[Justin Barrett's "Animate a Face" available again]

This year is already full of surprises, the first one being pointed out by Robert: my account is still active! And on top of that, I somehow remembered the password!

Thanks to Robert for being willing to start this thread on my behalf. I hope that Animate a Face will still prove useful to the community!

[forum spam reports?]

I just got a similar PM from the same user.

[Autostitch]

I've been getting into photography pretty heavily these days, and ran across mention of a little FREE app called Autostitch. The killer thing is that it has some definite potential applications for 3D work as well. Here's the super-short summary:

 

Autostitch will take any number of source images and automatically blend them together into a single seamless panorama image.

 

Want super-easy reflection maps? Just render a bunch of overlapping shots from the same camera position, throw them into Autostitch, and BOOM! The same thing can give you an easy way to take your 3D scene and create panorama images for use with QuicktimeVR. Even if it's not a full 360-degree image you're after, Autostitch will still do a great job. As a test, I took three 4-megapixel photos and ran them through it. Less than a minute later, I had the stitched result. Sure, it could look better if I had taken more photos, but what I did get was still pretty sweet.

 

Until the creators sell off the technology to someone else for inclusion in a larger program, they're making Autostitch available for FREE! The only down-side is that it's Windows-only for now.

 

Anyway, I hope this is useful. Cheers!

[Animate a Face]

Just a quick heads-up to those who were thinking about attending the animation demo I'm doing (mentioned in this thread). In addition to the "Animate a Face" CD set that will be given away as a door prize, I'll also have a small quantity with me to sell at a special meeting-only discount! The only way you can get this discount is to come to Saturday's meeting and buy the discs directly from me.

 

Thanks to the fine folks at Anzovin Studio for making these available for the event!

[The Making of the Leopard Queen]

Great work, Jim! One of the great things about this (mentioned earlier) is that it captures a story. Even if you'd only done a single character on a much simpler background, though, I'm sure that some impression of story would still be there. That's one of the great things about your work. When you present a character, you're not just presenting a sculpted, textured, and lit 3D creation. You always find some way to convey a sense of character and personality, and it makes your work stand out from the crowd.

 

There are a few things that could still be punched up on this, but I realize this isn't the place for crits, so I'll refrain.

 

Keep up the great work, sir!

[Paint Can]

Dang...nice can! And I don't say that to just any guy...

 

Seriously, very well done. Great job on all fronts.

[Bluejean baby...]

Lookin' good, JT! Always an inspiration. One of these days I gotta take a crack at modeling...

[Animating Insect Man]

Hmmm...I'd done some tweaks on the rig from what the Eggington crew had originally made, but I never tested it post-tweak. I'll dig into it and see what I can do about fixing it...

[sound editing software]

Just to throw another option into the mix:

 

Goldwave

 

I've been using Goldwave for years. It's shareware, but well worth the price. Also check out the link on the Goldwave site to its sister app, Multiquence, which is a multi-track audio/video mixer, also shareware. Granted, it's not nearly as full-featured as something like Premiere, but it's great for the price.

[Aw, heck with it...]

Animation could used more polish...

Any specific places in particular?

The shampoo bottle works pretty well overall, partly 'cause he's so limited. Very nice work on lip sync for that character, although I'm not sure the "teeth" (when that extra shape pops into place for some nearly-closed-mouth shapes) works that well. Because it flashes on and off, it doesn't really feel like teeth coming together. The way he's constructed, I'd almost say it would be better to drop that element entirely. I think it might work just fine for the style to ignore his teeth completely. That's how the VeggieTales characters operate, pretty much. The teeth only appear when they need to do a toothy-grin, not during regular speech.

 

Most of the cleanup is needed for the soap and sponge. I don't have time to dig in super deeply into specific segments, but I'll try to point out some global issues quickly...

• There are many places where acting choices could be better. One that jumps to mind is the "I can't believe my eyes" line from the soap bar. He's referring to seeing the shampoo bottle, but it feels a bit awkward 'cause he's not even looking toward the shampoo during that line.
  
• Some moves feel unmotivated. During that same line from the soap, some of his body motions put him in awkward poses. It almost feels like he's moving just to move at some points. Pick your poses carefully, making sure that they're motivated by what's going on. You can insert bits of "business" where appropriate, but even business should fit within the larger structure of appropriate, clear poses.
  
• Lip sync for both the soap and sponge is pretty good, but feels slow at times. Could be a bit snappier. And as with the shampoo, the flashing teeth don't really work that well. Because these two are more realistic in their facial design, they definitely call for more more realistic handling of their teeth. But the more I think about it, I think you could also get away with nixxing the teeth entirely. It could go either way. But the flashing doesn't really fit. Too jarring, distracting.
  
• Body movements could use a hair more snap in some places. Stronger holds.
  

