini. Its procedural tools enabled large crowds and particle systems—such as paper shards—without crippling render times.

Redshift gave them the speed and quality needed, while cinematic lighting boosted the video’s emotional impact.

The Future of Real‑Time in Music Videos and Animation

We believe that tools like iClone and ActorCore have enormous potential to transform the music and animation industries. They enable the creation of highly realistic digital doubles of artists, as well as a wide range of diverse characters, exponentially expanding the creative possibilities for each project.

Access to high-quality, real-time animation not only accelerates production processes but also opens up new forms of visual storytelling in music videos and animated content. This flexibility allows for rapid experimentation, faster iteration of ideas, and the ability to push the traditional boundaries of creativity in audiovisual projects.

Art Camp’s La belle et la bête demonstrates how integrating Reallusion’s Character Creator, Headshot, and iClone with Clo, Cinema 4D/Redshift, and Houdini creates a real-time, high-fidelity workflow for music videos.

By reducing manual labor and emphasizing creative iteration, the team delivered a compelling, cinematic experience that resonates with artists and audiences alike. Music video directors, 3D animators, and content creators seeking to streamline production and enhance visual storytelling can look to this project as proof that modern toolchains unlock new creative possibilities—no massive budgets required.

Follow Art Camp

Website:
https://www.madeatartcamp.com

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/madeatartcamp/?hl=en

Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/artcamp

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Eric Scot Dalnes won the 2024 Animation at Work Contest. Learn how he creates captivating 2d farmlife animation with Cartoon Animator and XPPen.

Featured Story

Winner Spotlight: Cartoon Animator and XPPen as the Linchpin to a YouTube Animator’s Pipeline

May 27, 2025May 27, 2025 ReallusionLeave a comment

Eric Scot Dales wins honorable mention in the “Education Animation” category of the Reallusion 2024 Animation at Work contest. In his own words, he takes us through the workflow that brought his winning entry, “Why Do We Dream?”, to life.

Eric Scot Dales / BlinkyBarky Animation

Hello, I’m Eric Scot Dales. My interest in computer graphics and 3D animation began between 1989 and 1995, during which I worked on small projects for college. Professionally, I spent my career in government as a computer engineer.

After retiring, I returned to my passion of studying and exploring 2D and 3D software and AI diffusion models. Today, I am a freelancer, laying the groundwork for a small business. I’m also launching YouTube channels to make a positive impact while also building a source of side income.

Follow BlinkyBarky Animation

Entry Concept

I’ve been a fan of Tales From The Loop by Simon Stålenhag and was drawn to its unique blending of what I would call sci-fi in nature. The idea of rural life interwoven with advanced sci-fi technology, used in a way that brings ease and fun, really resonated with me. Inspired by Stålenhag’s work, I introduced technology into my story that you wouldn’t normally find on a country farm. The story centers on the relationship between a grandson and his grandpa. The grandfather gets upset after being splashed by the boy, who finds a clever way to cut corners while doing chores. His reaction of basically grumbling “no respect” served as a comical close to the piece.

The idea began forming in my mind around July 2024. By September, I started shaping the rough story, character concepts, background ideas, and voice lines. In mid-2024, I was preparing for an animation project for a 2024 contest with Reallusion, although I had no idea if or when it would actually be announced. Storyboard development took place over September and October — two months filled with drawings and visual references to help bring the concept to life.

I started basically defining the video project style, characters, props and environment. I used a combination of StoryboardThat online software and Storyboarder software. StoryboardThat gave me a way to get raw concept characters for storyboard scene creation. I used Storyboarder locally on the computer because I liked the structure of the interface and the way to incorporate the various parts of the scenes. I acquired screenshots from Polygon Farm Pack by Synty, I used Unreal Engine to position the view in 3D to capture the screen and bring it into Storyboarder. The Storyboard went through refinements over three months before the contest ended, as I fine-tuned the story scenes in CTA5.

