Sometime things just seem to fall into place.<\/p>\n
I treated myself to a little birthday gift. I was looking at trying to incorporate Papagayo <\/a>lip-sync data into the .MHX2 rigs and was getting nowhere trying to get the humanoid models to:<\/p>\n A) accept .dat targeted lip-sync data<\/p>\n B) accept and merge multiple motion caption files<\/p>\n C) export all that to Unity and look nice<\/p>\n For whatever obsessive reason, my brain cannot come up with game ideas that involve characters that are static blobs \/ robots with very little animation \/ monsters with one or two simple expressions, meh and pure volcanic rage.<\/p>\n Nope – I have to have humanoid NPCs – somewhat realistic, and certainly with enough responsiveness and emotion on par with Saturday Morning Cartoons… Talk about a challenge.<\/p>\n So when I encountered lip-sync packages on the Asset Store, I did some research and settled on LipSync Pro<\/a>. Having a bit of animation experience I knew the more phonemes a character has, the more realistic dialog will be, and LSP seemed to fit the bill. It even works with Fuse characters, which aren’t as impressive as the .MHX2 rig – which works beautifully with Tore Knabe’s Realistic Eye Movements.<\/a><\/p>\n So I installed LSP, downloaded a Fuse model and amused myself with some impromptu dialog recorded from my three year old. I got big laughs from the kids when I showed them a sample of a truck drivin’ redneck dude asking for treats because he used the potty.<\/p>\n Suffice to say, I was impressed with the results and began wondering how else I can use this. I started rebuilding my VR Bum sim because I was getting atrocious frame rates so I’m pulling all my assets back into Blender to see how many polys I can slash off everything and optimize the level. Sovereignty is on hold until I can get some new dialogue recorded and I have a ton of 2D game design before I can start on my platformer based on my kids artwork.<\/p>\n I was scrolling thru some old projects when I happened to see my old 3D animation work folder and I searched it for things that I could adapt into a VR diorama. And lo and behold, my ‘learn Blender’ project\u00a0 – a music video for Mojo Nixons “Ufo’s Big Rigs & BBQ<\/a>”<\/p>\n