QuickStartLipSync

Prelude

FacePoser is Valve Software's tool to lipsync characters and control facialal animations. The lipsyncing in FacePoser is done automatically by the program, which if done manually usually looks sub par. The amount of time and effort an animator would need to spend too reach the quality of FacePoser, it would take an extreme amount of time and effort.

The lipsyncing in FacePoser works on a set of standardised rules based on phonemes, phonemes are how each word is constructed out of individual sounds. The mouth has a shape for each of theese sounds, so by combining theese you get perfect lipsyncing.

More on phonemes here Wikipedia

Start Screen

This is the screen you are presented with (Minus the G-Man) when you first start FacePoser. To start off, load a model from the file->load model dialog. I chose G-Man because I'm going to be using a segmant dialog for the phoneme extraction process.

Getting it to lipsync

First you need to have an actual wav file and to know the location of said file, you also need to know what was said in the wav file. The contents of my wav file "Rise and shine Mr Freeman, Rise and shine" Also note that you need in the case of abreviated words spell it out properly, so Mr would be spelt as Mister.

Open up the "Phoneme Editor" tab you will be presented with a blank slate, right click inside of that slate and select load, then navigate to your wav file. When you open it you will be presented with this.

Right click again and select redo extraction, you will be presented with an textbox where you must enter the speech the wav file contains.

Once it has finished extracting, you will be presented with this screen.

You will notice if you click the play button, it will play the sound but the lips of the character will not be moving, you need to commit the extraction. Right click and commit extraction.

The character will now move their lips perfectly with the original voice.