New Digital Diva - SELENA

Info-Chan

SELENA Developer
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It looks like there's a GUI but it also seems to be a third-party add on?? So, we'll have to download Festival, Flinger and this GUI in order to use Selena? Because if so, that's a bit cumbersome compared to what we're used to imo ;; Is this even true? Like correct me if I'm wrong.

Do you have Festival on your computer now? Is there anyway you could just show us what it looks like and such with some screenshots? I'm not 100% sure about what Google is telling/showing me and I honestly am not one to download a program just to see what it looks like xD
No that is not entirely true. Festival has a GUI made for it. I have it on my laptop. I'll post a screenshot in a minute. I'll try to explain what you saw though. Festival and Flinger are source files, but there are GUIs made for them. They are not separate though, most made are combined with the source files and you download Festival/Flinger + the GUI at the same time. It's not three downloads.
 

수연 <Suyeon>

Your friendly neighborhood koreaboo trash
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I've asked questions of those more familiar with Festival and this is a summation of their usage and knowledge...

- Festival only supports text input via a command prompt/terminal. This differs from a Graphical User Interface in that you cannot use visual elements to control the software.
- Festival uses a custom syntax to input commands for the software, this is very strict and mistakes cause no output, similar in how configuration of UTAU can make a sound fail if not written exactly as it's aliased
- Festival was not intended for the use of singing synthesis. The built in singing mode for Festival is very preliminary and low quality - it's more of a proof of concept alpha than an actual finished product. Think of other synths that never saw further development pass the initial stages of release such as Vocalina.
- Festival has no support for pitchbends and intonation outside of raw phonetic input (Festival does recognize words but this is primarily for speech)
- Festival uses HMM, which is what other synths (such as Sinsy and CeVIO) use, but is implemented in a way to produce speech. Festival is designed to be very flat, neutral, and expressionless. Festival is also very limited to General American dialects and responds poorly to accent, causing phonetic miss-matching.
 
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Info-Chan

SELENA Developer
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Woops wrong thing, sorry! Also, Flinger is the one where you can draw pitches and make it fully sing. Festival is the talking part. I swear I put that a few pages back, in fact, I know I did.
 
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Terindie

日本語 Patrol - Active Duty
Defender of Defoko
How large is it overall, storage-wise? Because, well... it's a little mysterious as to what advantage Festival/Flinger has over its competitors. Vocaloid, Cevio, UTAU, etc. all have plugins and peripheral software to achieve the same goal of speech if deemed necessary and all of these options have a higher standard of quality overall in terms of clarity, fluidity, and vocal variety. The program appears to be on the same experimental level as NiaoNiao or Namewave (shoddy rendering, awkward interface, configuration/programming of the voice isn't sophisticated to allow for higher quality rendering) but your team aims to profit off of it.

This last piece is especially concerning, considering the beta stage of Festival. VOCALOID had the advantage of being the first publically available voice synthesizer intended for music production. UTAU has the advantage of being the first free alternative to reach maturity as a software and see long term use, despite a lull in development. This one comes late into the race, and there's not a whole lot of acceptance for dampened quality... especially if it must be paid for. Chip Speech is an exception being based on older technology, but Festival doesn't have that sales blurb to excuse the lack of quality in comparison to their speech and vocal brethren.
 
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Info-Chan

SELENA Developer
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How large is it overall, storage-wise? Because, well... it's a little mysterious as to what advantage Festival/Flinger has over its competitors unless it is really, really small overall. Vocaloid, Cevio, UTAU, etc all have plugins and peripheral software to achieve the same goal of speech if deemed necessary and all of these options have a higher standard of quality overall in terms of clarity, fluidity, and vocal variety. The program appears to be on the same experimental level as NiaoNiao or Namewave (shoddy rendering, awkward interface, configuration/programming of the voice isn't sophisticated to allow for higher quality rendering) but your team aims to profit off of it.

This last piece is especially concerning, considering the beta stage of Festival. VOCALOID had the advantage of being the first publically available voice synthesizer intended for music production. UTAU has the advantage of being the first free alternative to reach maturity as a software and see long term use, despite a lull in development. this one comes late into the race, and there's not a whole lot of acceptance for dampened quality... especially if it must be paid for.
Festival and Flinger do not take up a lot of storage space and they are also free. SELENA is the only thing being sold here. We posted samples of the engine on SELENA's page as well. Flinger is able to draw pitchbends, make notes, use MIDI input, and everything needed to make songs. Festival has everything needed to make speech. (SELENA isn't even going to be over $15.) EDIT: And for people who want a screenshot of Festival, speech, here http://orig00.deviantart.net/39d2/f/2015/267/a/7/new_bitmap_image__4__by_infodinehatter-d9asjjs.jpg
 
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Xepheris

Ritsu's Renegades
Defender of Defoko
You guys are probably not going to be able to convince them to use UTAU instead of Festival/Flinger and they probably have reasons why they don't want to (maybe they don't even like the UTAU engine or how it sounds, who knows).
 
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samth1815

Ritsu's Renegades
Defender of Defoko

I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but that isn't a GUI, at least not in the sense people were talking about.

Most people don't know how to properly run things that operate solely in Command Prompt, such as Festival. I'm sorry, I'm really just not seeing the appeal to using this engine compared to the workload it will take to get people using it correctly.
 
