Mouth Animation

Easy Lip Syncing, Automated Puppet-style

1. Model a puppet head
   Make shape key for the open mouth
2. Add an empty
   1. add Z axes keyframe
3. In the channel menu select sound to samples and chose the audio
4. Go to Video Sequence and click Add and Sound
5. Check Audio Scrubbing in Timeline Playback and chose Frame Dropping for Sync
6. Add Driver to the mouth shape key and select the empty
   1. Use just $var$

Easy Mouth Rig in Blender

1. make bones

   • for the head
     • jaw
     • upper lip
     • bottom lip
       Change the rotation point to Active Element by clicking .

2. Select the head + Shift select the rig - parent with empty groups

   • Parent tees

3. Go to pose mode

   1. Ander the edit turn off Lock Object Modes
   2. Select the head from the outliner
   3. Go to weight paint

4. Weight paint

   • Options
     • Check Auto Normalise

5. Bottom lip

   • Go to bone constrains
   • Add Copy Location
     • Select jaw bone
   • Add Copy Rotation
     • Select jaw bone
     • Change the Target and the Owner to local
     • Set Mix to after original

6. Jaw

   • Add Limit Rotation
   • Set the Owner to local
   • Limit X:
     • Min: 0°
     • Max: 30°
       Check Effect Transform

7. Top lip

   • Repeat this for chewing
   • Make the same thing but for the Influence

8. Add Shape Keys for smiling

   • change the Range Min to -1 for frowning

   • add a new bone

     • turn off Deform in the bone settings
     • add Limit Location
     • Set the Owner to local
     • check all the axis

       • Limit the First key axis to 0.2

       • Repeat this for other keys

   • For the first key Right click the value and add Driver

     • Select the bone
     • Changing location
     • Target: chose the axis
     • Space: Local space
     • Edit the expression to $var\ast 5$ (so the result was 0.2*5=1)

   • Repeat this for other keys