CrazyTalk Animator (was Anime Studio 9.5 coming soon!)

[Droxon]

Hummmm...I wonder if its going to have any of these enhancements?

I really doubt it (x

Motion capture if for 3D animations, NOT for 2D.

[slowtiger]

Mixed feelings. Is this a software I'd like to work with? Looks like poor 3D to me.

[Droxon]

Mixed feelings. Is this a software I'd like to work with? Looks like poor 3D to me.

I'm not sure but I think is CrazyTalk Animator >.<

[InfoCentral]

I'm not sure but I think is CrazyTalk Animator >.<

It is CrazyTalk Animator. This was something their development team is working on for the next version and released that preview. It looks like they are going to be the first 2D animation program with mocap.

[AmigaMan]

It is CrazyTalk Animator. This was something their development team is working on for the next version and released that preview. It looks like they are going to be the first 2D animation program with mocap.

But this is the Anime Studio Forum. What is the point of posting that here? I think I can live without MoCap. It rarely looks great and with cartoon character's, and 2D in particular, I would think it would be of little value and most often look very unnatural (or 'over natural' perhaps?). I seem to remember someone, I think it was Chucky, used MoCap with Anime Studio ages ago anyway and in that instance it looked great as the character's were a rock band made up of particles and not cartoony in design

[dkwroot]

Hummmm...I wonder if its going to have any of these enhancements?

For the love of god, I hope that Anime Studio does NOT go this direction. This screams of gimmick and would be a total waste of the developers time and effort. What Anime Studio really needs is more advanced smart bone features like nested layer control. Instancing and Referencing to keep file sizes down which is good for studios that work online. Better drawing tools and a Frame by Frame option. These are features that real animators need...

[AmigaMan]

For the love of god, I hope that Anime Studio does NOT go this direction. This screams of gimmick and would be a total waste of the developers time and effort. What Anime Studio really needs is more advanced smart bone features like nested layer control. Instancing and Referencing to keep file sizes down which is good for studios that work online. Better drawing tools and a Frame by Frame option. These are features that real animators need...

I agree with you that those Crazy Talk 'features' a bit pointless. It must be very difficult for the developers of any software to decide what features to add. I mean, for me the drawing tools in Anime Studio are perfectly adequate now for how the software works. There are plenty of software options for those that want to do frame by frame also so why spend time adding that (especially when it is possible now anyway) when other things are more important? I think the the most revolutionary new feature by far in recent updates to AS has been Smart Bones. I believe that's where the most of the enhancements have been. I can't wait for 9.5.

[InfoCentral]

I have yet to see the Kinect integration with any software in action but this does seem to be a growing trend. NewTek announced they have a plug-in for their 3d software Lightwave that will allow direct mocap. Now I hear this and it is entering into 2d animation as well. Since I have never seen it in action I can't say if it is a good thing or not.

[exile]

I noticed that none of the contributors in this thread so far seems to have actually tried out Crazy Talk. I would be interested in the viewpoint of an advanced AS user who is also knowledgable about the other program.

There was a full version of Crazy Talk 6 SE downloadable from the German computer magazine CHIP. Unfortunately, it doesn't work properly on my Windows 7 computer, I have to re-install it every time I want to run it, it seems to need an older version of Direct X. However, some of the features in the tutorials seemed interesting - and tempting to a beginner like me! There are many automatic patterns like dance steps, walking and running that can be adjusted for your own characters, like we have for characters from the wizard (but not for our own which we create from scratch). The time line looked good - you can easily find which point belongs to which character/layer. The animation of photographs was mind-boggling.

I'd be interested in a comparison - what are the limits of the Crazy Talk approach, what can you do better in AS?

By the way, it was the new Micro-Smith user survey that got me interested in other software - it listed several I've never heard of and made me curious.

- Steve

[Telemacus]

I can understand some of the pros not liking this enhancement, but for a beginner like me, this would be an awesome feature, saving hundreds of learning hours.

