CompuServe Messages

Hi Philip, pesonally I would get Alias. I haven't used SoftImage, tho. Softimage still has better animation control, but I'd say Alias is the better all in all package. At Siggraph I saw several motion capture system. Also some for the face. They had small reflectors on the lips and a camera mounted to the head filming the face. They were even able to animate a cartoon face in realtime with that data. Dunno who sells these systems, they are out of my range anyway. Motion capture is one way. You could also film a talking face with a camera and use the single frames for rototscoping (or should I say "talkscoping"). Set up key frames for significant sounds and morph between them. Alias V6 has a special editor for lip sync character animation. It even has an automatic mode where Alias tries to match the key frames for the face with the sound by looking at the phonetics of the sound track. Alais V6 has a lot of tools especially for character animation.