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What would you do if you worked 2 years on your animated movie, and then, at its very end, you...

Posted By Zkeko 5 Years Ago
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What would you do if you worked 2 years on your animated movie, and...

What would you do if you worked 2 years on your animated movie, and then, at its very end, you stuck with dialog?

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Zkeko
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Kelleytoons
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Um, none of the above?

I'd use Live Face (cheap software -- the iPhone X is the expensive part) but if you are absolutely broke with more time than money on your hands I'd animate using Papagayo as we showed in another thread here (for many years I did animation in PG and it was good enough for Fox television.  Admittedly it was 2D, but 3D would be nearly as good).

It just means more work -- just like with body mocap, there isn't anything you can't do by hand that you can do with mocap -- but it sounds like you've put a lot of work already so that's not an issue.  People were doing feature length animations a LONG time before mocap, and there are still many today done without it.



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animagic
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I guess I don't understand the question. I have been doing dialog for years; the old-fashioned way. Editing visemes is a pain, but not impossible. And now there is a Papagayo also, as Kelley points out.

My problem has always been that I don't have the recorded dialog...Unsure


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justaviking
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Option 17 - You wonder why it took you two years to notice?

You can clean up the dialog (I assume you mean the speech animation, not the actual script of course) without having to start over from the beginning.

As Animagic pointed out, you can do a lot of manual viseme cleanup.  I did a video where some of the people sang, and I did a lot of manual viseme work on it.  After a while you can get fairly proficient with it.  It sure would be a lot faster than starting over again and repeating a 2-year effort.




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The-any-Key
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Depends on why I am stuck at dialog:
1# I don't know what the dialog should say: I hire writers before I do a project with dialogs. But you could try hire one now and get a dialog. Cost around $300 for 7000 words.
2# I don't know how to get a good synced dialog animation: I would ask people what my options are and go for one.
3# I don't know how the scene would look like: I hire screenwriter to figure out the scene.



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Rampa
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It would be helpful if you told us what the actual issue is. It may be something that can be solved.

This looks like a DAZ character. Did you set it up to be a talking character? You need to apply the Proper DUF file from the Genesis Extension to the character in DAZ before exporting as FBX.


Zkeko
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Thank you all for your ideas and help. I will try to explain in details, so that you can find answers on your separate questions in it, ok.
I wrote a story, script (along with the dialog of course).  There are 4 talking characters (actors) in the movie. It is short animated movie (around 30-35 min) in non-english language with English subs. Scene are done in Unity HD project, those without dialog (already finished and rendered in Unity in 4k scope (2.39:1) 4096×1716 in png image sequences) are in post-production stage for video and sound editing in DaVinci Resolve. Most of the sfx, folley and music is already done. Characters were animated in Iclone (using CC3 female base, CC2 male base, Hivewire Dusk and DAZ Genesis 3 male , and lot of animals models). I had a problems with fbx animation export to Unity at first, but when I start using alembic these problems were eliminated, with more time consuption, clearly. And then time came to make these dialog scenes, which I left for the end.
I didnt want to start recording voice of the real actors (real people who showed interest in cowork with me on this project) separately, because I was still looking for the proper workflow in which I can record dialog (voice) and face expressions at the same time.
Of course that I could record voices separately and then (even through Iclone alone) tweak it and lipsynch it somehow, but I am affraid that this would ruin already smashing look of the work done so fare (you can never get convincing face expression/talk flowless look).
So I first tried with Cinema Face Cap - Facial Capture for Unity. For that reason I got this Kinect v2 for Xbox One with Microsoft adapter (Kinect is working great by the way,in Win 10 with SDK from Microsoft, and Brekel ProFace 2 (trial) with 4 seconds of recording time for free (before I purchase) but already had problems  with Iclone models in Cinema Cap (guy from customer service asked me for one model to upload them for testing, because they didnt have experience with them sofare, still no answer).  The way it works is you capture your face talking in realtime inside unity and record that animation, which sounds great).
In the meantime I tried to apply facial data through DAZ Genesis 3 male. The animation was looking good, and at that point I was thinking  that I if I could export that to Iclone and convert to Iclone model, then I could maybe copy every new animation to other characters from Iclone (after succesfull  conversion from 3dxchange). Thats where I stucked.  It could be done with Motion Builder I know, but I dont have time to learn MB now, so I would like to stick to Iclone, which is familiar to me.
When I export it from 3dxchange as iProp, everything is fine, so at least I can make close-ups with just face in it (if you know what I mean). This way everything works, but then loosing iAvatar animation tools, clearly.
Thanks for your help and ideas. I will find the way, I am sure, I was just hoping that 3dxchange will fix this issue, but it seems it will never do that, so I guess, to continue my workflow inside the Iclone with fabulous alembic export to Unity, I will eventually have to go with Live Face or Faceware.
Kelleytoons
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As I said, I'd go with Live Face but I still disagree strongly with your idea that you can't do it by hand convincingly.  In fact, there is at least one thread around here (perhaps several) which show that by hand is far BETTER than using Faceware (Faceware isn't as good as Live Face, but the thread does show the limitations of any facial mocap system).

Indeed, to get it looking good you will be doing hand tweaking anyway, and the sooner you learn how to do this the better.  So, again, if I were you I'd first learn how to do it by hand and then if you do get Live Face you will know how to make it better.



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Zkeko
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Thank you Kelleytoons.
I can see that you are talking from your own experience. I aprecciate. I will seriously explore the ways you describe.



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