I'm making a 2 minute parody of a scene from the film, A Few Good Men. It's for the social media platform TikTok. Can you use crazy talk on a face (actual film footage) when the character isn't speaking? Basically, can I animate faces from an actual film scene with this software? It's not worth purchasing if I can't use it for this purpose which is why I'm asking. Thank you in advance for any help or advice.

Peter, thank you so much for such a prompt reply. I so appreciate that. While it's highly/likely possible this would still meet my needs and I will probably purchase anyway just because I can see this being useful in other projects, are you aware of other Reallusion products that might do what I'm asking? Say iClone or some other software that the company produces? Just curious before I purchase. I do not have a giant amount of disposable income so I definitely want to buy the software that would be the most useful to me, even though Crazy Talk just looks like an enormous amount of fun regardless LOL. Let me know...and thanks again, so much. I'm grateful for the info.

Sincerely,
Jim  

Hi Jim

All our main products will allow you to create a talking character using photos as the source, however none of our products will allow you to load a video and create talking character from that.

Please see the page below which should help explain the differences between our 3D and 2D products.

https://forum.reallusion.com/295588/Confused-About-Which-Product-To-Buy


                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

Let me clarify a bit from a user standpoint.

Crazy Talk is great if you want, essentially, a single character created from a single image.  That character won't move (much) other than the head being animated.  For 3D work you would want to get into iClone and Character Creator.  The latter in particular will allow you to take a single image and create a 3d Character that you can then animate inside of iClone (I would highly recommend you buy CC3 pipeline for this purpose).

If you want to spend even more money you can use video from the web and animate the faces of your 3D characters using Facetime.  So it's *possible* you could use video from "A Few Good Men" to animate the faces of your various folks (not the bodies, however).  Here's a video showing that particular process:

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Alienware Aurora R12, Win 10, i9-119000KF, 3.5GHz CPU, 128GB RAM, RTX 3090 (24GB), Samsung 960 Pro 4TB M-2 SSD, TB+ Disk space
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Kelley this is absolutely fantastic...This is actually the scene i'm using so your instincts for parody are spot-on LOL!!!!!! However, I am changing the dialogue to something a bit more ridiculous...it is after all, a parody. So I'm completely stripping out the audio in the film and doing my own Jack Nicholson impersonation (which isn't that great but will hopefully add to the comedic element). And because this scene really is just a talking Jack Nicholson head, this is definitely what I am looking for. But for clarification, in order to animate Jack Nicholson's head speaking different dialogue, would I need BOTH iClone AND character creator or just primarily one of those programs? Or, just Crazy Talk?? Again, due to the current "global" situation, I'm not working right now so funds are not in excess. I am shooting in green screen however and will be overlaying Tom Cruise's role with myself asking some silly questions to Jack Nicholson that only someone on tiktok would actually find funny but there it is...lol. Again, thank you so much for this response, it's eye-opening and very helpful. And if you could clarify what I would need for that, now that you have a little more info on what I am actually trying to accomplish, I'd really appreciate that as well. 

So just to recap in case I wasn't clear. I'm green screening myself into the film to overlay on top of (basically completely covering up) Tom Cruise. The green screen of me will of course be using my own voice so no extra software needed here. So I'm stripping out all audio and I will be impersonating J.N. The reason for this is that I will often just be lip syncing or rather "looping" J.N.'s actual dialogue from the film only veering off his loop when I'm adding "additional" dialogue that isn't in the movie. Hence the need for some software that will lip sync JN's head to the additional dialogue. I hope it's clear what I'm trying to accomplish. I thought about just using cut-away reaction footage of myself when adding that additional dialogue which might work perfectly fine without the need for ANY additional software but I just thought the comedic element might be enhanced by Nicholson actually lip syncing MY dialogue in certain sections. Anyway, Kelley you've been a huge help and please let me know about potential purchases that would help me accomplish the goal. Again, I can't thank you enough. I'll look forward to hearing from you.

I guess it all depends on how far down the rabbit hole you're willing to climb -- and animation of ANY sort is a rabbit hole (some of us love it down there but for others... it's just WAY too deep and takes up all the rest of their lives).

Crazytalk is a very easy solution to animate a head, whether via audio you have elsewhere, or even create yourself.  Think of it as the entry drug to the harder stuff.  Based on what you're doing I wouldn't have any qualms about recommending it for you as long as you understand the limitations.  (Basically, a single person, and really only the head and head movements).  You can take a freeze frame from the movie with Jack (there are some pretty good high res versions on the web) and animate that to do exactly what you want.  It's a lot of fun, you can master it in a week.

I've never met anyone who didn't want to improve their hobby, though, and if you like (or even love) the results you'll soon want more.  More means body animations as well as doing more than one character in a scene.  In that case, iClone is as good as it gets (see what I did there?) when it comes to character animation (the free Character Creator or even the bundled version is a must).  Beyond that you will find tools that make creating animations even easier and better (like doing what I did with the Lion) but, as I said, Crazytalk is a nice place to start.  (And for some folks that may be all they ever want -- just be aware it's definitely possible that a year from now you won't even have that program on your computer, as I no longer have -- again, the harder "stuff" gets you higher and higher and you never want to go back).

Here's something I did with Crazytalk about a hundred years ago (and now it makes me wince when I see it).  Just to give you an idea on how the art will improve as you get better and use better tools:





Have fun and show us the results here -- folks love to see this (there's a whole gallery section).

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Alienware Aurora R12, Win 10, i9-119000KF, 3.5GHz CPU, 128GB RAM, RTX 3090 (24GB), Samsung 960 Pro 4TB M-2 SSD, TB+ Disk space
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

there are many face swapping apps out there for FREE
ill leave this video because its hilarious