I prefer to animate lip sync the "manual" way; I always scrub frame by frame and assign mouths this way. But having said this, ANIMATE's Auto Lip Sync feature is still pretty cool and can help save time or if you want to have basic lip sync without detailed attention to consonant sounds etc.
Here is a video demo with Indigo's head:
As you can see (and not hear), ANIMATE picks the mouth positions that correspond to the sound. There are only 8 mouth positions by default, but I can add new ones and/or swap out the mouths on any frame in the timeline. (I did these mouths very quickly for the purpose of testing out the feature... need to redraw!) You can also see the mouth positions in X-Sheet view (top right of my workspace)
NOTE: This Auto Lip Sync feature does not work with Symbol mouths. The mouths have to be Drawings. So when you create your mouths, it would help to save them as Drawings in a library template (.tpl) OR you could save them in a Symbol and then Expand the Symbol on the timeline before you Auto Detect Lip Sync and Map Lip Sync.
What I didn't show in my video is that I originally had these mouths in a Symbol and they were all facing the opposite direction inside the Symbol. After expanding the Symbol to Drawings in Timeline view, I selected all the drawings in the layer (to do this, click on the layer name, and use the Transform tool
) and flipped them horizontally. 
P.S. We will be re-demonstrating this feature and others at the ANIMATE LAUNCH in Mexico-Brazil-Argentina next week.
Here is a video demo with Indigo's head:
As you can see (and not hear), ANIMATE picks the mouth positions that correspond to the sound. There are only 8 mouth positions by default, but I can add new ones and/or swap out the mouths on any frame in the timeline. (I did these mouths very quickly for the purpose of testing out the feature... need to redraw!) You can also see the mouth positions in X-Sheet view (top right of my workspace)
NOTE: This Auto Lip Sync feature does not work with Symbol mouths. The mouths have to be Drawings. So when you create your mouths, it would help to save them as Drawings in a library template (.tpl) OR you could save them in a Symbol and then Expand the Symbol on the timeline before you Auto Detect Lip Sync and Map Lip Sync.
What I didn't show in my video is that I originally had these mouths in a Symbol and they were all facing the opposite direction inside the Symbol. After expanding the Symbol to Drawings in Timeline view, I selected all the drawings in the layer (to do this, click on the layer name, and use the Transform tool
) and flipped them horizontally. P.S. We will be re-demonstrating this feature and others at the ANIMATE LAUNCH in Mexico-Brazil-Argentina next week.
Thanks for this tutorial
ReplyDeleteI watched a video on Toon Booms youtube channel where they used this head in a lecture. In the video they speed through a feature that I can't figure out how to do. They make all the mouth shapes follow the audio like you did here but then they morph inbetween each substitution. I can't figure out how to get symbols to morph at all. Once I make a drawing a symbol it seems like morphing doesn't work. But rewatching the video on youtube it looks like that is exactly what they did. Could you please help with a video on this? There aren't any videos that I have been able to find on how to do this step by step. This blog is awesome by the way. Thanks a lot!
ReplyDeleteHi Kenzie
ReplyDeleteThat is right - you can't morph symbols. They have to be drawings. I need to go look at that video on YouTube that you are referring to...
Will be back!
hi, this is awesome,thank you... i do all my drawings in photo shop, cartoon characters, can i import those images into this program?
ReplyDelete