SAN JOSE, CA — Reallusion (www.reallusion.com), the maker of animation tools for Mac, PC and mobile device users, is preparing to release two upgrades to its existing product line. CrazyTalk Animator 3, which was recently showcased at the Comic-Con show in New York City, recently launched. The 2D animation allows users to create professional animations with only minimal effort.
“It has all the bells and whistles for character creation and making character faces out of photographs, and making them talk, being able to do full body characters and full scenes,” explains Reallusion VP, John Martin. “The big addition to Crazy Talk Animator 3 is that you can put bones in anything. You can animate a sketchbook. You can animate anything that you want to bring in as an image and put bones to it in a very easy way. It opens up the opportunity for a really universal animation system. This update to Crazy Talk animator really brings it inline with what is commonly thrown to After Effect. So you really get all the power, but you also get the ease of use and the benefits of all the other Crazy Talk tools for facial animation and lip sync.”
Reallusion released Crazy Talk Animator 3 on the Mac and PC simultaneously. Pricing is $69 for the standard version, $179 for the pro version and $299 for the pipeline edition. The company is also gearing up for the December release of iClone 7, the latest version of its realtime 3D animation tool for creating digital actors, virtual environments, visual effects and powerful physics. The tool allows users to easily create and customize assets; direct actors, props and scenes; and control vehicles, lighting and cameras.
“We've been focusing a lot of the internal engine, and things like global illumination,” says Martin. “There’s a whole new camera system that speaks right to previs and tech-vis especially.”
Martin recently went on-location to Puerto Rico during production of Lotus Entertainment’s upcoming feature Replicas, starring Keanu Reeves. The production’s DP and VFX team used iClone to previs a number of shots, some of which involved motion capture.
The upcoming version of iClone 7 will feature VR capabilities, allowing users to render any camera or scene as a VR-ready 360 video. The new feature simplifies creating content for the Unity and Unreal game engines.