First Words

[adamP]

This character has been a WIP for a couple of years, but I can finally make him talk. This is my first time trying to sync up a mouth with dialogue (this clip is from Office Space). C & C are welcome.

lipsync.mov

[JBarrett]

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!

[adamP]

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.

 

How can I set this up? His head is basically a cylinder without a jaw.

I do have a mouth up/down slider. Could this compensate for not having a jaw?

[Eduardo]

Hey...! If my first LipSync looks like this I´ll be a happy Hasher!

 

Nice work.

[MATrickz]

hahaha I love that movie! Great lipsync and the eye movement also look really good!

[Biotron2000]

Nice work! I like his face; it fits the attitude of the dialogue.

[luckbat]

How can I set this up? His head is basically a cylinder without a jaw.

 

If I'm reading him right, Justin is simply suggesting that your character's mouth should open in a downwards direction only. Right now his mouth opens in both the up and down directions, like Pac-man.

 

Try making his upper teeth stationary relative to the head. His lips are allowed move up a little, just not the teeth.

 

Step one in setting this up would just be to lock down the upper teeth and leave all the mouth shapes the same. If you're satisfied with this look, then you're done.

 

If you think it makes him look bucktoothed, then you'll need to adjust the lip movements so that the upper lip only travels a short distance upwards, while the lower lip does most of the mouth-opening movement.

[adamP]

Hey guys, thanks for all the great comments.

 

I am just curious though...

Is the mouth position really that bad? I only ask because it took me forever to model his head and make the mouth poses, and I'd basically have to redo the mouth mesh as well as the poses.

 

-Thanks

[luckbat]

Only you can decide whether the mouth is good or bad. Are you satisfied with it?

 

It's true that you'd need to rework some of the lipsync poses if you follow Justin's advice, but I don't see why you'd need to remake the mesh.

 

Try it the easy way--go into your lip poses, select all the upper-teeth CPs, and hit delete. This will delete any keyframe movement for these CPs. Close the pose window and have a look at the results. Everything will be the same, only now the upper teeth will remain stationary relative to the head when the mouth opens. You may be pleasantly surprised...

[adamP]

Here's an updated version.

I'm still not sure about the top teeth though. It just looks a little weird to me.

lipsync2.mov

[adamP]

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?

[steve392]

that looks good to me and I agree with him lol

[JBarrett]

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.

[adamP]

Okay, I'm going to make the top teeth stationary in the mouth poses, but I have an idea...

Instead of reworking the mouth mesh in the poses, couldn't I just raise all of the teeth in the model so that the starting point for the "jaw" is higher?

 

basically, instead of having the "jaw" start where it currently does but end lower, why don't I just make it start higher and end in the same spot by raising the teeth?

 

also, do I need the top teeth to be stationary for poses like O, U, and W?

[luckbat]

Okay, I'm going to make the top teeth stationary in the mouth poses, but I have an idea...

Instead of reworking the mouth mesh in the poses, couldn't I just raise all of the teeth in the model so that the starting point for the "jaw" is higher?

 

basically, instead of having the "jaw" start where it currently does but end lower, why don't I just make it start higher and end in the same spot by raising the teeth?

 

I hope Justin's not offended that I keep inserting myself into this conversation, but I guess he'll let me know. In my opinion, for a cartoony character like yours, you could probably get away with just raising the teeth, as long as you raise both the upper and lower teeth. (Otherwise he'll never be able to say "Grrr!")

 

also, do I need the top teeth to be stationary for poses like O, U, and W?

 

Short answer: Yes. Your upper teeth are connected to your skull and can never move in any way.

 

Long answer: Yes, but... Well, look. In hand-drawn animation, animators "cheat" the position of the teeth all the time. It's not "correct," but they do it so the mouth will always look good and be readable. If you want to cheat the upper teeth up a tiny bit to give the "oo" shape a little more zing, no one's going to revoke your animator's license. Just as long as you're aware that it's impossible for any vertebrate to move its upper teeth.

 

P.S. Beaker from the Muppets was just a cylinder too, but even he had a "jaw."

[adamP]

In my opinion, for a cartoony character like yours, you could probably get away with just raising the teeth, as long as you raise both the upper and lower teeth.

 

Are you saying I should move all of the teeth up in the model, or are you saying I can keep the upper teeth moving in the mouth poses?

 

In hand-drawn animation, animators "cheat" the position of the teeth all the time.

 

So I would only need to make the top teeth stationary for poses in which they are visible.

 

P.S. Beaker's "jaw" was more like a flap than a chin/jaw. With my character, he has "muscles" pulling his mouth.

[luckbat]

In my opinion, for a cartoony character like yours, you could probably get away with just raising the teeth, as long as you raise both the upper and lower teeth.

 

Are you saying I should move all of the teeth up in the model, or are you saying I can keep the upper teeth moving in the mouth poses?

 

Earlier, you suggested that rather than changing the entire mouth so that it opens downward, it might be easier for you to just move the teeth upwards. I agreed, so long as you moved both upper and lower teeth to a new position.

 

In the big picture sense... of course you can keep the upper teeth moving. It's your character. If you want to, you can make his upper teeth change size, shape and color whenever he talks. You don't have to take Justin's advice, or mine, or anyone's. The only person you should be trying to satisfy is yourself.

 

Animators are always looking for ways to bend the rules to make their characters seem more human. The fish in Finding Nemo could blink. The chickens in Chicken Run had teeth. On the other hand, the mouse in Stuart Little had black spheres for eyes, just like a real mouse.

 

It's up to you to decide how to make your model appealing. If you feel it's more natural to have your character's mouth move like a sock puppet's, then maybe take the teeth out completely. That might look better.

 

But the bottom line is, there is a "correct" way for a set of lips, teeth and tongue to move, and you should at least be familiar with it, even if you don't plan to imitate it.

 

So, to sum up:

 

Upper teeth can't move relative to the head. Upper lip can raise and lower a little.

Lower teeth do most of the moving. Lower lip moves with the lower teeth, and can also raise and lower a little.

 

Remember: even if your character doesn't have a jaw, you can still give him a jaw bone! You can attach the CPs in the lower teeth and lower lip to it so that you don't have to keep moving them manually in the pose window...

 

P.S. I don't want to be one of those guys who's all talk and no action, so if you're interested in to sending me your model, I can show you how to put a jaw bone in there to make your mouth poses easier. Just flip me an e-mail.

[adamP]

First of all... thanks to everyone's comments and help.

 

This alien is 1 of my 2 complete characters and the other one does have a jaw bone. I've just always felt that the alien looked better without one. I've always pictured my alien with having more of a firm fleshly head instead of a hard skull. That's why his upper teeth moved, because they weren't really attached to a "skull". I think what I might do is raise the teeth in the model and minimize the movement of the upper teeth in the mouth poses. That way, there's still some movement, but not nearly as much.

 

Again, thanks to everyone.

[adamP]

Okay... his upper teeth no longer move, and his mouth opens in more of a downward motion than before. I have to say that after following Justin's and Mike's advice, I am pleasantly surprised at how much better and more natural the mouth moves.

 

C & C welcome!

lipsync3.mov