Moho Forum

I tried to search before posting this but I couldn't find any topics that have covered this yet. But it wouldn't be the first time I tried recreate a wheel ... Sorry if this is old news.

Macy was created with a smart bone that controls the emotions of her mouth switch layer. The video doesn't have any audio but Macy is speaking the same sentence twice but with a Smart Bone set at 2 different settings. First sad, then happy.

It may seem like quite a bit of extra work but for any characters that we will be using over and over I think it would be a really nice added dimension to their personality. We can add several different emotions or even a setting (or degree of Smart Bone rotation) that controls 10 more crazy expressions. All interpolated with 1 Switch Layer with the 10 phonemes.

Are you interested in describing how you set that up?

I would like to have this in place with recurring characters in a series.

This is just another use for Smart Bones so everything would be set up the same. This is a pretty simple character so I only used 3 different emotions. Neutral, Happy & Sad. To make this character B.S.B. (Before Smart Bones) I would have had to have made a switch group with 30 different layers inside.

If you're new to AS and plan to use Papagayo for the lip sync, the workflow would be ...
1) Create a Switch Group with the 10 basic phonemes.
2) Create a Smart Bone (there's plenty of great tutorials. Check out Chad & Jim's here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbD7wXWdJl4 )
3) In the Actions menu, create each emotion at a specific key on the timeline. When you get to this point you do have to rework all of the artwork in each of the ten phonemes to show the emotion you need. For example, stay "Neutral" at 0.
. . . 3a) At 1 second, rotate the bone (I would hold shift), create "Happy" mouth shapes for each of the phonemes.
. . . 3b) At 2 seconds, rotate the bone further and create "Sad" mouth shapes.
. . . 3c) At 3 seconds "Angry"
. . . Yadda yadda yadda, etc. etc. so on and so forth

Things to watch out for though.
-If you have your phonemes programmed to a Smart Bone for a Head Turn, using the Head Turn and the Emotion Bone at the same time can make some odd shapes that may need to be tweaked.
-When you are in you Actions Timeline, make sure you create a keyframe for ALL of the points in your mouth shapes at each emotion on the timeline