Animating Two-heads of a Single Character.


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By ZackandMack - 9 Years Ago
https://forum.reallusion.com/uploads/images/5ef08cfb-577a-47f7-9257-8f4d.pngOkay folks...We are Zack and Mack, a real live two-headed turtle.  My human purchased Crazy Talk 7 to see if he could get us to talk.  Kinda worked....so he went and purchased Crazy Talk Animator 2 Standard at a decent price to refine the task.  We really want to talk.  We can get one head set, but how do we get rid of character bodies (cause we have our own) and how do we animate the other head?   It can be done with anything we suppose.  Such as putting two sets of eyes and a mouth on a tomato for example.  But how do we do it without using bodies and importing another character.  Or do we take the one head and make a photo of it jpg or png and then re-import it as a new character and render the second head.  Then add vocals to one pic then the other and assemble in iMovie?   Try it and see.  Or if someone wants to use my existing proprietary photo, let me know?  doing the experiment on say two characters in a painting might do just as well.  

OR...if there is a handy dandy video/tutorial that will explain these things to our dense old man of a human, that might help him.  Lord, he needs help...but that is another story and we won't speak ill of him because he feeds us meaty worms and other tasty treats.

Thanks for helping to bring us to life....Once we get this thing a going, we will have much to say about everything....We just have a lot to say!  Right now...mum's the word...

Zack and Mack
By AverageJoe - 9 Years Ago
You'll pretty much have to do it the same way you did in CrazyTalk initially... Only difference is CTA can deal with two character on the screen at the same time...

Create a separate character from each of the head.  Import your main image as a prop, re-position each of the new character heads over it and animate.  It'd be better if you modified the image imported as the background to remove the heads so when you place the character heads in place, there will not be a duplicate behind it.  Again, a little imagination and some creative thinking, and this is easy to accomplish.

Oh, and a side note...  Use the photo that doesn't have the bow ties, add them after the fact as character accessories so they animate with the heads.
By jlittle - 9 Years Ago
ZackandMack (10/15/2015)
We can get one head set, but how do we get rid of character bodies (cause we have our own) ...  

Use the Sprite Editor and select the empty sprite for those body parts you don't want.

... and how do we animate the other head?  

Use two characters, one for each head. Each "head" will also have it's own voice track.

Jeff
By AverageJoe - 9 Years Ago
jlittle (10/15/2015)
ZackandMack (10/15/2015)
We can get one head set, but how do we get rid of character bodies (cause we have our own) ...  

Use the Sprite Editor and select the empty sprite for those body parts you don't want.


I rarely ever do just head characters, but can't you also just delete the body parts in the Character Composer as well?
By jlittle - 9 Years Ago
wizaerd (10/15/2015)
I rarely ever do just head characters, but can't you also just delete the body parts in the Character Composer as well?

Either way works.

Jeff

By ZackandMack - 9 Years Ago
We will pass this information along to our human.  He doesn't know that we crawled out of the tank and once again walking all over his keyboard.  Shhh...don't tell him.
By ZackandMack - 9 Years Ago
Okay, we passed along this information to our human, but quite frankly, we think he is a dunce.  So we tell him to import our body as a prop.  He did that.  He also made nice heads for the each of us.  First he carefully cut out our heads one at a time and them imported them into CTA and made them talk.  he did that both for Zack and I.  Then after all that he imported our body as a prop like someone suggested.  That was fine.  Then he imported my head (Mack) and placed it on the body and got me to talk.  So far so good.  Then he went to import Zack's head (as a model) and it appeared where mine should be!  Egads!  Where did my head go?  We tried looking for it but couldn't find my head.   

We told our human to read the directions, but he said there was nothing in the directions about two-headed turtles.  Can anyone tell us where Mack's head is?  
By AverageJoe - 9 Years Ago
When dragging the second head into the scene, do not drop it on the other head... Drop it far enough away it doesn't replace the other head.  If double clicking to add, make sure the first head is not selected.
By AverageJoe - 9 Years Ago
I took half an hour, and did a quick example. It was not done meticulously nor with any attention to detail, just a quickie to demonstrate how easy it actually is... If I had spent some real time on it, it could've looked better.


By ZackandMack - 9 Years Ago
We will get him to try it again...its just that when we watched, he didn't drop it on Mack's head.  He dropped in far away.  It just automatically went to where Mack's Head would be and swallowed it up.  When the human moved Zack's head to see if Mack was there...his head was gone.  We will prod our human to keep trying.  All he needs is this basic template and then Mack and I are off and running.

