My characters aren’t entirely finished yet but I’m at a point where the rigging is somewhat complete and I wanted to test how well it works. I also did a quick and dirty recording of one dialogue to test whether automatic lip synching or the manual approach is the way to go.

This scene is not using the environment it is meant to be in, and the camera work is only test level, so it’s really just a basic functional test.

In Moho there are two ways to do lip synching:

1) Lip sync using phoneme mouth shapes

Using separate mouth forms for different phonemes you can switch between them using a “switch layer”. The switching can either be done instantly, or if you manage to use exactly the same basic shapes and number of points for all mouth positions you can do automatic tweening between the forms to make animation look even smoother. However, for some forms which need abrupt change like P, T, K you wouldn’t want a smooth animation, but an immediate switch.

This kind of lip sync is the most authentic, but it’s a lot of work, because you’ll have to switch mouth shapes timed to some vowels or consonants, and often have to make tough decisions which shapes to leave out of the animation, because when we speak we also slur shapes and you can’t possibly include mouth animation for every single sound you make, that would make the mouth look way too busy and unnatural.

2) Automatic lip sync using different “apertures”

With this kind of lip sync, you’ll get something akin to Japanese anime mouth animation, that simply just opens an closes at different mouth apertures. So all you do is create 5 layers of mouth opening level from closed to wide open, and then load a narration sound file, and Moho does the rest.

This kind of synching is far from perfect, because it will simply open the mouth according to audio volume, so you’ll still need to do some manual tweaking

Upcoming Character Tweaks

Phungus (the yellow bloke)

If you’ve paid attention, you might notice that Phungus’ rigging and eye shapes have changed considerably from the first rigging test. I wanted its eyes to be retractable like a mollusk and not just bending, so I changed the bones and the points they control.

I’m planning to give Phungus a few more body features that I had in early sketches, I chose to drop and now I think I should get them back (I’ll reveal it later). I’m also not happy with the facial expression range that Phungus has. Without eyebrows it is quite difficult to express some emotions, only using the eyelids, I’ll study some of the masters and see what other trick are available to make up for that.

Mowld

I kept Mowld’s sunglasses for the left and right eye on one layer, but this turns out to be a problem for facial expressions, and for head-turns. So I’ll need to separate them and I’ll need to rework the heard turn animation entirely (the nose animation looks quite jumpy and unnatural).

Mowld needs more hand shapes! I’ll have to add way more hand shapes for better expression.

How can I do a head turn animation in Moho that doesn’t interfere with the bones controlling the eyebrows? If there’s any seasoned Moho aficionado – your help would be appreciated!