duchess110 (12/20/2015)

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Putting 2 in this post.
Bruno has now become stage struck :D and wanted to do another. ha ha.
So here is Bruno singing the Ugly Bug Ball,



Next is Adel Singing Rolling in the deep. In the video it shows the picture I used to create the face in Ct8.




Now I must get back to my Yam Yam males they are getting restless waiting for final testing before joining the Marketplace.

animagic (12/20/2015)

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I did something with a photo of myself that was far from ideal. Still it got a resemblance, but somewhat younger. Lighting is indeed tricky to make things look the same in iClone as in CT8.



We''ll keep trying...

duchess110 (12/20/2015)

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Hi theschemer
This does not always work but there are 2 things that I have tried
1 - Within CT8 when doing the blend for the rest of the head to match I will select a blend colour quite low down the face towards the neck.
2 - In iClone try playing around with the diffuse colour on the head and body. They are usually white so I have tried various shades of grey on one or the other to
try and get them to blend better.
Hope this might help as I say it does not always fix it.

patrick.gerard (12/21/2015)

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I would say skip side fitting and do it manually for the time being. It always comes out deformed when I try it and my suspicion is that slight angle variation or photos of different scales mess it up. If I'm doing a celebrity face the way one typically does a CT face, I'm not going to match the scale and vertical alignment of the two photos typically and you can do much more refined work within Character Creator if you have the patience and plan to take it further.

I figured I'll show you the full process. Here is a base image of Donald Trump.



Here is my Donald Trump in Crazytalk (no necktie because the installer for people who bought Party Fun early still doesn't install to CT8, hair is backwards because I have no means of inverting it at this point):



I then import into Character Creator. All options are set for high quality textures. Make sure your CC character is selected. Also make sure you have both chosen the default morph and clicked "reset" on the head as the true default is only achieved at this point and CC will otherwise go for a hybrid of the two morphs.

To reacquire the hair in CC, I had to manually import the matching hairstyle from iClone as a head accessory because it isn't recognized as a hairstyle. (I think it's the "suave/charming" hair). I have to replace the eyes because of a bug.

Dress Up Showtime doesn't install anything to iClone or CC so while I DO have Party Fun neckties there, I have no shirts they clip onto.



So we'll compromise and go with an open shirt (like Mason's) before we go into iClone:



Now, you can recover some of the original look by giving Donald's skin self-illumination.

I set self-illumination on skin for body and head each to 75:



And for fun, here's Trump in Indigo, one minute render, around 35 samples per pixel:



There is some likeness degradation at each step although I think Indigo manages to restore some realism to it. Now, something to keep in mind about CT8 is that it inherits some of its base features including head size from the previous actor. So if you start with Sammy the Ogre, you get a bigger starting head and some room for a more Pixar-like effect.

I went through all of these steps starting with Sammy in place when I created a Trump avatar with the same photo and wound up with this (different hairstyle) as my "Pixar Trump" style take in iClone/Indigo.



So I'd be more inclined as an iClone user to think of CT8 as a sketching tool (and a decent one for cartoon/caricature) than as a likeness solution. Plan on iterating whatever you do in each step and be prepared for an outcome that deviates and I think you have an interesting character generation tool at least.

patrick.gerard (12/21/2015)

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Also, as a piece of advice, I think the average CT user would benefit if Reallusion offered:

1. Rotation, resizing, and alignment of source images within Crazytalk.

2. Less emphasis on side fitting. It can mess things up more often than it fixes them which will lower people's impression of the product as they try to do something with only marginally better returns.

3. An option to automatically make all non eye and nose features symmetrical. Eye and nose assymetry are important as no source photograph is perfect but chin and ear assymetry really belong more as an advanced feature (and I'd rather do those in Character Creator).

4. Shifted expectations towards cartooning/caricature.

5. I think it's a mistake to release content that can't be used across the products going forward. The tricks I had to use to get suave and charming hair in character creator were non-intuitive. The idea that I have a necktie in three programs (once they get me the installer for CT) but only have a shirt that can use it in Crazytalk is non-intuitive. It also destroys the possibility of any workflow that doesn't end with iClone as I had REALLY hoped to be able to create characters who could be used in CT and iClone so that I can:

- Create a character in CT.
- Port it to iClone for body animation and action.
- Go BACK to CT for faster rendering of talking heads sequences in a movie, using a pre-rendered background from iClone.

