QuickTalk Blender Addon For Lip Synching - Tutorial
Channel: Starship Schrödinger's Destiny
Date: 19/04/2015

Quicktalk Lip Synch Addon

I’ve written an addon for blender intended to help to lip-synch a character using a simple text file script describing what all the characters in the scene say. Here's a quick tutorial on using it.

You can find it here on Github:
https://github.com/revpriest/blenderquicktalk

Or visit the addon homepage:
http://tentacles.org.uk/quicktalk

How’s it work?

You build shape-keys for your character’s mouth: 9 of them, one for each of the phonemes “AI”, “O”, “E”, “U”, “L”, “WQ”, “MBP”, “FV” and “ETC”

Next you apply an armature to that object, then click a “generate panel” button. This adds a panel of bones representing levers to the armature. Each lever controls each shape-key, so rotating the level “AI” increases the amount of “AI” shape-key shown.

Then select a script file, a .txt file which just contains the lines spoken by the characters. Every time the ‘speaker’ changes, have a line with that speaker’s name followed by a colon. Then just the words that they speak until the next person chimes in.

Clicking the “Guess Dialogue” markers then puts markers in at around about the places where the person speaking changes. You’ll need to adjust those markers so they are correct.

Then click the “Guess lines” button that’ll do the same for every line within each speaker’s dialogue. Again, adjust those markers.

Then click the “Guess works” button and new markers are added in for every word in every line in every character’s speech. Adjust those too.

Next select a dictionary file which tells the plugin which words are spoken with which phonemes. You can download a dictionary file from the CMU Pronouncing project here:
http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict

Hope you find some use from this plugin, do check out my cartoons and puppet shows at http://tentacles.org.uk/