Simple Mouth Animation - How can I do it myself?

ancich

Hi,

    All I want to do is animate the mouth of a character to move 'somewhat' in relation to a sound file (which would have speech).  I've looked at Mimic but I don't want to pay $50 (along with the muddled conversations about which versions of Daz it works with and which generations of figures, etc, etc).  The models I will be using will not be close up, so just 'some' lip movement is what I am after.   Even something as cruded as the 'Monty Python' animation where the mouth is either open or closed would be 'good enough'

 

Arnold C

DAZ Studio 32 bit has the "Lip Sync" plugin (64 bit unfortunately hasn't). It is able to create lip sync from self recorded audio (wavesound format) for varios figures, including V4/M4/Genesis/Genesis 2 and other.

Usage is simple: choose the appropriate Configuration File (under "Details"), load your audio file and klick on "Analyze". When done, klick on "Open Timeline" and watch and hear your figure talk, including simple mimic, blinking and head movement. Which also could be turned off if you prefer to use your own.

If you rather want use Studio 64 bit to render, save your scene then and re-open it in that. AFAIK, even with aniMate2 Lite you're able to create custom aniBlocks. So you can save your lip sync as aniBlock if you want to reuse it at a later time.

Some "Evaluation Audio" and the "Mimic Configuration Files" you can find in C:\Program Files (x86)\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\plugins\dzmimic.

Couldn't be any easier.

ancich

Thanks for your reply, but I have tried that one already.  Problem is you are limited to the models you have .dmcs for.  I also found that the mouth movements and sound are not lined up and I don't want to have to fix this each tiem I make an animation.

Is there some kind of animation script out there that would just respond to a wav file and just vary the mouth from fully open to fully closed  (ala monty python)?

 

 

WendyLuvsCatz

You can edit a dmc in notepad for most things that have morphs or bones 

you can create morphing figures by exporting posed obj's if making a figure out of primitives even and loading them onto a master obj with morph loader then under edit make it a figure, just use your morph names in the dmc or give you morphs those names

ancich

JaguarElla said:

You can edit a dmc in notepad for most things that have morphs or bones 

you can create morphing figures by exporting posed obj's if making a figure out of primitives even and loading them onto a master obj with morph loader then under edit make it a figure, just use your morph names in the dmc or give you morphs those names

Sounds a bit complicated.  I was hoping for something that would take a sound file, and create key-frames (or whatever) in the animation timeline that would just move the mouth open or closed depending on the volume of the words.  This was relatively easy to do in Adobe AfterEffects.

 

WendyLuvsCatz

You can try a script by casual that does simple transforms or poses to sounds

 

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/8917/mcjaudiomation-animations-from-audio-files-first-version-released#latest Otherwise use adobe after effects if you find that easier