Reallusion Crazy Talk 5.0

Computer generated animation. Say that in a crowd and almost everyone will say you either need extensive training or a massively expensive high powered PC to do it. I personally asked a few friends and all seemed to agree that the home user could not do it. They also all agreed that it would be far too expensive to both buy the software and to build a PC powerful enough to run it.

Reallusion believes otherwise. They have created a powerful set of tools that allow even the novice user to create animated puppets. You are not limited to just using computer generated pictured for your animation. You can also use your personal photos as well.

I am by no means a power user. When it comes to complicated programs with a large array of features, I tend to get very nervous. When this program came up for review, I was honestly sceptical that I was up to the challenge. I am happy to say that after only a few minutes, not only was I comfortable with the user interface, I was animating my own pictures out of my photo albums.

Installation

First off, here are the minimum specifications for running this software:

Hardware:

• Pentium III 800MHz (Pentium IV or higher recommended)
• 256MB RAM (512MB or higher recommended)
• 512MB Hard Disk space (1GB or more recommended)
• Duplex sound card (can playback and record at same time)
• VGA card
• Microphone

Operating Systems:

• Windows XP SP2
• Windows Vista

Browsers:

• Internet Explorer

Misc:

• DirectX 9 (or higher) and Windows Media Encoder 9 required for video exporting

There is no Mac version offered as of the day of this review. I checked their user forum and the official statement was that there is no planned MAC version and if the need was there it would be considered in the future.

Installation of the software was painless. No restart was required and after entering the license key and registration information, we are brought to the start-up screen.

After you click off the “getting started” window, you are greeted by the Marilyn Monroe type character starting at you. You also get a glimpse into the ability this program has to animate as the character’s head is moving, eyes blinking as well as the mouth moving. Press the play button and she then starts talking.