Disney World FX

[screamsofnight]

I was watching the Travel Chanel this morning and it was about Disney World. They were showing the 'Finding Nemo' exhibit. When they went in, there was an effect, where the audience could talk to crush (the turtle) and he would talk back. It was done on a large screen and he could move and do what ever they asked. What is this effect called? This definitely exceeds the CGI effect, in my opinion.
Kyle

[icandrawem2]

This is a very cool technology in which it combines animated characters which can interact with the audience. For this particular attraction, there is a live actor which provides the voice for Crush. He can see the audience and the animation "engine" has many preset movements that the character is capable of doing, with the mouth of the character being synched to the audio of the actors voice. Its somewhat complex but when you break it down into its basic parts, not that hard to understand. Im sure that there is more than one person running this show, my guess would be one voiceover actor, and someone controlling the animation of the on-screen character(s), or then again maybe the actor does it all... For those of you that were at IAAPA last year, there was a company there selling a similar system, though the animation not as great as on 'turtle talk with crush'. There is a short article on wikipedia about this show here.

[screamsofnight]

Pixar

So I guess in order to get one done like this, then you would have to contact pixar... that would cost a pretty penny. Thanks for that info. Kyle

[Nicole]

Some home haunters set something like this up and have it available online for people to use but it's pretty basic... but the same idea. It wasn't as smooth/cool as the Pixar CGI of Crush... rather a skeleton head (pretty rough) that you control very basic face movements with keys on a laptop "actor" his hidden and only can see "audience" and is communicates via mic/speaker and just "puppeteers" the animation off the laptop.

I WISH I had bookmarked it. I tried googling different things and couldn't find it... but I know it's floating out there in webland somewhere...

[Infoamtek]

Here it is

http://www.imagineerieing.com/

[Nicole]

Yes! That's the one! Thanks!!!

[Nicole]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v68pbw5IgU

Here's an example of it in action...