Using XPPen

Currently, I use the XPPen Artist Pro 24 (Gen 2). I had other drawing display tablets (1080p models) starting in 2020 and had been considering acquiring a 4K tablet at some point. When the Reallusion contest announcement came out in 2024, and I saw there was a contest for XPPen; Which led me to think about the models XPPen offered, along with their price and feature offerings.

I noticed a sale in late November 2024 for XPPen tablets on their website, with some free financing options. I wanted a 4K tablet that would fit the table I was using and match well with the 4K monitors I had. So, it has only been since December 2024 that I’ve been involved with the XPPen brand.

Using Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo

I started acquiring the Affinity suite of software in early 2020. After I purchased training materials, extra brush packages, and later upgraded to version 2 of their software. I primarily use Affinity Photo 2 and deepened my knowledge while working on a project for a contest.

I’ve always gravitated toward software that offers strong features and a perpetual license model, which is why I chose Affinity back in 2020. My real test of Affinity Photo 2 and the XPPen began in December 2024, during that project. The pen was highly responsive on the screen, making it easy to navigate menus and perform both drawing and editing tasks.

To enhance my workflow, I used a separate 48-key keypad on my left, with custom shortcut keys assigned, alongside the pen to interact with the tablet display. I didn’t transfer those shortcuts to the XPPen remote during the project. My goal was to complete most tasks in Affinity Photo 2 without needing to use a traditional keyboard.

Integrating Cartoon Animator

There are several features that I adore and would like to share. One is the rigging and morphing abilities applied to objects and characters in CTA5. The functions in the 2D Motion Key Editor, Face Key Editor, and FFD Editor were enjoyable to use for achieving the desired result in keyframing. Specifically, when used on the same part of a character (such as the face, as I did with the grandson’s facial movements in a few scenes). The “Transition Curve” feature was especially helpful for smoothing the interpolation between keyframes.

Another feature is the ability to integrate audio, both as background sound and voice clips, and then modify the character’s mouth within CTA5 to match the voice. This was incredibly helpful for achieving a natural voice-to-mouth motion flow. Lastly, Motion Pilot allows real-time motion recording with a mouse or pen and applies the resulting path directly in Timeline editing. This feature greatly enhances animation flexibility and speed.

Affinity Workflow & the CTA 5.33 Update

I saw two videos when they came out on YouTube: the ones that Kai did with version 5.33 , using Affinity Photo 2 and Affinity Designer 2. Kai did a wonderful job outlining the integration flow between the Affinity packages and CTA5, and how to edit in Affinity Photo and bring back changes to selective layers (as in the background shot for the Raster video).

I also saw the new vector tutorial, and again, Kai explains and demonstrates the process with the SVG and the multistep workflow, including working with layers in Designer (grouping parts of an object) when the images come back to CTA5 before bones are added.

Video Compositing

A tip I learned from Mark Diaz, that I always keep in mind, is to split a large CTA project into smaller CTA project files. This approach helps maintain better performance when working on bigger projects. Another important habit is keeping track of which keyframe you’re on while making modifications across the timeline, which ensures more precise edits.

Understanding the various media types available in the “Create Media” dropdown menu, such as Props, Scene, Image Layer, and Background, is also essential. Early in my journey, I made the mistake of importing a background using “Create Media > Background” when I actually needed to modify the image after placing it in the scene. In that case, “Create Media > Props” would have been the better choice, as it allows more flexibility with edits.

For final compositing, I imported all my MP4 files into DaVinci Resolve Studio 19, which I use as my video editor. I made sure that the frame rate (24 FPS in my case) matched between CTA and DaVinci to maintain visual consistency. I also balanced the audio using a YouTube preset in DaVinci, ensuring the final render had proper volume before completing the project and uploading it.

Closing Thoughts

I am glad to spend some time challenging myself after work and come up with this piece. In which I learned a lot from the competition, and there was a lot of back-and-forth checking the tutorials from the CTA tutorial on Reallusion’s LEARN portal. I highly recommend that future contestants bookmark, so you can always come back and learn a new thing in Cartoon Animator by yourself. It is rewarding, and I have become a better creator after this challenge. Thank you so much!

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