Moho Animation Forum

What do you think is better for mouth animation - switches or actions? Please, state your preferences and explain, if possible.
Personally I think switces is faster way but it suits more to simple mouth animation since you need to place it all on one layer. Actions on other hand are more detailed but you have more control over animation because of that.

Completely depends on your style of animation. If it's a web or TV series with lots of dialogue you will use switch layers anyway because you can't deliver in time with any other method. If it's a one-shot you may want to have much smoother and subtle mouthz movement, and different expressions as well.

Switches definitely for FAST painless lip sync. There are huge arguments and discussions AGAINST "auto lip sync" but in reality it doesn't look horrible and it's dang fast. Anime Studio has the "auto lip sync" built in but ONLY for switch layers. So if you really need fast lip sync that's the way to go. If you want QUALITY you should key it by hand.

I did a project some years ago using Anime Studio and Papagayo. I had like 20 minutes of solid lip sync. I could NOT have done this by hand. however, I did tweak the final result to add that "hand crafted" quality. But the initial auto lip sync saved me hours and hours of time.

The drawbacks to Switch layers is that they can not have smooth interpolation on the key frames if using interpolated switches (confusing I know. 2 different types of interpolation). Switches can interpolate smoothly between switches if they are created correctly, but the keys themselves are linear only, no option for easing.

Lip sync by hand looks fantastic if you spend the time, however it can take a TREMENDOUS amount of time, especially if you want top notch great looking lip sync. Even using tricks or techniques to speed up this process, it's still going to take a lot more time. What you use depends on the time and budget.

-vern

Now that we have version 9
switch layers have a disadvantage in using the new smart bone. Until we have smart bone tie into adjusting layers, it would be better to use actions.

One thought I have and not tried yet was to place and render out 2 set point on the head where the lip would be and track the mouth switch layer to the head where the 2 point could be use for motion tracking. Which will mean that you would have to render out the footage and bring back in as video file and then place mouth switch layer to the tracking point.