Thanks everyone. Yesterday I tried adding a WAV file and was not only able to add the vesime manually but also automatically based on the WAV file. The automatically results were okay (would probably need adjustment for a more professional video) but they would definitely be a good starting point to work from. When I opened the Lip Editor the coloring of the visimes still appeared disabled to me but clicking on them did add them so it might just be some oddity of the Windows color scheme that I am using.


"We often compare ourselves to the U.S. and often they come out the best, but they only have the right to bear arms while we have the right to bare breasts"
Bowser and Blue, Busting The Breast

Hmm...You must have missed reading the post about the fact that many people, including myself, are working on a $0 budget.
Notice how each of your lines of solution was prefixed by pay. I presume pay would involve more than $0 ;)


"We often compare ourselves to the U.S. and often they come out the best, but they only have the right to bear arms while we have the right to bare breasts"
Bowser and Blue, Busting The Breast

Some properties of objects, when you change them, affect the entire timeline. This means when you set them at T0 in your project and then changed them at T1 is your project (where T0 and T1 are two different key frames in the time line) the results will be the T1 changes for the entire timeline (i.e. including T0 and T1). I am working from memory here (as I am typing this) but I believe the selection of Materials for an object, as an example, is a property that falls into this category (although I could be wrong). These types of properties are what I call "Project Scope".

Some properties of objects, when you change them, apply to the key frame only and transition to between values between the neighbouring key frames. This means, for example, if at T0 the property is 27, at T1 it is 212 and at T2 the value is 324, you will have those exact values at T0, T1 and T2 and extrapolated values in between. This is what I call "Timeline Scope" or "Keyframe Scope".

However, "Timeline Scope" / "Keyframe Scope" is further sub-divided on which gets collected by Capture Clip. Some properties that can be set on the timeline (i.e. are not "Project Scope") do not seem to get recorded when the Collect Clip / Add To Perform Action is used.

The problem that I ran into is that the "rules" seem to change but I don't know why. As an example, I created a prop (electronic sign) which used the UV offset property to offset the texture on the sign to produce a scrolling effect. I used Collect Clip on the resulting keyframes and added the result as a Perform Action. It worked great. The sign is selling in my store. However, when I tried to use the same technique later for a different prop, I was not able to do it. The UV offset suddenly seem to have become "Project Scope" (i.e. when I adjust them at a later frame it changes the offset for the whole project). This may not be a bug...there may be some logical explanation as to why it is acting this way but I have not managed to get an answer to it.


"We often compare ourselves to the U.S. and often they come out the best, but they only have the right to bear arms while we have the right to bare breasts"
Bowser and Blue, Busting The Breast

LA said "what properties are project scope as opposed to what properties are key frame scope".

Could you expand that a little bit. Sorry, I'm having a bit of a hard time interpreting your meaning.

Agreed. In the good old days, when you bought software, you got a nice thick book that covered the software from end to end. However, now that software has gotten so big and with so many features, many software companies are skimping on the documentation and, instead, relying on users to figure it out and then post tutorials. I my opinion, it should be the opposite...the more features you have the better documentation you should need.
If I need to write a document on how to use a pencil it should be a lot shorter than writing a document on how to use a Windows computer.
But I guess that is the trade off for getting the software sooner. If RL waited until all features were properly documented, we wouldn't be using its software right now (i.e. it would be slated for a 2020 release).

And, yes, there is an online manual for iClone and some stuff available with F1 but this nowhere near a complete document. It may have enough for a newbie to get started but as soon as you start to do anything more complex, the documentation does not cover it. For example, I have not found "what properties are project scope as opposed to what properties are key frame scope" in any documentation.


"We often compare ourselves to the U.S. and often they come out the best, but they only have the right to bear arms while we have the right to bare breasts"
Bowser and Blue, Busting The Breast

Thank you. This answers my question perfectly. From your answer, the reason why the Lip Editor for visimes was disabled, in my case, was because I didn't load a WAV file. I believe someone posted the same answer earlier...so thanks to you both. Now I can go and finish my video.



"We often compare ourselves to the U.S. and often they come out the best, but they only have the right to bear arms while we have the right to bare breasts"
Bowser and Blue, Busting The Breast

Money is a secondary consideration. I make content for the fun of it, for my own movies and for others. The money is a side benefit.
However, I did notice that you seem to be fixated on money...it seems to come up a lot in your posts.


1: I'm looking in to it. DAZ Studio has a nice Lip Sync software but it is extra...not part of the core software. It will be very nice if iClone's functionality will be comparable and part of the core software.
2: That is exactly what I am trying to do in this post. Asking question so that I understand.
3: In this particular case I am not sure what I would use the external software for since, according to answers, iClone has this functionality embedded in the core software but as a general rule: I do.
    My choices are a bit limited since I am working on a $0 budget but I use external software for 3D mesh creation, boning, texture creation and post production.


Cryptic comments like that don't help newbies learn...I only have the 3DXChange Pro version (not Pipeline version) so I am not sure what this comment is suggesting.

Regarding Learning...

That is what I am trying to do. I noticed my Lip Editor visemes all disabled so I asked about it and got more info that expected (which is generally a good thing although sometimes too much information can be hard to process all)...causing me to have learned...now I will go and explore those concepts (via practice and video tutorials to learn more).

