Loose Lips

Question 1

What does Loose Lips do?

Answer

Loose Lips is a web app that generates a data file directly from your audio file of recorded dialog. Then, using the animation platform of your choice, you load the data file into our free plugin. Loose Lips will create all the animation keyframes for jaw, lips and tonguue movement.

Question 2

How does Loose Lips actually work under the hood?

Answer

When you upload your audio file, it is sent to a speech-to-text function, and text is returned. It is almost always right, but you can edit the text if necessary. When you click "Get Keyframes", the audio + text is processed through our patented algorithm, which contextually interprets the material at the phoneme, syllable, word and phrase levels. Finally, it creates a separate data stream for each of the different animation controllers, a total of 16 data streams in all.

Question 3

What do I need in order to use Loose Lips?

Answer

Requirements: 1. You have installed the plug-in for one of our supported platforms . 2. Your character is rigged with jaw, lips and tongue controls.

Question 4

Wouldn't it be easier just to have a mouth shape for every phoneme?

Answer

Yes, it would be easier. That is how other phoneme-targeted lip sync solutions work. As you have probably discovered, making a mouth shape for each phoneme (often called "Visemes"), results in animation that is choppy and mechanical. Why? Because that is not how people do it. A person speaking does not form a new mouth shape for every single phoneme. It is a LOT more subtle and complex than that. How the jaw, lips and tounge move for a given phoneme depends on many different things in context. The questiion of how to translate an audio recording into believable animated mouth movements is a very deep problem. We proudly say that we have done it! But if you find examples where you feel Loose Lips could work even better, we are happy to dialog with you.

Question 5

How much does it cost?

Answer

Loose Lips works on a credit system. 1 credit = 1 second of audio procession. Check out our bundled pricing options.

Question 6

Do you keep my credit card on file?

Answer

No. This is a Wix website, and we use the standard "Wix Store" feature. Our money transactions are handled by Stripe.

Question 7

I got an error message after "Get Keyframes". What can I do?

Answer

The dictionary associated with our algorithm has over 20,000 English words, and more are being added all the time. Every once in a while, you may encounter a word that the system does not recognize. It's OK, you can always work around it, by substituting other words. Example: It does not recognize the word "keyframe". Solution: Edit the text to be 2 words - "key frame". Example: It does not recognize the word "harkening". Solution: Edit the text to read "hark a knee". It doesn't matter if the words are silly, as long as they are words that the system recognizes, and that sound similar to the original word. It is a simple workaround.

Question 8

I drag the .Mel file into Maya for Windows 10, and nothing happens :-(

Answer

An update to Maya in Windows 10 causes Maya to not make a Shelf when you drag in the .Mel file. We are working on an update. For now, here is the workaround: Paste this line of code... import lipsync; lipsync.showUI(); ...into the in the Python console or Python line at the bottom, and hit return. Like this: