[Liam Smith]

Thanks Dan, thats great.

[Liam Smith]

Hi Dan,

Yes thats what I’m thinking. I understand my issue but struggle to articulate it that well.

I have used your very helpful tutorials for expressions and started to delve into https://www.codecademy.com/learn and this PDF https://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/files/2012/06/After-Effects-CS6-Scripting-Guide.pdf. Are there any resources or starting points that you would suggest to start making scripts. I feel a little lost with no place to start from.

Thanks again for your time!

Liam

[Liam Smith]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for clearing this up ‘expressions don’t have access to vertex data’ this makes a lot of sense. So i’m looking to make a script for this with limited scripting knowledge (I cringe typing that but very excited to start) and wondered what some of the frame work would look like. you mention the following..

[Dan Ebberts] “Your workflow might be something like you get all the phoneme names set up on the time line where you want them (using marker comments) and then run the script to drop in the appropriate vertex keyframes at the markers.
“

So these are my thoughts and for this example I will say there are 14 phonemes (mouth shapes).

So would you have one shape layer with a keyframed path. Every frame for 14 frames would have a keyframe and be a different mouth shape. For example frame 1 = A, frame 2 = E, frame 3 = O etc

Ideally the ‘controller’ would be a null where by numerical values linked to a expression slider controller determine which keyframe has been selected. By numerical values it could look something like 1 = A, 2 = E, 3 = O etc.

So aside from the scripting task ahead. Do you think it would be possible to interpolate between the mouth shapes mid shape? So in dialogue we don’t usually go from a resting position to the full mouth shape to the resting position. It would be great to switch midway between on mouth shape and rest on another in a fluid manner.

Thanks
Liam