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Singing Faces to Pixel


Powers_Ronald

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Is there a way to moved AC Sining Faces to a pixel tree? For many years I had four 9ft which I placed coroplast faces on driven by AC CTP16PC ( Channel 1-Outline, 2-Eyes open, 3-Eyes close, 4-Upper lip, 5-Middle lip, 6-Lower lip, 7-O, 8-Ahh). The trees fell appart, so I am replaing them with four 8ft pixel trees (16x50). Is there any way to transfer the singing faces from the current sequence onto a matrix? I have a fallback plan to place the existing coroplast faces behind the pixel strands and black out a box on the pixels when they sing. 

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There is a difference: The faces, the Lights shape the feature: Light Lips. That is it.

OTOH a Tree is really a cone shaped Matrix. There are no Lips. You need to define the nodes that appear when you want Lips

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There is a big difference between the 2. There is a way to use the data from the older sequences but the new props have to have custom motion effects that match the AC prop effects. What I mean is if you are using the standard 5 mouth position on the old AC prop then you will have to create 5 custom motion effect rows (mouth positions) in the prop definition for each tree. then you can copy the data from the 5 ac mouth position channels and paste them in the same order to the custom Motion effects rows. I had done this last year when I first switched from S4 to S5 and from AC to smart Pixels on my 6 singing face props. It does require a little work to create the faces for the Motion effect rows but it's worth it to be able to change colors of the Face or use layered effects over the top of the face in the tree like snow effects. you can also use custom effects rows to divide your trees into sections, what I would do in your case is have the singing face effect only be in the lower two thirds of the tree because of the cone shape that kinds deforms the face at the top if you use the entire tree. Then add a non custom Effects row to allow for an over lay of something across the entire tree, in addition you can create any type of tree effect by just adding more custom effects rows for other effects like eyes that blink, wink and even angry eye effects can be done too. The possibilities are endless. I have created singing skulls and Ghosts for the Halloween show and singing snowmen and Santa for my Christmas show in a Matrix but the trees you will use are just Matrixes turned into cones. I know that I just said a mouthful but it's not that hard. were here to help if we can. 

Kenny

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What Kenny described is the same way I have been doing it now for a a few years. You can create the basic face and then create the 5 mouth movements.

You will use motion rows for this. Once you do that, you can use any of the singing face sequences and it will work perfectly. I have had Elsa singing Bodies to Rudolph to Red Solo Cup.

You can search for faces and mouth movements and find a ton. Most will not look all that great, but a few will.

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8 hours ago, Box on Rails said:

you will have to create 5 custom motion effect rows (mouth positions) in the prop definition for each tree.

Thank you for the direction. Would the best way to create these 5 motion effects is by images?

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12 hours ago, Powers_Ronald said:

Thank you for the direction. Would the best way to create these 5 motion effects is by images?

This is a hard question to answer. images can be used but for a pixel tree this can skew the image to much. I made a pixel tree prop yesterday with custom motion effect rows set up for animation.  I'll try and put a quick video together to explain how to create a pixel tree animation with Motion effect rows.  One question. What are the 5 mouth positions and their in order? I'll post a link here when it's uploaded. 

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3 hours ago, Box on Rails said:

One question. What are the 5 mouth positions and their in order? I'll post a link here when it's uploaded. 

Channel 4-Upper lip
Channel 5-Middle lip
Channel 6-Lower lip
Channel 7-O
Channel 8-Ahh

 

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Are these LOR singing trees?

The pixie supports Macros (set in HU for the tree connected) for these. (I assume single color per macro channel CALL)

(assumes LOR smart string wire pattern was used)

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25 minutes ago, TheDucks said:

Are these LOR singing trees?

No, these are faces I made years ago out of black Coroplas. I would put up the four trees, and attach these faces to the trees. 

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48 minutes ago, Powers_Ronald said:

Channel 4-Upper lip
Channel 5-Middle lip
Channel 6-Lower lip 
Channel 7-O
Channel 8-Ahh

 

 

That's right... I forgot that the upper lip and lower lip have to light up for the mouth to look open fully. I remember now these are the standard channels set by the early singing face venders. I had the HolidayCoro incan. singing tree 8 years ago that used this channel set up. Here is a video I just put together for a 16x50 pixel tree prop with a sing face with Custom Motion Effects rows. The cool thing is you can use this method to create any type of animation you could think of in the tree area. 

 

 

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@Box on RailsI do it almost the same way except I use JPG's for my face and mouth movements. This allows me to drop in any face sequence out there.

It takes a lot to get a JPG that looks good, but there are 100's out there. I grabbed mine from some Xlights file that floated around a while back.

Honestly I never even thought about drawing my own faces under the prop\motion rows area.

 

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@gsmith37064 Do you have any links to where I can the images for the faces? I found a few, but not many.  Thank you.

