Anyone try out Mimic and P5 yet to see if it works? I'm thinking of buying it and just want the lo down on how it integrates with P5. Thanks.

I did a quick test on Don. His Mimic compatibility is somewhere right in between the P4 figures, which work the best, and the Daz Millennium figures, which are the worst even after they've been tweaked. Don's "speaking" isn't as unnatural-looking as the Daz figures are. The Daz figures completely lack subtlety. They look like they're chomping on hamburgers. Clearly Mimic compatibility was put in as an afterthought for them. Don's not bad. His face contortions seem more natural and his mouth is more normal as he talks, but he isn't "spot on" the way the P4 figures are. Also, I don't recall seeing his eyes blink at all. I'll run more tests to see what's up, but that's what I've noticed so far. --jjsemp

The P5 figures also work with Text Puppet, another facial animation tool for lip synching.

Just ran another quick test to confirm that Don's eyes and eyebrows remain still during speech (alas, no blinking or eyebrow-raising to enhance the illusion). His mouth and head move very naturally, though. As I said above. He's not bad. Buy Mimic. It's well worth it. --jjsemp

Ok, I'll get it. At 48 bucks, can't hardly resist.

jjsemp, That's a bummer about the eyes. They should be blinking. Is that the case in all versions of Don? How about Judy? Kupa

Attached Link: ftp://www.web-runners.com/p5-mimic-test.mov

I did a test animation using a custom face I created in the FACE ROOM (see the attached link, Quicktime MOV, 4MB), in order to evaluate: MIMIC w/ P5 FaceRoom modifed Don, as well as TIF image sequence output to make sure Poser was no longer inverting the Alpha-Channel like P4 did. (Thus the star field in the background.) BTW, the alpha channels come out beautifully.

Also, wanted to see how eye movements looked rendered in P5.
I removed the sound becuase I wasn't happy with the lipsyncing at all ... I'll post another movie if I can get a better lipsynch.

So far, I actually think Mike does a better job than Don. Maybe I'll post a comparison animation ... might not be a bad idea.

-Tim

If I understand it right, the blinking is a DAZ add on for specific models.

Well where is the FIX for this?Either from Mimic or CL?I paid the FULL price for Mimic not 48 bucks.What about us people who supported Mimic from the beginning?

The solution is to either change the internal names of the blink morphs to "Blink Left" and "Blink Right" with Morph Manager or some similar utility, or spawn new morphs with those internal names.

Yes, do a search for Mimic and you'll come across more than a few posts on this, AND how to do it. I'm an original MIMIC purchaser as well (bought it the day it was released) and it has been a little frustrating at times. However, I'm overlooking this for now because there are so many other completely aggravating issues with P5 itself right now, I can't even think about it.

I bought it for full price too, and there has never been any real support for it. Marque

Hi King Kupa. I tried a quick test with Judy as well. I used a pose file that I'd already used before on a P4 figure (with excellent results). Sorry to say that Judy's eyes and eyebrows don't move either. She also has a bit of a lisp -- meaning that her tongue seems to want to stay a little too prominently visible while she speaks. All of these things are "tweakable" but I sure do miss the "working-right-out-of-the-box" experience of using the old P4 figures with Mimic. I fervently wish that more time would be spent on Mimic compatibility when Curious Labs and Daz build their newer, more complicated figures. You don't realize what a gold mine you'd uncover if you catered more to the world of animation. I'm making an animated film with Poser which is very dialogue-heavy and relies on Mimic a lot. In fact, it's the combination of Mimic and Poser that made me decide to purchase Poser in the first place. But I've been forced to exclusively rely upon ONLY the P4 figures. Simply put, they've been set up correctly for Mimic and that makes them worth their virtual weight in gold. I'm an animation industry veteran producer (20 years and counting) and the lure of instant lip-sync was too good to pass up. I started my career in pre-production doing "track-reading", the tedious first step in making a cartoon in which all the dialogue is "broken down" into frames on "beat sheets" for the animators to work from. The fact that these new hi-tech tools eliminate that boring, time-consuming process is miraculous. But the professional animation world knows nothing about any of this. It's Poser's best-kept secret -- and that's not a good thing for your bottom line. The focus of the Poser community is directed too much on still shots of skin pores and eyelashes, and naked women in temples with swords. While these things have great value, I think that if the professional animation world caught on to how versatile Poser and Mimic can be, your sales would go through the roof. Something to think about... When I have more time tomorrow, I'll run tests on all verions of Don and Judy and get back to you. Thanks for listening to me rant. Timoteo: your animation looks great. It's hard to evaluate Mimic's performance with the dialogue removed, but the mouth movement seemed very natural. Great work! I'm curious as to why you think Mike does a better job. My experiments with him yielded really, really lousy results. I look forward to further posts from you on the issue. Please enlighten me! Little Dragon: Y'know, I realize that I can tinker with the morphs and such, but, like Artist3D, I also bought Mimic at full price just so that I wouldn't have to DO any of that stuff. I HATE having to suddenly think like a programmer and tinker under the hood. I'm lazy. I bought Mimic to make my life easier and obtain INSTANT lip-sync. If it's so easy, why don't Daz and Curious do it for me? Wouldn't it make their figures worth the money we pay for them? EricofSD: a figure that's fully Mimic-compatible should be able to blink and raise it's eyebrows as part of the process. The lowly P4 figures do it beautifully. All the other figures built since then just haven't been set up right for it. The figure-creators' priorities have been elsewhere. --jjsemp

