As AI animation tools become more prominent, I’m wondering what the plan is for Cartoon Animator. Will there be new versions or updates coming out? Has there been any discussion on how the program will develop, or (like Adobe Animate), might CA be phased out?
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The situation with Adobe putting their Animate program into. “maintenance mode” ,with no future updates, has absolutely nothing to do with what’s happening at Reallusion with cartoon animator .
So there’s no reason for anyone to assume that cartoon animator is going to be phased out.
Yes, I was just mentioning that as an example, not suggesting they’re connected in any way. I just haven’t seen any information about future plans for Cartoon Animator. Has there been any discussion of future development for Cartoon Animator?
There has been no news at all. A Cartoon Animator 5 video from last February said there’d be an update (as in news, I think?) by the end of 2025, but there hasn’t been any update since.
Seems they’re putting all their attention on their 3D stuff, which I get, but any news about Cartoon Animator would be good. I guess they don’t want to generate hype or have a surprise waiting for us?
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I’m curious, but is there some specific feature you guys are looking for that you feel is somehow missing from cartoon animator 5
I mean, the CTA program is pretty full-featured compared to the other 2D puppet animation programs such as MOHO pro and even Adobe animate.
Personally, no, there’s nothing I’m particularly missing from CA5, I’m just looking for some indication of future plans from the company. Like, are they planning a version 6, or is this the end of the road? I began using Cartoon Animator back when it was called Crazy Talk, and I used to use it on a Mac. When they discontinued Mac support, I invested in a PC solely so I could upgrade to CA5. I’m just trying to get a sense of the direction here.
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There’s a lot I like to have in CTA that Moho and Animate can do; like, say, being able to port my animations straight to Unity/Unreal/Blender/whatever and still animate in CTA and have the changes happen in the other program instantly.
Wind, a physics engine, a particle system, the ability to edit vectors within the program, not needing a ton of 3rd-party software to do everything, having characters that turn, an auto-rig system inside the software, and so on—like what Moho, Animate, and Toon Boom can do.
While CTA does offer features the other programs don’t, there are a few things CTA could use that the other programs have had for years.
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Why do you want 2D puppet characters in a 3D program like unreal or blender?
I saw a recent demo of a moho character exported to blender as GLB file and it looked like utter trash.
You’re much better off learning how to use blender’s grease pencil if you want to do 2D characters and blender.
I have MOHO 14.
It’s severely lacking when it comes to easy facial animation option such as being able to do facial motion capture from your video camera as we can do with motion live.
not needing a ton of 3rd-party software to do everything,
The free canva Affinity suite is all one would need
for making original character art
I agree, that
Toon boom Harmony is the industry standard, but it’s really made for large teams.
And there is no perpetual option.
And the same is true for Adobe animate
no perpetual option and no future updates as it’s now in maintenance mode.
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I want that for the same reason exporting to After Effects is even an option in CTA5.
After Effects has some very powerful 2D compositing tools,which is why we have the export from CTA 4 and 5.
Are you saying you want to somehow export your image sequences to Blender and use blenders compositor in the same way ?
Yes, and to Unity and Unreal Engine (and what have you, maybe even a JSON file), so we can use their power to make the animations even better/use more tools without having to rearrange and rebuild the whole thing again, as the example video showed for CTA4/5 to Blender way back.
It also would be great to edit the SGV characters in the software outright without having to use a third-party program; in Moho, you can change any part of the vector, but in CTA5, you can only change the colors—anything else and you need to buy a $200 software and figure out how to use it to do anything.
You get the picture.
Yes, and to Unity and Unreal Engine (and what have you, maybe even a JSON file), so we can use their power to make the animations even better.
I have and older version of Adobe After Effects( CS6) and the scene comp exporter from CTA works great because AE is a proper 2D layered compositing & VFX software
I have not see any videos that would indicate that Unity or UE5 would be very useful for compositing 2D layers from CTA,
IMHO you likely would do better
by exporting your CTA animations as PNG sequences in importing that into the FREE Davinci resolve fusion app
to add edge lighting and glow effects similar to Adobe after effects
but in CTA 5, you can only change the colors—anything else and you need to buy a $200 software and figure out how to use it to do anything.
I already posted a link to the free Canva Affinity suite where you have a free vector editing software much like adobe illustrator
so no , you do not need to buy $200 software to edit your CTA character art.
Not sure how possible it is but I’d like a character creator cc5 equivalent for cartoon animator or some way to use cc5 to make characters for cartoon animator. I’d use it a lot more if so.
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Hi…
For 2026 our primary focus is on our 3D software which will see major updates and new additions. Sadly this means there are no immediate plans for a Cartoon Animator 6 release. However, this may change once the scheduled updates on the 3D side are complete.
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