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Anyone own Mimic Pro for Carrara?

LotharenLotharen Posts: 282
in Carrara Discussion

I'm thinking of purchasing this for a project I'm working on and was wondering if anyone own's this, how good it is? ect.

It seems from what I was reading that it can import .wav files for use instead of recording live like the Daz Studio version.

Anyway, thanks for any info on this product you can provide!

Comments

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,199

    It is good in that you can use it on anything not just figures just by creating NLA clips for the visemes and assigning them to an animation group

    so one can do animusic type stuff moving objects etc to voices etc, I much prefer it to  the DAZ studio  version but then again I use Carrara primarily,

    in DS you are just as well off using lipsync in the 32bit with wav files and saving as pose files or scene subsets  for 64bit, Mimic live never really brought anything more to the table than that and is actually more limited. 

  • LotharenLotharen Posts: 282
    JaguarElla said:

    It is good in that you can use it on anything not just figures just by creating NLA clips for the visemes and assigning them to an animation group

    so one can do animusic type stuff moving objects etc to voices etc, I much prefer it to  the DAZ studio  version but then again I use Carrara primarily,

    in DS you are just as well off using lipsync in the 32bit with wav files and saving as pose files or scene subsets  for 64bit, Mimic live never really brought anything more to the table than that and is actually more limited. 

    Okay, so you can use wav files with the DAZ studio version and don't need to speak live?  Also, will the Studio version work with Gen 3?

    I don't use Carrara primarily, I've gotten use to Studio but own Carrara so it would have been much harder for me to set it up, ect.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,199

    Yes and yes

    they only have a license for 32 bit apparently

    there is a dmc file for G3f on forum somewhere done by someone using notepad as indeed I myself do for many figures though I own the no longer available Mimic pro too.

    I shall try and find it

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,199

    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/890406/#Comment_890406

  • LotharenLotharen Posts: 282
    JaguarElla said:

    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/890406/#Comment_890406

    Thank you for this. Also, whats the difference between the Carrara version - what can it do exactally?

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945

    We have a good thread on Carrarators about that : http://www.bond3d.byethost18.com/index.php?board=3.0

  • Steve KSteve K Posts: 3,233

    I have it and it works well.  I don't use it much because I don't care for dialogue in short animations, but sometimes its unavoidable.  E.g. the 48 Hour Film Contest has a *required* line of dialogue ... but even then, the speaking character can be turned away from the camera ...

  • argus1000argus1000 Posts: 701
    edited November 2015

    I have Mimic Pro for Carrara. At first, I was a little intimidated by it. But now I'm learning to use it. You can use that plugin with pretty good results right out of the box (if you use the text file on top of the .wav file). But you can also switch visemes according to your wishes, if you don't like the initial results. In one word, I love it! It's worth its weight in gold.

    Post edited by argus1000 on
  • LotharenLotharen Posts: 282
    argus1000 said:

    I have Mimic Pro for Carrara. At first, I was a little intimidated by it. But now I'm learning to use it. You can use that plugin with pretty good results right out of the box (if you use the text file on top of the .wav file). But you can also switch visemes according to your wishes, if you don't like the initial results. In one word, I love it! It's worth its weight in gold.

    Thanks everyone for the awesome responses! Argus - what do you mean by 'use the text file on top of the .wav file'? 

     

  • argus1000argus1000 Posts: 701
    edited November 2015
    Lotharen said:

    Argus - what do you mean by 'use the text file on top of the .wav file'? 

    Well, when you open Mimic, you have to choose the WAV file you intend to use (see pic)  and also you have the option of adding a TXT file (that means you type the text of the WAV file in a window). I believe that adding that TXT file adds and benefits to the overall precision of the wording of the WAV file by the character lips. You can speficy what accent you want the character to mimic depending on how you write the text.

    mimic.png
    1206 x 913 - 839K
    Post edited by argus1000 on
  • LotharenLotharen Posts: 282
    argus1000 said:
    Lotharen said:

    Argus - what do you mean by 'use the text file on top of the .wav file'? 

