Blender: Lip Syncing Animation

by David Ward

In this Blender 2.6 tutorial, we go over a few techniques that assist with performing a decent lip syncing task. First off, we create a few bone groups that will contain the different sections of the face that we’ll be animating (mouth area, eye area, and miscellaneous), then we import a sound clip and set up some Scene Markers to visually illustrate the location of each spoken word in the timeline. We also spend some time to create several Pose Libraries, one for Phonemes and one for expressions. Finally, we utilize these libraries to animate the lip syncing and facial expressions.

You must be logged in to upload images. Register

Discussion

32 Responses to “Blender: Lip Syncing Animation”
  1. Jeremias Boos
    Posts: 7

    Is there a big difference to the Baker Animation Lipsync video?

    #
    1
     Dec 28, 2011 at 8:44 am
  2. thiago kolb
    Posts: 136

    thx David!!!

    #
    2
     Dec 28, 2011 at 8:46 am
  3. Jeremy Deighan
    Posts: 263

    What happened to getting sleep and detoxing your bodies???

    Jeremy

    #
    3
     Dec 28, 2011 at 10:34 am
    • Veleth
      Posts: 6

      Most likely had the computers timed to release tutorials so that there’d still be new stuff for us even though they’re gone.

      #
      3.1
       Dec 28, 2011 at 11:47 am
  4. David Alvarez
    Posts: 5

    You rock! Great tut, will be tring it as soon as I model my first human model, (still in the in-organic modeling phase :) – just robots and stuff)

    Keep up the great work!

    David.

    #
    4
     Dec 28, 2011 at 10:36 am
  5. tuncer eren
    Posts: 3

    Thats awesome!

    #
    5
     Dec 28, 2011 at 12:41 pm
  6. marvin evins
    Posts: 6

    allow it man allow it!

    #
    6
     Dec 28, 2011 at 1:42 pm
  7. Tentaklingon
    Posts: 1

    What I found to be a problem with almost every CG lipsync I saw is that the movement of the lips is way too exaggerated. People don’t usually enunciate perfectly every syllable, it’s really blended together and a lot more subtle when people speak.

    #
    7
     Dec 28, 2011 at 2:15 pm
  8. Bernard Hugueville
    Posts: 71

    Great David! thanks for this one :-)

    #
    8
     Dec 28, 2011 at 3:45 pm
  9. Hasier Goitia
    Posts: 12

    Hi! Awesome tut, many things to be learnt from here, Blender wise.

    With an animator’s eyes, though, I must say that the animation approach was completely wrong. As Richard William (director of animation from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”) explains in his book “The Animator’s Survival Kit”, when we speak, our mouth does not actually form to every single phoneme we pronounce, but rather flows along the most pronounced sounds (usually vowels) without stopping on the less exaggerated ones (mainly consonants). Watch yourself in a mirror as you say “hello”. Your mouth moves from the “ee” to the “oh”; the “l” sound is formed somewhere in between, but your mouth will not make a distinct “l” shape. In fact, the same mouth shapes can be used to say “I love you” and “alligator soup”!

    Here, you made poor Edward articulate to every single sound that came out of his mouth; the result: he looks as though he’s putting a lot of effort into speaking, which is not at all what happens in real life!

    David, you should try simply watching yourself in a mirror saying the sentence at a regular speed and deleting the mouth shapes of all the phonemes you don’t stress. I’m sure the result will be much more lifelike!

    #
    9
     Dec 28, 2011 at 4:44 pm
    • tenkei
      Posts: 77

      I think as far as how the lip sinking is done for a more cartoon like character, having the overabundance is as telling about the character as trying to go or the more realistic. Pick at it how you want seems to me more that it’s a useful method as long as it suits the character.

      #
      9.1
       Dec 29, 2011 at 11:18 pm
    • David Reinhold
      Posts: 1

      I have to agree – from a technical standpoint this was SUPER informative and I learned a lot, but the actual lip sync is far from believable. Using video references for lipsynch has worked pretty well for me though – that way you also get more realistic facial expressions along with your enunciation.

