Phonemes? Andy help pls!

WendyLuvsCatz

seeking Andy (3dage) Carrara guru

I have discovered Mimic does not use the same naming as V4 expressions or for that matter any other Daz or Poser character
after creating a set of NLA pose clips for the Daz cow (don't ask) using a series of head morphs I had created using V4's expressions as a guide,
I find there is so many differences between the namings and phonemes used between characters trying to match up my clips with a set imported using the default dmc tedious to say the least.
I can take wild guesses and match say ah with AA or easier k with K but looks like going into Mimic itself and looking at those phoneme poses on a character that uses the default and creating morphs based on that the only real way.
How did you lipsync your Justin Bieber lookalike on Youtube?
what reference phonemes did you use to create the morphs?
did you do as I tried in a seperate animation track drop in your own clips matching them to a mimic track or infact replace the mimic track ones?
so many questions, so little brain %-P

gaffer2

I know your pain I can;t fid a DMC for M4. there seems to be a lack of support for Mimic. not surprised

WendyLuvsCatz

I am trying to make my own in carrara

WendyLuvsCatz

my cow swearing using manually dialed morphs

Sockratease

Such language!

3DAGE

HI Wendy :)

I did it using Mimic for Carrara and M4. so it was straight forward,. load the sound and let mimic do it's thing.
but I also did a little custom guy (simple man) built in Carrara, where I made the morphs and (NLA poses)

When you're making your own NLA poses from your own morphs,. you'll find that some mouth shapes are almost the same, and you can get away with things like Using B for P, since in both the lips are together, even in M is the same.
really , you can get away with using a few basic shapes, if you look at cartoons, there's sometimes only 5 or 6 mouth shapes.

One tip, when you're making morphs and Poses is to use a Mirror to look at your own face and see how the different parts of your face change with different expressions.
that's how the 2D animators for cartoons worked

Also,. as you animate with mimic, if you scrub the time-line, you can make another NLA Pose from any point, which can sometimes be a quick way to make other vocal shapes, as long as you only save the head / face data :)

Hope it helps :)

3DAGE

Hi Gaffer :)

There should be an M4 DMC with Mimic and Mimic for Carrara,.

it should be in the Carrara / Mimic content / Configuration files. (for (mimic for carrara))

There should also be a Genesis DMC,... if you reset your downloads for mimic, you'll get the latest version with the newest DMC's

:)

WendyLuvsCatz

yes I did that, created NLA clips of my morphs but if I give them the same names as the mimic ones they end up AH1 etc
so was wondering, did you just drag the matching or near enough ones into a seperate track to match the M4 ones for your little man (who looks like Justin Bieber) or somehow replace them?
you did say Carrara does not like replacing master clips and found this to be so.
I am practicing on the Daz cow but hope I can get mmoir's little man talking too
even though I cannot see myself as part of the final CCMP
(except as offering encouragement and publicity and maybe helping render some of it if they post complete project files and need more resources)
I do intend using it as a learning experience

3DAGE

Ah,.. ok,... you mean ,... if mimic loads in the Wrong thing for the sound, ... you should be able to just select it, delete it from the track, and then drag your own NLA pose clip in,. to replace it, ....or drag the correct mimic pose.

The M4 I did , was all mimic poses, so I didn't have the issues with the clip renaming i just had to adjust a few lengths and positions of the clips as far as I remember

The re-naming thing, "With numbers" is a Carrara thing,.
For example:
If you have a V4 loaded then you load another V4, ...Carrara names it as V41, since you can easily get issues with two identical "Master" objects with the same name.
The same thing applies to objects, lights, shaders, poses etc... unless it's an "instance" of the master object, ...like duplicate

I suppose you could name your phonemes differently to avoid that, EG: _Aah, _Mmm, _Ooh ...so that they don't get changed when you load the mimic ones.

Making M_Moir's figure work, should be easier, "if you use mimic for Carrara", since you only have to create the NLA poses from the morphs, and set them up for mimic, then load the sound and run mimic.
If mimic makes mistakes and loads the wrong sound, or puts it at the wrong position, you can move the pose, stretch it out or shorten it or replace them with the correct clip.

TIP: Switch off "Snap" in the timeline, so you can actually adjust the length, or position of the NLA poses with some precision.

I think that the movie project is a great idea, and it should be a good learning experience for anyone, even just reading through it as a reference of the work-flow, you've got some good experience with animation and transferring from different App's, as well as a great brain for solving things and thinking outside of the box, ....or even outside of the planet the box is on :)
You're also used to rendering pretty big scenes and files,. so, I thing it will be good for you , and good for the project to have you involved in any way

:)

WendyLuvsCatz

visemes, that is my mistake
I need to use visemes as phonemes all over the place
new issue
popping eyes
https://www.box.com/s/ocsprwdm22vv50sbrcis
my attempt so far using badly matched Poser visually imitated phonemes, must do my own with a webcam
mouth not too bad considering the poor matches but what is with the eyes?
keyframing movement works but in mimc they explode

WendyLuvsCatz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7TmMNHzins

WendyLuvsCatz

actually had an idea
my eye movements are morph targets
many figures have seperate mesh for eyes with their own rigging attachment
not Daz figures but indeed the iClone ones I import and others
the Daz figures do however rotate the eyes using rigging not morphs as pointed out
I think the Viseme NLA clips clash with the eye morph NLA clips as they share the same mesh which is being morphed.
so
I will redo the morph targets, this time viseme based
and
use seperately attached and weightpainted mesh for eyes and eyebrows (using mmoir's rig most likely)
then adding gestures to the mimic track should not clash with mouth morphing hopefully
we will see

I might add a simple mouth cavity, teeth and tongue too.

3DAGE

HI Wendy. :)

You've answered your question before me :)

The issue is in morphs adding or effecting previous morphs which ADD to the overall effect. ...then you get distortion.

In the NLA save "list" you can select which parts of the figure EG: (head) you want to save in the clip or pose.
in NLA clips and poses you can also enable / disable specific bones or morphs to be used, so it may be worth the time load in a couple of morphs to cause the distortion , then open that NLA list and click through a couple of morphs to see what's effecting what.

Andy :)

WendyLuvsCatz

thx Andy, needed to think a while
willtry again and define the NLA clip morphs better
a work in progress
step 1
added scary teeth and tongue for better visemes

wetcircuit

Which cow is the swearing cow? I know a little girl who is 2yo and LOVES cows...

Sockratease

holly wetcircuit said:

Which cow is the swearing cow? I know a little girl who is 2yo and LOVES cows...

That would be The Daz cow!

But I'm 2 1/2 years old now!

WendyLuvsCatz

no matter what I did, I still got the eyeballs and in addition twist and explode adding head rotation (rigged not morphed)
so
this time at least since I saved the NLA poses better selecting the specific polymesh group, I could create NLA clips for and keyframe the eyes, brows, head etc seperately, just made sure they were not ticked in Mimic.
then did a mix of NLA motions and keyframes, the jerky Max Headwax headturn is an NLA clip, looked silly but I kept it on purpose for a stupid Wendy style video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcS8pPM1gFY