Free in this months issue of Compute Shopper (340) is a copy of Reallusion CrazyTalk 7, this is a piece of software where you import a still image, mark some points for the mouth, eyes, noose and shape of the head, then add a voice (you can use built in voice recording, audio files, or text to speech to make your own), and it automatically animates the head to talk, which you can then save as a video file.

I thought this would be great for creating voice acted cut scenes in GameGur, so what I did was take a screen shot of the character, removed and made transparent the background in GIMP and saved that, then I took another screenshot of the same location without the character and saved that for the background, combined them with a voice in CrazyTalk and saved it out as a video file, then slapped down a couple of story zones pointing to the videos.

Est voila, I now have animated cut scenes of the character talking to me, they're not great, I need to play with the video export settings to get better quality, but I think the lip sync is pretty good, and it does the job

That looks awesome, I am going to hunt every newsagent in Suffolk tomorrow looking for a copy of Compute Shopper (340) ....

Thanks for the heads up

The great thing about CrazyTalk 7 is it doesn't try to match words to lips like most lip sync software, it takes the sound and matches the sounds to letters and then converts them to lip movements, as well as moving the eyes and head around, making a much more realistic syn.

I got it in Sainsbury's, first computer magazine I've bought in years, and i'm glad I did

The magazine also has a code for SuperEasy Audio Converter 3 which is an audio file convertor that converts into a huge range of file types, including the OGG files needed for GameGuru.

ah its excellent, not perfect like you say but the best I'm likely to turn out, an awesome app and a good excuse for a Saturday morning spin on the motorbike lol

cool, I usually use Audacity but I could a decent batch converter with context support, I'll check it out

I haven't brought one of those for a lot of years either, last one I got had a demo of Battlefeild 1942 .... a very long time ago lol

Edit:



ah like 'Phonics' ?

thanks for the tip Belidos, will have to see if I can obtain a copy, good video well done.

Oh and you can also use it to add your own eyes and teeth, there's quite a few types provided.

cool, this is great, will have to dabble and see what I can come up with-thanks again

this looks awesome, sold out in my local newsagent, grrrr, will try a bigger town asap.

Ha! Cool

Thanks guys.

It was a weird moment where I looked at the magazine, saw crazytalk and thought "oooh, what if....." I didn't go looking for it and I didn't even think of lip syncs until I saw it, but a light came on in my had and I managed to pull that video off with about ten minutes of messing around in the software.

It's very easy to use, but if I get time I may do a quick how to video and edit it into the first post for people to see how it's done.

I might also pop into town at the weekend and see if I can pick up a few spare copied of the magazine for those who aren't able to find a copy, no promises though.

Also, if you can't find a copy of computer shopper, then PC Pro has exactly the same software bundle in it this month too.

Cool info Belidos!
I've downloaded CrazyTalk, and will give a try next weekend.

3com

Belidos - Thanks for pointing this great product out...
I got my copy of PC Shopper on Wednesday..
have Just done my first try out and it is amazing..
I'm so pleased I got it..
can't thank you enough for alerting me to this..

Glad it worked out for you