source: lips.zip
How do I animate lips?
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
How do I animate lips?
I have done some animation on lips, but it is really hard to control the lips with bones. Does anyone has some tips for me to rig human lips? Or can this one only be done with points animation?
source: lips.zip
source: lips.zip
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CartoonM!ke
- Posts: 110
- Joined: Mon Apr 17, 2006 4:54 pm
- Location: Walnut Creek, CA, USA
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I've been doing some lip/mouth movements using switch layers and HeyVern's trick with using interpolation, making a keyframe and dragging the inner switch layer out of the switch layer.
If you're real careful about not adding points or peaking them, the interpolation of the layers can really make things smooth. In my mouth layer (inside the switch layer) there's a filled group for the lips, teeth, tongue and inner mouth. I make sure that auto-weld is off (the space bar is how I weld things now), so I can move points around with ease. I make sure that I name each of the groups so I can acess them if they are hard to manually select.
I've read Stop Staring, and even though it's for Maya/3D programs, the sections about mouth shapes has given me ideas that all I need is to make the 9 basic "visimemes" (smile, narrow, frown, upper lip up, upperlip down, lower lip up, lowerlip down, tongue up, tongue out) and then in the switch layer do what Vern outlined in one of his tutorials (it's at http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/swtichpointcopy.html). It's a bit labor intensive, but I think it's worth it, as the mouth expressions with point movement have a kind of consistent look and unity to them that bone movement just doesn't quite have.
One thought, maybe you could name all your mouth bones and then recreate the bone structure and then constrain the mouth bones to these control bones. On the ControlBones setup, you could also constrain the amount of rotation.
Hope I'm making some kind of sense. The good kind.
Once I get over the issues I'm having with rigging my figure, I'll post a quick render animation ofmy character's mouth shapes/expressions.
hth
If you're real careful about not adding points or peaking them, the interpolation of the layers can really make things smooth. In my mouth layer (inside the switch layer) there's a filled group for the lips, teeth, tongue and inner mouth. I make sure that auto-weld is off (the space bar is how I weld things now), so I can move points around with ease. I make sure that I name each of the groups so I can acess them if they are hard to manually select.
I've read Stop Staring, and even though it's for Maya/3D programs, the sections about mouth shapes has given me ideas that all I need is to make the 9 basic "visimemes" (smile, narrow, frown, upper lip up, upperlip down, lower lip up, lowerlip down, tongue up, tongue out) and then in the switch layer do what Vern outlined in one of his tutorials (it's at http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/swtichpointcopy.html). It's a bit labor intensive, but I think it's worth it, as the mouth expressions with point movement have a kind of consistent look and unity to them that bone movement just doesn't quite have.
One thought, maybe you could name all your mouth bones and then recreate the bone structure and then constrain the mouth bones to these control bones. On the ControlBones setup, you could also constrain the amount of rotation.
Hope I'm making some kind of sense. The good kind.
Once I get over the issues I'm having with rigging my figure, I'll post a quick render animation ofmy character's mouth shapes/expressions.
hth
I guess point animation is the best solution here, with the modification of using breakdowns between interpolated switch layers, to have good inbetweens, instead of calculated inbetweens (which are often notorious in points animation, because they don't follow arcs, but rather go in an unnatural straight line). I think that actions can speed up this process.
Perhaps using bone animation is me being overcomplicated (I have a habit of doing that) again. I guess the combination of the mechanics of the lower jaw and the muscles that control the mouth area is too complicated and subtle for bone animation.
I wish AS has muscles to solve this problem. Bones are obviously not enough.
Perhaps using bone animation is me being overcomplicated (I have a habit of doing that) again. I guess the combination of the mechanics of the lower jaw and the muscles that control the mouth area is too complicated and subtle for bone animation.
I wish AS has muscles to solve this problem. Bones are obviously not enough.
Now I have created a piece of lipsync animation with 10 lip poses. They are all different. So now I should create a generic lip shape, make 9 copies of it and mold them according to the lip shapes I already have (but have a different mesh). If I have those 10 copies of the same mesh, I can replace those with the existing layers and turn on interpolation in the switch layer. I will do that another time.
click on the image to watch the video on YouTube
BTW A few things I learned while studying this subject:
click on the image to watch the video on YouTube
BTW A few things I learned while studying this subject:
- Lipsynching is trying to convey that speech is going on, not to form each motion of the mouth to real life. So it is a kind of abstraction
- For believability, the mouth shape should never be symetric.
Thanks for this post! Woohoo! I never would have tried this. It really got me thinking.
I slapped together this lip bone rig in like 20 minutes! It works pretty good. With some more effort it could be much better. It might almost be enough to persuade me to do lip syncing in AS instead of papagayo.
I used a bunch of position constraints and only 2 control bones, 1 for each lip, to get all the positions. By moving those two bones you can stretch and compress the lips. This is fun!
http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/lips.mov
This zip includes the moho and wav file.
http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/lips.zip
This is the moho file without the sound of course.
http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/lips.moho
-vern
I slapped together this lip bone rig in like 20 minutes! It works pretty good. With some more effort it could be much better. It might almost be enough to persuade me to do lip syncing in AS instead of papagayo.
I used a bunch of position constraints and only 2 control bones, 1 for each lip, to get all the positions. By moving those two bones you can stretch and compress the lips. This is fun!
http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/lips.mov
This zip includes the moho and wav file.
http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/lips.zip
This is the moho file without the sound of course.
http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/lips.moho
-vern
Okay I added a "smile control" bone. (links are updated).
Rotate the "smile" bone to make a smile or frown.
It isn't perfect, you need to tweak the other two control bones to get the lips to "line up" but it does the job.
This is fun. I love how "interactive" it feels. The way you can move those bones around and get all those "lippy" shapes.
p.s. There's an extra bone in there sorry. Can't delete it or it messes up my constraints.
-vern
Rotate the "smile" bone to make a smile or frown.
It isn't perfect, you need to tweak the other two control bones to get the lips to "line up" but it does the job.
This is fun. I love how "interactive" it feels. The way you can move those bones around and get all those "lippy" shapes.
p.s. There's an extra bone in there sorry. Can't delete it or it messes up my constraints.
-vern
I think you're right. I really like the solution Vern has come up with a lot more.Mikdog wrote:Err...
I don;t know about the lip shapes not being symmmetric. I kind of liked your first example with the teeth much more than the hastily drawn rough shapes.
It's back to the drawing board for me. I really hate that.