Ways to Improve my Animation?

Deke

I'm particularly interested in ways to improve lip-syncing.  Or is this as good as it typically gets? I'd welcome links to other Daz Animations that attempt dialogue. (and let me know if the link doesn't work)

Ivy

it looks great ..  it does really matter when using Lipsynce what you have done is as good as it typically gets there is really no way to tweak lip synce  :) good job with your animation. I enjoyed watching :)

wolf359

Hi First your clip was really good and well edited from a storytelling point of view nice work!!!

On the matter of the lipsinc we technically have have three options
for Daz studio.
the very basic built in lipsinc plugin for DS that regretably is 32 bit only.

there is the mimic live plugin which is likely your best option for Genesis 3 figures.

But also there is the discontinued older very full featured stand alone mimic pro3.

You can actually use mimicpro 3 on genesisposer native & 1-2 figures but first they must be exported as poser "cr2 so that cr2 can be loaded into the mimic interface

This user posted an excellent video demonstrating the features
of each one in comparison to the others.

wolf359

Here is one of my tests with the genesis 2 female 
made by exporting her cr2  to mimic 3 pro.

Deke

Thanks.  I'm a mac, and the Mimic programs have never been mac supported. I've thought about getting a cheap PC to just deal with this issue. My figures are all G2 and I'll stick with them for this project. Is lip sync much improved for G3 figures?

wolf359

"My figures are all G2 and I'll stick with them for this project. Is lip sync much improved for G3 figures?"

Hi I own both a Mac & a PC but ultimately I render every final from my old Mac.
My preferred figures are Genesis1 & 2
I have mimic Live and I have not seen anything that would indicate the the lipsnc is any more accurate on the Genesis 3 figures. 

Deke

Thanks. I notice that carrara is on sale for $45....and that mimic-pro works with it.  Would that combination make lip sync any more controllable? Does anyone have any experience with that?

Barefoot Upto My Soul

Did you ask a question about lip sync? I got caught up in the story. Very nicely done. How many FPS is this at?

WendyLuvsCatz

Deke said:

Thanks. I notice that carrara is on sale for $45....and that mimic-pro works with it.  Would that combination make lip sync any more controllable? Does anyone have any experience with that?

it has its own mimic plugin and sadly for D|S users only useable in Carrara

(I prefer Carrara by a longshot but accept not all share my opinion)

and genesis 3 does not work in Carrara, it crashes it.

DAZ discontinued the Mimic pro standalone so Mimic live and lipsync really all you have as far as easy solutions.

I say that as there are complex solutions you are not going to want to try, one is faceshift, I have not tried it but it looks awesome, another for G3F &M at least is iClone6 pro and 3Dxchange pipeline but not the preset provided by Reallusion for facial animation but using bone based animation and bvh import, I made my own bone based viseme poses by scratch in 3Dexchange!

Another roll your own solution is talk designer in Poser, at least for G3F & M, which requires fancy conversions

However there are python scripts in the DAZ store for Genesis 2 & below.

That can be saved as a pose animation a pz file.

Deke

Glad you liked it. I'm animating at 24 fps to save on rendering time. Barefoot, the options you've listed are probably beyond my capabiliies, but perhaps I have to step it up to get the effect I'm after.  I haven't used Poser, and I'm on Mac. I have bought Carrera, but I may return it as I'm not sure it will work in a round-trip fashion with Daz Studio as I was hoping.

I'm currently trying to type out each dialogue in various phonemic sounding syllables and seeing what effect that has. I do wish there was a way to exaggerate the moves...but I'm not sure even graphmate gives that option.

mmoir

Deke,

  This is very well done.  The dialogue looks very well synced with the characters, only a couple of spots it was off a little. The facial expressions, voices and movements of the characters are all very good.  Keep up the good work.

Barefoot Upto My Soul

Hi Deke, I'm not the3Ddigit. She is Wendy. I am Michael.

Does something bother you about what you have done so far? Do you find that the lips are spot on exact but choppy for lack of another word?

I am looking for the links on youtube of three feature length movies done with daz. One is Russian, one is German, and one is Greek. Doesn't matter if you don't understand the languages. They are well done from years ago even with Daz Studio 3.

Barefoot Upto My Soul

This one is The Trojan War. It's in English. It was done using text to speech (TTS). His later works have improved animation. Cut him some slack when watching, he has limited resources so just enjoy it for what it is. What I get from this is that using tts, smooth the lip sync. If it were me producing, I would then import the movie into my audio work station (DAW) where I would replace (loop or re-record) the tts with live talent voices. For animations, voices are recorded first and images synced to the voice. My preferred program for doing this is Pro Tools. Mine is old version 5 but it works for me.

If you can't afford ProTools, there is a program that is Open Source and free that works on Mac, Linux and Windows. It is called Ardour. You would need Jack installed to work with it. Jack is also free. Plus you would need Jadeo to view the video while editing, mixing the audio. Jadeo is free. There are lots of tutorials on youtube for working with ProTools or Ardour.org.

Speaking of English, worth a look is SciFiFunk. Done in Carrara and rendered with Octane. Steve Payne from Great Britain gives a lot of tutorials that you might find interesting. This is his original version without Octane as the render.

Lost Planet by Dmitry Petrov is excellent. He uses Sonic Foundry Sound Forge 5 for processing his audio and Daz's Bryce version 5.5 for the animation plus Poser for the character animation. He composits it all in Adobe After Effects and edit the whole thing togeter in Adobe Premiere. Click on link below to enjoy. He made two more movies to this so click on the link there to continue watching the trilogy.

If you liked the two Russian movies above, try out this German series. I can't find it at the moment.

Also, checkout Blade by Halenow and see some of his other short movies.

misterskuts has some short dystopian movies.

Michael

Deke

Thanks for the examples. Very interesting. The Russian films seem to have a tight fit between voice and lip movements.

wolf359

 "DAZ discontinued the Mimic pro standalone so Mimic live and lipsync really all you have as far as easy solutions."

It is quite regrettable that we no longer have a Native Daz Solution for Lipsinc that offers the advanced editing tools that
were present in Mimic pro 3
I still use my old copy ( as well as mimic Live) as it does work for Genesis 2 figures. 

Deke

You say you have an old copy...is this an old copy of Daz Studio or an old Copy of Mimic Pro?  If I recall the version that worked with Daz was a PC only version...wouldn't play with Macs.  Or do I have my programs mixed up?

WendyLuvsCatz

it was a standalone meant for Poser but could work with D|S3 via a bridge also.

What it was useful for was creating dmc files for any Poser cr2 

I have no idea why DAZ shelved it except that it took extra work converting G2M &f and quite a bit more converting G3M&F to use it saving as a useable cr2 with geometry but they have dmc files now anyway.

I made dmc files for all those figures using it before DAZ released the official ones so was doable.

WendyLuvsCatz

since a dmc is a text file it is plausable to alter the keyframe durations and values for the visemes in notepad

I have indeed created dmc files in notepad.