Overview
The Character Customizer is a tool that allows for the quick setup of a single-character scene and a set of lines for the character to act out. It offers control over camera angles, backgrounds, voices and facial animation. The goal is to be able to render out movies of the character. Because of this special purpose we opted to create a separate tool. Depending on user feedback we may eventually fold in some of this functionality into VHBuilder.
Quick facts:
Location: /tools/CharacterCustomizer
Users
Set up
The Toolkit is a collection of various components, so there is some manual work required to set everything up for creating movies using the Character Customizer. In general you will need to have the following elements up and running:
- Unity (the renderer or game engine)
- Character Customizer tool
- Supporting VH modules
Instructions for setting up Unity:
- Run the Launcher by double clicking 'run-launcher.bat' in the root of your installation directly ('c:\vhtoolkit' by default)
- Click on the Advanced button in the lower right corner. This will expand the view to show all components.
- In the Renderer row, change some of the start-up parameters
- Set Fullscreen to 'false'
- Set Intro to the empty value
- Optionally, set the resolution to your preferred one
- Launch Unity by clicking on the button with the green up arrow icon. Unity may take a while to load and will initially take over the screen before going back to window mode.
- Once Unity comes up, select the window and hit C to bring up the debug menu (you may need to click away the Tips window, depending on your earlier start-up settings).
- Note that you can use the M key to toggle between having your mouse cursor and using the mouse button for speech interactions (indicated by the microphone icon in the lower right).
- In the debug menu, select 'Load Customizer'. This will load the scene specifically made for the Character Customizer.
Instructions for setting up the Character Customizer:
- In the Launcher, click on the button with the green up arrow in the Character Customizer row in the Tools section.
Instructions for setting up the supporting VH modules:
- In the Character Customizer window, go to the System menu and select Launch All.
Install a codec for movie recording
The Character Customizer uses a Unity movie plug-in which in turn uses the video codecs present on your machine. You can try out different ones by selecting them from the Codecs int the Options menu of the Character Customizer. MJPEG may be available and is pretty good. Alternatively, you can install other codecs. The Lagarith video codec is a free lossless codec with good performance. It does produce quite large files, which the Character Customizer automatically converts to a more manageable format. You can find this codec here http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html
Once you have the codec installed, you can select the codec from the Character Customizer by going to Options->Codec in the menu. Your movies will now be recorded using this codec. If a specified codec cannot be found, uncompressed video will be produced. (note that you can see a warning of this in the Unity console window when you select a non-existing codec; hit the ~ key in the Unity window to bring up the console).
For more detailed information on how to use the recording plugin for Unity, please refer to http://www.renderheads.com/portfolio/UnityAVProMovieCapture/docs/UnityAVProMovieCapture.pdf
Make changes globally to several or all lines in a project
Most settings are saved per utterance. You can select multiple utterances and change the setting for all selected ones at once. You can select multiple lines by:
- Holding the mouse button and drag up and down over the lines.
- Adding individual lines to your selection by holding the CTRL button and clicking lines with the mouse.
- Adding a range of lines by selecting the first line with the mouse button, then select the last line while holding the Shift key.
You can select all lines by clicking a single line and then use CTRL + A.
Add new lines and speech
You can add new lines by typing them into the text box on the utterance list and hitting enter.
For each line you can there are three ways of getting the character to speak the line:
- Use text-to-speech. This is the default and you don't need to do anything for this. You can however change the voice from the Voice pull down menu in the Settings tab, and clicking the Set button
- Record your own voice. Hold down the Record button while speaking the line. Make sure to
- Start speaking immediately after pushing the button
- Hold the button continuously while speaking
- Release immediately after done speaking
- Read the line accurately, since both the text and audio is used for creating a lip synching schedule
- Use a prerecorded audio wave files. The spoken text in this file needs to match the text depicted in the line exactly.
Record in-game audio and microphone audio at the same time
Currently this plugin only supports recording audio from a single Windows audio device. There is a “trick” you can use though. In Windows 7 (and perhaps Vista) you may be able to set your microphone to play through the speakers by going to: Control Panel > Sound > Recording > Select your microphone > right click >Properties > Listen > check "Listen to this device". You should then hear your microphone recording through your speakers. It’s recommended to use headphones during recording to prevent feedback from the speakers into the microphone.
In order for you to be able to see the 'Listen to this device' option, please make sure that you have installed the correct drivers for your soundcard.
Known Issues
- The GUI does not always accurately reflect all settings properly when setting a new character or loading a new project
FAQ
See Main FAQ for frequently asked questions regarding the installer. Please use the Google Groups emailing list for unlisted questions.