| MOUTH ANIMATION - This is an example I use in class when we cover mouth animation and After Effects. It is a very elegant technique that uses time-remapping. There is an excellent step-by-step video tutorial about this method by Aharon Rabinowitz at the Creative Cow website - http://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/lip_synch.php | ||
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A layered Photoshop file containing the mouth shapes for each phoneme is imported as a Composition. The duration of each layer is set to 1 frame and then the Animation Assistant is used to sequence the layers. In the example on the left there are 16 mouth shapes in a composition 16 frames long. |
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All the mouth layers are then pre-comped and nested into a composition containing just the backgound. Time-remapping is then enabled for the mouth layer so that each mouth shape will now correspond to a specific frame number. | |
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The chart to the left shows the mouth shape and the corresponding frame number. In this example, entering the value "0" will display a mouth in the closed position. The mouth is animated by setting toggle-hold keyframes for each phoneme. | |