Lip Sync
Lip Sync
There are two main approaches to sync dialog with characters.
Dope Sheets
Dope sheets allow a user to enter in sentences. The dope sheet feature then breaks the sentences up into phonemes using a dictionary file. The phonemes correspond to mouth shapes. All that is left for the animator is to align the words to the sound files, and then perhaps do some tweaking.
Hand animate
A lot of people prefer to hand-animate vocal parts. As mentioned by Homeslice, here is a workflow:
- First pass - just open and close the mouth to the sounds.
- Second pass - do the "OHs" and "Ws"
- Third pass - so the EEs and SSes
- Do more passes if you have more poses, such as F, V and L.
Look in the Channel View and make sure all keyframes are using Spline interpolation. Sometimes they use Zero Slope even though the default is set to Spline. Then switch the interpolation of certain keys if you need more crisp movement in places.
Except for very fast or slow bits, open/close movements are usually 2 frames. In most cases, start the movement 2-3 frames before the sound, so it ends on the sound or 1 frame before.
Ohs, Ws and Ls are usually 4 frames. EE, SS, F and V - I usually time at 2 frames.
If you have to go 1 frame because of very fast speaking, only change the mouth position a tiny bit to avoid unnatural choppy action.
In real life mouth movement is pretty subtle. In animation, things like B K or a hard M at the beginning of works may benefit from punching them a bit harder.
To speed up roughing in the keys you can make drag and drop poses for the various mouth shapes. See tut on drag and drop poses in my tuts link.
the real hard part of lip synch isn't the lips, it's the body language. i f you get the body language going you can get by with surprising little polish on the mouth.
If you really want to read a lot about lip synch, the Jason Osipa book "Stop Staring" covers his approach to animating facial features. The first edition even mentions A:M although he was stuck on v8 at the time.
