Floating Heads

[ddrake]

Just finishing up some face design and head-rig testing on a couple characters, and decided to pull in a little audio and try out the lip-sync.

The audio clip is from A Christmas Story, just the first thing I came across that had the right age range voices. Not long, but enough to get a decent sense of workflow with this setup.

(As opposed to other earlier tests that incorporated switch-layers, this version is done entirely using just the smartbones for mouthshapes.)

[Danimal]

The audio clip is from A Christmas Story

This is something which never needs to be explained. If someone doesn't recognize that movie, they deserve to be shot to the moon to live out their bizarre and unearthly existence alone, as it should be.

Anyway, it looks good. The lip sync is surprisingly well done for smart bones, as are the head movements. I believe the reason for both can be boiled down to restraint. You're using the bones to aim for realism as opposed to "wow, I sure can make stuff move around a lot!"

Expressions on the characters are great too.

[sargumphigaus]

This is something which never needs to be explained. If someone doesn't recognize that movie, they deserve to be shot to the moon to live out their bizarre and unearthly existence alone, as it should be.

Well, it looks like Danimal has learned the true meaning of Christmas. Which is to seclude people on the moon due to their lack of seasonal culture comprehension. Will you be providing these people with means of survival I.E. space suits and survival kits?

[Danimal]

Will you be providing these people with means of survival I.E. space suits and survival kits?

Why would their survival be of any importance?

[ddrake]

The audio clip is from A Christmas Story

This is something which never needs to be explained.

Haha, very true. I mentioned it more to give credit and citing a source than feeling it was necessary to identify for people.

Thanks again for positive feedback. I think you are right about trying to use restraint with this kind of look. Though, I think that even in this clip there's quite a lot of movement for how quickly it goes by. Probably could have toned it down even more it if it wasn't in part to make sure the mouths positions worked in a range of angles. Or if I was dealing with a sequence longer than 5 seconds or so.

(I had to trim it off there or else I would have been compelled to try and do the whole scene. And to be honest the options for what the rig can have the tongue do just wouldn't cut it. )

[ianmage1]

The audio clip is from A Christmas Story

If someone doesn't recognize that movie, they deserve to be shot to the moon to live out their bizarre and unearthly existence alone, as it should be.

Why aren't we funding this?

Good job, ddrake. I agree with what Danimal said about using the smartbones for a realism approach; when I rig my characters' head turns, I'm always tempted to use them more than I should, which causes my characters' acting to look a bit unnatural at times. You managed to overcome that temptation, and you got some good results. Nice!