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4■n Chapter 1: Learning the Basics of Lip Sync
The Essentials of Lip Sync
People overcomplicate things. It’s easy to assume that anything that looks good must also
be complex. In the world of 3D animation, where programs are packed with mile after
mile of options, tools, and dialog boxes, overcomplication can be an especially easy trap
to fall into. Not using every feature available to you is a good start in refining any tech-
nique in 3D, and not always using the recommended tools is when you’re really advancing
and thinking outside the box. Many programs have controls and systems geared for facial
animation, but you can usually find better tools for the job in their arsenals.
If you’re fairly new to 3D, and have dabbled with lip sync, it has probably been frus-
trating, complicated, difficult, and unrewarding. In the end, most people are just glad to
be done with it and regret deciding to involve sync in their project. We’re starting to see
some amazing results come from facial motion capture techniques, but at least for now,
that’s probably beyond the cost range for readers of this book. Automated techniques are
always improving too, but so far, they aren’t keeping up with what a good animator or
capture technique can deliver.
Don’t despair. I will get you set up for the sync part of things quickly and painlessly
so you can spend your time on performance (the fun stuff!). If your bag is automation,
there’s still a lot of information in here you can use to bump the quality of that up too.
When teased apart properly, the lip sync portion of facial animation is the easiest to
understand because it’s the simplest. You see, people’s mouths don’t do that much during
speech. Things like smiles and frowns and all sorts of neat gooey faces are cool, and we’ll
get to them later, but for now we’re just talking sync. Plain old speech. Deadpan and emo-
tionless and, well, boring, is where our base will be. Now, you’re probably thinking, “Hey!
My face can do all sorts of stuff! I don’t want to create boring animation!” Well, you’re
right on both counts: Your face can do all sorts of things, and who really wants to do bor-
ing animation? Nobody! For the basics, however, this is a case of learning to walk before
you can run. For now, we’re not going to complicate it. If we jumped right into a world with
hundreds or even thousands of verbal and emotional poses (which is how they do it in the
movies), we’d never get anywhere. So, to make sure you’re ready for the advanced hands-on
work later, we’re focusing on the most basic concept now: bare-bones lip sync. When deal-
ing with the essentials of lip sync and studying people, there are just two basic motions. The
mouth goes Open/Closed, and it goes Wide/Narrow, as illustrated in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1
A human mouth in
the four basic poses
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