Cool Froyd Gets a CrazyTalk Animator 3, G3 Character Makeover

Cool Froyd was originally created and rigged in the first version of CrazyTalk Animator. Now that CrazyTalk Animator 3 has added its all new G3 line of characters it's time to update Cool Froyd to take advantage of this more flexible (literally), single angle, character rig.

Froyd was never designed to be an animated character. He's taken from a painting that I thought would be fun to animate. Which is largely what attracted me to CTA in the first place as, to this day, Reallusion still promotes CTA as a way to bring paintings to life.



As such, the way Froyd sits is how he sits in the original painting. Non of CTA3's new motion files or character rigs for quadrupeds are front facing and therefore not suited to him specifically.

However that's where CTA3's free bone characters fill in the gap. Anything that doesn't fit to a human, quadruped or spine template can still be animated with free bones.

To help understand the difference between G1 and G3 characters take a look at the sprite breakdowns on the right.

G1 characters are essentially puppets with each body part pinned together at the joints with a very simple bone system. G1 Froyd uses 15 sprites if you include all the head sprites.

In contrast, G3 Froyd uses only 7 sprites whilst still retaining the same range of movement using image warping. G1 characters do have some ability to distort and warp body parts to create a wider range of movement but not to the degree of G3's system.

If you compare bone systems (in yellow in the images below), G1 Froyd uses a severely distorted, front facing human template. He has an upper and lower torso with complete front arms (upper arm, lower arm, paw). His back leg sprites only move when the upper leg bone is moved.

Although it is possible to segment a G1 character's tail, Froyd's tail is all one sprite and therefore not flexible. Even if I did segment it, G1 character tails contain no bones, they're simply pinned to the character and have to be keyframed manually.

Froyd's G1 Bone Rig.

If you look at Froyd's G3 character rig (below) you can see he has many more bones that closely match his original, seated position. He has multiple bones in his tail allowing it to bend and move more naturally than the G1 version.

Additionally, G3 character bones are supported by sprite meshes that determine how the image will be warped and distorted when a bone is moved. The finer the mesh setting the smoother the warps usually look. G3 Froyd's body meshes are all at their most detailed settings.

Froyd's G3 Bone Rig with Meshes turned on.

G1 Froyd uses CTA's morph based head, which gives the characters face a semi three dimensional appearance. It's the fastest way to give a front facing character a really expressive, easy to animate face, in the least amount of time. CTA3 retained this feature. As I was very happy with how it worked I didn't see any need to change it for my updated Cool Froyd rig. Though I would be interested to try a version of Froyd with the new G3 Facial Morphing head which uses sprite swapping teamed with image distortion to create a greater range of facial expressions.

You can see both G1 and G3 Froyds animated in the short comparison video below. While both can handle the same range of positions and movement the G3 version looks just a little more natural with the body bending at the joints, rather than pivoting, more like you'd see on a real cat.