That's very helpful. Thank you very much.

I spent some time hitting some high notes on the hand keys - missing the scrub element very much so -.( BTW the tutorial actually has them scrubbing the dialogue at one point to check sync - how did they do that?) and then jumped into the Puppet Controller to play around with the eyes/brows and peripheral options. VERY NICE!!!. Having RT interactive options like this is fabulous and is one of the reasons why I became so enamored of IClone. Now, if they just look at Key Frame ON/OFF and Scrubbing as Animation Enhancements - this will make for a much more cohesive system IMHO.

• They slide the visemes on the timeline, but with no sound.
• They did the "puppeteer" animation at 1/2 speed, so it sounded like they were scrubbing the audio, but it is really a slow playback to allow you to move the puppet controls more accurately.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.  As you can see in the second post of this thread, I fully support this request.

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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

Hell, I would take 1/2 speed playback if that's an easier option for the powers that be? Or 1/4 speed? That would allow us to 'ear all' the sync and be a lot cleaner. As anything, you take the good with the bad and figure out work arounds.

I see that for the 3dX upgrade they are promising better lip sync. Can you shed any light on that?

I'm far from an expert on it.  I mostly use it to import props from Sketchup and Blender, though I dream of doing more.

With the disclaimer out of the way, I *suspect* it mostly refers to better tools to help you do the "mouth shape-to-viseme" mapping.

Hopefully someone can answer this with greater authority.

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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

Re Lipsyncs... haha, they beat me to posting that link. I've watched it a few times since I started with iClone and I understand something related to it a little more each time. 

Some of the most helpful "tricks" I found elsewhere or stumbled upon myself, including how to create accurate visemes for any skin/boned avatars via 3DX, so I've been blogging about them as part of my entries for the RGCA competition.... notes to myself really, since all the other entrants are way ahead of me with experience... but you're welcome to pop in to see if you've missed anything, as I did at first... the timeline and lipsync topics are here at the start of page 1.  (Page 2 also shows a pic of that little critter from my logo that google+ wouldn't let you see directly the other day... )

Weird but true: My only previous experience with animation was a few months in Cinema 4D (which I love for modelling, rendering, large projects and any really complex animations), but that spoiled me with features too, so I asked many of my initial iClone questions in various forums while clutching maniacally to clumps of my hair in my fists - and often without any responses because I'm striving for a style more like yours and pixars than most other members here, it seems, where the computer game style reigns as king, understandably, since that's the primary market for iClone - so it took me a while to learn that iC is a little like the Linux of the mac/pc universe... completely different from the ground up, but still handles nearly everything, albeit differently...

so now when I hit a wall that could have been solved easily at home in my other software, I stop and try to see how reallusion might have solved the problem during their reconstruction of animation software, which has a goal of making the whole thing *easier* for people with limited experience... and yes, sometimes this is at the expense of more advanced features... I personally miss morphing tools like my favourite shoe... but until last week, I thought I missed hypernurbs that much too - until I found the 1-click solution in 3DX via the smoothing tool... ironically, I first thought Maxon were crazy to name their smoothing tool something so bizarrely hard to find, like hypernurbs... I mean, sheesh... hypernurbs... might as well be hyper-stupid-name-for-nerds... LOL

And sometimes CrazyTalk Animator2 (Pipeline version) has solved some tooning issues for me with iC5... and still does with iC6, especially for backgrounds and toonish animations, like sweating, fuming etc... by saving those animations as alpha avis and control-dragging them into iClone, which converts them to iprops without needing to go via 3DX at all... 

food for thought, at least. 

 


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 

Thanks for the timeline links and the info, Bleetz. Much appreciated. Yes, we are more 'toon' focused than game - and this I think is a good thing. I'm enjoying dealing with the 'restrictions' of IClone as all software has some kind of headache. That being said, I wouldn't complain if they added keyframing on/off and scrubbing. I shall post this to the content requirements forum. Thanks for the encouragement and insights.

Rendering and tests continue as I look to the Toon Toolset and the Puppet Controller. I started out with Stout and looked at both the regular and toon render engines. There are always going to be limits with low poly characters but I think I can push in to a close up with no major objections.  All of this material has not been color corrected or finished and is just raw out of the render engine so I have a few tricks up my sleeve. I also looked to a monochrome render as well and shall explore a limited color palette as a creative choice as well. 



The monochrome look can be very effective, I believe, once I figure out the program. BTW - I am assuming the the depth of field aspect does not work with the Toon Render?



Overall, I was much pleased with the Stout character and put together a simple animation just to test his moving hold/idle position. He's a big lug that shall translate fine for the work I want to do.
I think he will be the first character I animate in a short film. I finished my day reviewing the progress I made and noted my new familiarity with keyboard shortcuts and coming to terms with the program.

Today I worked on continued Toon character evaluations and Curvy was my victim for the day. Using the Avatar Controller, I quickly loaded her and tried various moving holds and idles and then jumped into lip sync. I find I am using a 100 frame pattern - play and watch timeline than play and watch lip sync (repeat as required with adjustments.). I was happy with my progress as I hit a few more of the vowels but will still need to use body animation and secondary exaggeration to 'sell' the performance. 



I also had an opportunity to try out the Light Tool China Ball as a lighting prop (as opposed to the florescent I loaded up for the first Curvy clip here. I can see myself lighting scenes using this type of approach or assigning lights to primitives to light a larger swath of the set. The soft shadows here are quite nice without the breakup associated with the floro.

I have interest in doing regular TV episodes in the Toon Shader with a kind of Retro look ( More like animations done in Eighties ). I know you would bring some extra touch to the regular Toon Shader.
I would be eagerly watching you working with the Toon Shader.