Lip-sync exercise using Ludwig

Artwork Focused Critiques
1

Here’s a lip-sync exercise I did using Ludwig. Comments, critiques, all welcome.
Movie here: http://www.bestsharing.com/files/BxUAW1y192571/ludwig%20talk-L.zip.html
zipped AVI (2.61mb)

a sincere thanks to Jason Pierce for Ludwig. Ludwig can be got at:
http://www.cs.unm.edu/~sketch/gallery/resource/ludwig/ludwig.html

2

Very nice. The facial expressions help to sell it too. A few head and shoulder movements on “I fondle walls” will just about complete it.

For the lips I only see three minor problems.

  • The initial “Oh, oh, oh” - his mouth doesn’t quite do it for me. I’d like to see the lips purse a little more at the end of each “Oh” and it looks like he misses the third “Oh” and drifts into “You” a little early. In fact, fix this last “Oh” and the others might be okay.
  • I’m not quite reading the “F” in “feel”, it seem sit may need to hold just a couple of frames longer. “F” is quite a strong visual clue in lip-sync.
  • Same for the “F” in “fondle”.Also, have you tried a full, aliased render yet? I always find that if it’s looking pretty good in jaggy lo-res, it looks damned good when rendered properly as the lip movements “soften” quite a bit.

Was this done using the facial drivers?

3

Very good.
The crits AndyD made are correct, but you got the most important stuff right. Depending on how polished this needs to be you might want to make those corrections. If this was a close-up or for a film you would need to make those changes.

4

Thanks guys.

AndyD, those points are all on the mark. I’m fixing up his F’s now, and it’s looking much better. I’ll get a bit more shoulder action in there too. As for the Oh’s at the start, I had trouble getting the lips just how I wanted. Maybe a limitation of the rig, or maybe I just don’t know how to get it to work for me. Anyway, I should at least be able to get the timing better.

Was this done using the facial drivers?
I’m not clear exactly what “face-drivers” means. I used the face rig that Jason put in ludwig.

Will post a finished render soon for more comments, critiques. :smiley:

5

Personally I think the cough is a bit too over exaggerated comparing it with how little he
moves in the rest of the clip (- the intro).

But great work! Like the eyes, but maybe smoothing the movement of those quick turns
just a tad would be nice.

Keep it up, man!
//Mathias

1 Like
6

Thanks for the feedback Mathias. Everyone’s advice has been so on the money. I wish I had more… but it is looking better with all the changes I’ve made so far. Will post a finished render when I think it’s nice and polished.:slight_smile: