Moho Forum

Greetings! My name is Cap. animation is new to me, as is Anime Pro. I have been more or less teaching myself this program, with help from whatever info I can find online...You Tube, here, etc. I have managed to create a few characters, and I want to animate the heck out of them, but I must be honest, I don't quite get the timeline/key framing. I am getting unexpected results, and not exactly what I want, obviously.

So here is my first question. I have my character, and I have 5 poses for him. A forward pose, two 3 quarter pose...one left and one right, and two side poses for walk cycles (another hurdle to get over). I created separate head poses to match the body poses, because I wanted to be able to change the head pose on each of the body poses if I wish. So I have the heads in a Switch layer, and I have the body poses in a separate switch layer. The question is, how can I animate the lip syncing on each head pose? I managed to figure out how to do the lip sync for one pose, but I can't seem to figure out how to setup the lip sync for the other poses.

In my hierarchy, I have the Head Switch layer above the Body Switch layer. I made a Switch Layer for the mouth poses, and they work fine on the layer immediately below the switch layer, but if I try to switch body poses, the mouth is no longer where it needs to be. I don't know if this is making any sense. I want to be able to switch to a different body pose, and still have the mouth where it should be, and still be able to have the lips synced to audio.How can I do this? I would like for the character to be able to move his head while talking. If anyone can help me figure this out, I would appreciate it. My aim is to make the character as dynamic as possible.

Please keep in mind, that I am very green at this, and detail is what I need. Please don't assume that I know what your taking about...break it down for me. Thanks in advance.

No advice? Anybody? None of you AS gurus have anything? just for grins, here is one of the characters I am working with.

If you do turns with switch layers, you usually have full bodys in each switch layer, or just the heads. In either case there should be mouth switch layers in each of the views. You just assign the same .dat or sound file to each mouth layer.

Thank you. The thing is, the way I have it setup, is heads in a switch layer. I have the interpolate checked on the Switch, and so the head "morphs" nicely between poses. The problem is, I am having trouble making the mouth morph accordingly from say the front view to a 3 qtr view. Alternately, I did set it up with each head and body in it's own bone layer, along with the mouths, and then put those in a Switch. And this works, but I lose the smooth interpolation between poses. It just snaps from one to the other. Am I asking too much from the software, or is it possible to do what I am after?

Also you mention .dat files. I used Papageyo to lay out my lip sync. After saving the file as a .dat, and then importing it to As, and after enabling the .dat file in the Switch...I see the wave form on the timeline, but no key frames, and no sound? Thus no movement of the lips. I'm sure it's something simple I am overlooking, maybe you could shed some light on that too.

Much thanks for your reply.

~Cap~

AS can't do a "nested" interpolation. Interpolation only works inside one switch layer, and only on vector layers.

Most head turns are fast, they don't require interpolation, and interpolation in lip sync doesn't look nice anyway. If you really need to do a slow head turn with mouth movement, you should learn to use smart bones, but that's a complicated trick.

Any resources you can point me to for that "complicated trick"? I like to think I'm smarter than the average bear...but who knows, maybe it's too complicated to bother giving me a heads up on where to learn about it.
And the issue with the .dat files? I was wrong in my description of the problem. It seems that I do get key frames, but no wave form. Mouth moves, but no sound. Not to sound ungrateful for your help, but ignoring the question doesn't help me solve my problem. You know what, screw it. I'll figure it out. Peace!

If there's no sound and no waveform, did you import the sound file? The .dat from Papagayo will import swtich layer key frame information only - not the sound.

As you are self-described as "green" to animation, I'd strongly suggest starting with basic animation and using switch layers for head and body turns for now:

1 - They will be easier while you get the hang of making cartoons
2 - You won't get muddled down for weeks working on a head turn rig when you could be using that time making full cartoons
3 - Those smartbone head turn rigs look inferior to basic switch layer or keyframed point movement anyway, so why bother?

Thank You Danimal for that bit about Papagayo. Duh...of course I need to import the sound file, that makes perfect sense. None of the tutorials I've seen mentioned that little fact. I have resorted to keying the mouth shapes manually, and am getting good results. I will however try it again, and see if I like the results better. I'm thinking I will probably just do the key frames manually. I'm not one for short cuts. So yeah, thanks for the reply mate.

~Cap~

I recommend to do mouth sync keys manually anyway since the automatic result looks, well, automatic and not very expressive, also you may want to include more expressive mouth shapes.

http://lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=25748

Hey Cap don't take these guys advice with a grain of salt they know their stuff. We are just beginners and don't know what the heck anybody has been saying - kinda like a computer scientist explaining a new algorithm they came up with - just goes over our heads. Any way I am a beginner so I made a tutorial for other beginners to talk at 'our level' about using smart bones in lip syncs. Hope it helps. Here is the link to my original post. Don't give up!

-mtbuck24