Greetings guys,

I am a newbie to animation but I want to make a short promo video featuring a monkey. Okay Crazytalk 7.3 will give me facial and lipsync but how can I make at least his arms move and wave? Do I have to buy iClone6  or CrazyTalk Animator as well?

Some valuable advice from those in the know will be much appreciated

Crazy talk animator and iClone are similar tools. They both are used for making videos.
Looking at them from the most basic angle
Crazy talk animator uses 2d content to make videos
Iclone uses 3d content to make videos

I own both but you really only need one or the other to make videos
Do you want to work with 2d or 3d content?
The answer to that will tiell you which one to look more closely

Theres much more to it than the above statement but should help you decide if you want one or both of them
My orriginal thought was i would use both but i like 3d and i only have enough time to learn to use one of them fully so i dont use crazy talk much anymore

Edit
I dont mean to imply iclone is better. Just i like 3d better than 2d
Crazy talk animator is as good as iclone i think

i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

CrazyTalk 7 can only animate heads.

If your character is from a photo then CrazyTalk Animator 2 Pro or Pipeline can help animate it as long it is in an appropriate pose with no body parts obscured.

Please click HERE to find out all about CTA2.


                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

Hi,
I have CTA 2 and CTA 7 standard.  I bought these software to create animation videos for educational & Training purpose.  I am new to animation.  Finding it difficult with CTA 2 since all the documentations are provided only for pro version.  Should I buy any content or upgrade to have the ease of use of creating animation as easy as powtoon?  Or is it not possible to create video easily as in powtoon?
Existing characters itself is enough for me. But finding it difficult to turn and move the characters since I am not finding an easy guide to do this. (believe it should be very simple though)
Is there any documentation available for standard version?
Can anybody help me on this?

I have done more with CrazyTalk and it's only animating head than I have of CTA and iClone together.  Animating just the head is not a downside at all.  I have created a whole series of training videos for a doctors office using just photographs of doctors, and am currently working on a whole series of education videos for an online school.  Only animating the head can sometimes be a much better use of animation for a promo too, depends on your need.  And it's my personal belief that animating a photograph is a far better medium than 3D heads.,

Animating using only face, I find it little boring.  For example, if I want to create video on body language techniques, the animation using face will not work except for facial expression.
That is the main reason I bought CTA 2 and 7.3. I have been training make the character in CTA 2 to turn left and right.  But I am unable to since there is  not sufficient help available .

We'll have to agree to disagree.  Facial animation takes much more time and skill to pull off successfully, because it's much more detailed and there are many nuances.  I don't find animating faces boring at all.  But regardless, using a facial animation application to teach body language probably isn't a very good fit from the beginning.

Unfortunately, I can't answer your CTA question because i don;t have CTA Standard, I have the Pipeline version.  ANd in that version, along with the Pro version, turning a character is the easiest thing ever but I don;t beilieve the Standard version included the 3D key editor.  

Did you look on YouTube for the various tuts available for CTA by RL and others? There are plenty there.

To turn the whole actor use the bracket keys [ and ].
To move parts of the actor use the 2D puppet editor.

If you have the Pro or Pipeline version then you can turn a part of the actor use the 3D motion editor.

Jeff




Get my Plugin Manager and TaskNotes plugins for iClone.
Check out EZColors and Other products for CTA/CA. EZColors: the easy way to change Render Styled (RS) colors!
See my CTA Tutorials on the YouTube channel CTAStepByStep