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Mouth setups


adamP

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I just finished concept designs on a new character and will start modeling the head soon. I'm just confused about which type of setup to use for the face/mouth. I've already setup a character with phonemes, I've read through Victor's thread about his facial setup for his Big Bang animation, and I've checked out Jason Osipa's book. All three of these setups seem like they work very well and are easy to use. But how do I decide which setup is best? Is there a best? Or is there only personal preference?

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Hi:

 

I tried to look at the mouth setup link but wasn't able to get through to it..

 

But if the big bang character was the sphere head with little spikettes I understand what you are talking about.

 

For mouth riggign it is mostly a balance of what works and personal preference (that is how easy it is to animate).

 

For the spheroid heads with huge mouths opening ear to ear the setup with lots and lots of bones to even a mouth-open would be nessasary

 

For other characters like huminoids, small mouth openings you can use other methods. One of my prefered styles for the small mouth opening characters are all poses (with the exception of a jaw bone). IE a smile left/right, a lips curl in/out, etc... .. THEN from there you should have a bunch of fine tune poses to control spline-base by spline-base.. That is so if you like the lip pose but wish to move the bottom left and right side of the mouth further apart you can use the pose to drive the bottom left pose out and the bottom right pose out for the lips.

 

The other type of mouth you could use is the simple 'veggie tale' type mouth.

 

One excellent video I would highly reccomend, is the URL=http://www.rafhashvideotapes.com/amanfacd.html]Animate a Face CD[/url] by Justin Barrett. If I were building a resource library, or even putting together a training class of resources I would definitly have this CD to the collection.

 

This cd doesn't really cover setting up a mouth rig but from examining how he uses the rig, and examining the sample models you can pretty much figure it out.

After this CD training, I learned a whole new way to lipsync and mouth setups. The style of teaching also gave me a heads start to how to animate. Not all the little psychoid things humanoids do (IE shifting eyes from one thing we look at to the other we naturally blink in the middle.. when we turn the head, it isn't straight across but has a down-up arch to the head turn.. etc) but a great how do you start moving a dead character (one that is just dropped on the choreo).

 

Anyways, Good luck to you.. If you have a wip pic it may be easier to offer pointers on teh type of setup you'd be lookin for.

 

-Larry B

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The answer likely depends on how much contour and detail your character's face has. After spending countless hours adapting both Victor's and Osipa's types of rigs to my head models, I find osipa's rig works best and is the easiest to set up. For the more cartoony models with a bit less detail, you will likely be better off with Victor's style of rigging. He said he had better control with that style of rig on his model.

 

Another thought... if you go with Osipa's rig you can easily remodel your head into other head models and the facial poses with still work with only very minor tweaking (if any). I don't think you could do this as easily with the Navone-style rig.

 

I'm interested to hear what other's opinions are as well.

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I've watched Jason Osipa's video samples of the setup described in the book, and to be honest I was pretty amazed. So I have two simple questions...

 

Can the ideas in the book be applied to AM?

 

Is the book worth it? (I know this has been asked a lot)

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I haven't read Jason Osipa's book, so I don't know what his method is.

I personally have been using a nested slider approach. That is, I build all the basic muscle functionality into sliders- smile/frown, open/close, wide/purse, plus lots of little tweaks like lip curl. Then I build phonemes and expressions with sliders that do nothing but push the muscle sliders.

I find this method powerful because it keeps facial animation consistent and it avoids shape targets that contain unwanted repetition that can lead to overshoot.

The trick is to build muscle poses that work only one set of muscles. For instance you want to isolate the up and down movement of the corner of the mouth in a separate pose from the in and out movement, and you want to isolate both from the open close movement.

 

2c

 

Ben

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I would like to know --why is it "easier" or "better" to use a mouth rig then phoneme poses for lip sync? I've never really had any problem with phonemes. Are there any set guidlines to decide what to use to get your character to lip sync?

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why is it "easier" or "better" to use a mouth rig then phoneme poses for lip sync? I've never really had any problem with phonemes. Are there any set guidlines to decide what to use to get your character to lip sync?

Easier and better in this case are a matter of personal preference. For me the issue is allowing the most expressive acting with the least interference from the mechanics of dialogue. These days I'm doing that with muscle animation and relationships.