@Box on Rails Thank you so much for that video. For all the years I have been using the LOR software, I never thought about doing the faces this way. 

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15 hours ago, gsmith37064 said:

@Box on RailsI do it almost the same way except I use JPG's for my face and mouth movements. This allows me to drop in any face sequence out there.

It takes a lot to get a JPG that looks good, but there are 100's out there. I grabbed mine from some Xlights file that floated around a while back.

Honestly I never even thought about drawing my own faces under the prop\motion rows area.

 

I have some sequences where I use jpegs too. using motion effect for animation is awesome. Here are 10 Jpgs I use on a some of my Christmas sequences. I have these same jpgs in pink for the girls voices. These 10 jpgs I have set up for using Papaguyo. 

AI.jpg

E.jpg

etc.jpg

FV.jpg

L.jpg

MBP.jpg

O.jpg

rest.jpg

U.jpg

WQ.jpg

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On 9/20/2022 at 8:03 AM, Box on Rails said:

This is a hard question to answer. images can be used but for a pixel tree this can skew the image to much. I made a pixel tree prop yesterday with custom motion effect rows set up for animation.  I'll try and put a quick video together to explain how to create a pixel tree animation with Motion effect rows.  One question. What are the 5 mouth positions and their in order? I'll post a link here when it's uploaded. 

The order would be what makes it the easiest for you to sequence.

I find having my order as follows, most here that use singing faces know my order.

I find that having the vowel and O mouth directly under the top lip ensure the sequencer that they should not miss turning off the top lip of those two channels are used.

Otherwise you get the mustache effect and it looks horrible.

But there is no right or wrong, just what works for you.

4- top lip (mouth closed/ rest)

5- Vowel mouth 

6-  O Mouth

7- Middle Lip

8- Bottom lip

JR

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This is my opinion - take it as such...

Doing faces on a pixel tree does not look all that good (or most matricies).  Why not?  Resolution.  VERY few of us Christmas lighting people have anywhere near the number of pixels of even a low resolution graphics image.  For example, the nice graphics Kenny posted yesterday look pretty good.  But that is 49 pixels wide (yes, I counted it).  Do you have 49 pixel strings on your pixel tree?  I have no doubt that there are a few - but VERY few.  12 or 16 strings are far more common.  Ask yourself how well are those images going to translate onto 16 strings?  For reference, I have a 26 string x 100 pixels tree and yes, I use some graphics, but there are serious limits to what looks good on my tree.

Frankly, I really prefer singing faces done with mini-lights as opposed to RGB pixels for the same reason.  Because the pixels are generally larger, they are spaced considerably farther apart.  For example if you look at the LOR RGB singing trees, they are around 200 pixels for the entire tree outline, eyes, and all mouth positions.  By comparison, on the Holiday Coro mini-light based singing faces, there are 200 lights - just for the tree outline, plus almost 300 more for the eyes and over 300 more for the mouth positions.  Yes, you lose the ability to change color....  Note, I used the Holiday Coro faces for the comparison only because they are commonly used - I have two of them.

My standard recommendation is to go look at other peoples singing faces that use different construction techniques (primarily that means mini-lights vs pixels on dedicated face vs pixels on a tree or matrix).  See what you like.  Try to view from the approximate distance that your show will have the faces from your audience.
 

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20 hours ago, dibblejr said:

The order would be what makes it the easiest for you to sequence

JR I agree but I was asking what order so I could get Powers_Ronald's specific set up. That way I could make the ME Row tree animation work for him so he could transfer his singing faces over to the pixel tree. I myself use 10 animation position as a starting point and then add more ME rows for other more detailed animation. I Created a South Park Cartman with 23 ME rows in my Matrix. the rows give me the ability to have him sing as well as change his expression with eye positions and by adding a few more rows he will be able to dance. I personally feel the 5 mouth position standard, no matter what the order is, are very limited in it's realism. For me I want the singing prop to look like a cartoon character and that the lip sync is real looking. I was unable to get the realism I wanted with only the 5 position standard. So I decided I would use the Papaguyo standard  of 10 position and expand from there. I am very pleased with the results. This is what I love about this hobby. there are many ways to do things and if you can imagine it, it can be done. We are artists and our homes are our canvas. 

Be Well

Kennt

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I heading to defining the faces in the custom motion effects rows, much the direction @Box on Rails discribed. One more question please. Is there a way to set the color in the custom effect, or a way to bulk change the colors? I can change them one at a time, but did not know if it could be done all at once. 

Thank you. 

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for just a color wash, select an area (up to the whole row) and then choose the color using the color selector at the top, then do M and it will change to that color.  If you have a different motion effect, select the area and then do Shift-M and you can change the colors (and even the affect) in mass. 

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