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www.blender.nl this document is online at http://www.blender.nl/showitem.php?id=46 |
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![]() A frame from the animation |
![]() Relative Vertex Keys are needed for speech and facial expressions |
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![]() Have you been pronouncing Blender correctly? Find out today -- straight from the horse's mouth! |
Isolating a Word |
![]() Locating the word "Blender" |
O.K., lets start plotting out where our phonemes will go! Start Magpie. Select the menu "File->Open..." and select the file ton.wav. We will be mapping our favorite word "Blender" (the second occurance) The first trick is to find it! This is done by highlighting parts of the wav and pressing the "Play Selection" button (the "Play" button which is between two red vertical bars) After locating and highlighting the word (it should lie roughly between 00:00:04:17 and 00:00:05:03, which is indicated in the bottom right corner of the window) press the magnifying glass button to zoom into this part of the waveform. |
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![]() We want to see the mouth only! |
Isolating Phonemes |
![]() B! Oh B! Where could you be? |
O.K., lets find the first phoneme (this should "B" fun!) The important tool in this part of the exercise is the "Play From Selection" button (the "Play" button which is preceded by a red verticle bar). Pick frame 142 and press this button. This plays frame 142 and all frames after it in our zoomed sound clip. What is Ton saying? I hear "lender". This tells me that the "B" phoneme is earlier than this frame. Now try frame 141 and press the button. I hear "Blender"! This tells me that I will give this frame the "B" phoneme. Double click the "B" on the side bar to assign a B phoneme to frame 141.
Continue this exercise with the rest of the phonemes in this word. Pay attention to the animated cartoon mouth -- if something doesn't look quite right try moving a phoneme around by a frame or two. The frames that I get for the phonemes are as follows: "B" on frame 141; "L" on frame 143; "E" on frame 144; "N" on frame 146; "D" on frame 147; "U" on frame 148 (the "E" sounds like a "U"); and "R" on frame 150. If you don't get these values, don't fret: there is no one true method for mapping out the phonemes! |
Map out the Other Words | ||
If you have time, map out the rest of the words in the clip. It is highly recommended that you also go through the "Getting Started" section of the help file that comes with Magpie. Here is a copy of my Magpie file for this sound clip:
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Getting the Exposure Sheet into Blender |
![]() From Magpie to Notepad to Blender |
Having mapped out our sound clip, our next task is to use this info to construct some mesh IPO's for our relative vertex keys. We have a couple of choices. We could save it in the magpie format (an MPS file) and then alternate between the magpie window and the blender window as we construct our IPO's. No thanks! Blender has a built in text editor so wouldn't it be nice to have the magpie data as text right inside our file? (the answer is yes!)
We do this using the following steps: A) Press the copy to clipboard button; B) Launch notepad and select the menu "Edit->Paste"; C) Save the file as Magpie.txt; D) Open your model in blender and bring up a text window (shift-F11) and select "Open New" from the Menu and locate the file Magpie.txt from the file browser. |
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![]() I like to view my keys on frames 11-271 |
Modelling the IPO's |
Now to model the mesh IPO's. We have seven phonemes which luckily are represented by only four relative vertex keys: Key 8 gives us the "B"; Key 6 gives us the "L", "N" and "D" mouth shapes; Key 4 gives us the "E" and "U" sounds; and Key 5 gives us the "R". |
![]() B! |
Lets shape the IPO for the first phoneme (this should "B" cool -- yeah, yeah I know: it wasn't funny the first time!). Select the Key 8 IPO and enter edit mode. We will allow the "B" phoneme two frames to form so shift-left-click the value 0.0 on frame 1139. We want the phoneme to be fully present on frame 1141 so shift-left-click the value 1.0 on frame 1141. We want the "B" to be absent when the "L" phoneme appears on frame 1143 so shift-left-click 0.0 on frame 1143. Finally (this is optional), I like the handles on my IPO's to be of vector type so I select all vertices and press V_KEY. |
Modelling more IPO's |
![]() Blender! |
Groovy, lets do the "L". Select the IPO for key 6 and enter edit mode. The "B" phoneme appears on frame 1141 so we set the "L" IPO to zero on frame 1141. The "L" phoneme is fully present on frame 1143 so we shift-left-click value 1.0 on that frame. Finally, the "E" phoneme starts on frame 1144 so we want the "L" phoneme to be "Blended away" by that point: shift-left-click 0.0 on frame 1144. Continue this method until you have mapped out all the phonemes on your exposure sheet. |
Putting it All Together |
The last task which must be done is to sync up the audio with the video. The software I used to do mine was Ulead Video Studio, a commercial product that came free with my video card. There is a free product called DDClip free that will also do this for you. I like the price and the interface for DDClip better than ULead, but DDClip is very limited in terms of output options, and in particular it will not compress your output file. DDClip is suitable for making animations for your own viewing pleasure, but you should find something else if you want to distribute your work over the net (this might involve dishing out some coin!). DDClip free can be downloaded from here: http://www.softlab-nsk.com/ddclipro/free.html. |
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![]() Syncing up the video and audio in Ulead Video Studio |
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Some Tips |
I have adopted a few loose "rules" when animating this character. He is a cartoon so his expressions should be highly exaggerated so these rules may not be appropriate for other characters you might want to animate. I use them as a guideline, as a means to provide consistency of character -- but I won't lose any sleep when I choose to ignore them. Here they are: |
![]() "T & A" Blender style! (Hehe) |
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![]() Why not say it *and* spray it?!? |
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![]() A frame from the animation |