Talk and face animation programm

Hi all,

i have a question for a programm that could make some good talk and face animations.
I use Lightwave and the new genoma rigging system is a great almost easy to use and powerfull tool.
But talk animations are a little hard to make for me (i use this the first time).

So i was looking for some good programms to do this for me and save a lot of time.
So far i found:
FaceGen wich looks great for talk animations ... but only the Head is possible to animate.
Poser ... i guess one of the oldest in the market but never worked with it.
iClone 5 wich i found in a thread here as a hint from "raym18" but i cant import .lwo files only the fbx for motion (never used this format)

So anyone knows some other good programms for 3D face and talk animations ?

Umon

Hello Umon

Take a look to this program

CrazyTalk Animator
CrazyTalk Animator, the next level of 2D animation. Create actors using any photo or illustration. Bring actors to life with automatic facial animation & innovative puppeteering motion. Drag & drop to build sets with scenery and props. Film and direct all the action with the camera & timeline tracks for complete 2D Animation.

http://www.reallusion.com/crazytalk/animator/

hope it helps

Hi raym18,

i watched a few youtube videos and the possibilities of this iClone and CrazyTalk are amazing.
This lip sync out of a sound file is great, also text can be used. So i give it a try the next few weeks.
Seems to me this combination is great if you want to do close up scenes.

There are a few more programs like "Automatic Lipsync" and a promising looking plugin "TAFA" i found,
They are all almost in the same price range. But it seems like it is hard to decide wich one to use ...

Umon

Poser you'd need to do all the character work in there as facial animation doesn't export very well, likewise Daz
but you can get nice movement, this is exported to Max from Daz (very quick test.. didn't expect it to work!)
http://youtu.be/_hRSRPh_8fI

Hey this animation looks nice ... only a quick test ? how long does it take ?
You made this animation in Daz? I should have a closer look to Daz, if i remember right its also free now.

And if Poser doesnt export the animations very well i can save my time and dont try it.
My biggest problem is the lip sync right now, but if Daz or another program could do also animation in a very fast time i think i should uses this also. Who cares if i can say in the end "i have done all the animation by hand in my main program ... takes 20 time longer but i am proud of it".
I know normaly u use a few different programs, to speed up things.

Charakter rigging can sometimes be a pain in the ass ...

The character is Victoria 4, the newer Genesis models don't export very well, when I tried it looked like something from The Thing film lol
I used AniMate inside DAZ which has shit loads of pre sets so Daz time was about 5 minutes, 10 minutes in Max to fix some textures, then it rendered at about a frame every 5 seconds
There was a program called Mimic that did lip sync for Poser and Daz I'm not sure if its still being updated, when I tried it only old models worked

Thats really pretty fast ... i will have a look at the presets for easy animations for background chars i think this will be nice and best of it ... fast ^^.

Hey and from Sketchup to Max thats a nice update
I also was looking at max, blender and such, but i use lightwave now for about 10 years.
If you look at other programs you feel like you have to learn all new again ... and the price is 3 times as high ...
Lightwave is great and i love it but you have a hard time if you need to learn another program.

And i read about Mimic in the LW forum, sounds like it would not be the best choise to use it.

I'm using the learning edition of Max, I don't like it and to be fair its got a similar big learning curve as Blender, so if I had to choose "something new" it would be Blender
, I find Max a bit crashy and fussy were as Blender is very stable and uses less resources.
Its got to the point I just don't have time to learn a new modeller for me Sketchup is quick and gets the job done Max I mainly test the Thea Render plugin but apart from importing stuff I don't use it

When I had Mimic I thought it was shite unless it was an old model which looked like kryten from red dwarf

I read a lot about Blender and watched a few animation movies, and looks like it is a great tool for 3D and you can do all the things you have in Max, LW and all the other expensive renderer like physics and destruction but for free

And this Thea Render seems like as another one i know ... if you want to test someting else you should also take a look at Octane Render. I dindt try it myself but i read it could speed up render times 3 times also using GPU like Thea Render.
For longer render like HDRI and such i have a few render nodes without a grapic card, only onboard for settings. But i guess for a single workstation with a good grapic card this should be also be a great tool.
I really should take a few weeks to test a few programs, but if you test all you want you could spend easy one year