Lipsync in maya

[andy-davis]

I have been using a plugin in 3ds max called 'voice-o-matic'. It is an integral audio/text to keyframe generator which gives me instant lipsync animation on a character when I supply an audio file, with an associated text file. Magpie pro works externally to Maya, but does anyone know of a decent lipsync tool that works inside Maya?
Other tools are also available for Max which do the same: Fatlips3d, Ventriloquist etc, but I know of none for Maya.
There is no way I am going to hand-key the lipsync, it takes way too long.
It would be faster to animate in Max and import into Maya, if there is no alternative solution.
Help!!

[nazgul]

"There is no way I am going to hand-key the lipsync, it takes way too long. "

There sure is if you want it to look presentable! -J.

[goggle]

I second that. I've tried a number of automated lip-sync thingies and not a single one of them produced anything remotely decent. Although some of them did provide a good starting point I still had to go in and tweak things key by key.

It gets much faster the more you do it too. I was up to 6 minutes of from scratch hand keyed lip-synch a day on one show.

-James

[andy-davis]

I've worked on lipsync projects before. Thirty seconds of lipsync anims took me about a day to do from scratch. I have much more than that to do, so I can't spend weeks and months working on just the lips, when I got to animate the whole characters too.
I'll go with arcsecond's idea of using lipsync software as a starting point. Of course the software isn't going to get it right in each case, but tweaking and getting a good enough result allows me to spend my time animating the other things used in communication; emotions, gestures, eye focus, etc.
I'm working on a games project, and our time schedules are mean. Other games that have featured lipsync such as 'The Getaway' used automated lipsync software with after-tweaking. I think it makes sense...

[tha-dude]

I would also prefer to key by hand, but if you animate for a TV project or in your case, for a game. Automate lipsync will probably do it.
I know velontquist
did you check this?--> http://www.highend3d.com/files/dl.3d?group...mp;file\_id=1922

or this:---> http://www.highend3d.com/files/dl.3d?group...mp;file\_id=2573

[patchina]

...or Voice Works from www.puppetworks.com

P