Topic: Mouth Animations

Well, as many of you know, we used to (and still do to some extent) ask a lot of questions about Axogon. Well, we now know almost everything we need to know about it, except mouth animation. I thought to make mouth animations, you make a new geometry and map it to a black solid source. Then you map it to a transparent cylinder in Blender, and then just layer it on top of the previous video in Axogon. The problem is, if the minifigure moves his head in any direction, the mouth (eyes, eyebrows, etc.) will always stay on top of the video. I haven't figured out another way to composite it yet, regardless of numerous searches with no results. I don't want to ask Smeagol again, because I've asked him too many times for many things. So, I didn't know if any of the rest of you still know how to use Axogon, and how to re-composite the mouth like it is pasted onto the minifigure's head. Links to helpful websites are welcome (not a google search, or any thing).

-JP

http://tinyurl.com/krwj4ek
http://tinyurl.com/kvxr6umhttp://tinyurl.com/kxofj4mhttp://tinyurl.com/k5fw3syhttp://tinyurl.com/m4rv8tf

Re: Mouth Animations

Can you not just rotate the cylinder in blender, and have the texture not render on the inside of the cylinder (to prevent the back of the mouth animation appearing through the transparent cylinder)?

Red classic.
Free will carried many a soul to hell, but never a soul to heaven. -Charles H. Spurgeon

Re: Mouth Animations

I understand where you're going, but unfortunately, Axogon doesn't have a feature that allows you to map one video to another.

http://tinyurl.com/krwj4ek
http://tinyurl.com/kvxr6umhttp://tinyurl.com/kxofj4mhttp://tinyurl.com/k5fw3syhttp://tinyurl.com/m4rv8tf

Re: Mouth Animations

Have you tried Glueface?

Re: Mouth Animations

I haven't tried mouth animation in Axagon yet, but I use Axagon a bit. I suggest just shaping the mouth to look like it's on an angle. I have actually been thinking about that for a while. mini/tongue Haha.

Re: Mouth Animations

I like to try out making different mouth shapes in fireworks or illustrator then putting them into After Effects. I normally paint out the mouth in AE then creat a new mouth through masking. But think this new way would be a lot easier.

http://tinyurl.com/67k2bg3
http://tinyurl.com/63xal8hhttp://tinyurl.com/6da2bpuhttp://tinyurl.com/66q72xzhttp://tinyurl.com/6efhkyohttp://tinyurl.com/6jzmuoa

Re: Mouth Animations

Actually, I have almost figured it out. In Axogon, I created a new geometry to match the mouth of the minifigure. Then, I created a gradient to cover up the spot on which the mouth was. I then made a fill tool to fill the mouth on a white background (I did this for easier compositing). I then took it to Blender, where I made the mouth animation a texture, and mapped it to a cylinder, with either an alpha channel, or a full white back drop. Back in Axogon again, I added a paster tool to paste out the white of the tube and keep the black, therefore successfully creating a mouth animation that is composited back onto the head without any problems.

http://tinyurl.com/krwj4ek
http://tinyurl.com/kvxr6umhttp://tinyurl.com/kxofj4mhttp://tinyurl.com/k5fw3syhttp://tinyurl.com/m4rv8tf

Re: Mouth Animations

Sounds good. I believe it's quite similar to Smeagols method.

http://tinyurl.com/67k2bg3
http://tinyurl.com/63xal8hhttp://tinyurl.com/6da2bpuhttp://tinyurl.com/66q72xzhttp://tinyurl.com/6efhkyohttp://tinyurl.com/6jzmuoa