I'm a first time user who is developing characters for animation but only needs partial animation for some puppets. I have a lot of characters and hope to avoid creating having to create a full turnaround views of a character or make a full body if a character only appears briefly.
A couple of specific questions:
1. By providing just 2 perspectives on a character, can I get partial animated turnaround capability on the character? My understanding is that you can create 360 turnaround if you provide 5 point perspective  (front, back, side and 3/4 front & back--I guess a top view would allow even more views). Can you get a partial animated turnaround capability with just a front and side view or a front and 3/4 view? I don't like the distortion from the simulated turnaround from just a front view. If this is possible, is there some special approach needed and maybe an available link? What about animated turnaround capability when providing 3 character views--front, side and 3/4?
2. In some scenes I may just need to animate from the waist up. Do I just puppet only that part of the figure? Is that going to create problems with pre-programmed actions? I'm think of a waist up view where the character is talking, so I would just puppet the torso, arms hands and head. Again, is there some special approach needed and maybe an available link?
I'm trying to find out ahead of time what corners can be cut to lighten the workload in a very big project.  Pre-production puppet creation, scene planning and background creation have begun but I'm just starting to learn CrazyTalk Animator. Hopefully these are easy questions for someone.

Excuse me for interrupting your post. But how do you post? I only see a place to respond to other people's posts but no place to post my own question.

I just did my first post, but it's fairly obvious. On this website's home page pull down the "Learn & Support" top tab to the forum selection and then go to the software you want and pick the folder for the forum category you want. In the upper left button you'll see 3 buttons for different posting options. Just hit the one that says Post new topic.

Greetings joebvie,

When you are creating a character for your own personal production, you can really minimize your time it takes for you to complete the character.
You don't have to create a multi view character, you can create a single angle character or just 2 angles if you prefer.  
However understand that the other angles will still need to be populated in other for the character to use some of reallusions pre motions.

A single angle is pretty easy, because there is a button you can press that will instantly duplicate that one angle into all of the other views.  They may look funny when you rotate the character, but it will allow the character to do pre motions more smoothly. 

Now if you are going to be doing a lot of key framing and manual animation you will only need to create what's needed for just that scene.  If you are only going to be using 3 eyes expression, don't waste your time creating 13.  If you character is only going to walk across the scene then don't build out a full character with all of his facial expression.  Do only what is needed to complete the animation.  I would recommend you spend most of your time on your main characters that you will use over and over.  You can also save time by recycling body parts such as Eye, Hands and Mouth expression.  

Character creation can be very tedious and the learning curve is high in the beginning.  You may want to start of by modifying existing G2 or G1 Characters before diving into creating your own.

Here is a quick video on how to create a single angle character in Crazytalk Animator.



Hope the info helps
Take Care,



                   

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