That's what jumps out at me right now, looking back through the first little bit and going from memory on the rest. One spot that works really well is the "hand" gag w/ the soap. Even though it's really obvious that the gag is coming up once the shampoo's line has been sung, the way you stage it makes it work well. You did a nice job conveying a sense that the soap character believed he actually had hands at first.

 

Cool stuff! Just take a bit more time to spit and polish it. Not too much spit, though, or the soap will just turn into a pile of goo.

[Aw, heck with it...]

Wow.....now THAT would've been a nearly instant win, methinks. Animation could used more polish, but the creativity and storytelling still make it a lot of fun to watch.

 

Now, where's my hat.....oh yeah. It's already off. Kudos!

[Being Mattressy]

Hehe....very fun piece, Stuart.

[Short animation]

I've tried getting to the "theatre" page several times, but keep running into "bandwidth exceeded" messages. I'll keep trying...

[Darth Vader WIP]

Whoa...tough to read such a dark character against such a dark background. Start by cranking up your lights, and consider a lighter background as well.

[Candle]

Very nice work, Anders.

[My very cool 10 patch Dragon...]

Very fun! After staring at it and scrubbing through the clip enough, the illusion was finally broken for good. But now that I've been away from it for a bit, it would probably come back without much trouble.

 

Colin, you should submit your video to the site you posted. The creator has a live video clip of the thing, but it might be cool to show how it works just as well in a 3D app.

[new lipsync test]

I'm glad you like the tute, Michel.

 

Re: your clip, the lip sync feels way too soft and subtle overall. There's a lot of variety in the sound of the voice, but very little in your character's mouth shape creation. It shouldn't be super-duper snappy, but it definitely does need to be punched up a notch. It's a pretty good start, though!

[First Words]

Okay, I've watched the updated version over and over and I'm still not sure which one looks better.  I completely understand what Justin is saying about the jaw, but my character doesn't really have a jaw.  He doesn't even have a chin.

 

Any suggestions?

While he doesn't have something that resembles a human jaw/chin, he still has to have something inside his body that controls the way his mouth opens and closes. Even though he's a highly stylized alien creature, you've chosen to give him a fairly human design in many respects, so it pays to follow human motion patterns when designing his animation controls.

 

The mouth should work like the hinge on a door. One part of the hinge stays locked in place to the door frame and doesn't move. In the mouth, this is similar to the way the upper teeth are attached to the skull. They don't slide up and down as we speak. The lower teeth are attached to the jaw bone, and as the jaw opens, they go along for the ride.

 

The lips are essentially on a separate "layer" of movement, but they are affected by the movement of the jaw bone to some degree. When the mouth opens, the lower lip will generally go along with the jaw bone, but it can also move independently. The upper lip also has independent movement. However, in your rig, it appears that the upper lip is automatically going up every time the character opens his mouth, which isn't always the way our lips move when we speak. So in addition to locking the upper teeth in place, you could get even better results by creating a separate control for moving the upper lip up and down. To carry this further, instead of having the "pivot" of the pseudo-jaw movement happening from the corners of the mouth, shift it so that it happens from around the top of the upper lip. That way when the "jaw" opens, the mouth corners will actually move down, causing the mouth to stretch open in a similar fashion to the way our mouths stretch.

 

That's all just a long way of saying that looking at the way the mouth operates in reality will help you create a better feeling in your character's mouth operation. It pays to observe.

[First Words]

Not bad for a first attempt! Here are some things to address for future stuff...

• One core issue you may want to address w/ the rig is the way his mouth opens. It feels too much like a puppet, with the "jaw" opening up and down nearly equally. Even though he's an alien-ish creature, it will read better if his jaw performs in a more human fashion, which is to have the jaw bone (lower hinge) handle all the raw open/close movements, with the lower teeth and lip moving along for the ride. The upper teeth won't move, as they're attached to the skull. Admittedly changing the rig to this system will take a bit of additional time, but the end result will have a better feeling to it.
  
• Most of the closed-lip shapes don't close quite enough. The level of closure at the end of "job" is the best one. The rest don't really read as fully pressing the lips together 'cause the teeth are ever-so-slightly visible.
  
• The jaw doesn't close quite far enough for sounds like the "j" in "job". The teeth should be practically touching, while currently they are still a good distance apart. Try making that sound yourself with your jaw open similarly, and you'll find you don't get nearly the same sound.
  
• Work a little more on getting more overlap between the wide/narrow and open/close movements in the mouth. This will create some nice arcs in the corners of the mouth, whereas now a lot of the transitions feel fairly linear.
  

Again, it looks pretty slick for a first try at lip sync...better than some other firsts I've seen. Keep it up!

[my recent work]

Looks fun! Can't wait to see this guy in motion!

["Toribio" The Super Bull]

Looks fun! Curious to see more...