 

As far as phoneme poses go, the beauty of AM is that you can use phoneme poses regardless of whether the underlying movement is genrated from bones, muscles, or what have you. In terms of bone versus muscles- again this is your preference depending on what you need. And again A:M offers you the powerful option of mixing bone and muscle movement within a pose.

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I would like to know --why is it "easier" or "better" to use a mouth rig then phoneme poses for lip sync? I've never really had any problem with phonemes. Are there any set guidlines to decide what to use to get your character to lip sync?

Well.. To answer this a little better, I'd have to say the following:

 

Lip poses ( the preston blair set) has the basic sets.. these are GREAT for 2D animating. It gives you a better idea on how the shapes are made. With the 2d medium it is all penciled in so the mouth shapes are never really exact. With 3D the poses are computer made which are really exact. kind of makes the mouth look phoney as the character speaks.

 

To make the character look more organic/natural you need more control and the ability to add thousands of ways of making the mouth poses. Instead of the pre-made Poses and the help of the dope sheet you can make basic mouth shapes that can be tweaked to make mouth shapes for sounds and use the poses to shape the mouth to the sound (look in a mirror and see what shapes your mouth can make and the variations and use that as a refference to make the characters mouth).

 

Something else to consider: Many words can be broken down to basic phonetic shapes, but many of the words can be spoken with different moods and emotiond. Even different ways like some accents.

 

Setting up the character to pronounce words with a sounds (using a mirror to mimick) helps make more natural talking of your characters lips. It adds the variation needed and gives you the flexability to create more natural lipsynch.

 

I strongly recomend the Animating a Face CD (anzovin store). It is one of my favoirates and even teaches how to add emotion to the characters face as well as the poses and how they can drive the mouith shapes neded for sounds.

 

Anyways hope this answers your Question

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Thanks guys,

That helps a lot... I just thought maybe there was some new better way to create face poses... so I guess I'm just going to stick with my favorate way... phoneme poses.

 

I made a chart recently of my characters phonemes/ facial expressions... the phonemes are all at 50%, because the 100% look is really exagerated. The facial poses are at -100% to +100% for most of them.

I noticed how much some of the phonemes resemble each other, but when you have a human character you need that slight difference even though you could just use a few phonemes as primary poses and mix and match those to make the others, but I think that would require a lot more tweeking.

 

Phoneme-Expression-Chart2. jpg

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Jason Osipa is quite familiar with Animation:Master.

Several of the images in his book are from A:M and there are at least two of his character tests on A:M Films. The characters may look familiar from the book. I believe these are the ones: Jason Osipa Character Tests on A:M Films

 

One thing that I didn't really see mentioned in this discussion (I may have just missed it) is that the rigs are just a means to get the desired phonem poses.

 

Even though there may be various rigs out there it all boils down to much the same at the end; a means to articulate the mouth in sync with sound.

 

Rigs are generally created to offer more control over animation and lipsync.

 

There have been several A:M Users that have really pushed the envelop of lipsync control: Jason Osipa, Kieth Lango, Justin Barret, Victor Navone to name a few.

 

The one thing they seem to agree on is that they don't want to use the dopesheet as they feel it takes away control. It should be noted though that the dopesheet is really a rig (of sorts) all of it's own and can serve a purpose for those that use it.

 

This is a facinating area of study and there is much history behind it.

Best of luck on your search for answers.

 

-Rodney

 

-------------------------------------------------

Additional Info for those interested

-------------------------------------------------

Keith Lango's site seems to be in mid upgrade but has some great resources: www.kiethlango.com

 

Gary C. Martin - Preston Blair Phonems and Lipsyncing

 

Lipsyncing - Making Characters Speak by Michael B. Comet Not much A:M but the principles apply

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I recently obtained Jason Osipa's book ("Stop Staring..."). This is one fantastic resource for learning how to lip sync and animate the face in general. Very clearly written. Osipa has a real knack for getting at the essentials, putting things in perspective and relative priority. This is one of the "must haves" for your animation resource library!

 

One of the arguments against a "phoneme" based "automated" lip sync tool is that such systems do not account for the variation of corresponding shapes depending on the shapes that proceed and follow (especially if you are animating something like the joke about the Wide Mouth Frog). With the right kind of approach, I would think most animators would prefer more direct creative control. I'm just now getting into lip sync, and so far I think its one of the more rewarding aspects of animation. It's fun!

 

Bill Gaylord

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