Jumping on the lipsync bandwagon

[funksmaname]

Hey guys,
I couldn't face doing any work today So instead I threw this thing together.



Audio from Monsters University.

Yes, he's an aubergine... don't ask.

The beard was done with a custom brush along a stroke - brush created in AS and exported to the custom brushes folder. I had to restart AS to make it appear (couldn't figure out how to refresh it otherwise, if you know do tell!)

The lip sync is done using only 3 smart bones. One opens and closes the mouth (up/down), another widens and narrows the mouth (oOo) and the last one turns the mouths corners up and down. These were done over approximately 100 frames at default 1 frame intervals.

On the main timeline, I just scrubbed through and made the moth shapes using the (mostly 2) smart bones. All keys on the mainline were set to interpolate on 2's - I think this gives it a more 'traditional' look with less random floaty tweens.

The camera move is also set on 2s. This initially created juddering between the background and the character, but i just moved the start frame around until the moves were in sync.

It's not perfect, but was quite fun You have to be quite careful with strokes like this so that strands don't appear/disappear as the shapes change...

Any comments/questions/criticisms below...

[ddrake]

Haha, nice. And finally answering that question I'm sure all of us have had at some point, "If this eggplant could talk..."

I loved that you've showcased how effective this can be even with a relatively simple and streamlined rig.

Is your shadow also part of a smarbone action? On first watch I felt like it maybe moves a tad much on the narrow mouth position, but then again it also does a give a good sense of interconnectivity of the mouth's influence on the head shape and creates a sense of depth and auberginish curvature.

[funksmaname]

Hey -thanks for the feedback! yeah, the highlight is just on a layer above the face - it is masked as it originally went down under the shirt but I changed the shame and so the masking is unnecessary for this.

I might have gone overboard with the movement of the highlight

[synthsin75]

..but I changed the shame ..

Now that's the animation I want to see.

[funksmaname]

*shape

[Danimal]

The beard was done with a custom brush along a stroke

TO me, this is the most interesting part because any time I use brushes I get the Dr. Katz-esque squiggle vision, which definitely isn't happening here. Very well done.

The lip sync looks quite good, but although I could see the tongue in the mouth, I didn't see what it should be doing on the words "late" and "the" (touching the roof of the mouth). It's possible it was there but got dropped somehow by YouTube and their confounded compression.

[exile]

Much more convincing than automatic lip sync, IMO.

[funksmaname]

Thanks exile!
Yes Danimal, I overlooked the tongue movement... I get lazy like that sometime