Can't do that. Well, I can but it means the stuff I do in CT in that last step will be with a 2D avatar.

That's my feedback. Some nice things. Some issues with bugs. Some differences of opinion on design.

Kelleytoons (12/27/2015)

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Don't worry, there are plenty old men like myself around here willing to say bad things about people -- the other poster was full of... um, well, full of the stuff that Santa puts in bad boy's stockings (and I'm sure it was a boy, and a young boy at that.  He's just mad that he didn't get what he wanted for Christmas, although if he's better perhaps NEXT year -- otherwise, Krampus for him!!!).

patrick.gerard (12/28/2015)

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[quote]O'Brixtor (12/27/2015)

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The 2D heads in CT8 are better than the 2D heads in CT7.

NoKat (12/29/2015)

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@Kelleytoons Nice job getting the morph close to the original. I'm having trouble with that yet. Anything too far off basic features and things go wonky. :)

Kelleytoons (12/29/2015)

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Yeah, CT8 is very "human centric", which is the thing that surprises me the most since they touted how you could do animals with it (I guess only animals that look like humans, like apes and monkeys :>).

I have some Anime stuff I was trying and even there, as human as they are, the large eyes are a real issue.  So I like to fool myself into thinking this is only their first pass and they will add capabilities to it that allow for more extreme variations.  Time will tell.

texasvideographer (12/31/2015)

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wow, I never said anything that vicious, yet they deleted MY posts.....oh well.

urbanlamb (1/1/2016)

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is that a dead rooster on his head? LOL 
:blush:

NoKat (1/1/2016)

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First, you owe me a keyboard, and second, I quite like the character.
He looks like he does the daily news wearing a rug that no one notices.

planetstardragon (12/28/2015)

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Dear O'Brixtor,

"what if" they weren't trying to make it better,  maybe they were just trying to make it different ?  u know ...like chicken waffles ?

better is also a subjective term,    ....

theschemer (11/14/2016)

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Where did you get those great dance move motions near the end?? Good job. :)

rogyrue (11/17/2016)

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Thanks , the dance moves are a mix, some converted from the Carneigie Mellon Capture Database and some converted from Henmations  mocap data off the secondlife market place

patrick.gerard (12/21/2015)

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I would say skip side fitting and do it manually for the time being. It always comes out deformed when I try it and my suspicion is that slight angle variation or photos of different scales mess it up. If I'm doing a celebrity face the way one typically does a CT face, I'm not going to match the scale and vertical alignment of the two photos typically and you can do much more refined work within Character Creator if you have the patience and plan to take it further.

I figured I'll show you the full process. Here is a base image of Donald Trump.



Here is my Donald Trump in Crazytalk (no necktie because the installer for people who bought Party Fun early still doesn't install to CT8, hair is backwards because I have no means of inverting it at this point):



I then import into Character Creator. All options are set for high quality textures. Make sure your CC character is selected. Also make sure you have both chosen the default morph and clicked "reset" on the head as the true default is only achieved at this point and CC will otherwise go for a hybrid of the two morphs.

To reacquire the hair in CC, I had to manually import the matching hairstyle from iClone as a head accessory because it isn't recognized as a hairstyle. (I think it's the "suave/charming" hair). I have to replace the eyes because of a bug.

Dress Up Showtime doesn't install anything to iClone or CC so while I DO have Party Fun neckties there, I have no shirts they clip onto.



So we'll compromise and go with an open shirt (like Mason's) before we go into iClone:



Now, you can recover some of the original look by giving Donald's skin self-illumination.

I set self-illumination on skin for body and head each to 75:



And for fun, here's Trump in Indigo, one minute render, around 35 samples per pixel:



There is some likeness degradation at each step although I think Indigo manages to restore some realism to it. Now, something to keep in mind about CT8 is that it inherits some of its base features including head size from the previous actor. So if you start with Sammy the Ogre, you get a bigger starting head and some room for a more Pixar-like effect.

I went through all of these steps starting with Sammy in place when I created a Trump avatar with the same photo and wound up with this (different hairstyle) as my "Pixar Trump" style take in iClone/Indigo.



So I'd be more inclined as an iClone user to think of CT8 as a sketching tool (and a decent one for cartoon/caricature) than as a likeness solution. Plan on iterating whatever you do in each step and be prepared for an outcome that deviates and I think you have an interesting character generation tool at least.