[Dear Marvin or Steve]

To echo what others have said, certificates really don't pull much weight in the animation business. They do more to inflate egos than to impress potential employers/clients. Indicating a person's level of understanding of program operation is one thing, and to some extent a certificate can show this. A person's ability to use that knowledge effectively is an entirely different thing that a certificate really can't convey. Also keep in mind that just because a person knows the ins and outs of a program doesn't mean that what they do with it is any good. It's like knowing how to use a stove, but not having a clue how to use it to cook anything that actually tastes good.

 

If you're talented, your work will show that talent to people that better than any certificate can. There are plenty of folks out there who have no formal training, but produce killer work. Certificates mean nothing to them, nor to the people who've hired them. When it comes to animation in any program, it's best to forget about certificates and just get down to work.

[Lipsync's not In sync]

For those on PCs, the TMPGEnc utility allows you to shift the audio timing in relation to the video. I've done this several times, and it works like a charm. The only problem is that it doesn't allow you to preview the timing before spitting out the finished product. So you have to tweak settings, output an MPG/AVI, check it, tweak some more if it's not right, output, check, etc. Personally, I don't mind, but some may find this troublesome.

 

Anyway, just throwing out an alternative. TMPGEnc is also a spiffy tool for other stuff besides audio shifting, too.

[Animation Anzovin]

Michel,

 

Quick tip: don't put spaces in file/folder names on a web site. It often leads to funky links.

[LIP SYNC]

So the tongue allows the mouth to skip shapes and our minds eye accepts that.

This is a good point, although I think it's more accurate to say that the tongue allows the mouth to form different shapes. I believe that no shapes are ever skipped. Whatever shape is created by the mouth for a given sound is very specific to that sound.

 

This also ties in with my belief that the mouth isn't lazy, as some have said. (Please bear with me, because I'm not saying these people are wrong. The thought behind the "lazy mouth" statement is a valid one, but it doesn't accurately describe what's going on, and in doing so, it could affect how one approaches lip sync). The mouth isn't a separate entity from the rest of the body that chooses to be lazy or detailed on its own accord. It's similar to a computer, in that it only does what we tell it to do. If we tell our brain to send signals to the mouth to articulate every sound to the hilt, the mouth will happily oblige. If we choose to speak in a more relaxed manner, it'll oblige just as happily. In each case, the mouth very accurately creates shapes that are appropriate for the speaking style that we choose. The mouth, by itself, isn't lazy. To more accurately describe it, we are often lazy in controlling our mouths. With that in mind, let's look at a quick example...

 

Say that I'm speaking the "allows the mouth to form" portion of the line that Mike typed. Look at the word "to" in that line. If I'm saying that word by itself, I will generally be pretty specific and enunciate all the appropriate sounds, especially the ending "oo" sound. Consequently, my mouth will go through a specific combination of shapes appropriate for speaking the word "to" with the high level of enunciation I've chosen. However, if I'm saying the entire phrase, several changes will take place with regard to that word...

• The word will come out sounding more like "tah" because I'm choosing to relax my enunciation, which will require a different set of shapes.
  
• The word will be stressed a lot less than if I'm saying it alone because of its context in the overall phrase, so those different shapes will be much more relaxed and take less time to create than if I was even saying "tah" by itself.
  
• The sounds from the end of "mouth" and the beginning of "form" will affect those shapes even further, again due to the relaxed enunciation of the overall phrase.
  

The end result is that I'm still saying the word "to," but because of the context of the word within the phrase and my choice to relax my enunciation, the mouth forms a completely different set of shapes than if I'd spoken the word by itself. I didn't skip any shapes, like a pursed "oo" shape for the end of "to." I simply chose different shapes that were appropriate for the way I wanted to speak the word in the context of that phrase. Again, my mouth isn't lazy. I'm simply choosing to speak in a lazy fashion, and my mouth is very accurately creating shapes to form sounds that represent that laziness.

 

That's the type of understanding that I try to bring to the lip sync process when animating, and why I said in an earlier post that I don't skip shapes. I don't skip them because my mouth doesn't skip anything. It does exactly what I tell it to do, whether I'm choosing to be lazy or choosing to be very precise and articulate. By understanding just what I'm telling it to do, how the shapes are created as a result of that choice, and how the resulting sounds are affected by those chosen shapes, I can more accurately reverse-engineer the process during lip sync, creating a much more believeable performance of speech.

 

Keith Lango has often said something at work that applies to this discussion: it takes the same amount of time to create a good pose as it does to create a poor pose. While he is most often referring to body poses when making this statement, I believe the same goes for the mouth. It takes the same amount of time to create accurate, believeable shapes as it does to create inaccurate, not-so-believeable shapes. By clearly understanding what we are telling the mouth to do during speech, we can learn to create lip sync that is accurate and believeable, and it won't take a ton of time.