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Crazy Talk 7 puts character animation power on your Mac
Putting words in other people's mouths: more of a hobby than a vocation for most people, I'd say. If your work or play involves facial animation, however, you know how much work goes into making fake speech look convincingly real. Although there are impressive pro animation tools for this task, they might run you hundreds or thousands of dollars per seat. That's why the Mac version of Reallusion's US$29.99 Crazy Talk 7 Standard is such an intriguing product. For a modest cost, this app delivers impressive character animation power -- with a learning curve that's not too steep for amateurs. Crazy Talk lets you work with libraries of preconfigured characters, where mouth movements and other motions are already pinned to specific features on the character's image. You can also pull in your own images for the face animation treatment; political or corporate portraits seem to work particularly well, as do pet snapshots. For the DIY images, the app walks you through preparing them with essential feature points -- corners of the eyes, point of the chin and so forth. The idea is to make a model of the character's face that will react appropriately to the audio using Crazy Talk's Auto Motion feature. Once the base character "puppet" is ready, Crazy Talk really gets to work. Import or record your dialogue audio (or use the built-in text to speech feature) and the Auto Motion animation tools will analyze sounds and phonemes, trying to match mouth and face motions to the soundtrack. You can tweak emotions, attitudes or the overall character energy with a few clicks. The results range from decidedly comical to eerily realistic. In the example here, I've taken Tim Cook and put some of his comments from the recent earnings call in his virtual mouth. The whole process -- including defining the animation "bones" and grabbing the audio from the earnings call podcast feed -- took less than 15 minutes for this clip, and even though the results are kind of rough (sorry about the hair, Mr. Cook) it would not take too much refinement to get them looking really sharp. Of course, now that "Tim" is prepped, future animations using his character will take a lot less time. Aside from the fun factor (which is decidedly present), training pros or web content authors may be able to leverage Crazy Talk to produce quick and hi-quality animated narrations or instructional vignettes. Putting a face with the voice, even an animated one, can help improve engagement and attention versus a voiceover-only approach. Game developers and other animation users may find Crazy Talk or its sister app, iClone (for 3D character animation) useful entries in the utility belt. Crazy Talk's look and feel certainly carries some of its PC heritage in its flat UI and sometimes-confusing controls, and it has a few annoying quirks (no app should ever hijack focus when it's done with a lengthy task like a video export; that's what bouncing the dock icon is for!) but with a little bit of time and effort you can get something really interesting out of it. Crazy Talk 7 Standard is $29.99 via the Mac App Store; the Pro version ($149.95) delivers much more manual control, higher-end animation options and keyframe editing for projects. Here's another video sample from the app, featuring Sarcastic Cat.
AT&T says Verizon's first LTE phone is 'going to be a fat brick'
Ooh wee! Verizon and AT&T are getting all hot and bothered over the forthcoming LTE battle -- a battle which much like the current map wars, you can expect to grow weary of in about two minutes. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal today, both carriers have put reps in the limelight for a volley of tough talk. For starters, AT&T's CTO John Donovan claimed that Verizon was jumping the gun with its first-on-the-scene LTE rollout, suggesting initial devices are "going to drain the battery like crazy, and [they're] going to be a fat brick," noting that "2012 will be the time when you'll have decent handsets." Donovan lumped on the hits by also saying that "Anyone who says their network is ready for the iPhone -- or the broader mobile data explosion that AT&T has experienced -- is being naive." Of course, Big Red didn't just sit there and take it -- spokesman Jim Gerace fired back that "No matter how much our competitors talk, it's not going to slow us down," though he offered no further comment on the insults' stride-breaking potential. Both parties were mum on just how fleeced the consumer would be getting once the LTE pricing plans are announced, of course.
Cinemassively: Animating avatars with CrazyTalk
Reallusion, the company that creates the animated facial expression software, CrazyTalk, embraced Second Life machinima quite some time ago. First, they appeared at real life festivals, then they developed their own plot of land in the virtual world, and now they've created a page on their website that features the works of SL machinimators, as well as a tutorial. In the instructional video, they explain how to use their software to lipsync pictures of avatars, as well as give some tips and tricks.[Thanks, John!]If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.
Reallusion opens CrazyTalk 5 beta to public
One of the top questions I'm asked about creating Machinima is how I get my lips to move. Second Life users know all about the struggle to make convincing lipsync dialogue in their movies. The answer to their problem is CrazyTalk, by Reallusion. It doesn't just apply to SLers, though. Any MMO Machinimator can use it, with the help of chromakeying and bezier masks.CrazyTalk, currently released up to version 4.6, allows you to use a picture or screenshot and map facial regions to animate them when combined with audio. They have been in closed beta testing for a couple of weeks for their newest version, CrazyTalk 5, but they just opened it up to the public! You can download the beta and use it until January 15th, 2008. If you haven't tried CT yet, this is the perfect time.
In memory of Ginny Talamasca
It's amazing how much one can be affected by virtual friendship. I remember first meeting Ginny Talamasca when I was a wee newb. My friends were raving about her store, Dazzle Haute Couture, where she mostly sold formal wear. From that moment on, I was addicted to her clothing. I literally bought 99% of what she made. Given the amount of real money I spent keeping up with her heavy production of attire, I soon needed a Second Life job to support my habit. That's how I got into Machinima.When I first discovered this new method of expressing myself, I went wild with filming. Then I discovered that I could make my avatar lipsync what I was saying. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I was going to create a Machinima declaring how great I thought Ginny was as a friend, a designer, and an inspiration to the community. I would invite her friends to say kind words about her and I would animate them. The project never ended up getting very far off the ground, but as a filmmaker is often married to their footage, most of it was saved. Upon hearing of his (she would later be revealed as a man in real life) death, I unearthed some of this footage.Read on for more memories of Ginny ...
Cinemassively: Beast
Sometimes a video provokes so much emotion that you forget it's not real. In the words of Beast creator, Dr. Nemesis, "So far, facial animation has been very limited in Machinima. To get emotion across, most of us have had to rely on good acting, a well chosen sound track, and the viewers imagination, but not facial expression." In his current film, he uses Crazy Talk, Motionbuilder, and Sims 2, to overcome this issue.When the scene opens, you see two men. One is tied up and the other is yelling at him. As the story unfolds, you learn that the man in captivity has deeply wronged the other man, to the point where he has nothing left to lose. With each facial expression, punch thrown, and gut-wrenching confession, you feel his pain.While this is not traditional MMO Machinima, you can learn from the tactics he used. In the future, Second Life will be part of a hybrid-Machinima movement. Filmmakers are already using multiple programs to blend their works, such as MovieStorm, Poser, Crazy Talk, and iClone. As merging mediums becomes popular, I believe we'll see a whole new level of quality work coming from the community.
GameDaily's delusional list of 'overrated' industry people
GameDAILY's Chris Buffa has moved on from talking about the sad state of game reviews and giving lessons on how to be a better games journalist. Now he's after the big guys. In probably the most incredible grab for traffic we've ever seen, he explains who the top five "overrated" industry people are. Ready to hear the list? Koji Igarashi (Producer of Castlevania) David Jaffe (Creator of God of War) Hideo Kojima (Creator of Metal Gear Solid) Shigeru Miyamoto (Creator of most things Nintendo) Reggie Fils-Aime (The only non-developer) There you have it, the list of the most "overrated" people in the industry. Other than Reggie, who is a marketing guy and is paid for being "overrated," these other individuals are the industry. Shigeru Miyamoto is overrated, but American McGee merely gets an honorable mention? This list wasn't about going after those who are actually overrated, it was just finding the biggest fish to fry with only a dab of oil in the pan.
