PHONEMES: the mouth movement is like a accordion, each of the letter has a different sound, so the mouth will move differently depends on the letter and also influence by the mood/ state of emotion of the character
each phrase in the story represent the pose in the story
animating what character is thinking not what they are saying, as per focus of the listener is on the eyes/face not the
The most important are 3 poses to established the shot
understanding what makes up a sound, helps established how the corresponding parts of the face are moving if the
talk, resting against the elbow, to help you understand better the movement of the mouth
twin machine and animbot
Dreamwall picker for Maya by owenferny YT
4 components of language
The “m” and “b”, to make sound the lips had to be close but the mouth have to actual open to make the sound, pressing and realising lips.
P and B work the same way.
- How the jaw goes up and down, open and closes the mouth.
2. Corners: in and out.
The above picture show sketching for prepearing, trying to understand the mouth, jaw, tongue, movement, as per example from YT tutorial. Very good exercise, in understanding how different sounds are articulated, and how the movement should be created to approximate the movement, make it convining to the viewevr that actually is synced to the audio provided – the audio -visual.
Just like the jaw, corners should not be going in and out just for the sake of keeping going.
The corners’ movement is driven by the adjacent sound.
E is a great example, like word never, E within never is going to keep the mouth wide open. Exaggerated E means the mouth will open quite wide, but it is possible to pronounce E just short.
3. Tongue.
The most frequently underestimated and forgotten, yet significantly important. Needs to be taken for consideration.
LET IT GO: The L and T are best examples, when L is pronounced the tongue touches the roof of the mouth hardly, same for T but less powerfully.
4. The Polish
Look up if the character is breathing in between lines.
Do not go for default poses, create interesting shapes that express the emotions.
Bes sure to have a little moment that will stands out.
Process.
1. Setting up the project. Referecnign rig. Ensuring all the texture files are waiting source images folder.
2. Regenerating node inside the hypershade to fit the texture of the rig.
3. Default position. The character is sitting at the table in the restaurant so therefore sitting position.
Optimising workflow:
Installing animbot
Installing Studio Library 2.20.2 in order to be able to create custom poses and then save them so these can be used later, throughout an animation.
Setting up the pose library that comes with the rig.
It throws some errors and requires changing the namespace.
Solution:
Go to Windows > General Editors > Namespace Editor
Find your current rig namespace (e.g., character1)
Select it and click “Rename”
Rename it to mars_v01
Some of the lips coordination, when trying to match the sounds and approximate lipsync.
ssssssss
way -> w
she’s -> shhhhhhhh
shameles->
eee- from sheee
jaw slighl;ty mvoes up
the – ffffffffffffffffffff
Approach:
Start with the lipsync to ensure it matches the soundtrack. The soundtrack is very helpful with keeping the timing.
The feedback from the TA:
If the head moves too dynamically,the viewer won’t be able to notice the face expressions, as the high speed of head movement will creat somewhat the motion blur like effect. For the sequence with a lot of text words, especially when character speaks very quickly, the movement of the head should not be so dramatic.
Tips: Use the animation layers instead of keeping all of the keys on the same layer. It will make the process of work much efficient and you will be able to toggle between the layers and blend all those together.
George’s feedback:
Get your GOLDED POSES: the start and the end of the body right, and work with the middle.
The non verbal part of the acting- the body language is equally or even more important than the lypsync. It must showcase the emotional state of the character.
WORKING WITH THE QUICK SELECTION (WAIST, CHEST, NECK, HEAD) ***OREDER IMPORTNACE***
1. Set animation to autospan legacy for working in spline.
2. Create quick selection tool using for the body part: COG + chest +neck +head (not this will differ depending on the rig and the acting pose, this is true for my sitted animation with use of mazu rig)
3. Get the golden poses.
4. Start working with the middle part, get your in-betweens. Answer to the questions, which poses am I favouring? Apply this with the use of moving holds. The middle mouse button, move over, then hit S for keying or use the tweeting machine.
5. Getting in between poses. Decide on how long the pose is being held for before moving to the next pose.
WORKING WITH CHEST
WORKING WITH THE NECK
WORKING WITH HEAD
The next step of the process in this method is to decide how head moves in correspondence to the rest of the body.
In my reference, in the first part torso moves then head follow, on the contrary in the second part head is leading the movement.
To extancuate this further, in the next step is to work with the chest and the neck. Only work with the parts of the body that appear in the shot, no need to work with the waist, as only the check, neck and head are in the shot.
Working with the chest:
translation z:
translation y:
translation x:
The graph editor screenshots of work in progress, the one above gives better results than the one higher up. The rotation Z and Y matches, which means as the character moves their head in circles, the head goes back and then left, which makes sense. However, the one higher up give worse, less organic and more jumping effect.
Working with the neck controller to define the head movement. So the order goes like waist, chest, neck, head. The waist is the closest to the COG. The body moves from below upwards.
Reflection:
I’ve approached this from the other way around, doing lip sync first and then moving to body movement. One could argue that this is not a bad approach, as it sets me off with a foundation of mouth movement; however, I’ll need to go back do it and reapply accordingly.
My biggest problem in design thinking is being biased to being a 2D visual artists, and often struggle to think in 3D. Going through George’s tutorial, I reminded myself that I often merely refer to what’s in the viewport, that’s a 2D representation, so when moving the chest, the translation does not only happen from side to side and back to front, but in 3 dimensions altogether, which outputs much better results.
I kind of ignored what was happening at the waist level. Too bad. The waist isn’t visible in my acting pose, but it’s still crucial. It’s fair to say it doesn’t move as much as the upper body, but whatever happens to the waist affects the rest of the body. That’s the FK (Forward Kinematics) system at workâthink chain reaction. It’s also very important to animate the waist intentionally so that you can later emphasise the contrast between the movements of the head and the waist. One of these parts usually leads the motion, and that difference needs to be accentuated in the animation.
In gaming and virtual worlds, animation is crucial for communicating between characters in a non-verbal way.
Blocking updated video for feedback, after applying changes and following the tutorial in class: