In this After Effects Tutorial we create a talking tree. While this is usually a lot of manual work and requires a lot of keyframes to animate the mouth, we are going to automate it with the tool Auto Lip-Sync.
The step by step wizard makes it very easy to adjust the automatically generated mouth animation to get the perfect result for our project.
Comments
vincent (not verified)
Permalink Submitted by vincent (not verified) on Thu, 06/12/2014 - 21:10
Hi, i'm using the trial version of lip sync. First time i used it worked great.
Second tryout: I run thru the wizard process which works fine. but when i finish the wizard and want to do some touch ups, After effects starts peaking my processor to 100 - 110%... i'm using small video files and low resolutions. i'm running a i7 with 16gigs of ram
Is this a known problem?
thanks,
admin
Permalink Submitted by admin on Fri, 06/13/2014 - 08:37
Hi Vincent,
usually, this only happens when you use high resolution images. The speed simply depends on how many pixels Auto Lip-Sync has to process.
When you have a huge image, apply Auto Lip-Sync to it and then scale it down, the process will be very slow. If you scale down your image in Photoshop to the size you need in the final clip and apply Auto Lip-Sync to this low-res variant, it will me much faster. Alternatively you can scale it down in AE in a precomp that has a low resolution (and NOT "collapse transformation" enabled) and apply Auto Lip-Sync to the precomp.
To speed it up even further, you can build the project such that the layer only contains the mouth region that actually deforms. All the rest of the face can be placed on a layer below.
If all of this does not help, you can also send the project to info@mamoworld.com such that we can check what is slow in your example.
Cheers,
Mathias
K (not verified)
Permalink Submitted by K (not verified) on Tue, 05/12/2015 - 17:18
How did you do the blink effect??? can you make a video on that, too?
admin
Permalink Submitted by admin on Tue, 05/12/2015 - 21:30
I simply used a Liquify effect to squash the eyes. By keyframing the distortion mesh of the Liquify effect, you can animate this (one keyframe for open eye and a second one for closed eye - then just copy and duplicate the two keyframes as often as needed).
Here is a tutorial showing another technique to create blinking eyes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE28M5M3dZ8
k (not verified)
Permalink Submitted by k (not verified) on Tue, 05/12/2015 - 22:26
thank you! i will try it out. :)
Aaron (not verified)
Permalink Submitted by Aaron (not verified) on Thu, 09/17/2015 - 20:40
I'm trying to create a character with multiple moving layers. How do you have to where the teeth and tongue are masked behind the lips? Also, how do you keep the "black background" within the mouth, so that you can layer the mouth animation on top of the face layer? If you could let me know that would be great!
admin
Permalink Submitted by admin on Fri, 09/18/2015 - 09:49
Hi Aaron,
in After Effects you can use matte layers to limit a layer to the region of some other layer.
Hence, if you use a duplicate of your mouth layer as a track matte for the teeth and tongue, the teeth and tongue are clipped to do not appear outside of the face.
Of course, this duplicate of the face layer should not have Auto Lip-Sync applied to it, since then the mouth itself would also be excluded by the track matte.
Alternatively, you can create the Auto Lip-Sync mouth rig inside a precomp such that inside the precomp, the head is not moving anymore. Then it should be easy to clip the teeth and tongue with a mask.
For the black background, you can use a black solid layer in-between your mouth and your face layer.
Cheers,
Mathias
Aaron (not verified)
Permalink Submitted by Aaron (not verified) on Fri, 09/18/2015 - 15:48
Thank you, and if you could, I have one last question. Is it possible to drop in audio that's been edited after the rig is built and have the plug-in re-intemperate?
admin
Permalink Submitted by admin on Fri, 09/18/2015 - 16:02
yes, see here:
http://mamoworld.com/tutorials/auto-lip-sync-how-replace-audio-after-cre...
Aaron (not verified)
Permalink Submitted by Aaron (not verified) on Fri, 09/18/2015 - 17:06
Wow, thank you so much, that really helped out! :)
robi (not verified)
Permalink Submitted by robi (not verified) on Sun, 08/21/2016 - 22:25
Hello.
Where can i download project files (I mean tree + environment)
Thx for your answer,
Best regards, Robi
admin
Permalink Submitted by admin on Mon, 08/22/2016 - 15:45
Sorry Robi, we don't offer a project download for this particular tutorial.
Anne Gentenaar (not verified)
Permalink Submitted by Anne Gentenaar (not verified) on Mon, 03/06/2017 - 10:14
Hi there!
I was wondering if you have to go through all the steps to set up the character every time from the start?
or if you can replace the audio after you've set everything up?
Thanks!
admin
Permalink Submitted by admin on Mon, 03/06/2017 - 10:59
Hi Anne,
this tutorial shows how to update the character after replacing the audio:
http://mamoworld.com/tutorials/auto-lip-sync-how-replace-audio-after-cre...
Cheers,
Mathias
Anne Gentenaar (not verified)
Permalink Submitted by Anne Gentenaar (not verified) on Tue, 03/14/2017 - 09:39
Hi Mathias,
When using the Liquify effect I find my computer completely freezes and takes hours to render a 30 sec animation. Let alone preview stuff. I have a super powerful computer and have already brought the resolution of my image down to 1500 by 2150 pixels. Do you have anymore tips to enhance the workflow?
Thanks!
admin
Permalink Submitted by admin on Tue, 03/14/2017 - 10:13
Hi Anne,
yes, unfortunately, AE's liquify effect is not really fast. The best thing to do is to keep the layer as small as possible. Since Auto Lip-Sync usually just deforms the part of the face around the mouth, you can apply Auto Lip-Sync to a layer that contains only this region and keep the remaining part of the face on a bigger layer below.
See here:
http://aescripts.com/knowledgebase/index/view/faq/auto-lip-sync-frequent...
Cheers,
Mathias
Anne Gentenaar (not verified)
Permalink Submitted by Anne Gentenaar (not verified) on Wed, 03/15/2017 - 10:13
Hi Mathias,
Yes, I've made the area I'm putting the effect on as small as possible and render time are little better.
Something else, I've noticed the nose gets affected allot. I've set the deformation masks to only effects the mouth and cheeks, but still it pulls on the nose to much. If you want I could send you an image.
Is that fixable?
Thanks again!
admin
Permalink Submitted by admin on Wed, 03/15/2017 - 12:09
The only way to fix that is to make the masks even smaller
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