Multiple Audio Files

[wizaerd]

I'm at the point now in my little animation where I want to lip synch two different characters in a conversation. Back in the day, I remember Moho and ASP could only import 1 audio file, so all dialog regardless of the number of people had to be a single file (and I think even including music and/or sound effects too). Has this been changed? The lip synching tutorial I just watched has the import of audio and lip synching done on the mouth switch layer, but how do I use multiple files? The audio I have has each persons dialogs broken down into multiple sound bites that I wish to synch too. I don't want to combine them into a single file because what If I have to make adjustments, or timing tweaks.

[wizaerd]

Anybody? Anybody at all?

[synthsin75]

ASP9 can have as many audio layers as your system can handle.

http://anime.smithmicro.com/comparison.html

[wizaerd]

Yes, but how do you use them? If the lip-synching is done at the switch level layer, how do I do multiple lip synching against multiple audio files? Are there any tutorials that show an on-going dialog betweeen two different characters, using multiple audio files? Because I've yet to find any...

[synthsin75]

Oops, I lost my spoon.

[wizaerd]

Oops, I lost my spoon.

Ahhh, I get it, you don't want to spoon feed me. That's very funny. Too bad it doesn't offer any help though. Nowhere in the documentation or in any other tutorial I've seen, there's no place where it demonstrates using multiple audio files, nor a two person conversation made up of multiple audio files. So boo for me for not knowing how to do it, right.

[slowtiger]

One sound file per switch layer. This, and you have all the information you need.

[CartoonM!ke]

Without reading the manual, just by poking around, there's an option on each switch layer to either link to an audio file or a .dat file for lip-synch. Then for each of the individual speaking parts, just create custom keyframes for the non-speaker (because we react to what we're hearing).

Or you can edit the sound files to mute the opposite voice and have 2 files for the same exchange. You can put them on different layers and they should synch up, and your lip-synch issues should be gone. Google Open Source sound editors to help you with this one. It seems that this may be what you're trying to do.It should be simple with ASP 9.

Or you could kick it old school and individually keyframe all the lip movements yourself (smart bones makes this much easier than ever).

Or come up with your own way to do this. Experiment. Play around. Not every attempt results in success, but the learning we get from it can carry us through the next bunch of hurdles. With an app like AS, there's so many different ways to do the same thing, the only right way is the one that you're comfortable with and works for your way of doing things.

BTW, it would've been good info if you included which version of AS you're using. I went from v. 5 right to 9. Lots of changes. Audio files is just one of many.

[wizaerd]

One sound file per switch layer. This, and you have all the information you need.

This is very unfortunate. I only have one switch layer of mouths, and the fact that the audio file is directly linked to that switch layer makes it cumbersome to do a dialog. I suppose I've been spoiled by other applications that handles the sound files completely different.

[slowtiger]

Duplicate. Switch visibility.