DAZ3D's mimic

qwerty · Post by **qwerty** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 12:52 am

Does anyone happen to know if DAZ's mimic lip synch software would work in anime studio?

Captain Jack · Post by **Captain Jack** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 1:30 am

I'm pretty sure it wouldn't, because it's designed to read phoneme arrangements as a set of point deltas to a 3D object in Poser or DAZ/Studio format; I don't think it would understand the AS file format.

Bones3D · Post by **Bones3D** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 8:39 pm

You might want to look into Magpie Pro. It's been around a long time and is practically an industry standard for this type of content.

Magpie Pro already supports Moho, and should work with Anime Studio as well. (The native file format of Anime Studio is virtually identical to Moho's file format, but might require the older .moho file name extension to recognize the files themselves.)

DK · Post by DK » Thu Mar 15, 2007 12:59 pm

This is an interesting topic. Lipsyncing for cartoons. There are many variables. No right and no wrong.

D.K

DK · Post by DK » Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:24 pm

personally I have used Mimic and the lipsync quality is not really that good. I prefer a couple of mouth shapes and to get on with the job. I mean who walks out of a movie these days saying that the lipsync was awsome? Interesting, what do others think?

D.K

Captain Jack · Post by **Captain Jack** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:56 pm

I would agree that lip sync is one of those things that most people only notice in an animation when it doesn't look right. I also think that the style of the animation has a lot to do with whether it looks right. If an animation is more "cartoony" then you have a lot more leeway; the audience will be a lot more forgiving of only three or four mouth shapes that move rapidly in time to the words. If the animation is more "realistic", I think the animator has to go the extra distance and get the lip sync a lot closer to what a live actor looks like on film.

Bones3D · Post by **Bones3D** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 2:02 pm

One method I use myself, is to simply use an app like Audacity that will allow you to scrub through a sound file to track dialogue phonemes. I've even created audio timers that emit a brief pulse every frame to assist with this sort of thing. The result is pretty drastic when viewed as a waveform. (Here's one such timer I created to break apart an audio clip into 15fps intervals.)

From there, I simply create a "dope" sheet, which charts the dialogue phonemes over time. You can also use one to track additional audio for background sounds or character actions.

It's time consuming, but the process does work.