In this tutorial you will learn how to generate a speaking bitmoji or pixton avatar to use in your teaching or explainer videos.
Download the example pptx here
The first step is to insert an audio file, you can whether record it directly by clicking Insert, Audio, Record Audio... or insert a previously recorded audio file by Clicking Insert, Audio, Audio from my PC...
Next is to erase the existing mouth, select a freeform shape, draw a shape around the mouth, then select the fill color to be the one of the face using the eyedropper. Remove the outline by making it transparent.
Then group the two shapes together.
Now, insert a shape that will indicate to automate.video the position and size of the new speaking mouth. Insert a shape, for example an oval, and then edit the Alt Text. Enter %%MAGICMOUTH% in the alt text field. If you want a mouth with lipstick, add %%FEMALE% to the alt text (for example %%MAGICMOUTH% %%FEMALE%) !!There's a space between %%MAGICMOUTH% and %%FEMALE%!!
Caution: Do not group that new shape with the previous one.
You can make sure that the avatar and mouth appear at the same time by going on the animations tab, click on the avatar, pick the appear animation, and choose Start: "With Previous". Do the same with the oval shape you inserted.
That's it, now log on to https://www.automate.video and upload your PowerPoint file and you'll get a speaking avatar in your video.
If you want to synthesize speech for your avatar, you don't need to attach an audio file, follow the same procedure as above, except that in the Alt text field, add the text you want to synthesize after the gender keyword, for example:
%%MAGIMOUTH% %%MALE% This text will be synthesize using a male voice
or
%%MAGICMOUTH% %%FEMALE% This text will be synthesize using a female voice
(don't forget the spaces)
Advanced feature
To change the voice of the avatar, you can use the advanced SSML feature, you will also be able to change the rate of the speech. Please refer to https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/ssml
to learn more about SSML.
For example to use an australian female voice, use the syntax
%%MAGICMOUTH% %%FEMALE% <speak><voice name="en-AU-Wavenet-C">Hello here I talk</voice></speak>
For the voice code to use in the name field ("en-AU-Wavenet-C" in the example above), refer to this tutorial https://www.automate.video/blog/how-to-change-the-voice-of-the-automatic-speech-feature
Can't wait to see the exciting videos you will create with this feature!