JJ: Thanks! It was really a combination quickie test of those things I mentioned. Animating the eyes and blinks, etc. took me about 20 minutes. It would have taken less time if the Don figure didn't have multiple identically named morph targets. I'm not sure if this is inherent in the Don figure, or it is because the head was created from the FACE ROOM. One more thing I need to look into. I'll post a Mike-Don comparison animation within the next day hopefully. Probably a new post. -Tim

Well I know Steve and CL will fix all the bugs in Poser5.But if Mimics Company is not even BOTHERING for upgrades or patches for Mimic,then they should be Ashamed of themselves.I said"IF" they are not.So far it seems like they are not,and if that is true,then screw them and their company,LIPSInc.

Mimic belongs to DAZ now. LIPSinc is history.

DAZ hasn't had time to dig into the Mimic source code yet, but Mimic blink-updates for the Millennium figures were posted at the website on Wednesday. Get them here (scroll down to the bottom of the page).

Thanks for the link, LittleD!! Good ol' DAZ. I know they said soon ... but wow. I hope the other updates come soon!

I'm guessing you might be aware that LIPSinc was liquidated (or whatever the proper term) only a month ago. DAZ3D bought Mimic "lock, stock and barrel." As I understand the terms, DAZ has the legal right to reverse engineer the code. Considering the drastic price drop for Mimic, my suspicions tell me DAZ is probably developing a more enhanced version. The following is just theory, or maybe just wishful thinking. I have no facts upon which to base these ideas, so please don't take these pondering as any official statement of purpose. 1) They might make this newer version available for both Windows and Mac. Most of their items are offered for both platforms. 2) Rather than just simple check boxes for including various supplimentary motions such as brow archings and eye blinks, why not variable rates controlled by dials, sliders or numeric input fields? 3) Controls for general emotional states would be fascinating. Better yet, why not tools to change the emotions during the speech? 4) Options to select whether the charcter to be used is a Poser 4 character or a DAZ creation would eliminate the problems of compatibility. Such additions may make the application nearly as complicated as just manually adding keyframe adjustments, but I feel DAZ would not have bought Mimic if they didn't have any thoughts for improving it. Sincerely, Bill

There is a running wish list for the "Mimic 2" release here on R'Osity. Just do a search.

Oh, um, er, then again... DAZ may start by providing patches for their existing characters. That would eliminate the need for option # 4. I was composing my message when you posted yours, Little Dragon. I, too, thank you for the link. I just bought the Michael and Victoria CDs earlier this week, so this update is especially relevant. Actually, I got the best deal doing it this way. The 20 dollar voucher allowed me to acquire the Mil' Dragon effectively for free! What a bargin! I didn't know Mike and Vicky came with additional bodies that can wear the "classic" Poser 4 clothes. This allows so many possibilities! Sincerely, Bill

I'm thrilled to hear that DAZ is offering Mimic compatibility patches for the existing Millennium figures. That's EXACTLY what I've been waiting for. Thanks, DAZ, for taking care of business. And thanks to you Little Dragon for pointing it out. I think that with this latest release, Poser has strongly moved into animation, much more so than before. I hope that Curious and Daz continue to beef up their animation capability and support. There's a whole new marketplace waiting to be conquered. As it stands now, most 3D animators aren't even AWARE of Poser. Except for about thirteen of us, that is...;-) --jjsemp

This might interest all of you http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=884385 Anton