ayone ever used crazytalk for lip sync?

[toonertime]

http://www.reallusion.com/crazytalk/ct_introduction.asp

[jhbmw007]

Seems like more of a novelty thing- kind of a hefty price tag just to be able to make talking pictures... This and those stupid sitepal animated characters for your website- I just don't get it.

[toonertime]

I didn't know quite what to make of it
but I could see some uses of mixing it
into an animation somehow.

[jhbmw007]

I downloaded the trial and it's interesting how it tries to add a 2.5-D effect to a 2-D photo- but I'm not sure how easy it'd be to add it into an animation.

Since it's basically just "warping" the image- this has me curious as to whether or not Heyvern's 2.5-D rig for his characters could be applied to an actual photograph of someone using image warping...(perhaps even a less-complex version since the movement would only be minimal) ? This could allow for some freaky deaky cut-out animation! Those subtle head-turn movements add quite a bit of life to characters. Heyvern, can you shine some light on this?

[heyvern]

Well the problem with my rig being used with photos is that I use region binding on the bones which doesn't work well with images.

Also image distortion isn't... "perfect" in AS. Even using flexible binding you would need a TON of bones to keep stuff from moving around that shouldn't.

Plus around the mouth area there would be severe stretching of the pixels. You would need a lot more bones with graduated constraints to get a good look. You would probably need to modify the image to work with this... open the mouth up so the bones could grab the lips.

I haven't done much with animating photos in AS since this doesn't interest me and I wasn't thrilled with the results or the long render times.

-vern