Hey all,

When i set up a scene with Michael 3 or Victoria 4 in Talk Designer the mouth moves fine, but i am not getting much movement in the eyes and the characters both don't blink at all when i play the animation back once lip syncing is applied. Could this be as the blinking only shows up with rendered animations i don't know? but i doubt it. Does anyone know what the cause of this problem could be?

I downloaded free phonemes for v4 are there any better phonemes out there? 

I also have noticed that the emotion bars do not seem to be doing anything, could this also be to do with the phonemes or something i am doing wrong? 

any help would be greatly appreciated.

I haven't used Talk Designer myself, but I was thinking you might get a better response if you used a subject like Blink Problems with Talk Designer... or if you still get no assistance, you might try the Poser7 forum at content paradise.

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When i set up a scene with Michael 3 or Victoria 4 in Talk Designer the mouth moves fine, but i am not getting much movement in the eyes and the characters both don't blink at all when i play the animation back once lip syncing is applied.

Did you select a viseme map appropriate for Michael or Victoria?  The handful included with Poser 7 aren't configured for either figure.

Shaders Cafe (a.k.a. NomiGraphics) sells a Talk Designer expansion pack which adds support for over 200 figures, including Michael 3 and Victoria 4.  You can find it here in the Marketplace, or at Content Paradise: http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=53126

http://www.contentparadise.com/us/user/talk_designer_expansion_kit_for_poser_7_product_25231

One of Talk Designer's limitations (as far as I can tell) is that it isn't quite as flexible as Mimic.  Most functions (including blinking) can only be tied to a single channel.  Michael 3 has Blink Left and Blink Right morphs, but no Blink Both dial, so Talk Designer couldn't be made to blink both eyes simultaneously, even with a viseme map set up for his morphs.  Unless, of course, such a dial were added to the figure.

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I downloaded free phonemes for v4 are there any better phonemes out there?

DAZ added its own phonemes when they updated Victoria to 4.1.  In my opinion, they're about the same as mine.  I've produced good results with both.

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I also have noticed that the emotion bars do not seem to be doing anything, could this also be to do with the phonemes or something i am doing wrong? 

Talk Designer uses an assortment of face files to control the emotion morphs.  These face files are listed in each viseme map.  Since the names of the emotion morphs might vary from figure to figure, custom face files are often required.

Unfortunately, the Talk Designer expansion doesn't provide these yet.

Kalon thanks for the advice, but i think this thread title should be fine.

Hey Little_dragon you seem like a guy who knows what he is talking about, so hopefully i can find all of the answers to my problems with you.

Yes i did download the Talk Designer expansion kit. I used both the v4 and m3 viseme maps. 

So as far as you know it is impossible to get Michael 3 to blink simultaniously in Talk Designer? one eye at a time would look unnatural, so that is no good for me. Would my only option be to use Mimic, unless its possible to add such a dial you talk of?

As i own victoria 4.0 base and do not want to purchase 4.1 i am happy to use your phonemes, especially if you say that they produce the same results. I also encounter this absence of blinking with my V4 model, you said this is expected with M3, but any ideas why this is also happening with me V4 model? 

Lastly is it not possible to control the emotions of V4 and M3 in Talk Designer without custom face morps, that don't currently exist for these models? 

cheers for the help i hope i can narrow down these answers soon, so i know where i stand. Looks like Mimic is the best option atm.

Matt  

The reason you are not seeing blinking yet, is that none of the DAZ figures have a blink morph.  They have individual eye blinks, not both at once.

We're currently working on adding morphs to the package that will include full blinks for the most popular DAZ figures, we just haven't finished them yet.  When they are done, it will be a free update to the package.

As for the emotion sliders, only face room supported characters can work with those sliders currently.  So the DAZ figures currently don't work with the emotion sliders.  We're investigating ways around that issue too.

 - Noel

Hey Noel,

Thanks for replying that clears up any queries i have. Do you have any estimation at this current time when these problems will be solved?

What morphs do you need for M3 and V4 to get one eye to blink? i thought i may aswell try this just to get a feel for the blinking. 

cheers

I don't have a time frame on them.  We're working on them, but I hate to put out dates and then not make them.

You need the head morphs for M3, and V4 depends.  On her, she only works if you have V4, not V4.1.

V4.1 changed how the morphs are setup, fairly dramatically, and are causing us some additional issues with the talk designer expansion.  That is another one of our projects, is trying to find a way to work within the new setup, so she will work properly.

 - Noel

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As for the emotion sliders, only face room supported characters can work with those sliders currently.  So the DAZ figures currently don't work with the emotion sliders.  We're investigating ways around that issue too.

I've got the emotion sliders working for Krystal now, though the lipsync itself still needs fine-tuning.  Would you like a copy of my files for study?

I would very much like to take a look at them if you don't mind :)  You can e-mail them to admin@shaderscafe.com

 - Noel   

I received the files, thanks very much.  For some reason hotmail keeps bouncing my replies to you back :)

So I'll ask here, how did you make the fc2 files?

 - Noel   

Hotmail seems to be doing that lately.  I have no idea why.  Some emails are getting through; others aren't.

I simply dialed the head morphs in Poser and then saved to the expression (face) library.

Although I could have left them there in the library and pointed the XML to that location, I decided to move them to the lipsync subfolder for the sake of consistency.

I also hand-edited the files afterward to remove certain unnecessary channels, like the face-shaping morphs.

Interesting!  I'll give that a shot.

Thanks for the info.

 - Noel

Quote - The reason you are not seeing blinking yet, is that none of the DAZ figures have a blink morph.  They have individual eye blinks, not both at once.

Actually, V4.0 has such a dial.  It's named "EyesOpen-Close" (internally named "PHMEyesOpen-Close").