Think of it as an "efficiency upgrade." You aren't buying new characters or props (though those are nice). You are buying time .
However, even the best software has its friction points. Rigging can be tedious. Lip-sync can feel mechanical. Motion capture data sometimes needs "cleaning up."
It recognizes that the future of 2D animation isn't choosing between puppets and frame-by-frame —it's using AI and smart utilities to do the boring stuff faster so you can spend your time on the art . cartoon animator 5 power tools vol.1
If you have been feeling frustrated by the limits of CTA5's default toolset, do yourself a favor. Grab Power Tools Vol. 1, run the G3 converter on your oldest, most broken character, and watch it come to life.
The result? Hair that swishes with momentum but settles with gravity. When your character stops moving, the hair doesn't keep bouncing forever. It stops. I tested this on a character with a long braid. With default CTA5 springs, the braid looked like a snake having a seizure. With Smart Hair, it behaved like heavy silk. For female characters or fantasy creatures with tails, this is a must-have. The default facial animation tools in CTA5 are fine for YouTube talking heads, but if you want emotional acting—a raised eyebrow, a sneer, a twitch—the stock sliders are too broad. Think of it as an "efficiency upgrade
introduces "Angle Lock" and "Damping zones." Instead of treating hair like a chain of beads, you define a pivot point (the scalp) and a mass point (the tip).
In my test, I imported a complex robot character with 45 layers. The converter took about 90 seconds to spit out a fully rigged character. Was it perfect? No. I had to adjust the elbow angle slightly. But it did 95% of the grunt work. For series production where you need to rig 10 characters a week, this tool pays for itself instantly. CTA5 has always been great for "puppeteering" (dragging limbs around in real-time), but creating a specific, drawn arc of motion was frustrating. You had to keyframe every pose. Rigging can be tedious
This takes hours. The Solution: The G3 Character Converter .
Have you tried Power Tools Vol. 1? Let me know in the comments if the Motion Pilot changed your workflow as much as it changed mine!