CrazyTalk7 review

Rob Redman | Applications | Reviews | 14/12/2012 14:00pm

Rob Redman investigates a fun and simple facial animation tool from Reallusion that turns out to be surprisingly useful

PRICE: £21 / $30 / €27

PLATFORM: Mac OS X

MAIN FEATURES:

Rigs photos and 2D images for animation
Creates 3D animation from 2D content
Lip syncing (recorded or imported audio)

DEVELOPER: Reallusion

Animating faces can be tricky – that’s a fact. Anything that helps to ease the process should be investigated, and CrazyTalk7 might just be one of those applications. With built-in lip syncing and the ability to rig a photo or drawing easily, it’s a doddle to do a quick test animation.

This isn’t going to replace any of your current 3D tools, but as a way to understand how a facial animation works it’s actually very good. Stripped down to its basics, the workflow is simple: load in a head and shoulders image of a character and then plot out the shapes using the predefined guides, which are pretty adjustable. CrazyTalk then uses its algorithms to turn it into a semi-3D object, which can be animated and lip synced in near-real time.

CrazyTalk may be marketed as just a ‘fun’ application, but if you’re working on the move and need to get your head round animating a tricky phrase, it’s great. It’s an outwardly simple app but it has some power under the hood, and the results are consistent and of a good quality.

On top of the help animators can get from it in understanding how the face morphs, CrazyTalk is a fun app and you’ll find yourself jumping in now and then simply for entertainment. Just try doodling a quick character and bringing it to life as fast using anything else.

CrazyTalk may not look like a serious application, but that shouldn’t stop you from having a lot of fun with it, or from learning about facial animation in an intuitive way, and at a very reasonable price.

Although lacking in depth, this is a fun application that’s intuitive to use and could be very useful for animators

RATING: 4

About the author
Rob Redman has a long history as a 3D artist, and is 3D World’s technical editor

Learn where to find textures for 3D projects at Creative Bloq.

Posted on Friday, December 14th, 2012 at 2:00 pm under Applications, Reviews. You can subscribe to comments. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.