"Can You Say That?...and then what?

[Kelley]

I did the "Can You Say That?" tutorial and rendered it out, [never mind that it still looks like it was dubbed from an old Godzilla movie] but I'm wondering what to do from here. How do I get one of my characters to say the right thing at the right point in the Choreography? Should I save it as an Action>Library and drop it onto the character at the right frame?

[KenH]

Yes, that's one way to do it. Probably the best.

[Rodney]

Robert,

Have you already set up your character with a phoneme set?

If you've set them up with the Preston Blair set as outlined in Exercise 7 then your characters should be ready to go.

 

The whole idea of the standard phoneme set is automation and reusability. That and making difficult often repeated tasks easier.

 

Once you've blocked in your basic lipsync you can go back in and personalize it to each character.

 

Edit: I should have said Exercise 12: Lipsync. That is where it details setting up the lip poses.

[Dhar]

I'm not sure if you need to save your action in the library unless you're going to reuse that exact same action in another project. I simply create the action and then drop it on my character in chor.

 

About phonemes; there is an inherent tendency for chatter, where the uninitiated animator will input each and every syllable in the dope sheet and the program will make the character pronounce every letter which will then give a very un-natural render of speech. It's best you see yourself in a mirror speaking the lines, you'll be amazed at how little we actually move our mouths during speech, and then use only the phonemes where a change in mouth shape is necessary.

[Kelley]

Dhar: I agree that in forming speech, a little tends to go a long way. A lot of the sounds are formed back in the mouth, and people slur over syllables in everyday speaking.

 

Rodney: How does Exercise 12 dovetail with Exercise 7? When I opened up the "+" sign by the words in the left-hand vertical column [of Exercise 7] I found bunches of phoneme values for every word. Was I supposed to choose the best of these...and will the phonemes I build in Exercise 12 override the Exercise 7 phonemes?

[robcat2075]

Current thinking in animation circles is getting away from the idea of numerous preset mouth poses and moving toward rigging the mouth so it can easily be manipulated into various shapes with just a few controllers.

 

The premise is that repeating the exact same shape for every "oo" or "ee" gets to look very mechanical.

 

Jason Osipa's "Stop Staring" is the seminal book on that approach and even includes some examples in A:M.

 

 

Either method has pluses and minuses.

[Rodney]

Rodney: How does Exercise 12 dovetail with Exercise 7? When I opened up the "+" sign by the words in the left-hand vertical column [of Exercise 7] I found bunches of phoneme values for every word. Was I supposed to choose the best of these...and will the phonemes I build in Exercise 12 override the Exercise 7 phonemes?

 

I'd probably have to see a comparison of the two before I could say for sure.

The dictionary.dic file is what tells A:M what phonemes to use for a given word.

Change either the word in the dictionary.dic file or the phoneme pose and you'll get a different result.

 

I guess I really should dig into all this lipsync business soon.

I see no reason why a dopesheet couldn't run a lipsync pass with the new squetch rig (with the FACE rig based on Jason Osipa's work) and help the animator get the basic pose in place. Fine tuning and character quirks added thereafter I think we'd have nice fluid animation.

 

Since I have nothing to show to prove how successful it can be I'll shut up now.

 

Was I supposed to choose the best of these

 

If I understand what you are looking at I would say no... there is nothing to choose from.

The phoneme breakdown is created from what is in the dictionary.dic file. The A:M Phoneme set is based on the Preston Blair lip poses and so the phoneme values should match those that Preston Blair is best know for.

[Kelley]

OK. Thanks for all the come-back. I'll press forward.