Just discovered this, might be of interest to somebody..

I've been super HAPPY with CrazyTalk over all, great program, my favorite discovery of 2016.  I've been crazy talking about Crazy Talk to anyone who will listen. 

One challenge that frustrated me was that the program seemed to require a face without a smile.  This rules out most photographs, given that folks tend to show teeth when a camera is aimed in their direction. 

I just discovered that Photoshop Elements very easily removes small to medium smiles in a manner that is entirely convincing.  It requires no skill all, just the manipulation of a few simple sliders.  

I also tried it with a big beaming smile photo.  In this case Photoshop was unable to close the smile entirely, but it did reduce the scale of the smile considerably.   Hey, it just dawned on me while typing this that if you exported the big to medium smile photo, and then imported it again, you could probably reduce the smile further, perhaps to no smile.  I'll test this next.

Photoshop Elements also edits other facial features with the same simple mechanism.  In a quick test, I was quite impressed.  The converted face can be quite different, but also realistic, without looking distorted or cartoony.   So for example, you could take 20 years off of your subject, but it would still be immediately recognizable as the subject.

Sorry if this sounds like an ad, but I was excited to find a tool that addresses a key weakness of CrazyTalk in a very easily accessible manner.   A great many more photos will now find their way in to my CrazyTalk projects.  Yea!

A similar tool would seem to be well worth incorporating in to a future version of CrazyTalk.  I'll write the breathless sales copy if you want.  :-)

Glad you found something that works for you, but as an aside I've never found it particularly important to worry about the smile or not.  The important thing is whether teeth are showing (because they will get mapped) but someone can frown or smile all they want and the textures can still line up properly (at least IMHO).

But whatever works.

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Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Right, it's the teeth that are the problem, not so much the smile.  Good correction, thanks.

Here's an example of what a powerful feature adding a "face fixer" would be within CrazyTalk.  I have a couple thousand photos of a friend.  I can only use a couple dozen of those photos in CrazyTalk, because of the showing teeth in most photos.  So for me, being able to remove the teeth is many times more useful than for instance, being able to create a 3D head.  Discovering this feature in Photoshop Elements equals a major upgrade in my CrazyTalk operations.

I wasn't even using Photoshop.  I have it only because it came cheap as part of package deal with Premiere Elements.  Now I'm very pleased I got the package, because this feature alone is well worth the $30 I spent on Photoshop.

I have not the slightest idea how easy or hard it would be to add this feature to CrazyTalk.  It would be interesting to read what the development team thinks. 

Now I've tested for about an hour....

The Photoshop face fixer (formally known as Adjust Facial Features) will remove the teeth, but it takes a sequence of steps.  You don't need to export the photo and reimport, just close the Adjust Facial Features panel and then reopen it.  Four or five times usually does it.   Each time is very fast, as you're just adjusting a slider in each pass.

As you might expect, the results vary according to how big of a smile you're trying to close. For small polite smiles, this will probably do the job.  For medium to large smiles, it's a lot better than nothing, but some distortion  must be accepted.  Once you're removed all the teeth in Photoshop the face does look edited, but then you put the teeth back in with CrazyTalk.  For larger smiles, the end product looks kind of like a 3D version of the person, without the actual 3D. Recognizable as that person, but not photo realistic.

Again, this is after only one hour of experimenting.   More patience and skill may improve the results. 

Agreed Phil_78.   Especially when dealing with kids.  It is hard to get a straight face from them. 
Also, I hope that CrazyTalk will allow us to attach hairstyles (from pics)  to the head but still be able to make a 3D look to it ....
hahaha .. my wishful thinking.


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