I been playing around with animating robots. You know getting them to 
walk, talk and fall down. So the next step is to put them in a little 
story. I'm no writer. But I did write up a little scene with two robots 
talking and doing stuff.
   I used a text to speech program (Zebspeech)to do the voices. But I 
don't like having to record the whole text in each voice the editing 
them together. And the voices where a little flat.(more editing)
  The prefect program for me would be one that could read my script 
dropping all the stage directions and speaking the appropriate voice, 
with some emotional control over each voice.
  Any one heard of such a thing or do I have to make it?

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On 25/11/2014 21:11, Leroy wrote:
>  I been playing around with animating robots. You know getting them to
> walk, talk and fall down. So the next step is to put them in a little
> story. I'm no writer. But I did write up a little scene with two robots
> talking and doing stuff.
>   I used a text to speech program (Zebspeech)to do the voices. But I
> don't like having to record the whole text in each voice the editing
> them together. And the voices where a little flat.(more editing)
>  The prefect program for me would be one that could read my script
> dropping all the stage directions and speaking the appropriate voice,
> with some emotional control over each voice.
>  Any one heard of such a thing or do I have to make it?

I remember a long time ago, when I had windows, the soundblaster card
came with such kind of voice synthetizer, with a syntax to change the
module (aka voice).

On linux, Festival has a mode to process commands, and it's then easy to
switch to another voice. It just make the normal text a bit cumbersome,
as it must be inserted in commands too (SayText...)
(well, Festival is not linux centric, so there is some binary for
windows too... if you like terminal...)

The nice thing, there is even a command to save to a wave file.

The hard thing: it's hard to get new voices.
-- 
IQ of crossposters with FU: 100 / (number of groups)
IQ of crossposters without FU: 100 / (1 + number of groups)
IQ of multiposters: 100 / ( (number of groups) * (number of groups))

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TLe_Forgeron wrote:
> On 25/11/2014 21:11, Leroy wrote:
>>  I been playing around with animating robots. You know getting them to
>> walk, talk and fall down. So the next step is to put them in a little
>> story. I'm no writer. But I did write up a little scene with two robots
>> talking and doing stuff.
>>   I used a text to speech program (Zebspeech)to do the voices. But I
>> don't like having to record the whole text in each voice the editing
>> them together. And the voices where a little flat.(more editing)
>>  The prefect program for me would be one that could read my script
>> dropping all the stage directions and speaking the appropriate voice,
>> with some emotional control over each voice.
>>  Any one heard of such a thing or do I have to make it?
> 
> I remember a long time ago, when I had windows, the soundblaster card
> came with such kind of voice synthetizer, with a syntax to change the
> module (aka voice).
> 
> On linux, Festival has a mode to process commands, and it's then easy to
> switch to another voice. It just make the normal text a bit cumbersome,
> as it must be inserted in commands too (SayText...)
> (well, Festival is not linux centric, so there is some binary for
> windows too... if you like terminal...)
> 
> The nice thing, there is even a command to save to a wave file.
> 
> The hard thing: it's hard to get new voices.
Thanks. I give it a look and see.

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Leroy <lrw### [at] joplincom> wrote:

>   Any one heard of such a thing or do I have to make it?

I recall that Normand (Dr. No) and Thomas DeGroot were working on a gigantic
movie, and Normand came up with this amazing system for actually using the
dialog to place the characters....   I'm sure there was a speech variation
component in there as well.

Check out this:

http://tinachepforum.forumup.co.uk/about220-tinachepforum.html

and the other "OUT" threads.  IIRC, it seemed complicated but extremely
powerful.
There ought to be YouTube links to video so you can see the results.

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On 26-11-2014 16:47, Bald Eagle wrote:
> Leroy <lrw### [at] joplincom> wrote:
>
>>    Any one heard of such a thing or do I have to make it?
>
> I recall that Normand (Dr. No) and Thomas DeGroot were working on a gigantic
> movie, and Normand came up with this amazing system for actually using the
> dialog to place the characters....   I'm sure there was a speech variation
> component in there as well.
>

[cough] I am merely an external adviser ;-)

Thomas

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Leroy wrote:
>  I been playing around with animating robots. You know getting them to 
> walk, talk and fall down. So the next step is to put them in a little 
> story. I'm no writer. But I did write up a little scene with two robots 
> talking and doing stuff.
>   I used a text to speech program (Zebspeech)to do the voices. But I 
> don't like having to record the whole text in each voice the editing 
> them together. And the voices where a little flat.(more editing)
>  The prefect program for me would be one that could read my script 
> dropping all the stage directions and speaking the appropriate voice, 
> with some emotional control over each voice.
>  Any one heard of such a thing or do I have to make it?
I found something. But it costs a little ($40).

www.screamingbee.com/product/ScriptVOXStudio.aspx

I'm playing with the demo. There are some problems.
The main one is that it only uses SAPI5 voices.I only have one(Sam).
But VOX lets you change the pitch & speed and other effects for several 
actors voices.
It doesn't have any real emotional control.
But, You can mute out any thing that you want.
I don't know. There is a lot more work than doing a music video.

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Bald Eagle wrote:
> Leroy <lrw### [at] joplincom> wrote:
> 
>>   Any one heard of such a thing or do I have to make it?
> 
> I recall that Normand (Dr. No) and Thomas DeGroot were working on a gigantic
> movie, and Normand came up with this amazing system for actually using the
> dialog to place the characters....   I'm sure there was a speech variation
> component in there as well.
> 
> Check out this:
> 
> http://tinachepforum.forumup.co.uk/about220-tinachepforum.html
> 
> and the other "OUT" threads.  IIRC, it seemed complicated but extremely
> powerful.
> There ought to be YouTube links to video so you can see the results.
> 
> 
Nice!

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On 3-12-2014 19:21, Leroy wrote:
> Bald Eagle wrote:
>> Leroy <lrw### [at] joplincom> wrote:
>>
>>>   Any one heard of such a thing or do I have to make it?
>>
>> I recall that Normand (Dr. No) and Thomas DeGroot were working on a
>> gigantic
>> movie, and Normand came up with this amazing system for actually using
>> the
>> dialog to place the characters....   I'm sure there was a speech
>> variation
>> component in there as well.
>>
>> Check out this:
>>
>> http://tinachepforum.forumup.co.uk/about220-tinachepforum.html
>>
>> and the other "OUT" threads.  IIRC, it seemed complicated but extremely
>> powerful.
>> There ought to be YouTube links to video so you can see the results.
>>
>>
> Nice!

One of the issues I think I remember discussing with Normand was that 
the amplitude of the body language movements was too large/exagerated to 
seem natural. You can see this effect also in some commercial 
animations. The Matt Hatter Chronicles is one I think. Otherwise, the 
technique seems to be very effective.

Thomas

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