When having characters sing along to a song can you get the character to stop making automatic mouth movements during certain parts of a song when a chorus is singing then have the character start using automatic lipsync at any part you want.

I remember that while testing CT 7 Pro you could import a song and you had a choice of lip sync mode or listening mode. In listening mode the character's mouth would not automatically move no matter what was happening in the music.

That's what I essentially want to be able to do at will. Sometime a song starts and the character's mouth moves to the intro music BEFORE the singer starts singing

So, I want the ability to make certain the character's mouth does not move at all whenever I choose then make it move when I want it to

I hope I made that clear enough

Thanks


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Many of your answers can be found by reading the product manual.

The online manual and the online help are NOT the same thing

It is a little different (and harder) in CTA then just a listen/speak setting.

After you import the audio (i.e. song) to the actors, on the timeline, go to the voice track and ungroup that item which will split the audio and lip sprite switching to the voice and lips sub tracks. In the lips subtrack (expand the voice clip track) you will see all the sprite switching keys for the lips. There you can change, add, and delete as needed.

Jeff


Get my Plugin Manager and TaskNotes plugins for iClone.
Check out EZColors and Other products for CTA/CA. EZColors: the easy way to change Render Styled (RS) colors!
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Thank you so very much for your response

I really appreciate your help

I'm going to have to read your post over and over and over for at first reading I barely knew what you were talking about.

For one thing: What exactly is a "sprite"?


"In computer graphics, a sprite (also known by other names; see Synonyms below) is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene. Initially including just graphical objects handled separately from the memory bitmap of a video display, this now includes various manners of graphical overlays.

Originally, sprites were a method of integrating unrelated bitmaps so that they appeared to be part of the normal bitmap on a screen, such as creating an animated character that can be moved on a screen without altering the data defining the overall screen. Such sprites can be created by either electronic circuitry or software. In circuitry, a hardware sprite is a hardware construct that employs custom DMA channels to integrate visual elements with the main screen in that it super-imposes two discrete video sources. Software can simulate this through specialized rendering methods.

More recently, CSS sprites are used in web design as a way to improve performance by combining numerous small images or icons into a larger image called a sprite sheet or tile set, and selecting which icon to show on the rendered page using Cascading Style Sheets.

As three-dimensional graphics became more prevalent, sprites came to include flat images seamlessly integrated into complicated three-dimensional scenes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_%28computer_graphics%29


MY COMMENT:

I hope this answers your question

Wait

It was MY question :P

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in CTA the characters are not considered 'sprites'. However anything else you may bring into the scene (props of any kind) are called "sprites". Am I right?


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Many of your answers can be found by reading the product manual.

The online manual and the online help are NOT the same thing

I believe I've done what you said. I have the voice clip track expanded, but I don't see anything I can change. Ordinarily if I want to delete something in the timeline there is something there I can click on and it turns a 'pink' type color. Once this happens I can right-click on it and delete it. I see nothing like that in the voice and lips timeline that I can delete.



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Many of your answers can be found by reading the product manual.

The online manual and the online help are NOT the same thing

With the voice track shown by clicking the "Facial" button on the timeline for a character you should see the "voice clip" track and your voice clip. The one I imported was named 19446__totya__yeah (see below).


Right click on the voice clip and select "un-group".
This will split the voice clip into two tracks: voice and lips.
These are sub-tracks of the Voice Clip. Click on the arrow to the left of the track header "Voice Clip" to expand.


A character is made up of many "sprites". Some examples would be eyes, ears, hand, arms, etc.
Actually, each of these "sprites" is really a container that holds a single sprite image but is commonly referred to as a "sprite".
CTA provides the ability to have a group (or library) of sprites that a sprite object/container can select from for display.
With the ability to select from this group of images you can switch sprites on the fly throughout your animation.

One of those many "sprites" are the lips.
There a group of sprites for the lips for facial expressions and another group for speaking (see partial list of speaking sprites below).
To get create the look of speaking, the lips sprite is switched between the various sprites from the voice group where each represent various mouth pronunciation positions.


In the "Lips" track each of the black diamonds represents a switching of the lips from one "sprite" to another. When the audio file was imported it was analyzed and the various lip sprites were assigned at different points in the audio track to simulate the character talking. The voice and lips track were then grouped together into a "Voice Clip" and placed on the timeline for that character.

With the Voice Clip un-grouped you can edit the lips track to add, delete, or change the sprites.

Jeff



Get my Plugin Manager and TaskNotes plugins for iClone.
Check out EZColors and Other products for CTA/CA. EZColors: the easy way to change Render Styled (RS) colors!
See my CTA Tutorials on the YouTube channel CTAStepByStep

Thanks so much for your help! What a friggin AWESOME explanation. I'm sure many will benefit from all the time and effort you took to create that awesome post.

I like your method best...if I can get it to work. I also sent the question to the support people at Reallusion at the same time. Now I know it's best to ask them and ask in the forum. Here is an apparent alternative method:


Thank you for contacting Reallusion.

We are sorry but CTA doesn't include the Lipsync Only option.

The easiest way is to cut your song in an external editor and import the parts with voice in the characters voice track and import the parts with sound as bacckground music in one of the the Sound Trx tracks.

Or you import the song in both the characters Voice track and the Music track and cut/break the clip in the timeline and delete the unwanted parts.
http://www.reallusion.com/crazytalk/animator/help/animator/pro/09_Timeline/Breaking_Clips.htm

Hope this can help you.

Please feel free to let us know if you have any further questions.

Best Regards,
Jana
Technical Support
Reallusion Inc.


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Many of your answers can be found by reading the product manual.

The online manual and the online help are NOT the same thing

IT WORKED!!!

IT WORKED!!!!!

IT WORKED!!!!!

You are a genius, dude!!!!!

Thanks a whole lot!!!!

I quoted you and sent your post to the support people at Reallusion

They really should know this!!



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Many of your answers can be found by reading the product manual.

The online manual and the online help are NOT the same thing

Great! glad you got it to work.

While cutting a song into parts is another way to do it I find that aligning the pieces back up to be a bit tricky.

If you have multiple characters in the same song what I do is import the song into the music track and then again for each character.
Then, for each character ungroup the Voice Clip and delete the Voice track which leaves behind only the Lips track.
You are left with only the music track with the song and various Lips tracks that are in perfect sync with the music.
Then, for each character delete those sprites switches where that character is not singing or talking.

Jeff


Get my Plugin Manager and TaskNotes plugins for iClone.
Check out EZColors and Other products for CTA/CA. EZColors: the easy way to change Render Styled (RS) colors!
See my CTA Tutorials on the YouTube channel CTAStepByStep

I created a new topic thread for this question



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Many of your answers can be found by reading the product manual.

The online manual and the online help are NOT the same thing

You can have a dialog between many characters.
There is a limitation of the max number (I think its 3) that can be speaking at the same time though.

Using MorphVox Pro I record each of a characters lines in separate files. Then I load them into CTA where needed. Keeping the lines in separate files allows you to replace a line if you need a retake or need to change the lines. If you used one big file then that would be difficult to do.

Jeff


Get my Plugin Manager and TaskNotes plugins for iClone.
Check out EZColors and Other products for CTA/CA. EZColors: the easy way to change Render Styled (RS) colors!
See my CTA Tutorials on the YouTube channel CTAStepByStep