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.
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.
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
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.
Motion Pilot
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
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
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.
Beginners Start Here
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