lipsync (stepped curves - blocking?)

[steveblake]

Early on I struggled with lipsync, but when you break it down into stages and analyze things a bit, it's not too bad. And I don't actually know of many others who use stepped curves at first, but i do. Think it's easier to edit, and get timing knocked out much easier...

So anyway, after listening to the track several times, I think one of the main things is to work out where the strong sounds are and kind of soften the animation over the rest. *Entirely* dependendy on the delivery of the lines of course, but a word like say, "spoken" could be blocked in as p-Ow-n, that's 3 shapes (ie. not s,p,ow,k,e,n as that'll look too much.)

works the same for most words so, using stepped keys:
for the word "House" i'd go block in "Ah-s"
for "People" - "p-ah-p-l"
"Towel" - "t-AH-w"...

Anyway, you get the idea.

Then fire off a playblast and take a good hard look at it over and over, and get friends/colleges to comment. Now it's just a matter of shifting the keys around to what looks right. You'll find that in certain situations you'll want the first part of a word to start with a mouthshape way before any sound appears, also for hard sounds like M,P,T etc you'll have to keep the shape for 2 frames just so it reads well.

It's going to be pretty choppy to look at, but once you have it nailed, go back and add the softer part of the sounds between these first keys.

so...

for the word "House" as it's now "Ah-s".. i'd add and make it a-Ah-s-e (adding the building up on the first a, and mouth slowly closing on e)...for "People" - "P-air-p-l" - maybe add a drifting closing mouth shape at the end, that type of thing. Just keep softening things up, add anticipation and overshoots where they are suggested in the soundtrack.

Once it's all done some people get the whole animation and drag it back so the whole thing precedes the sound by 2 frames..works, aparently.. yet for me I just do it where and when I see fit for individual sounds. Very often the waveform in your graph editor and the keys you set will be at odds with each other, since it's all about how the viewer perceives, not lining things up precisely to match the way it *should* be.

Hope this is helping a bit... that's kind of it in a nutshell (well the basics at least)

If you've found what I've said here confusing (and I wouldn't blame you if you did) just head over to keith's (http://www.keithlango.com/), he's got a nice article that just about covers everything much 'nicer' than I have hear... take a look (http://www.keithlango.com/tutorials/old/lipSync.htm) :thumbsup:

[lukx]

Thank you Steven :) The other problem for me is that during animation (I'm using "Generic rig") I'm starign to get lost in all keyframes. The most confusing part are keys for closing and opening jaw and morhp (phenomens) keys. I guess I have to practice a lot to finally get it all right. Thank you again for help.

[steveblake]

...try the pose2shelf mel script (search on highend3d), great for selecting a bunch of controls, blendshapes, attributes etc and having them at your fingertips whenever you need them...

Not had the pleasure of using 'Generic rig' but I'm assuming from what you've said you have a jaw bone AND a set of shapes. Well, maybe try keeping to one way of opening the mouth, and set it as a pose2shelf button that you always use when blocking. Since you can change, soften and layer as you go, subtle emotions can be pulled in over the top later on.

Also at this stage I'd simply consider setting up a limited number of pose buttons, by shaping the generic rig to make a set of simple phonetic poses - to quote Stef (over at Aardman CGI) the main 6 could be:

"rest
uh (also works as a kind of jaw)
ee
f/v
oo
b/m/p"

- having each as a shlef button, you could scrub through you track, find your mark and BAM! knock a shape right in there... go through all and review, then pull open the Dopesheet and drag the keys around to get timing nailed.

Just remember unless you've got a character who speaks very p-r-e-c-i-s-e-l-y or is AWLAYS SHOUTING!! then not every shape needs keying in, just keep to the highs and mush over the rest....

I'm sure there's a million other ways of doing this, eventually you've develope a way your comfortable with, for now keep it simple and as we're all here to help each other... keep asking questions..!

:)

[lukx]

Thank you again Steven :) :) :)

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