    Well, when you open Mimic, you have to choose the WAV file you intend to use (see pic)  and also you have the option of adding a TXT file (that means you type the text of the WAV file in a window). I believe that adding that TXT file adds and benefits to the overall precision of the wording of the WAV file by the character lips. You can speficy what accent you want the character to mimic depending on how you write the text.

    Ahh, I see now. Thank you for that.

  • LotharenLotharen Posts: 282

    Well I've purchased Mimic Pro for Carrara and a LOT of other goodies to use with Gen 2. Can't wait to play with it and see what I can accomplish.

    Now to find a good free text to speech program with a half way decent female voice to make my first test video.

  • Steve KSteve K Posts: 3,233
    Lotharen said:

     

    Now to find a good free text to speech program with a half way decent female voice to make my first test video.

    Let us know if you find a good one, I have tried and not had much luck.  Voice acting really is an art unto itself, as demonstrated by every Pixar animation (Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Ellen Degeneres, ...)  A favorite female voice is in "Jack Jack Attack", a short base on "The Incredibles".  The voice is by Bret "Brook" Parker, originally an animator at Pixar.  The whole animation is one of my favorites, but she deserves a lot of the credit (this YouTube video is messed up, but it gives the idea):

    If you see the full video, it has one of my alltime favorite voice acting lines: "THE BABY WAS EXPLODING!"

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,199
    edited December 2015

    Oh dear you may have issues, Mimic for Carrara does not recognize all text to speech voices, it does MS Anna so you could always do two tracks same speed using her to drive the analysis.

    It does not seem to like the Acapella ones in particular and two of the four Win 8 SDK ones I have.

    I use Morphvox/Screaming bee on my voice mostly these days as my viewers loath TTS and tell me so!!!

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • LotharenLotharen Posts: 282

    Oi, I never thought that mimic might not detect those.

    Thanks for telling me about Morphvox Ella! I had thought about using something to change my voice and do it myself. At least until I find some wanna-be voice actors. :)

  • LotharenLotharen Posts: 282

    Okay, one issue. I got it to work with my small test with Generation 4 figures and Genesis Figures but not Gen 2, does it not work with Gen 2 figures?

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,199

    yes if you use the correct dmc

    it should be in your library under general

  • mindsongmindsong Posts: 1,701
    edited December 2015

    FYI, another voice changer is at audio4fun.com - "voice changer software (VCS) diamond  v9". I have both that and Screaming Bee's MorphVox and like Morphox better for animations/story-telling, but VCS has strengths as well.

    Morphvox has some nice 'story-telling' features and optional add-ons for pre-and-post work on these kinds of animation projects - like batch processing of dialog sound-clip groups (e.g. converting separated folders of character1 dialog snippits/streams and character2 dialog snippets, etc.).

    VCS seems to be targetting real-time pseudonym functions for online gaming and communications, but isn't at all limited to that.

    Morphvox can also tie into standard VST sound processing plugins, if you wanted to add additional effects to your sound effects or dialog.

    Some of the mentioned features are add-ons but not hugely expensive. Check the web-sites. Lots of presets for robots, males, females, kids, gramps, etc.

    Both can sound synth-like, but with some fiddling, you can get some pretty varied character voices that are far better than most people's effort to fake the other gender 'natively', etc. Youtube vids on both - some sort of old, but still compelling.

    ms

    (edits to clarify)

    Post edited by mindsong on
  • FifthElementFifthElement Posts: 569
    Lotharen said:

    Well I've purchased Mimic Pro for Carrara and a LOT of other goodies to use with Gen 2. Can't wait to play with it and see what I can accomplish.

    Now to find a good free text to speech program with a half way decent female voice to make my first test video.

    I found this one particulary useful for my own needs, expecally two last voices Jenna and John) : http://www.fromtexttospeech.com/

    smiley

  • argus1000argus1000 Posts: 701

    My opinion is, if you aspire to any kind of realism  for your project (if you think your work is worth it), you need real actors to read your lines, not a machine. They're not hard to find, and not as expensive as you think. Just Google "voice-over talent".

     

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