Lip sync help!

[Sharky]

Hi Guys!

 

I have a little animation and I'm breaking the lip sync, because I couldn't

position the lip sync pose correct.

I interest it, how can you break down your track(words)?

What poses do you use to it and where?

Because the lip sync was be pop out for me!

 

Can you help me, it's very important me!

 

Thanks before!

 

Sharky

[Drakkheim]

The mouth shapes/poses I created for my lipsynch wip, I got from Here.

 

and in case you haven't seen the dopesheet video tutorials here. (Exercise 7: "Can You Say That?") I found it to be quite helpful.

 

My intuition tells me that you're probably not going to be lipsynching english, in which case the automatic phoeneme (probably) won't work, However the dopesheet can be useful for breaking down where the words lie on the timeline. Then just work your way through the timeline first positioning your mouth poses.

 

I hope this helps.

[Ross Smith]

Sharky, if it interests you, there is a really excellent book on facial animation/modeling and lip sync called _Stop Staring!_, by Jason Osipa. He completely breaks down the lip sync process with a very useful but different method he made himself. If you want to spend a lot of time and pick up a great method, I recommend his book, but that depends on your level of interest.

[JBarrett]

When creating lip sync, sync to sounds, not words. Listen to each sound being made, figure out the shape the mouth needs to be in to create that sound (including taking into account how strong the sound is in relation to surrounding sounds), and recreate that shape using the controls you've made for your character's mouth. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

 

I do lip sync pretty much straight-ahead, with the only pre-game analysis being on an emotional level; i.e. getting a bead on the emotional state of the person speaking.

[Aminator]

I interest it, how can you break down your track(words)?

 

As Justin the wise says, you want to break out the *sounds* and animate them. There's a spiffy shareware tool called Magpie that makes this easier.

 

http://www.thirdwishsoftware.com/magpie.html

[Dalemation]

you want to break out the *sounds* and animate them. There's a spiffy shareware tool called Magpie that makes this easier.

 

The Dope Sheet in A:M also does pretty much the same thing. You can add your own words to A:Ms dictionary and you can add to or change the `sounds` that A:M has chosen. Everyone has different ways of working but I find the A:M Dope Sheet can give you a great head start with lip synch.

[John Bigboote]

I agree with Justin. I used to try to capture every syllable and phoneme, not any more. Now I usually just 'gloss'over' the words and tend to spend more time with extremes. Go over the entire text once roughly, then 'comb' thru it where it needs work. Remember, this is cartoons...NOBODY should be trying to 'lip-read' your character.

[JBarrett]

Remember, this is cartoons...NOBODY should be trying to 'lip-read' your character.

I hate to take issue with this, but I must...

 

I've got a close friend who is mostly deaf, and who relies a lot on lip-reading. Despite his severe hearing problem, he still loves to go to the movies, and one of his biggest complaints about animated films is the poor lip sync on characters. The only way he knows what's going on is if he lip-reads. If the characters' mouths don't give him an accurate picture of what the characters are saying, then it can literally ruin the experience because his whole connection to the story is broken.

[Sharky]

Hi Guys!

 

Thanks your answers!

I have some problems:

Well, I'm living in Hungary and so I don't use the DOPE SHEET of A:M and I can't

buy Jason Osipa's book!

 

But we can help me, if you send me a not important lip sync project or action, or give me a link where I will can download it! Because I can study this project and it helps me that I can continue my project!

 

Thanks before,

 

Sharky

[Sharky]

Hi Guys!

 

Can you help me anybody?

I need a not important lip sync action,because I can study it!

 

Thanks before!

 

Sharky!

[CRToonMike]

Here's a link to a facial/lipsych rig description thread:

 

Raf's new face rig

 

read it and then come back here, else what's being described won't make much sense.

It gave me a brain-ache trying to understand it, but then had a breakthough, it's just a fanbone constraint-system like

sonofpat tutorials.

 

Making a lipsynch is no trivial matter, as I'm finding out. This is where all the talk of "modeling for animation" really hits home. On your model, make sure you have several spline-rings around the mouth (including the lips). Ditto for the eyes. Having the splines echo the acutal muscles under the skin helps. I've spent about 12 hours just getting my character to open her mouth and do a half-smile.

 

Take a mirror (as every animator pro or hobbist should have) and look at your face as you talk and make expressions. Pick out how there's some constantly simular things. When you create poses/muscle modes, keep it simple. In other words, if the cheeks get puffed out when smiling with the mouth open and closed, make a cheek-puff slider and use it in conjunction with the open and closed smile pose. You can have a practially limitless amount of pose sliders for relationships. So, for the open close mouth, I just move the jaw down (a bit more than I think I'll need) and then add constraints to the various bones along the radial splines coming out of the mouth and intersecting the circle splines around the mouth. There's about 28 bones for the mouth on my model.

 

What you could try and do, is to figure out how to make your mouth open and close.Make a pose slider (relationship) of that and the following...

 

Go wide and narrow (smile to pursed lips), make an "ahh" and a "ohh" shape (open and either wide or narrow). have the upper and lower lip go up and down (with no jaw movement, just lip movement). Now by adjusting these sliders in various values you should be able to come up with postions that represent sounds for your character(s).

 

I created a circle that I squished down to a flat line in a pose, made it larger and smaller (also in a pose) and a wide to narrow pose. Using just those three sliders, I was able to animate a simple mouth to say words and it passed muster on the spousal unit.

 

Also keep in mind that if you come close, usually people will "fill in the blanks."

 

This is really a haphazard kinda post, sorry about that, but I'm also learning this and the Jason Osipa book is a big help for understanding what needs to happen, but it's for m*y* and not A:M and it's difficult for me to figure out how to do the things he mentions in A:M. But thanks to the Raf thread (above) I think it can be done and I'm going for doing as little muscle mode-ing as possible (if at all).

 

I really hopes this helps, When I finish rigging up my character, I'll post something, maybe work up a "how I did it" kinda webpage. Dunno, depends on time and such.

 

Good luck Sharky!

[Sharky]

Hi Michael!

 

I thank that you wrote it for me! It's a great help for me!

I'm very grateful to you!

 

I make a promise that I will try your method!

 

Thanks again!

 

Regards,

 

Sharky

[CRToonMike]

Sharky:

 

Glad I could be of some help. Attatched to this message is a Sorenson 3 quicktime movie of what I've been able to get to work thus far. The character isn't saying anything specific, it's just a test to move the lips and jaw around and to get a feel for Danise's "animated" character.

 

And just for the record, it's not "my" system -- Raf created it and I'm just pounding pixels trying to recreate it... so thank Raf for what he shared with our community, I'm just the typist.

danise_synch_test.mov

[Sharky]

Hi Michael!

 

Thanks again! It'S a good sample!

 

Cheers,

 

Sharky