Using SuperStar to speed up creating singing faces for use in Sequencer

[TexasLights]

I use the approach shown in the video to create my singing faces.   In my case, its for 3 singing bubs but the same approach would work for singing trees or other similar props.   It is different than using superstar to create an animated singing face and also not the same as solely using SuperStar.   This is S5 and I cannot say if a similar technique works in S4 or S6.   I actually find it pretty quick, I can generate the basic faces in less than 30 minutes and then I start tweaking them to fine tune to my requirements.  Open to opinions as to what others think of this perhaps a bit unique technique. 

 

[Box on Rails]

Your technique is great for basic faces but if you want to get more realistic mouth movements here is what I do. I use 10 different mouth positions and 4 different eye positions. All my singing props are smart pixels. I have 7 singing elements in both my Halloween and Christmas shows. I also use my matrix to display picture animation too. I go a little overboard on animation because I want the animation to look as real as possible. for me the standard 5 mouth positions most of the time just look like flapping lips over singing. In addition, most eyes movements are just open and closed position which is really limiting the animation. I use open, closed. wink and angry eye positions. for the mouth sequencing I use Papagayo. I think it works similar to the SS program with one extra step of changing the data from Papagayo to LOR. I have been using it for 10 years and it works for me. The end result is more natural looking animation that matches the singing. The limit is the props must be all smart pixels. This is a video I made in April. The animation still needed some minor tweaking but it shows some of my process I use in S5. 

 

Edited August 8, 2022 by Box on Rails

[TexasLights]

I've watched your video in the past and agree, your singing faces are much more realistic.  In my case, there are new this year and sort of side props to a lot of other stuff going on so at least this year, I don't mind as much if they are flapping lips. 

[Jimehc]

@Texas  Your Template Selection? Most would need to know what Mouth for what SS opening ---  ie top lip = rest > bottom lip=full open, etc...  SS does not detect "O" mouth

[ebrown1972]

21 hours ago, Box on Rails said:

Your technique is great for basic faces but if you want to get more realistic mouth movements here is what I do. I use 10 different mouth positions and 4 different eye positions. All my singing props are smart pixels. I have 7 singing elements in both my Halloween and Christmas shows. I also use my matrix to display picture animation too. I go a little overboard on animation because I want the animation to look as real as possible. for me the standard 5 mouth positions most of the time just look like flapping lips over singing. In addition, most eyes movements are just open and closed position which is really limiting the animation. I use open, closed. wink and angry eye positions. for the mouth sequencing I use Papagayo. I think it works similar to the SS program with one extra step of changing the data from Papagayo to LOR. I have been using it for 10 years and it works for me. The end result is more natural looking animation that matches the singing. The limit is the props must be all smart pixels. This is a video I made in April. The animation still needed some minor tweaking but it shows some of my process I use in S5. 

 

I'm curious to know about how long it takes to sequence this way using ME rows? Are you using any other program to sequence with? Thanks and the mouth movements look great

[ebrown1972]

Just now, ebrown1972 said:

I'm curious to know about how long it takes to sequence this way using ME rows? Are you using any other program to sequence with? Thanks and the mouth movements look great

 

21 hours ago, Box on Rails said:

Your technique is great for basic faces but if you want to get more realistic mouth movements here is what I do. I use 10 different mouth positions and 4 different eye positions. All my singing props are smart pixels. I have 7 singing elements in both my Halloween and Christmas shows. I also use my matrix to display picture animation too. I go a little overboard on animation because I want the animation to look as real as possible. for me the standard 5 mouth positions most of the time just look like flapping lips over singing. In addition, most eyes movements are just open and closed position which is really limiting the animation. I use open, closed. wink and angry eye positions. for the mouth sequencing I use Papagayo. I think it works similar to the SS program with one extra step of changing the data from Papagayo to LOR. I have been using it for 10 years and it works for me. The end result is more natural looking animation that matches the singing. The limit is the props must be all smart pixels. This is a video I made in April. The animation still needed some minor tweaking but it shows some of my process I use in S5. 

 

Nevermind my last question. I see you use  Papagayo.

[TexasLights]

8 hours ago, Jimehc said:

@Texas  Your Template Selection? Most would need to know what Mouth for what SS opening ---  ie top lip = rest > bottom lip=full open, etc...  SS does not detect "O" mouth

Apologies that the SS mapping didn't show up very well.   I had to use my laptop to record to avoid some weird latency issue when I used my larger display (not that that matters to anyone). 

For the mapping, it is a bit of a matter of choice.  I see some people like to fix the upper lip and open the mouth down.  In my case,  I typically use the lower lip and open it up.   To mix it up, I also use the middle as the fixed lip so the mouth looks smaller.   I found that I get reasonable results using 3/4 for E and full for O although in cases where it doesn't look good that's where editing them back in sequencer is needed.  And if its a very definite O or U sound, than its easy to edit it in sequencer to set it.  

Example for my singing bulbs 
closed - bottom or mid only
1/4 - bottom and mid
1/2 - bottom and top 
3/4 - E shape
Full - O shape 

[TexasLights]

So this morning, I used this technique to do the song in the video below.  Its just over a minute and it was pretty easy because I wanted the singing faces to do the group vocals so I just used the whole audio file and then cut out the parts I didn't need after I pasted it in Sequencer.  This took about 10 minutes.  Even using the mapping as mentioned above for E and O, it came out pretty good.  I did make one change at the end where it was making an O face, even thought it was clearly not saying O. Since I wanted all 3 to sing along, that made it easy.  The longest part was making each bulb look slightly different (Shift-M is your friend, if you don't know what it does, check it out).   Spent probably another 45 minutes on that.  Audio and video is a bit rough since it was just for demonstration purposes. 

 

Edited August 13, 2022 by TexasLights

[weigh2fast4u@yahoo.com]

 

On 8/13/2022 at 7:51 PM, TexasLights said:

So this morning, I used this technique to do the song in the video below.  Its just over a minute and it was pretty easy because I wanted the singing faces to do the group vocals so I just used the whole audio file and then cut out the parts I didn't need after I pasted it in Sequencer.  This took about 10 minutes.  Even using the mapping as mentioned above for E and O, it came out pretty good.  I did make one change at the end where it was making an O face, even thought it was clearly not saying O. Since I wanted all 3 to sing along, that made it easy.  The longest part was making each bulb look slightly different (Shift-M is your friend, if you don't know what it does, check it out).   Spent probably another 45 minutes on that.  Audio and video is a bit rough since it was just for demonstration purposes. 

 

What is this?

Is this one of the Disney Christmas songs?

[TexasLights]

I posted several videos on YouTube about this technique.  One to explain a bit more about what I called the template and how it was created and a recent one now that I started using S6 which has more SuperStar mappings.  I am sure some people wonder why I go to all of this trouble and not just use SuperStar without exporting it. The main reason is that I edit it and I find that easier in Sequencer,  I also use a lot of motion effects on different parts of the face and so I need the raw parts,  I use SuperStar when I animate my tree, but that's a different technique.  This is the final product that I came up with the videos explain how I do (see the How To Playlist).