I purchased CTA 3 Pipeline a week ago and learned from several tutorial videos: (and many others that I don't list here): 1. CrazyTalk Animator 3 Tutorial - Getting Started: My First Animated Project (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkbLq87EitQ&t=1204s)2. CrazyTalk Animator 2 Tutorial - Creating a Character from a 2D Image (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntUy_3AMsTs&t=1647s) 3. CrazyTalk Animator 2 Tutorial - Create Talking Characters from Photos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTn-yLIdLR4&t=81s)I want to say that I have totally no previous experience in cartoon creation at all. I only played a little with Adobe Lightroom (not even Photoshop) on photos and Apple's Final Cut Pro in video film creation. So the environment of CTA 3 Pipeline is very new to me. The lessons that I learned during this week are:
1. From video 1, I notice that the movement that applied to character in G3 is very easy. The transform is also not too difficult to learn. The 3D depth of the scene takes some time to figure out the layering issues among the action of props and characters. The timeline manipulation is complex, but not too extremely challenging. The camera movement is hard in the beginning.
2. From my experience of practice, the character creation (like those shown in videos 2 & 3) is the hardest part. My final goal is to create several avatars from pictures and drawings into a G2 character with different clothing. In this week, I used one photo of mine to create a G2 character, but I realized that I may have to take a much longer time to make body part PNG files (say, rounded corner, simple color clothes, upper body and hip (the upper pant part)) good enough to make smooth movements without terrible glitches.
3. The online user manual of CTA 3 is really just a manual, not a tutorial guide at all. After purchase, I had no idea where to start (which is slightly disappointed). CTA3 newbies have to follow videos above to learn it themselves step by step. There are many tricks that those video produces remind the viewers, but they are not mentioned much in the user manual. I know it might be too much to create for Reallusion, but maybe Reallusion could compile a list of videos for 'beginner's training' specifying the purpose of each tutorial video. (Well, after I posted, I found this page kind of doing this job, but the newbies have to choose what they will learn first, https://www.reallusion.com/crazytalk-animator/tutorial.html)
4. The users on this forum are very helpful. Many of them are very knowledgeable and point out the key flaws of my work immediately. However, The speed of the forum is very slow.
My final goal of playing with CTA 3 is to create a short film of a story (maybe 20 minutes) with several characters. I estimate that it will be accomplished in several years. I will slowly to create characters, props and scenes for the story. I think the props and scenes might not be too difficult (maybe I am wrong). At this moment, I see more problems in perfecting actors' actions, expressions and movements (because they are the focuses of how this story evolves). I bet I will probably spend 50% of the time in perfecting actors' bodies, facial expression, and movements.
Have other users have gone through their learning curves? What are your tips and what have you learned?
Or do you find some experts having their experience shared online? Can you share them here?
Alex.
Edited
6 Years Ago by
alexch2441