How to replicate this Flash lipsync into Anime

[Wolfo]

In my new job, to make character animation they do that with After Effects, but its very painful, for that kind of animation I suggested we use Anime studio because is better in many ways, is faster, etc. There is only one problem, I can't replicate the lipsync, workflow here, first they do in flash and then, export as PNG sequence to import in After Effects, but in Anime I don't found how to import a PNG sequence or video with alfa, so I decided to replicate the same effect directly in Anime studio, but I have some troubles trying, I don't know how to do it, does anyone can help me to solve this?

Here is the Flash mask


I tryied to replicate the same in Anime Studio but worked diferent


Heres how it looks with interpolations in flash, the reason that i need to do in a native way in Anime Studio.

[slowtiger]

In AS switch layer interpolation only works in vector layers inside the switch layer - not any deeper.

[ddrake]

Not exactly sure what you're looking for, but the concept and style is similar to what I've been working on adjusting for my mouth shapes. I've got mouth parts as shapes stacked in the same vector layer, but instead of masking, I sort of just created a manual skin colored "mask" essentially. (After trying to work with it I wouldn't recommend doing it that way necessarily. ) And then multiple copies of that mouth template in a switchlayer, and created a variety of mouth poses. But perhaps now that I've got the concept down, there's some way to adjust masking settings of the switchlayer and get the same effect but a self contained mouth.

Anyway, then if you're just using phoneme shapes in an interpolated switch layer, you can get similar results.

Here's an older clip of mine testing the technique.

[Víctor Paredes]

This kind of lipsync works better with actions and smart bones, since switch layers can't interpolate layers inside groups, but that would imply to lose the already made animation.
Anyway, you can import image sequences and videos with alpha. For videos I think an option is to have them in Quicktime PNG Millions of colors +.
For image sequences go to Scripts>Image>Import Image Sequence...

[slowtiger]

I just did a test, the file is here: http://www.slowtiger.de/examples/mouthpoints1.anme.zip. Interpolates nicely, and all elements lie in the same vector layer. You could add more elements, and shading and image texture to your like. You only need to have all elements there in the first mouth, then duplicate this layer and transform all points without erasing or adding anything.

Here you see how all shapes fold into itself for O and M, everything is hidden under the top shape, the lips outline:

[Wolfo]

Anime Studio Crashes when I try to import a PNG sequence, is about 3 minutes of 24 FPS, maybe is to much, for now seems that I have to keep the painful process until we start a new project in order to get unifided all the past animation. to the next project will be all in Anime studio based.

[slowtiger]

A PNG sequence of 3 min at 24fps would be 4320 frames. No, AS can do a lot, but not handle the import of such an amount of files.