Tutorial: Lip Syncing 101

Its been a while since I've posted and I thought that I should come back strong, and so I'm going to give a brief tutorial on how to lip sync your model with a sound. There are two ways to do this, and I'm going to highlight the easiest way I know how. This will take a lot of practice and depending how detailed and how much sync you want, can take a very long or very short time.

Tools:
3D Studio Max
Patience

Steps:
1. Start by creating a sphere with 30 segments. Then add a Edit Poly modifier, and under Edge select a radius near the middle of the sphere.


2. With the edge selected, use the Move tool to drag the edges backward. You will see a mouth start to form.


3. Here I would recommend using the transform tool, to shrink the edge along the x axis. This will make the results look better during rendering.
4. In step five we are going to animate the lower portion of the mouth, so for this step add another Edit Poly on the model, and then select Vertex, and then select enough vertexes on the lower part of the mouth, that you feel would create a lower mouth or lower lip. Be sure to look at the pic for this one.


5. Next with the vertexes from the previous step highlighted, added a FFD(box) modifier to the model, and you will see an orange box surrounding the vertexes.


6. For this step, where taking a short break from modeling, to add sound. So under Graph Editors, select TrackView-Curve Editor. Then Right Click on Sound and select Properties and here you can choose a sound that you want to sync your model with.



7. Now right click on the FFD(Box) modifier, and hit Rename. Enter lower mouth into the box.


8. Repeat steps, 4,5, and 7, for the upper mouth. So begin by adding an Edit Poly, selecting vertexes, and then adding a FFD(B0x) modifier, and finally renaming. Make sure that none of your upper mouth vertexes intersect with that of the lower mouth. Or you run the risk of sabotaging your model.
9. Get ready to Sync!!! When you sync you should work you way from the bottom of the top of the modifying chain. So begin with the lower mouth and then the Under the lower mouth, click Control Points, and then select the control points that you want to animate. A good idea is to select all of them and then work your way back as too what works and what doesn't work. Select AutoKey and a frame above one. Now move the control points up and down to create lip movement and match the sound. If ever you do not like the way the mouth is moving, just delete the frames (after frame 1) and start over. You might have to do this a couple of times. Complete the same steps for the upper mouth.


10. Finally hit play to marvel at your work.

More Tips:

I know what your thinking, what can I do with just a head (Model A). Well if you bring up your modeled body from before (Model B), the easiest way to attach the head to the body, is to delete the head vertexes on the model B, and merge model A into Model B. Now place the head that we just made onto the neck portion of the body. Now link the head, with the head portion of the biped system.

Another good model tip is, if you want to make the mouth look like if it is pronouncing a word with a strong "O" sound, such as choose or boot, highlight the control points nearest to the edge and select transform and shrink them across the the x axis for that particular frame. In the following frame enlarge the points back to their original size.

Finally, the best place to look for mouth pronunciations is by just looking in the mirror and by saying a couple words. Take note of how your mouth moves, because it will be very useful when syncing.

Good Luck Syncing....Practice Makes Perfect!!!