[Freddy]

Thanks for the kind words Art

I know what you mean - I did think her teeth looked a bit bright. I'm using two light sources in the scene and one of them is a spot light off to her left. It's possible this is too bright so I could adjust that. Also I could look at shadows, at this moment I am not sure if I turned them on.

So far it's really been mainly about the lip-sync. I think it's actually a bit better than using Windows SAPI - this might be due to the fact that MaryTTS recognises a lot more visemes than SAPI does, so there's more going on there than before.

Thanks for the input

[8pla.net]

Nice job Freddy!

Here is a low poly model I am working on in Blender...

[Freddy]

Looking good.

Spent the last few days trying to get my character animated and into Unity. No end of problems, still some things that need to be fixed.

The main problem is I can get an animated figure in okay, but I'm having difficulty getting the model to work with the mouth shape animation.

I may have to do it so when you talk to her it does a cutaway scene with just her face as a compromise.

Anyway I have a few feelers out.

Instead I went back to the mocap and have her all kitted out and walking now, which worked relatively smoothly for a welcome change.

[Art]

Very nice. She does walk like she's on a mission! Nice outfit BTW!!
Is collision detection available or even possible at this early stage?

Good work so far!!

[Freddy]

Thanks, this was an outfit I had for a long time which I used on some renders of Tyler.

Collision detection is possible yes - I've glanced at it so far - seems you can set up a sort of cage around things to detect collisions. That's for later though. First I need to figure out this morph mess I'm in 

[Freddy]

Been busy on this. I've now moved on to full body characters. All week I was experimenting with things, many times hitting a brick wall. At times frustrating but at others great fun. I had to change my whole process, but I've now found a much more convenient way to get the models into Unity.

I bought a few more tools to help the process. A really useful one was a decimator that drastically reduces polygon count in models without too much loss of detail.

I had to do this because the models exported from Daz Studio once converted to tris added up to over 500,000 polygons 

Even so my PC handled it surprisingly well and was animating the full figure smoothly. But that's a lot of polygons for just one character, so I've now got it down to about 60,000 polys. It's good that I found out that I can really push this machine to places I did not think it could go though.

So yep, here's a new character talking and animated. I haven't connected her to a chatbot yet - that's actually one of the easier things. I want to work on the character a bit more. Her chest area got a bit mangled but I think I can make that look smoother and more feminine.

Also I want to work on the voice. At one point it took a little time for my server to create the audio - which in turn made the animation stick. I'll have to investigate if I can do the audio stuff in the background so it does not affect the visuals.

Anyway stop rambling Freddy 

[claude2]

It's a nice lady! Quality Daz we recognize, in the finish of character.

[claude2]

behold, the skin of Daz character. They are several format each type is different. You can added, makeup, ECCT.

[claude2]

Here the code of the joint, the face, it can be accessed using 3DExchange. By iclone.

[Data]

Freddy, it's good to see your progress, still coming alone nicely I see 

[Art]

Freddy, it's good to see your progress, still coming alone nicely I see 

Right on Freddy! I second Data's observation and general consensus!! Nice work!!

[Freddy]

Thanks all

[GT40]

As always, wonderful work in progress.

[8pla.net]

Congratulations Freddy on reaching a milestone in your project!  In my opinion, your results are neat and clean and aesthetically pleasing.

3D animation is a topic I enjoy discussing.  I think animating skin tight outfits on 3D models, usually is not to achieve a trashy effect by the animator.  Rather it is a shortcut, or compromise, exchanging the default nude model with "shrink wrapped" or "sprayed on" dressed model.   

I have seen this technique enhanced further, by removing polygons, by remodeling the cleavage area on a 3D female model, or otherwise removing polygon detail with low polygon dress skirt or shorts built-in to the final model...  Neat trick, I think, to customize a final 3D model.

[Freddy]

Thanks you two

8lpa, yes this really is a milestone for me, I didn't think I would be able to get to the stage of making a talking full body character that is also animated.

The choice of costume was decided by how cheap and how low poly it was - or could be made so. There are some costumes which are like spray on clothing, but there aren't many, just a couple I found. I have another outfit that I quite like and which can be reduced.

I couldn't use my favourite character as that's not available for the newer model I am using, but I found one I may pick up today.

I've got a few free or cheap buildings to use to make an environment. I think I am going for medieval period, kind of like in RPG games. Most chatbots are present day, so I thought I would go for something different.

I had thought about turning her into a desktop assistant, but I'm not convinced that desktop assistants make life easier. Sure I could ask her to play a song, but isn't it easier just to click on an icon ? Anyone have any thoughts about that ?