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Info-Chan

SELENA Developer
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I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but that isn't a GUI, at least not in the sense people were talking about.

Most people don't know how to properly run things that operate solely in Command Prompt, such as Festival. I'm sorry, I'm really just not seeing the appeal to using this engine compared to the workload it will take to get people using it correctly.
All you do is open the .exe and type in (SayText "Example"). It's not difficult at all. Everyone I've taught this to has gotten it in 2 minutes flat. Reminder that this is Festival NOT Flinger.
 
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bodytemp

Guest
anyone looking for things on flinger: http://www.cslu.ogi.edu/tts/flinger/fldoc.html
Honestly I would look into other synthesis methods. Both require people to know how to use command prompt, which most people who aren't computer savvy/know programming will not be stuffed to learn. Having most synth engines, I personally would prefer something that streamlines with the rest of the GUI's that I have. Also not having MAC support cuts out a good chunk of the community. Not everyone has a windows PC or the know how to BOOTCAMP one.
I would look at providing screenshots of a GUI rather then a command prompt screen too.
 

Info-Chan

SELENA Developer
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anyone looking for things on flinger: http://www.cslu.ogi.edu/tts/flinger/fldoc.html
Honestly I would look into other synthesis methods. Both require people to know how to use command prompt, which most people who aren't computer savvy/know programming will not be stuffed to learn. Having most synth engines, I personally would prefer something that streamlines with the rest of the GUI's that I have. Also not having MAC support cuts out a good chunk of the community. Not everyone has a windows PC or the know how to BOOTCAMP one.
I would look at providing screenshots of a GUI rather then a command prompt screen too.
The Flinger source file can be put with ANY GUI if it is customized to do so. We are working on a GUI for Flinger. We are not however making one for Festival, it is easy to enough to navigate and tutorials will be made for the engine. I'm going to restate that the early screenshot was NOT FLINGER. I used bold and underline along with caps to make sure that people do not misunderstand the image. We are not going to change our decision and that's final, we are sorry if you do not like it. EDIT: Also there has been some new news~
https://twitter.com/TheCreepyPie/status/649046816126799872
https://twitter.com/TheCreepyPie/status/649046858996797440
https://twitter.com/TheCreepyPie/status/649047479900614657
https://twitter.com/TheCreepyPie/status/649047776748269568
 
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Info-Chan

SELENA Developer
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There was an issue with our domain, but that's fixed and SELENA's contest is now over! The winner is Katerinu~ On our site you can now see SELENA's full art as well.
 
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melobuniiP

Queen of Bunnies, Thou shalt not forget.
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Defender of Defoko
I already said this in my twitter account but doesn't Selena have a similar outfit scheme to ALYS?
CQK_s-DWIAEcbgv.png:large

Also, the blue/purple + orange colour palette is really weird, at least in my opinion of course, those colours are opposites and don't get along pretty well in that artwork.

The voice selected is perfect, I'm not gonna deny that, she'll sound really good in that engine.
All I'd change is the artwork to be more "appealing", of course, these are suggestions and opinions so it might be just me.
How do you mean appealing? ;o; /shotintheheart</3
Alys owns
Side bangs, arm warmers, anklet, transparent skirt, side ponytails.
brb let me change my UTAUs new design
//no. :T
Cyber designs are very very limited due to 50% of characters in vocaloid world having cyber/nightcore designs. ;o;
 

★StarsNeverStop★

Princess Of The Stars
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Defender of Defoko
I already said this in my twitter account but doesn't Selena have a similar outfit scheme to ALYS?
CQK_s-DWIAEcbgv.png:large
Also, the blue/purple + orange colour palette is really weird, at least in my opinion of course, those colours are opposites and don't get along pretty well in that artwork.

The voice selected is perfect, I'm not gonna deny that, she'll sound really good in that engine.
All I'd change is the artwork to be more "appealing", of course, these are suggestions and opinions so it might be just me.
Well we really are becoming extreamly limited in cybertronic designs in my opinion. It'a hard to NOT make characters look like others now a days...
Honestly i myself am over cybertronic style but the character is Alien.
As for the colors, maybe purple and yellow may be a bit less extream but hey, not our character right? I say let's let them see to it themselves ^^
 
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orahi_shiro

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
How do you mean appealing? ;o; [...] Cyber designs are very very limited due to 50% of characters in vocaloid world having cyber/nightcore designs. ;o;
Apealing as in trying to use adjacent colours/colours that do not clash between each other (for example, this website helps in choosing nice palettes)

EDIT: But being very very limited doesn't mean that you can accidentally grab some stuff from another character.

Well we really are becoming extreamly limited in cybertronic designs in my opinion. It'a hard to to make characters look like others now a days
Yep, but they could have done it a bit not as similar to Alys as in this design orz
 

★StarsNeverStop★

Princess Of The Stars
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Defender of Defoko
Apealing as in trying to use adjacent colours/colours that do not clash between each other (for example, this website helps in choosing nice palettes)


Yep, but they could have done it a bit not as similar to Alys as in this design orz
I seriously just said that they are so limited....... she also has similarities to Miku Append, you going to say Alys is a rip off of Miku Append?
Please just don't insult the design. If you'd like to be a design consultant PM Pepper about it.
 

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