      #
      9.2
       Dec 31, 2011 at 9:10 am
    • Andy
      Posts: 38

      Yes, I wondered about this too. I tried and I only had to move me lips for these: b, f, m, p, v. The rest I could form in my throat and using my tongue.

      #
      9.3
       Sep 9, 2012 at 12:42 pm
  10. thomas speed
    Posts: 301

    Dave is one of the BEST, grateful for his teachings =)

    #
    10
     Dec 28, 2011 at 4:58 pm
  11. nick milios
    Posts: 4

    WoW.. This tut come at the same time while i am trying to create an new year animation with an model i create and i was thinking to make it speak. This timeing is amazing. thank you!!

    #
    11
     Dec 28, 2011 at 5:39 pm
  12. Steve George
    Posts: 5

    Everyone wanting to do charactor animation should read Jason Osipia’s book “Stop staring”….You’ll get a whole new take on lip sync animation from a professional!

    #
    12
     Dec 29, 2011 at 1:55 am
    • Bernardo Pardo
      Posts: 20

      Yes, this book is wonderfull. I think to read this book one more time. The tappering technique is very quickly and the accuracy for facial expression is great. May be tappering technique in Blende in CGCookie tutorials?… The Jason Osipa book is 100% facial animation, with visimes (visual phonemas), and shapekeys construction.

      #
      12.1
       Dec 31, 2011 at 11:57 pm
  13. philip august
    Posts: 11

    great tutorial david :)
    I have a question about who is doing the voice acting?
    (sorry for my english)

    -philip :)

    #
    13
     Dec 29, 2011 at 11:17 am
  14. oldman44
    Posts: 43

    Thanks David,

    Love your JB3 series. Do you have any additions planded for it?

    -OldMan44

    #
    14
     Dec 29, 2011 at 11:57 am
  15. ben
    Posts: 2

    Thanks David, doing a good lip sync is tough. I still use papagayo to help with the lip sync audio layout. It helps work out where words start/end and you can play around with words that run into each other.

    #
    15
     Dec 30, 2011 at 12:49 am
  16. Валек
    Posts: 1

    Крутая программа!

    #
    16
     Dec 31, 2011 at 10:08 am
  17. nick milios
    Posts: 4

    Thanks…
    Video Respond:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_wkrugpby8

    #
    17
     Jan 1, 2012 at 8:25 am
  18. Joel
    Posts: 7

    just a tip – selecting “available” as the keying set adds keyframes to available f-curves (ie, only what you have already manually keyed will have keyframes added as you animate. if nothing has been manually keyed, then even with automatic keyframe insertion it won’t add any new frames).

    also in order to use that keying set with automatic keyframe insertion, you have to toggle the switch next to the automatic keyframe insertion switch.

    #
    18
     Jan 5, 2012 at 9:04 am
  19. pangunduh
    Posts: 1

    thank’s david success for you forever

    #
    19
     Jan 7, 2012 at 11:06 pm
  20. jokayo
    Posts: 59

    I would that this is good start for biginers , although there are a lote of random dicisions , I totaly agree with “hasygh94″ , it doesnt respect the principles of animation, I would be happy if BlenderCookie provide us with more organised and solide animation tuts

    #
    20
     Jan 9, 2012 at 7:43 am
  21. Nadie Duran
    Posts: 2

    Great tutorial.

    As a side note, I’m really interested in the mouth controller you made to open and close the mouth. I can make the shape key for the wide open mouth and purse closed mouth, but I cannot make the driver to properly work with those shapes by scaling the corresponding bone. A tutorial or hint on that control would be really appreciated. Thanks.

    #
    21
     Jan 12, 2012 at 9:16 pm
  22. Lucas Kerbs
    Posts: 3

    When every I use the VSE to render out my animations, the video either come out black or cuts out too short, someone please help!

    #
    22
     Feb 4, 2012 at 6:25 pm
  23. Juan Nicolas Gomez
    Posts: 146

    You could just hit M and Control M To add and rename a marker. ;)

    #
    23
     Jun 5, 2012 at 7:43 am
  24. david kolb
    Posts: 13

    how do you render an animation like this with the sound????

    #
    24
     Jul 1, 2012 at 11:38 am

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.