As far as I know there is no "do this and you will learn everything about iClone". One learns but trying and reading. As you said, there are many "blind leading the blind" so I can learn by tutorials from others but it is not always clear if those tutorials are "good sources" or "the blind leading the blind".

On a number of occasions, when I did not understand something, I posted questions in the forum to understand...but it has been hit and miss. For example:
1. I am still trying to understand why in some cases I can change the offsets of my UV in the timeline to create an animation (such as my Electronic Sign) but in other cases I can not (i.e. changes to the UV offsets seem to apply to the whole project).
2. I posted a question about why, suddenly, I was not able to load Personas for an Avatar. The same Avatar file, when used by someone else was able to load a Persona but I was not.
3. I have been trying to get a good understanding of what properties are project global scope (i.e. a change to them changes the property for the entire project), what properties are key frame scope (i.e. can be changed for each key frame) and what properties are "recorded" by the Collect Clip/Add To Perform. Not all changes to properties that can be done in the time line seem to get recorded with Collect Clip.
4. Why the Motion playback is different from the timeline playback. For example, in one chase I made an animation that rotated an object 360 degrees. On the timeline the animation was correct but when I Collect Clip, Add To Perform and played back the Perform Action the object rotated half way and then back. I was able to "fix" the problem by adjusting the key frames (i.e. using something angles like 89, 179, 269, and 359) but it still begs the question as to why the logic is different for the two (I would expect both to be either right or wrong).


If I may suggest, if you want people to learn then respond with helpful answers to further that learning as opposed to cryptic answers or useless comments. If you look at, even just this post, you will see that most people provided some good answers trying to answer my question (or at least trying to understand my question)...but your own answers did not contribute as much to the learning process. If you have knowledge to share...share it. If you don't, leave the post for others to answer.


"We often compare ourselves to the U.S. and often they come out the best, but they only have the right to bear arms while we have the right to bare breasts"
Bowser and Blue, Busting The Breast

I'm not asking for step-by-step instructions, but thorough documentation and reasonably predictable behavior is nice.

For example, changing "shadow transparency*" allows light go actually go through a wall, regardless if the wall is opaque.  Strange, and not something you'd suspect by looking at the interface based on the terminology they used, and the help (manual) does not tell you about that either.  It is something - in iClone - that you learn through experimentation, trial-and-error, or talking to people on the forum.

Sorry to the OP about the diversion.  Back to lips...

*I'm not at my iClone computer right now.  I might not be using the exact term, but those who have encountered this know what I'm talking about.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

You'll see when you get a chance to play with it, because the visemes for dialogue have their own line in the timeline - you just need to open them using the little triangle drop-down-box-thingie beside the word visemes (where it appears in the timeline under the "face" tab)...

And aside from that free video link I suggested earlier, don't forget about the tutorial page you can sign in to as part of your registered account (on the right hand side of your account page). 

Or there's the free step-by-step guide that comes with the software, which you can access via F1 (or by clicking on the question mark in the top right hand corner of the program)... sure, it's mainly the basics and also includes a lot about crazytalk and how to get iC5/6 interacting with CTA, 3DX etc. But if you enter the word "visemes" in the search bar of F1, it'll take you straight to the screenshot you need, which also happens to be on the page where I learned how to do it with great precision in iC5 during my first week. 



Ahhhh, that explains it... I leapt from newbie to veteran in a month, but I thought that was just because I opened an account to start giving away some of the models and avatars I've made in cinema 4d (which is like maya, max and zbrush all thrown together into one big happy place with every extra kind of tool you could ever imagine from toonshading to advanced pro rendering, and their timeline is to die for... it also lets us work and develop at least 15 projects/scenes at the same time in different tabs, while also rendering up to three other projects to cinema standard before noticing any loss in processing speeds... on the downside, it can also suck power from the national grid like a starving industrial estate... haha)... 

So now you've got me thinking that I should stop posting before I cross an invisible line to "tutor" too. Haha

Although, even as a keen lurker, I think a lot of confusion and misunderstandings like this could be curtailed if ranks were only available to members with registered copies of the software, and suffixed by the version number they own of both iC and/or CTA... so then genuine newbies and/or "visitors" who are still considering their purchase could be helped and advised more appropriately by the real iClone/CTA veterans, while semi-skilled newcomers like myself could also see at a glance, which feedback is the most insightful and reliably current, so we also know who to approach and who to respond to, based on our own levels and version of iClone/CTA as we come in...?

But then, I'm also guessing there are solid reasons why they haven't gone that way already. The RL team seem very sensible, fair-minded and generous in all my dealings with them. 

:)


 





  




Anita, aka "Bleetz" the Toon Wrangler @ Tarampa Studios
SYS: Win 8.1,  64-bit, i7-4770 CPU @3.4GHz,  
32GB RAM, Intel(R)Graphics 4600 & nVIDIA GTX1060 TI 

Lord Ashes, I just want to get back on topic. I'm not quite sure what sw00000p is trying to contribute. I sometimes get the impression from him that if things can't be done in a complicated round-about way that requires years of training they are not worth doing. This is not the case. It's the end result that counts, moving pixels on the screen, however that is done.

To answer your question, in iClone the lip editor only comes into play after some sound input (wav file, microphone, or TTS output). Now if you wanted to place visemes manually you could. Just load any sound file of the right length (could be silent even) and the Lip Editor will be enabled.

The basic lip sync in iClone is reasonable, but could be greatly improved. I usually have to do quite some editing afterwards (if time allows).

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