CTA5 bones/pivots does not connect to image

Hi there, I purchased CTA5 last year and I still was not able to use because of one little issue, which I struggled at that time, and it took so much of my time and I could not solve, so gave up, now I returned to study on it, and I’m struggling again with the same issue. I’m following the tutorials from one of your tutors, Mark D, and when he rigg a character with free bones it looks easy, but when I go to CTA5, that’s when the problem starts, and seems to work differently or maybe it’s some configuration I need to pay attention.

First, I separated my character, which is a gecko, into parts using affinity photo (Mark does in photoshop but I’m following it exactly the same) then place the cross marks to reference where the pivot points will be, and export to a PSD file. However, when I import into CTA5 and go to composer mode, exactly as the tutorial teaches, click on the central pivot, open the bone editor, then click on the next bone. Her it should connect the two pivots with the yellow line representing a bone, but it doesn’t. I have to add bone then click again in the main pivot to start the chain, then click in the next one, and it will connect. Now it comes the bigger issue. When I go to the next pivot, which is let’s say, an arm, this arm is a separate sprite, so CTA5 does not connect the bone to the image, it goes grey. I tried many different things, and one on them I clicked on “connect” then “add bone” then connected the two pivots, its one way I though it had worked, as it did not go grey, however, when I go to preview, and move the bones, it move the bones but not the body part, which means the bones are not linked to the images. I had spent all my energy on this and it just nothing works, what do you think this could be, some configuration, the software is corrupted, is there anything different on this matter from CTA4 to CTA5, as Mark uses CTA4 in this tutorial and I use CTA5? Can you help me please?

Thank you very much.

Fabricio.

Hi Fabricio

As there are differences between using Photoshop and Affinity Photo, please refer to the user guide HERE and HERE for Affinity specific instructions.

One other thing you may like to consider is that CTA5 contains a number of templates that you can use to help create your character. This goes from a simple spline template to create a very basic character like a snake, up to a full G3 character, all within CTA5 itself. For G3 human characters, please take a look at the tutorial HERE and for a simple Spline Template take a look HERE.

Hopefully these may help you get started.