I would like to learn how to animate from a voice track. I looked in the training videos but didn't see that one. If you guys have any tips or specific guidelines that would be great. Thanks.

I made a tutorial concerning a important part of the facil animation - cleaning the viseme track. Hope it helps a bit ...



Greetings, Direx

Hi Direx,

This is a big help. I spent hours last night doing a one minute voice track. After watching your video I can see a couple of things I can do differently right away that should help out. My workflow is from the manual but not sure if that is going to be the best. The manual shows I should use Crazy Talk 8 first so:

Crazy Talk 8 -> iClone 7

I end up with a lot of lip markers and I think that actually makes it harder. Also, it adds in many eye movements that I don't want. Do you use Crazy Talk 8 first or just import directly into iClone 7? How do I delete some eye movements? I've been searching for it in the Timeline but not finding the key frames. Thanks for making this video. It helps to watch someone go through the process and I like your results.

I don't use Crazy Talk 8. I just load my sound files into the project and start cleaning the viseme track ...

Sounds good, I would prefer to drop Crazy Talk from the workflow. However, with my current animation I finished the viseme track but now I have unwanted eye movements that came over from Crazy Talk. Do you know how I can delete those movements? I just can't seem to find it in the Timeline. Thanks.

The eye movement data is in the Expression track, which has three sub-tracks: Muscle, Eyeball(R/L), and Head. The Eyeball track should allow you to fix the eyes.

There is indeed no particular advantage to using CrazyTalk for lip-syncing as the underlying functionality is the same for both programs.

If RL would put some work in the lip-syncing function by adding textual support (similar to Papagayo) the results could be greatly improved. Has been requested numerous times, by the way.

---

I'm not seeing the data in the expression track, eyeball. I keep looking in that area unless the vertical lines mean there is data stored in that area. I was looking for keyframes. I attached a picture so you can see what I'm looking at. The Crazy Talk workflow put a whole bunch of eye movements that I didn't want.

Good to know regarding Crazy Talk. They really should update their manual because it says I really should use it because it is greatly improved over the iClone viseme method. Probably old information.

I wonder why they are not adding the textual support. The lip syncing is obviously a huge component and needs to be correct, or at least very close.

Or do I have to delete the entire track on the Expression row? Maybe everything is baked in and can't just fix the eyes.

I deleted the entire expression track to correct the problem. I think it may have been the only way so another reason why the Crazy Talk workflow is not a good idea.

I started over with Create Script, Audio File, in iClone 7. One of the first things I noticed when playing back is the hair flying around. How do I disable that? Thanks.