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Friday, January 12, 2007

Tips & Techniques: How To Make a Talking Tree

I'm off to NYC till Tuesday, so I won't be posting for the next few days. But before I leave, I want to share this neat method with you. A while back, a user made a talking tree in iClone. I thought it was a really creative idea. I elaborated a bit on the method, in regards to making the texture for the face, match the rest of the tree. So with the Doctor's blessings, I made the one above. The way it's done is pretty simple. Import a tree prop into iClone first. Go to TOOLS, IMAGE, then snap a close up photo of the tree and save it. Now go into PHOTOSHOP and grab the bark texture off the tree image that you saved, and make a new .jpg entirely of the bark texture. Save it. Now re-open iClone. Make a character, and LOAD the full bark .jpg to make the characters face. Now you have a character with bark texture on his face. Now here's the fun part. Go to TOOLS, CHARACTER, MODIFY and pull the HEAD SIZE slider all the way up, to make his head as large as it goes. Save the character. Import the newly saved character and make the head even bigger, as far as the slider will allow. Keep doing this process repeatedly till the head is so big, you can no longer see the body. Once it's all head, shrink the head down by bringing the BODY SIZE slider all the way down (You'll have to save and repeat like before). Now bring in your tree again. Position the face/head/character, where you want him in the tree. Presto! .... A fully functional talking tree character. Try it, with other objects too, and have fun. I'll see you next week with tons of more FREE iClone stuff. For all of you in the USA, have a great Holiday weekend!

Till Next Time, .... "Keep Cloning" ........ Pauly