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animating a mouth. Maybe an expression???
Okay, so I’m animating a mouth using some masks and solids. I have the mouth split up into a few layers like the teeth, the black and the outside stroke. All of these masks need to move in unison.
What I’ve been doing is animating one layer key frame by keyframe and then copying those keyframes to the other layers. This works okay but is a little time consuming, especially when I need to go back and make changes.
I’m wondering if there’s some way in which I can link the other masks on separate layers to this one mask so that I basically have one control layer and one set of keyframes to deal with.
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4 Replies
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I’d look up tutorials on animating a mouth. Unless you need emotion to come through, you could create some precomps for all the vowel sounds and two or three other positions and then throw them into your master comp and fine tune from there.
Are you keyframing mask path or the solid’s position? If you’re just keyframing position, then parent all your objects to a null layer and just move the null layer around.
If you’re doing it straight from the masks, it’s a little tricky because the mask wraps position and shape in “Mask Path”.
Angelo Lorenzo
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Malcolm, check this out. I think it might be just what you are looking for.
Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
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Angelo, I do need some emotion to come through. I’m familiar with the basic vowel shape technique but want something a little more fluid and expressive. I’m animating the actual shape of the masks.
Tom, that might be a decent, cheap and quick method. I’ll look into that.
Thanks.
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you could also try converting the audio to keyframes and pick whip it to CCSplit. Might not give you the detail you want but has worked well on one of my projects. If the movement is not extreme enough try boosting the audio and playing with the levels then repeat the steps (convert audio to keyframes and pick whip them to CCsplit across mouth area). You can add teeth, tongue etc. as separate layer behind the face layer. Again, might not be what you are looking for but I have had success with it.
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