Lip synch switch interpolate - FV and "teeth" shap

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 8:25 am

Dagnabbit!

Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees.

Lately I have been revisiting some projects with a new eye. My skills have improved with AS and I have learned so much over the last few weeks/months that I see and notice things that I never saw before.

One was a situation with interpolation of switch layers and the phonemes. It suddenly hit me what an idiot I have been.

A while back I discovered you can change the order of shapes in a switch without any worries. By changing the order of the shapes on certain phonemes I can easily bring the teeth shape over the lower lip shape for the FV phoneme. I can also bring the tongue over the teeth for the "L" phoneme. (previously I was laboriously "squishing" shapes to get them "out of the way").

Changing shape order gives a lot more options while still being able to use interpolation for a switch.

-vern

funksmaname · Post by **funksmaname** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 8:55 am

that sounds interesting - any chance of a demo file

? I'm all in a mess about whether to use actions or switch layers for talking... how do you control switch layer order as well?

thanks vern.

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 9:09 am

Aaah! cool!
That use or reordering the shapes inside the switch layer is a very good tip!
No more strange mask needed!.

It will be interesting to see it in action. I predict that the shape order is not smooth interpolated but anyway lip sync is so quick that nobody would notice it.

Thanks Vern!
-G

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 12:46 pm

Yes, Genete is correct. The shape order doesn't have smooth interpolation which isn't really necessary. I don't see any way it could anyway.

The quick "flipping" of the shapes is fine.

http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/shap ... witch.moho

http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/shap ... switch.mov

All the shapes are named so you can see on each layer how the shapes change order.

-vern

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 9:22 pm

hey, nice!

AlanPS · Post by **AlanPS** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 10:06 pm

That's funny, I have been struggling with the same thing for so long and only about a week ago did I realize you can reorder shapes during animated switch layers. I can make the nostrils on my character's nose hide behind the nose when he looks down, and I can make the thumb overlap or underlap the fingers on the hand depending on the angle.

Same with ears on a head as it rotates, or eyes. Progress!

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 10:12 pm

The really really funny thing is...

I was already doing this with a hand. I put bones in a hand switch and was able to make the hand "flip" over to show the back. I didn't need two sets of hands.

I did this by changing the shape order of the fingers and thumb and moving bones.

It never occurred to me until the other day that this would work with lip sync switch layers... forest for the trees...

Now I have all of these switch layers for characters where I painstakingly squished and scaled shapes to "hide" them... how silly it all seems now.

-vern

funksmaname · Post by **funksmaname** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 10:22 pm

Aaah i get it

Nice one!

myles · Post by **myles** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 3:26 am

Really useful technique Vern - thanks!

A further thought:
Regarding the technique of using shape visibility to fake order changing, you could instead use identical switch layers (except for the shape order/visibility) instead of having keyframe the fill/outline visibility itself.

Regards, Myles.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 4:41 am

... you could instead use identical switch layers (except for the shape order/visibility)...

Exactly!

That's how my hand switch/flippy thing worked. The two layers in the switch were absolutely identical. the only change was shape order.

All motion of the switch I did using bones on the switch layer.

-vern

funksmaname · Post by **funksmaname** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 9:02 am

Sorry to deviate, but the most useful thing i learned from this file was how you construct mouths... i developed my own solution (which until now i thought was quite clever) where i have two skin coloured layers coming out sideways from the mouth corners and covering a big area around the mouth... these covered the teeth, the background etc etc but this way makes more sense.

Actually i based it on the 'putty shape' idea DF described in the headturn videos, but using shape ordering is a much neater solution i never thought of!

Thanks again for sharing files with us n00bs Vern

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 9:19 am

Yeehaa!

To be honest I only came up with that mouth set up just for this sample. Before this I was doing it the same way you described.

I was creating a sample for this demo and all I had was the mouth. I needed to stick a "face" on it to hide all the stuff going on. I thought... hmm... how do I connect the darn shapes to hide all this stuff and still keep it simple?

Of course! Shape ordering and connected shapes! I can make the mouth fill shape connected to the inside of the lips and the face connected to the outside and stick the teeth and tongue in between! Bingo!

I'm quite pleased with this. Glad you like it. It works really well! I only wish I had come up with it sooner.

EDIT:

Works for eyes too! Create the holes for the eyeballs and float them behind the face. they will stick out though if too close to the sides of the head.

-vern

funksmaname · Post by **funksmaname** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 10:17 am

yeah, i worked out it would work with eyes soon as i saw it - coz i've been using the same system for eyes too...

Only problem i'm having now is rotating the face to full side view (where the mouth cuts into the face) - you cant seem to keyframe hide/show lines, maybe i can animate line width instead? either way - its tough as when i put the side i want the bottom teeth to be over the back of the mouth - maybe i need to use switch layers like you've described in this thread.

The only problem with this method and switch layers is that you have to have/switch the entire face (including eyes etc) inside the switch layer, you cant just have eye/mouth switches seperately as the fills rely on a single layer... hmmm.

AlanPS · Post by **AlanPS** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 4:08 pm

funksmaname,

you can hide lines (at least with switch layers). I'm doing some point-by-point stuff, and as long as the number of vertices are the same in each layer (and correctly moved) you can have wrinkles/creases in skin come and go as you wish.
It is not the smoothest transition to be honest but it still looks pretty cool.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 5:30 pm

you cant seem to keyframe hide/show lines, maybe i can animate line width instead?

What about changing line colour? At least this is animatable and shows its own timeline. Set it to the surrounding skin colour and you have the same effect as an invisible line.

Lip synch switch interpolate - FV and "teeth" shap

Lip synch switch interpolate - FV and "teeth" shap

we coulda had a V8

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