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cuckets
cuckets
Participating Frequently
October 29, 2018
Question

Layer picker or Cycle layers via Audio Input

  • October 29, 2018
  • 16 replies
  • 1458 views

I've been trying to hunt for the video explaining this, which I followed step by step but could not get to function.

Essentially, it was to have Loudness(db) via audio input either trigger a cycle layers or layer picker, the example I'm remembering had to do with arm movement, where someone was raising their arm based on how loud their voice was.

What I would like to eventually set up, is laughing/yelling mouth layers to activate upon loud audio input.

Any help appreciated, thanks!

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16 replies

cuckets
cucketsAuthor
Participating Frequently
October 30, 2018

okay, I've found it after hunting through all of my search history in the past month haha

so here in this video(timestamped 21:30)

Character Animator New Features (Part 2: Physics & Everything Else) - YouTube

I tested this myself with a group of layers, but got no response out of it, not sure what I did wrong

    DanTull
    Adobe Employee
    DanTull
    Adobe Employee
    October 30, 2018

    Clever idea. Cycle layers doesn't respond to audio amplitude, but layer picker does. If the early frames of the layer picker were the same as the default but there was a group with cycle layers further into the group to which layer picker was applied, it should trigger the cycle only with sufficent audio volume.

    I'll see if I can get an example working and post it. I vaguely recall the last time I used layer picker it didn't work right away for non-obvious reasons.

    DT

    DanTull
    Adobe Employee
    DanTull
    Adobe Employee
    October 30, 2018

    I can get the layer picker to trigger a cycle layers animation, but it doesn't seem to honor the option to let the cycle finish when the audio volume drops again. Depending on what you're trying to do, that limitation may or may not be problematic. I'm going to ask internally to confirm if that's a bug.

    One other option given that limitation would be to have the later layers in the layer picker correspond to layers that make a nice forward/reverse animation. Then for low volumes it'd do nothing, but oscillations in the higher volume range would trigger some movement/laughing animation/etc.

    Attached for reference in case it is useful.

    DT

      DanTull
      Adobe Employee
      DanTull
      Adobe Employee
      October 30, 2018

      Another variation on this is to tag arms with a Jaw tag and use the rotation option of nutcracker jaw. If it gets too annoying, you could also put the tagged variant in a separate group and use a swap set to toggle the audio volume based arms on/off.

      DT

      alank99101739
      alank99101739
      Legend
      October 29, 2018

      I did not know that was possible! Adobe Character Animator Help | Control puppets using behaviors lists two “Audio input” behaviors - Layer Picker and Jawbone (mouth movements). If you find the video again, please share here!

      Reading the manual it seems like you create a layer with children layers then add the “Layers” behavior to the parent. Then you set the audio sensitivity to control how to map volume to child layer to trigger. Child layers can be cycle layers (e.g. as noise gets louder, bird flaps its wings harder or something). I would try having

      - Mouth Group

         + Mouth (standand mouth with all the viseme children)

         - Big Mouth

         - Very Big Mouth

      So normal volume picks the first child (“Mouth”), and louder volumes stopped using the normal mouth and picked the Big or Very Big mouths. I guess each could be a complete set of mouths perhaps, with its own Mouth behavior added if necessary.

      Alternatively, you could have the Mouth group with each viseme child layer being a group with Layers behavior added and different artwork underneath so you can have different sized mouths for individual visemes....

      - Mouth

         - Neutral (no child layers as no sound)

         - Uh (with Layer Picker behavior)

            - Uh quiet

            - Uh medium

            - Uh loud

         - Ah (with Layer Picker behavior)

            - Ah quiet

            - Ah yell

         - Smlie (would not use a LAyer Picker since smiles are triggered by webcam, not sound)

      Etc.  But I have not tried it.

        cuckets
        cucketsAuthor
        Participating Frequently
        October 30, 2018

        I will give that a try later tonight, thanks!!

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