No Mouth Control Timeline?

Deke

I'm trying to animate shots with dialogue and it's not easy. What would be nice is to have a separate timeline for the mouth. Right now, any phonemes are added to the "head" timeline along with any head, eye, expressions. There is no sub-line for just mouth moves in either Timeline or Keymate.  Daz Studio designers...are you listening?

Richard Haseltine

That's really a figure design issue - if the mouth had a separate control node it would have its own timeline. You could add your own - and a new bone with the Joint Editor, or simply as parented null, create new properties on it by putting the Parameters pane into edit mode (right-click menu) then creating the properties (also in the  right-click menu), then use the Property Hierarchy to link them to the real mouth controls.

Deke

Whoa...you've just blown my mind. Didn't know any of that was possible. Great stuff. 

patience55

Richard Haseltine said:

That's really a figure design issue - if the mouth had a separate control node it would have its own timeline. You could add your own - and a new bone with the Joint Editor, or simply as parented null, create new properties on it by putting the Parameters pane into edit mode (right-click menu) then creating the properties (also in the  right-click menu), then use the Property Hierarchy to link them to the real mouth controls.

.... tippy toeing in here ....

Is there anyway that I could possibly "break" something if I tried this and um, goofed on it?

Would a fix be to reinstall the original figure?

Or would they be "safe changes" to make as long as I do "not save" anything.

Have not done anything yet but like the idea and want to try it.

Richard Haseltine

I don't think you could break anything, but updating the figure might have negative consequences; I would not recommend saving as a Figure Asset over the orignal Daz Figure Asset though (both because an update would certainly replace the modified version and because of the small risk of problems).

patience55

Richard Haseltine said:

I don't think you could break anything, but updating the figure might have negative consequences; I would not recommend saving as a Figure Asset over the orignal Daz Figure Asset though (both because an update would certainly replace the modified version and because of the small risk of problems).

Okay ... so saving it as a "character" would be safer yes?

[although I think first I would have to save the character, then make the changes and write over said character file for the save]

Richard Haseltine

or a Scene Subset

patience55

Back, nothing exploded. :-)

Didn't do it all right but anyhow deleted the character preset and seems to still work fine for G3F so ...

okay ... In the Eric Freeze tab; The first line chosen would be the new bone one just made, yes?

Property???

The second line would be ???

I found something for upper face rig ... and for lower face rig ... did it twice trying to get them all ... almost made it. Lower lip/chin etc ???

And then again for Property ???

tia

If the Eric Freeze is not the option to select, how to get what is to appear not greyed out on the hierarchy tab?

Richard Haseltine

You'd need a property on the new bone for each proeprty you wanted to control on the head or wahtever the location is. This isn't to reduce the number of controls, as I understand it, but to have a separate key-able bone that is purely for controlling the mouth.

patience55

Okay ... somehow that makes more sense than what I think I may have been trying to do.

Will work on this some more hopefully tomorrow.

zombiewhacker

Richard Haseltine said:

You could add your own - and a new bone with the Joint Editor, or simply as parented null, create new properties on it by putting the Parameters pane into edit mode (right-click menu) then creating the properties (also in the  right-click menu), then use the Property Hierarchy to link them to the real mouth controls.

Richard, could I trouble you to repeat this process one more time, breaking it down into smaller steps?  This sounds like very useful advice, but I'm new to all this.

Richard Haseltine

Select the bone you want to add the control bone to - could be, but doesn't have to be, the head here. Switch to the Joint Editor tool (Tools menu), right-click in the viewport and select Crate>Create Child Bone..., name it, label it, click accept.

Right-click on the Parameters pane to put it in Edit mode. Right-click again, Create New Property..., name and label it, adjust the path as desired (by picking from the list or typing the group name you want - e.g. Select General from the list then type "/Remote controls" after it to make a sub-group called Remote controls, the / separates groups and sub-groups), edit limits, click Accept. Repeat until you have all the controllers you want.

For the first remote control link you want, set the other properties you want it to control (morphs or transforms) to the value you wanbt them to have when the remote control is maxed, or at some convenient round number if you don't use limits. Set the new control, on the new bone, to that max/convenient value, then right-click on it and select ERC Freeze... It should be safe to click Accept, but make sure that there are no stray properties in the list of controlled properties at the bottom. If that works the controller on the new bone should now set the target properties as you adjust it. Zero that cproperty and repeat the process for the next controller and its target properties.

patience55

Richard Haseltine said:

Select the bone you want to add the control bone to - could be, but doesn't have to be, the head here. Switch to the Joint Editor tool (Tools menu), right-click in the viewport and select Crate>Create Child Bone..., name it, label it, click accept.

Right-click on the Parameters pane to put it in Edit mode. Right-click again, Create New Property..., name and label it, adjust the path as desired (by picking from the list or typing the group name you want - e.g. Select General from the list then type "/Remote controls" after it to make a sub-group called Remote controls, the / separates groups and sub-groups), edit limits, click Accept. Repeat until you have all the controllers you want.

For the first remote control link you want, set the other properties you want it to control (morphs or transforms) to the value you wanbt them to have when the remote control is maxed, or at some convenient round number if you don't use limits. Set the new control, on the new bone, to that max/convenient value, then right-click on it and select ERC Freeze... It should be safe to click Accept, but make sure that there are no stray properties in the list of controlled properties at the bottom. If that works the controller on the new bone should now set the target properties as you adjust it. Zero that cproperty and repeat the process for the next controller and its target properties.

Thank you.

zombiewhacker

Just so we're clear, I don't need to go through these steps if all I want to do is add phonemes, correct?  Then I could simply select head and use the standard timeline.  It's only when I need do facial expressions in addition to phonemes that I would need to create additonal child bones, etc.

Richard Haseltine

You don't need to do it at all - the original poster wanted, by my reading, a way to control the mouth specifically from a single node. All the controls you need are available without any extra action on your part.