Good evening - I figure “why start small?” I’m going all in on a full length movie. I’ve drafted a 120 page script and will be mixing real photographs with images created in GIMP. I’ve downloaded the development version that integrates Papagayo. I watched the training video and have been able to get it to work using one character. I haven’t had success with two characters speaking to each other. I’ve tried a couple of different approaches (1. made a copy in Synfig of the pgo file for each character; 2. made a pgo file for each character in Papagayo) but still seem to be struggling. Any thoughts would be appreciated!
I myself never used Papagayo, so I am not sure I can help, but I can tell you that your issue isn’t obvious. Can you be more specific? What exactly doesn’t work? What is struggling?
If you could make a simple example illustrating the problem, it would be ideal. File should be saved in sfg format (File -> Save as -> Compressed Synfig file change to Container format file).
So, I recorded two people reading a small portion of the script as a wav. file. I uploaded the wav. file into Papagayo. Papagayo allows for multiple “voices” to be named and linked to a particular character’s speech. So, in my first attempt, I imported into Synfig one Papagayo file with a breakdown of both characters speech. I then copied the Papagayo file and used one with each character in Synfig. That was unsuccessful. I was aware that Papagayo has some connection with Anime Studio, so I started wondering if the multiple “voice” feature would work in Synfig (prior to my initial attempt, I did question how Synfig would know how to link “Voice 1” with “Character 1” and “Voice 2” with “Character 2” - so when it didn’t work, I wasn’t too surprised). In my second attempt, I used the same wav. file. However, I made two Papagayo files - one for “Voice 1” and one for “Voice 2” (the entire conversation is recorded, but there is only a phoneme breakdown for one character’s speech in each file). I then imported both Papagayo files and linked “Voice 1” with “Character 1” and “Voice 2” with “Character 2.” Even though “Voice 1” only included a breakdown of the speech for “Character 1,” the mouth for “Character 1” would sometimes move when “Character 2” was speaking. Hope that was clear. I realize it may be tough if you haven’t used Papagayo before. Thanks for considering my problem!
So, I figured out what I was doing wrong (and am offering it here in case there are any other newbies out there who might get stuck in the same spot I did). I needed to use the master audio recording and create separate “character” files in Audacity (Character 1’s file would omit any audio from Character 2, and Character 2’s file would omit any audio from Character 1). I then imported each wav. file into Papagayo to make the pgo. files. I then followed the rest of the online tutorial instructions. I feel a little dumb for not realizing this immediately, but I guess there’s a learning curve with everything. This development feature REALLY IS GREAT!!! Makes things really easy!
Are you happy with Papagayo’s synchronization? I say this because I found I had to insert silences in Audacity of at least 2 frames (at 24fps) to get the lips and mouth to move completely in sync. Otherwise, everything went way too quickly.
Another thing I like to do is to make sure the character’s mouth is completely closed between words, something that we humans (mouth-breathers!) don’t do in real life. Again, only 2 frames makes a difference that the eye notices.
As someone relatively new to this, I haven’t done too much animation with the lipsync feature. I was really just excited I was able to get the mouth to move . Not sure if it will address your issue, but I think I saw one video where the animator used 15 FPS because he thought the mouth was moving too fast.
. Not sure if it will address your issue, but I think I saw one video where the animator used 15 FPS because he thought the mouth was moving too fast.