LGM's Learning to Talk Tutorial

Frame 81, rotate the head clockwise (from topview) and tilt it to the left juuuuuuust a tiiiiiny bit more.




Frame 87, rotate the head so that Ludwig's looking back out again.




Frame 81, insert the location of that EyeTarget.




Frame 84 (again, before the head finishes moving) move the EyeTarget once more back to the same spot as the camera.




Now you've finished his lipsync, and his head movement! But if you play back the animation . . . then you'll find it still looks off. Something's missing. Oh yeah, blinking! Every time you turn your head (or 99.9% of the times you turn your head) you blink mid-turn. Also, there's no brow motion. All right, let's go.

On frame 13, he has just finished his head turning, so select the EyeOpen.L and the EyeOpen.R bones and insert their location on frame 13.




Now go to frame 10 and close his eyes by selecting EyeOpen.R and moving it down. Do the same for EyeOpen.L and insert their locations.




Starting on frame 46 he starts to move his head again so insert the location of EyeOpen.R and EyeOpen.L (both eyes should be open).




Now on frame 48 close his eyes and insert the locations of EyeOpen.R and EyeOpen.L.




Now hover the mouse over the Action Editor and press A to deselect all the keyframes. Select the two keyframes for the bones EyeOpen.R and EyeOpen.L on frame 46 (where his eyes were open). Now using shift+D, duplicate those keyframes over to frame 50 (be sure to hold down Ctrl, so the keyframes end up on an actual frame and not inbetween 49 and 50 or 50 and 51). It might seem easier to simply open his eyes and insert new keyframes and perhaps you'll find that way easier and faster, this is just the way I do it. At other times it might be convenient to duplicate old keyframes, so it's nice to be aware of that possibility.




For instance now you have a set of six keyframes, 3 for each eye. These keyframes describe a nice, fast, average blink. So select the last three keyframes you made (the keyframes for bones EyeOpen.R and EyeOpen.L for frames 46, 48, and 50 and duplicate them and move the new set 18 frames to the right.




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