[jahnocli]

I'm a long-time Anime Studio user who bought a Crazy Talk pack a while back and tried it out. It comprised Crazy Talk 6.0 and a trial version of Crazy Talk Animator 1.0. The answer to your question really depends on the level of your expertise and what you want to do. These products supply you with a lot of ready-made artwork and animated moves. If you are interested in, say, moving postcard-type scenes from family life, they are pretty good (I would say always buy the Pro versions of this software, as the 'Standard' versions are much more limited). If you are interested in developing your own work, and are looking for non-standard animation, then this software is a lot less useful. I am interested in stop-motion animation, and Crazy Talk 6.0 is pretty good at 'animating' an action figure's face -- much easier to use this software for things like that. So it has a niche. Unfortunately, in almost every other respect, it is inferior to Anime Studio. In my opinion.

The only real way for you to form your own opinion is to try it out. I think they do a trial version of both software products. Hope this helped...

[exile]

I can understand some of the pros not liking this enhancement, but for a beginner like me, this would be an awesome feature, saving hundreds of learning hours.

Just what I thought! However, to start off with, I lost several hours experimenting with the trial version of Crazy Talk Animator Pro. Since it claims to make it easy to animate photographs, I imported a character I made in Anime Studio as a .png file. Nothing worked like in their tutorials! This program seems to be primarily for people who want to use pre-fabricated content. That's too limiting, I'd rather do things the hard, heroic way and at some point be able to do things that go beyond the repertory of automatic motions.

So it's back to those tutorials (Incredible Tutorials, Victor Paredes etc.), they make those Anime characters come alive, that's a goal worth working for.

I found a great quote by one of the pioneers of animation, Lotte Reiniger: "You must not copy a naturalistic movement, but must feel the movement within yourself. ... The animation will always be stylized, but this stylization must be true."

Fortunately, my first big project - more than 2/3 finished now - is a satire, so the movements can be a little crude. Of course I'm working on doing it better.

Good luck,
Steve

PS. Thanks to jahnocli for those comments - you posted while I was writing this.

[webdefender]

I think Anime Studio definitely has a lot more flexibility. There is not an easy way to create a custom skeleton/bone structure in CTA and shape animations don't seem to be supported, as least not as well as in AS. That being said, It is really easy to convert a photo to an animated character and come out with a decent result. For some types of work it might be more useful, but AS is definitely the more full featured tool IMOHO.

[InfoCentral]

If you want to see how they implement 3D motion then watch this clip. It should answer some of your questions on how they look.

Character Types and Motions

[Greenlaw]

My wife and I have used a dual-Kinect based mocap system to animate 'Happy Box' and for our upcoming short film nicknamed 'Brudders 2'. Here are some links:

Happy Box

One Minute Excerpt from 'Brudders 2'

And, yes, we also hand-keyframed animations in other productions too. As an animator who has worked on many keyframed AND motion capture productions (as well as hybrid productions,) I really don't see what the negativity is about. Mocap is just another tool available to an artist and there's a place for every tool--there are projects where it has been inappropriately used and then there are projects where it's absolutely the right way to go. (An animator friend of mine calls motion capture 'The Devil's Rotoscope', but even he concedes he's glad we had it available for several jobs we worked on.)

The really cool thing about Kinect based mocap is that it brings tech previously available only to huge corporate-financed movie productions to an indie artist's more 'reasonably priced' productions. Just how well this tech is applied in a given project is another matter, and the scale of the production has little to do with that. It's all about imagination, skill and craft, not the tools.

I'm not using mocap on our current 2D production ('Scareplane' is almost entirely being animated in Anime Studio,) but I have been intrigued by the idea of using mocap for 2D on a future project, at least in a limited capacity--but that's a ways off, we have several other projects to finish first.

FWIW, I've never thought of mocap as animation, at least not in the traditional sense--it's really a new form of puppetry, and I think everybody must agree that puppetry is a valid art form with a long history of its own. Having created two Little Green Dog productions with Kinect-based mocap (okay, one and a half actually, until we finish 'B2',) I can honestly say that using mocap is not necessarily an easy solution--like puppetry, it takes a lot of skill and practice to use this tool effectively.

G.