Hi all-

After buying A:M track last year...I put it on a shelf for a rainy day. Well, it rained a LOT last week and I dusted it off to give it a whirl. HERE is a letter I sent to Luuk with my findings:

MC


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Hi Luuk-

Well, after 'sitting' on my Zigntrack product for several months, I FINALLY stuck some stickers on my face and went about testing it out...

I am happy to report EVERYTHING WENT SWIMMINGLY WELL!!!

Sorry, I have no questions to ask nor buggs to report! I DO need to do a better shoot next time, with a better camera and less head action... I ended-up 'saving' my digital camera shoot1 (640X480@30fps) with a little After Effects touch-ups before going in to ZT. I felt quite elated after all was done and my character was moving to my own head actions! This opens-up worlds of ideas!!!

I saw there were 2 options... a 'bones' controlled option and a 'pose' controlled option... I opted for the 'pose' option. The ONLY thing I was looking to see more of was a big mouth-pucker for my 'W' phonemes, but I can make a pose for that and add it as needed. I REALLY liked being able to set the parameters to 100% and beyond...and found everything looked nice and overly animated (the way I like it) at around 120-130% Good feature! Next time I will limit my head movements as I shoot and then set the head/neck to 200%

I just wanted you to know that your product is quite worthwhile in my opinion, and tested quite well initially... I look forward to giving it another days work and hope to show you some animations soon.

Matt Campbell (aka John Bigboote from the AMForum)

That's great Mat. Thanks for sharing your findings. Which rig did you use? Or did you roll your own?

Is it possible we can see the test?

Yeah, let's 'ave a gander then, Matt.

I was just reading an article about Jeff Lew and the making of Killer Bean Forever in which he states that he didn't keyframe a single second of the lipsync. Instead he used SynthEyes to track video of himself miming to the voice actor's performance. This is essentially what Luuk has given us with Zign Track and A:M Track except that we can have the data translated directly into A:M Actions which, as far as I am concerned, is the cleanest and most useful format for A:M.

FUNNY! I guess I roll my own...as far as the face goes. I have always been a big fan (and customer) of TSM2, so I use that for the body...and in the face I use a combination of muscle and bones.

I WOULD SHOW IT TODAY BUT... my dog ate my homework...actually, I stayed at home today to meet Mr. Furnace repairman (ca-CHING) and the only time I used my car...it started to 'steam' anti-freeze... the project is at my work machine- if I can ever get there!

i have not had a chance to use my am track yet but was wondering is it better to use am track for mouth sync and forsake the dope sheet?

If you have a character who is going to be doing alot of talking, especially close-ups, then A:M Track/Zign Track can save you many hours of work. It takes a while to get a model calibrated correctly and performing the way that you expect it to but once you have it set you should be able to churn out decent lipsync almost as fast as you can render. You will still need your phoneme set and possibly a few other poses to emphasize and exaggerate mouth shapes, in my opinion. Even the extremely expensive mocap setups require time for calibrating and more time to clean up the data so that it plays the way you want it to rather than the way the actor performed it. It is not a five minute job quite yet but it can help you get your timing spot on and, when used wisely, will save you many hours of lipsync time.

A:M Track is very well suited for long-form animations... and it's 'niche' is that it adds 'human realism' to cartoon characters...and human realism is very hard to fake. It can be used as a base... and then further embellishments added to it. I think a good foundation to using A:M T is that you have 'some sort' of lip-synch experience. I personally have never used the A:M dopesheet... I guess I just make poses, make a new action, import my audio and commence keyframing!

STAY TOONED!