[Art]

Hmm...Flaffing - engaged in useless, unproductive activity.

Don't know if your flaffing about produces this beautiful image but if so, you should do more of it! Nice work Freddy!!

New word for me and just when I thought I've seen them all...flafffing. Indeed! 

[Freddy]

Hehe, well maybe it's not unproductive if people like it !

Thanks for the thumbs up 

I'll do a bit more flaffing.

[squarebear]

Can these animations be used on websites? Do you need a special player to make them work?
I'm looking at a replacement for Haptek which stopped working on the web after Windows XP

[Freddy]

No, these are just stills - there's no animation with the ones in this thread.

These ones take 20 minutes just to render (draw), so you are not going to be able to animate to this clarity in real time. At least not in 3D. I can't wait for affordable hardware to get to the stage of making this possible though, but that's a good few years away, for most people at least.

For good animation, you'd need something like 30 fps to look nice.

You could animate in 3D with something like the Unity Web Player or the newer WebGL player. The web player was working in FF and IE, but not Chrome now. WebGL I think is still sort of beta, but looks promising. But with those options you can't really get the realism that you can with stills.

I'll be playing with those things again soon, so I will post my findings, maybe we can come up with something.

To give an example of the quality of using these models in Unity you can look at this animation (real-time) that I made a while back...

It's possible it could be improved with creative use of lighting and shaders.

[Freddy]

A new one I did today. Same model, very versatile. You can see the hair is more complex and this does add to the render time of 40 minutes.

Click for the full size image.

[Korrelan]

You have a talent... now if we could make droids like this... hmmmm 

On a side note... the video above when she is lip syncing... that's just what I experience when my gert is talking to me...  then I say... what?

Edit... the numbers I mean...

[Freddy]

Thanks 

The numbers as you have probably guessed is my system for timing phonemes to trigger visemes. I had to build that myself, I felt quite pleased with myself. Previously I had used SAPI, but with Unity it would not work, so I used MaryTTS and did my own thing with the timings.

[Freddy]

An Elf today.

[Data]

That's not an Elf, she is a Vulcan 

Good work 

[Freddy]

 Could be 

Thank you

[Freddy]

Two more shots of the Elf lady. Couldn't decide which background I prefer so here's both.

[Data]

Prefer the second background myself, adds more depth and is more realistic.

[Freddy]

I like them both for different reasons.

In the one you like that's a photo I took which I blurred out of focus. Sometimes real images can make the model seem less realistic, but with IRay it's becoming less of a problem.

It's all subjective this art lark. Thanks for taking a look 

[Art]

Personally, the 1st one has more of a magical feel, especially with the fog / haze about.
Just my take. Both are nice.

Your "vulcan-elf" didn't have the same lighting as the previous girl's image which looked more realistic.

Yeah...I know...a critic in every corner... (or behind every tree)....

[Freddy]

Thanks for taking a look Art

Yes I was not happy about that light in the Vulcan Elf.

Also about the foggy backdrop - yes that's why I like it - it reminds me of old Edwardian portraits where they would pose in front of a canvas.