Speech Blend Property Editor

Adjust the weight blend for the lips, jaw, and tongue channels in the speech clip used for lip syncing in Face Robot.

For more information, see Blending the Lip-Sync Animation [Face Robot].

To display:

Click the Create Lipsync button in the Lip Sync Dialog Box or choose Inspect Speech Op on the Lip Sync tab in the lip sync view.

Lips/Jaw/Tongue

The parameters on these tabs are all the same except that they each set the weight blending for their respective mouth controls: lips, jaw, or tongue.

Display Language

Select the language in which you want to display the phonemes in the lip sync view: English or Japanese

General

These parameters appear on each of the three tabs, but apply generally to all three channels (lips, jaw, tongue) in the speech clip.

Min Silence Length (seconds)

The length (in seconds) at which a gap between phonemes (silence) is included in the blending.

If there is a silence gap that is smaller than this value, it is ignored when blending, and Face Robot instead blends into its neighboring phonemes.

If the silence is larger than this value, it is treated like a phoneme for blending (when computing how far to blend into the neighboring phonemes). However, very long silences are not treated like very long phonemes. Blending a long silence is "capped" based on the length of the next phoneme and how much there is left to blend.

Min Phoneme Length (seconds)

The length (in seconds) at which a phoneme is included in the blending.

If a phoneme is smaller than this value, it is ignored when blending. This can be useful for preventing animation "pops" where the blending hits the short phonemes, but doesn't have enough time to properly ease into and out of the neighboring phonemes.

Lips/Jaw/Tongue

Enable

Toggle the Enable option on each channel's tab (Lips, Jaw, Tongue) in the Speech Blend property editor to determine whether or not the animation controls for that channel are used in the lip sync animation. For example, if you have mocap controlling the jaw instead of the lip sync animation, you could deactivate (and animate) the Enable option for the jaw for the duration of the dialogue.

Channel

Weight Scale Factor

The weight of the each channel (Lips, Jaw, Tongue). A value of 1 is 100% of the lip sync animation coming from the Speech action clip. You can use values between 0 and 1.

See Weighting the Lips, Jaw, and Tongue Globally [Face Robot].

Time Offset (seconds)

Offsets the channel's blend time.

For example, you can have only the lips and jaw channels lead the audio by an eighth of a second, which may generally look better than having the visemes sync exactly with the audio. Or you can have only the tongue start moving a quarter of a second before the audio.

Blend

See Blending the Lip-Sync Animation between Phonemes [Face Robot] for more information.

Before/After (phonemes)

The number of phonemes before/after the current phoneme with which the Lips/Jaw/Tongue channel will blend. The default value is 1.5 phonemes for the lips and jaw so that the change between phonemes is neither too abrupt nor too slurred. The default value for the tongue is 1.25 phonemes.

Falloff

The falloff value for the blending between phonemes. This controls how smoothly the viseme pose eases in and out of each phoneme for that channel. The default value is 0.4, which makes the pose blend in and out fairly quickly.

You can enter Falloff values can between -1 and 1, even though this slider doesn't show this.

A negative falloff value makes the viseme pose ease in/out over a larger area so it blends in sooner and more gradually.
A positive falloff value makes the viseme pose ease in/out over a smaller area so it blends in later but more abruptly.

Phoneme Type

Preserve Scale Factor

Preserves the shapes of the visemes for the Lips/Jaw/Tongue channel. A value of 1 means that no weight boost is applied. Anything over 1 applies that scale factor to the affected phonemes so that they have more of an influence in the blend, but the amount of weight boost depends on the surrounding phonemes.

See Preserving the Viseme Pose When Blending Phonemes [Face Robot] for more information.

Falloff

The falloff value for the preservation scale factor. This controls how smoothly the preserved phoneme scale factor eases in and out of the phonemes.

At a value of 0, a uniform falloff is used. You can set this value to be within a range of -1 to 1, even if the slider doesn't show this.

A negative falloff value makes the scale factor ease in/out over a larger area so it blends in sooner and more gradually.
A positive falloff value makes the scale factor ease in/out over a smaller area so it blends in later and more abruptly.

Corrective Shapes (Lips Only)

These options are available only for the Lips channel because only these mouth controls are affected by corrective shapes, not the jaw or tongue.

See Blending in Corrective Shapes Globally and Blending in Corrective Shapes Per Phoneme [Face Robot] for more information.

Shape Weight

The weight value of all corrective shapes that are being used for the viseme poses.

A value of 1 is 100% of the corrective shapes' weight. You can set this value to be within a range of 0 to 1.

Falloff

The falloff value for the corrective shape weight value. This controls how smoothly the corrective shapes ease in and out of the phonemes.

At a value of 0, a uniform falloff is used. You can set this value to be within a range of -1 to 1, even if the slider doesn't show this.

A negative falloff value makes the corrective shape ease in/out over a larger area so it blends in sooner and more gradually.
A positive falloff value makes the corrective shape ease in/out over a smaller area so it blends in later and more abruptly.

Apply Channel Weight

Toggles the Weight Scale Factor option for the Lips channel:

When on (default), the corrective shapes consider the Weight Scale Factor for the Lips channel.
When off, the Weight Scale Factor is not used for the Lips channel, which allows you to use the lip sync animation to drive only the corrective shapes. You can then use mocap animation to drive the lips movement.

See Decoupling the Corrective Shapes from their Viseme Poses for Mocap Animation [Face Robot] for more information.

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