Datasheet

Starting with What’s Most Important: Visemes n 13
The term rest in the following chart refers to the width of the mouth as it is at rest, in
the default position, but it does not necessarily mean Closed. Another way to describe rest
would be to say it is neither particularly Wide nor Narrow.
Word Wide/NarroW SequeNce
Who Rest, Narrower
Are Little Wider (rest)
You Narrower
And Wider (rest)
What Narrower, rest
Are No change in width
You Narrower
Doing Narrower, Wider
When I talk about working in passes, I mean going through the process from start to end,
dealing with only one goal, and then returning to the start to go through a second or third
time with a different goal in mind. To properly grasp sync by viseme, I recommend that you
work in the passes described. By pushing the Open/Closed analysis and posing to the sec-
ond pass, you reduce the temptation of overcomplication. When your first pass really doesn’t
look like much, you’re unlikely to noodle with it too much!
who I started with rest, because without it, you wouldn’t see that the narrow OO shape
to follow is narrower than anything. In other words, by leaving the mouth at rest for a
moment, I created a reference point for the OO shape to look narrow in context.
are This is wider. Being exclusively affected by the Open/Closed shape of the mouth in
this case (the main sound being AW, which is an open mouth/jaw sound), this is made
wider not because it needs any particular Wide/Narrow, but instead because it’s sand-
wiched between two OOs. With something wider between them, both OOs will have
more punch. If you’re wondering why this has no need for a specific Wide/Narrow, it’s
because R is relatively narrower, not just narrow. R should generally be narrower than its
surrounding shapes, but because both of its surrounding shapes are already narrow, it
gets cancelled out.
you This is narrower and has an OO sound that needs to be represented, but that’s it—
nothing fancy. A true viseme breakdown would be from EE to OO, EEYOO, but I went
slightly wider in are to enforce the OO in this word, so that aspect of starting wider was
already taken care of.
and Again, this needs no specific Wide/Narrow shape, if we’re referring to our viseme
list looking for a match. So I widened it to make the OO sounds around it look narrower.
This concept of shaping the mouth opposite to shapes that precede or follow the sound
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