Make your avatar talk?

Hi there!

Trying it also here in this forum
So my problem is the following: I want my avatar to explain something to the audience (==camera) but I am missing some animation which does look as if he's explaining something (for the audio part I'd simply use my own voice). So does anybody know if there's an animation around which does make your avatar speak or at least gesture around like explaining something?

(it would even be cooler if he'd be standing there with a mic like some reporter

Any help is appreciated!

-- Tao

i know two ways of doing it but none of them are easy, the first one is to use the face expressions like OO AA that we have combined to animations that play half speed, and when compositiong your video you play it at twice the speed

the other way is to try to morph the mouth in post production, like its done in some flash movies, but its hard too

Thanks for your answer, Kyrah. Just where do I find these OO AA animations?

But otoh I wonder if not both is too much work for me as I would like to do it on a regular basis and wouldn't like to spend that much time on the postproduction.

For me it would be even sufficient just to have some gestures with hands/body looking like explaining something (without moving the mouth).

I also wonder how one can animate the facial expression. It seems not to be doable with avimator. Is it with Poser?

But anyway, thanks again, might have to experiment a bit and if it's too much work maybe I just comment from the off..

The skeletal hierarchy of the BVH animation files that SL accepts does not include anything for facial animation. The only possible way to move the face in SL is to use the built-in SL animations that contain facial expressions. Kludgy, I know.

Anyway, you might also try asking in the Products Wanted forum to see if someone has what you're looking for or is willing to make an anim for you.

Thanks for any answers! I didn't know that it's not possible doing facial animations. I just thought it is by looking at the standard ones.. Too bad then.

Well, I might try to figure something out and if it's just some body gestures glued together to make him look like explaining.

Probably you will see the result then someday

...not sure if someone told you about the free facial expressions animator at Yadnis yet. It is over by the NEW items are amoungst the beds and sofas...by the flower cart.


GoldieFawn Fielding

In the past I did try to create lip synch with the set of facial animation we have inside SL and I never got convincing result. Here is the example :

http://twlinz.han-solo.net/bedazzle/test/lip_synch_018.mov

So for the project Bell & Spurs, we did use a completly different solution. We did use an animated texture place on the avatar face. This solution isn't perfect either, but its not bad.

It'd be an even better solution if the rest of us non-FIC folk could actually use it.

Seriously, though, do you have any idea whether LL is considering releasing this feature at some point? It does have some interesting potential.

I put quite a bit of effort into using face morphs for speech. as far as I could see the only obstacle in the system was that sl can't cue them fast enough. They blend suitably --- what apparently happens is they average, so if you start the smile (closed lips) and laugh (wide lips) you get a normal semi-normal speech opening. Unfortunately they can't turn on and off fast enough.
I'd rather see this restriction removed/adjustable -- under certain cicumstances like only if avatar detail is all the way up -- to seeing the image solution expanded. That is, let's take a step in the RIGHT direction. Lips move, your skin doesn't change color.


In terms of a simple gesturing loop... my product mood mixer comes with 3.
Buy it at my stores in Aqua or Mauve for 500L
if you want a custom contact me in world. they start at 5000L

Thanks again for these answers
And ty to GoldieFawn for giving me that facial expressions box in-world.
But as noted otherwise, it's still hard to do any talking animation with it.
I might check out the gesture loop though.

For the actual first episode of my video blog I did nothing of these as I feared that it will maybe never get out when I first try to make this talking stuff work so I simply went with an off voice while showing my avi for now.

Maybe this stuff will improve anyway if sometime speech will be added as means of communications (whenever that will happen .

Think outside the box. Literally. Build a copy of your avatar in Poser and use Mimic to actually make the speaking animations for closeups. You could green screen the head and insert it if you need to. Unfortunatly speech on game characters tends to look bad reguardless because of the low polygns used so getting SL avatars the ability to lip synch isn't going to help that much. Using a much higher polygon model like Poser or Maya will make a world of difference.

Doesn't make it easy though...

This is done with Linden Labs, Its a feature they created just for them to use, where they can apply video to a skin. And will not be available to the public no where anytime soon, so dont hold your breath lol. However, Do it the way every other video maker does in PostEditing. where you record your mouth talking, and cut it out, uploading it to the video, and editing it with effect. this can be done is such programs as After Effects. and Mac programs like Shake (very expencive) lower quality versions are also available. Editing programs like Vegas 6 (downloadable of course however illegal =P) will allow you to do it also. Once you get such programs, in the help menu will teach you how to do this.

Correction Bebop. This video above was a test that Jimmy did without Lindens that you could do also. The results where not great.

ahh ok, thanks for that. But yup, anyone can do it. I think the mouths blended well. trying to mix the 2, RL and SL anyways with the voice thing isnt always gonna work out the best. Yea, I'd say they should come out with a toy where you typed what you wanted your avatar to say, and the mouth would move correctly

See my avatar talk here:

Link: Hello, my name is...
or Download the WMV file

Cheers,
Mad

awesome =)

I tried a rough post-production lip-sync test using MorphAge software, (Mac).

I made a fool of myself by videoing my singing; traced the mouth movement keyframes, and applied the result to a still image taken in SL. The result could be convincing with a little time. ATM you can preview it here.

hahaa best AV singing EVA!

That was great! Thanks for sharing!

Dr

I have added new bones to the SL skeleton and imported the new animations into SL but the bvh motions for the new bones are discarded. I think this is because I have the names wrong. Do we have a list of what ALL the bone names are? It seems that the Lindens gave us only about 60 percent of the skeleton. I would assume that they used character studio or some such and the names would be about the same. Also selecting None for the facial expression could be overriding the bones that I am moving in Poser. Anyone else trying this? If it's just the latter case then we can select a facial expression with a low priority and then over ride that.

Cait

Caitlin, unfortunately the bones the Lindens gave us are all we have to work with. All structural data in a BVH file is ignored by SL. The only possible way to move the face and fingers in SL is with the pre-made expressions; it can't be done through an uploaded BVH.

Sucks, I know. Here's hoping for the future, though!

Is there any update for this problem? I organized some conferences in the beginning of 2007. And it would be very nice to speak to all of my clients.

let me know something about this,

remco

There is a much easier way of making mouths move along with facial expresstions. Get the program called "Crazy Talk". They offer a free download to check it out. It's amazing. Very easy to use.

My first quick test at an avatar singing.

http://www.allrobotradio.com/video/Second%20Life%20Singing.wmv