Thanks again for the help for our human

Zack and Mack
By ZackandMack - 9 Years Ago
Oh Boy!  What crazy eyes!
By ZackandMack - 9 Years Ago
Zack here:  So, Mr. Wizaerd, did you animate one head (along with body) and then drop in Mack's head as an imported model and then animate that?  Is that the gist of it?

Zack and Mack
By AverageJoe - 9 Years Ago
I took the photo into Photoshop and masked out each head into their own images.  Then in CTA, I clicked the Create Actor (left hand tool bar) and imported the LeftHead, mapped it out (eyes and mouth) and left it on the stage.  I then re-clicked Create Actor, imported the RightHead, mapped it out (eyes and mouth again) and left it on the stage.  I then dragged and dropped the original image onto the stage, and chose to import as a prop.  I positioned and scaled each head so it covered the original heads on the original image.  I then selected the left head, moved the playhead in the timeline to Frame 1, and created the script/talking head.  I moved the playhead a little bit forward, selected the second head and created the second script/talking head.  I then moved the playhead back to frame 1, selected the left head and did face puppettering to get the eye blinks and slight head movement for the whole clip.  Moved the playhead back to frame 1, selected the other head and did the same thing.  Then exported to video.
By ZackandMack - 9 Years Ago
Okay...zaaazaaaammmm....We are going to tell our human to get with it here.   Thanks Mr. Wizaerd...Thanks!  Zack and I will be talking up a storm thanks to your guidance.  We wish our human was as knowledgeable.
By ZackandMack - 9 Years Ago
Okay, our human is a real dunce.  He managed to do one head and then the other.  He then brought in the body as a prop.  He managed to position one head (mine), but Zack's head keeps wanting to slide behind the prop and not out front.  So Our human figured that it is obviously a layer issue.  He went to the layer button at the bottom left hand side of the panel and kept trying, but to no avail.  He could not bring Zack's head up front for positioning.  Where did he go wrong?  We declare, this human is a real dummy when it comes to this stuff....we could use someone with talent....but then again, we don't know if you have any worms.  Hammy always a problem with you humans.
By AverageJoe - 9 Years Ago
At the bottom of each element, characters and prop, there should be a circle with an upward pointing arrow in it.  Click and drag in that circle, and it will adjust the depth of the Z Axis, what controls individual elements layering on the stage. When you do this, it will appear as if you're scaling the element, but you're not, you're moving it back and forth in the Z Axis.  At the top right hand, end of the toolbar there is a button for enabling the 3D view.  This is used to rotate your stage around to view each element in the 3D space.
By ZackandMack - 9 Years Ago
Ack!  We were able to get our human to put our body and both heads together.  Now we need to find the new script button, or how to erase previous TTS so that we can begin a test sync.  Thanks Mr. Wizaerd!  

Zack and Mack
By AverageJoe - 9 Years Ago
Press F3 to bring up the timeline, and select each character.  The lip synching information is in the Face track./
By ZackandMack - 9 Years Ago
Once again, thanks Mr. Wizaerd.  Zack and I sure appreciate your help.  Now if we can get our human over here to do some work on this....
By ZackandMack - 9 Years Ago


We want to thank Wizaerd and any other humans that helped out our human to give us the voices we were missing.  Here is our human's first effort to get us talking.  It is our Book-Mercial for our first two books.  We found that CTA was limited in the pre-programmed facial movements over Crazy Talk, but the ability to have both of our heads talking outweighs that drawback.

Once again thanks.  While this video is not the be all end all, it was the first effort using Wizaerd's instructions.  

Sincerely,

Zack and Mack the two-headed turtle
By ZackandMack - 9 Years Ago


We want to thank Wizaerd and any other humans that helped out our human to give us the voices we were missing.  Here is our human's first effort to get us talking.  It is our Book-Mercial for our first two books.  We found that CTA was limited in the pre-programmed facial movements over Crazy Talk, but the ability to have both of our heads talking outweighs that drawback.

Once again thanks.  While this video is not the be all end all, it was the first effort using Wizaerd's instructions.  

Sincerely,

Zack and Mack the two-headed turtle
By jlittle - 9 Years Ago
Looking good Zack & Mack!

A little less eye blink might be better IMO.

Jeff
By AverageJoe - 9 Years Ago
Good job Zack and Mack...  I dunno much about turtles, and how much the may actually blink, but I tend to agree with Jeff, it might be a little bit much.  But it certainly doesn't hurt the clip...  Glad your human was able to get this done for you.  Perhaps you should give him a reward of some type.  Wink
By ZackandMack - 9 Years Ago
It was windy and the dust was blowing, hence the eye blinking.  Don't know if you could pick it up in the short video or not.  Smile