Whew! Now that the clips are created, we can begin to synch the clips with the sound file.
The clips you created are stored in the Visor. You can open the visor from the main menu by choosing Windows General Editors Visor. Click the Clips tab to see the clips you have created. If the clips do not appear, be sure you have chosen the appropriate character. MM drag the clip from the Visor to the appropriate character in the Trax Editor. You can use the Trax Editor to organize and rearrange the clips you have created, which gives you maximum usage from each clip.
Creating a Sentence from Character Clips
The process of matching the mouth movement to the emphasized sound is accelerated because of the blend shapes you created. Organizing the clips is a simple way to quickly ani-mate a large number of words. As your word library grows, you will gain a better under-standing of the capability of each blend shape, increasing your lip-synching speed. This por-tion of lip-synching requires patience and an artistic eye. Playblasts are a quick way to see the results of your work. You will find that a good deal of tweaking may be necessary to make the lip-synching believable. Have fun with lip-synching and try not to become frustrated.
To create a word from character clips, follow these steps:
1. Make sure the sound track is represented by green lines in the Timeline. Right-click the Timeline to select the name of the file you want to display.
To Import sound, choose File Import and browse to the sound file you want to reference. In this case, choose M C m a g n i f i q u e . w a v from the CD-ROM.
Hands-on Example 1: Lip-Synching Using Blend Shapes and the Trax Editor 147
2. Place the following clips in the Trax Editor: closed mouth, zay, are, magnifique, and a second closed mouth.
3. Place the closed mouth clip four frames before the character should begin to speak.
MM scrub over the Timeline to hear the sound track.This will help you coordinate the sound and the movements.
4. Place the zay clip on the frame with the first green sound line in the Time Slider.
5. Align the other clips so that they begin a frame or two before the matching word is spoken.
Scaling Clips
Scaling a clip is a great way to extend the use of your animation work. When words are repeated, they can be spoken at different rates of speed. If the character is excited, it might speak faster than normal; if the character is distracted, its speech patterns might slow down.
Scaling a clip lets you use the same clip each time a word is spoken, even if the speed or emphasis of the word is different. To scale a clip, mouse over to the lower end of your clip.
A straight arrow with a line appears, indicating that you can now drag to scale the clip (see Figure5.28).
Cycling a clip lets you repeat an animation as many times as the script calls for. Cycling a clip is especially useful when someone is laughing. You can set the cycle to Relative to add a little variety to the motion, or you can set the cycle to Absolute to begin and end the clip exactly the same each time a cycle completes. To cycle a clip, mouse over the top end of your clip. A curved arrow will appear. Drag the clip to the desired ending position. A black tick mark denotes a complete cycle. You can scale and cycle a clip more than once, giving your-self a wider variety of results from the same piece of animation.
To scale a clip, follow these steps:
1. Scale the clip until it matches the length of the word. You can scrub through the Time-line to hear when each sound is said and when words begin and end. This should be all the scaling you need to worry about for the words zay and are.
2. Right-click the magnifique clip and choose Activate Keys to return your keys to the Time Slider for editing.
3. The keyframes begin with frame 2. To simplify the scaling process, Shift+click frame 1 in the Time Slider. Drag the mouse until a red bar covers the last key. (Keyframes are denoted by red bars in the Time Slider.)
4. Click the middle two arrows in the red bar, and drag the keys to the frame before MC begins to say "magnifique."
Now you can continue to edit the keys in the Timeline so that the movements are scaled to match the sounds.
5. Scrub through the Timeline and listen to magnifique. Shift+click and highlight the keys you need to position, and move them to the appropriate position in the Time Slider.
Match the placement of the keys in the Timeline (or Graph Editor) with the empha-sized portions of the words.
9. Create blends between the remaining clips.
Scrub through the animation. If the character's movements are overemphasized, make the correction in the Trax Editor. The weight attribute determines how much movement appears in the animation. To reduce the effect of a blend, lower the weight. If you want to exaggerate the motions, increase the weight. The script might call for the same word to be whispered in one scene and screamed in another, or perhaps sometimes the words are just overexaggerated. The weight of the clip influences the extent of action in each clip.
Select the clip, and in the Channel box, set the weight to 0.2. Now, scrub through the animation. Change the weight back to 1, and notice the results. The weight attribute is use-ful for conveying emphasis and emotion. When you play back the animation, you will dis-cover that you need to reduce the weight of each clip. Experiment with values from zero to 1 until you are happy with the results.
Testing the Lip-Synching:
It is finally time to see the results of your hard work! Create a playblast and let the talking begin! If MC's movements appear to lag a frame or so behind the sound, you can offset the sound track in the Timeline. Follow these steps:
1. Right-click the Timeline.
2. Choose Sound name of your track
3. In the Audio Attributes options, set the offset to -2.
Alternatively, you can drag+select all your Trax clips and move them two frames or so to the right in the Trax Editor.
Tweak the clips until you are pleased with the lip-synching, as shown in Figure 5.29 (also see a rendered sequence of MC speaking in the file M C m a g n i f i q u e . m o v on the CD-ROM).
If the mouth looks as if it is moving wildly and is not in synch with the sound, you probably tried to create too many sounds for a word, or you need to reduce the weight assigned to the clip. Remember to lip-synch phonetically, and not according to the actual letters.
Now that you are pleased with the words, add some movement to the upper portion of the face. You might want to set the character to MC and simply create one clip of movement that covers the entire sentence, by setting keyframes throughout the Timeline each time you want movement. Again, do not overdo the motions of the forehead and the eyes. Say the
Hands-on Example 2: Photo-Real Facial Replacement and Lip-Synching 149
Figure 5.29: MC in action!
sentence while looking in a mirror. Notice when you move the upper portion of your face, and re-create those movements using the blend shapes you created. Don't forget to add movement to the character's head. Remember, a person's head is not still as they speak! Keep in mind that lip-synching requires an immense amount of patience and attention to details.
The minor quirks or subtle movements in an animation separate the good characters from the great ones.