Eyes closed until first puppet talks

Report · Jul 02, 2023

All of my puppets who have autoblink close their eyes at the beginning of the scene and keep them closed until the first puppet in the scene has visemes. Then all of them open their eyes at the same time and begin regular autoblink. It's silly looking and also makes it a tight edit due to the character having closed eyes right up until one of them starts to talk. Anyone else encountered this weird quirk?

Report · Jul 05, 2023

I'm afraid I've never encountered that. What are your settings for the blink behavior?

Report · Jul 05, 2023

Thanks for asking! Typically I am using the defaults but I tried tweaking them to something I saw on the forums about changing the duration to 40ms. I think it might have to do with the number of puppets in a scene. My animations tend to have 4 or more characters in a scene and I think it might just be too much of a resource pull. I noticed that it doesn't happen with a scene with 2 characters or at the very beginning of a work session. As my machine is building up layers of undo and previous versions in history that quirk seems to show up more. That's what I'm going with!

Report · Jul 06, 2023

Very curious. In the face behaviors, what is the setting for eyelid strength. With autoblink, you probably could turn that off. In any case, do some more tinkering. 🙂

Report · Jul 07, 2023

I do not use Face behavior. I do turn off autoblink and just blink the eyes with a manual trigger but it never looks as smooth/random as autoblink does. I'll keep playing with it!

Report · Jul 07, 2023

When you say manual trigger, does that mean you have the camera input turned off for blinking?

Report · Jul 07, 2023

Correct. I wear glasses and the camera doesn't pick up the blink very well so w/o autoblink I put the blink eyes on a trigger /b/ and mash the button to blink the eyes manually.

Report · Jul 10, 2023

And for that reason, you choose not to use autoblink? I also wear glasses and I use auto blink with the camera input turn off. Autoblink has a random feature that works well for me.

Report · Jul 12, 2023

I do use autoblink. Sorry, I meant I don't use Face or whichever one tracks my blinks. It just doesn't respond well. I'm glad that it works for you!

Report · Jul 13, 2023

Sorry, my mistake. I wish I could find an answer for you. All I can suggest at this point is saving the project in a zip file and posting it on a file-sharing service like dropbox so someone can take a look at it.

Report · Apr 04, 2025

Just FYI, I am having the same problem.

Report · Apr 04, 2025

I have a 1:25 long scene, with only one puppet in the scene. There are 9 MP3/visemes in the scene, with a second or two in between the visemes to make it look/sound more natural. With auto blink enabled, the puppet's eyelids are closed 100% of the time in between the MP3/visemes. While she is talking, the auto blink functions as expected.

Also, the scene will not allow me to record just the auto blink track with everything else turned off. With the Auto Blink parameter enabled, when I click Record, a message appears that says, "Record-arm a parameter or turn on the microphone." Auto Blink is armed.

Report · Apr 04, 2025

This is my work-around. I disabled Auto Blink, enabled the camera, took my glasses off, and worked my way through the scene moving my head and blinking my eyes. The result is fine.

Report · Apr 04, 2025

Just a guess, but it's probably expecting to see the face behavior enabled.

As for the problem with the eyes being closed, like I said before , I've not encountered this problem, so I can't think of a solution. I'd be willing to take a look at the puppet if you want. You can use export>puppet and then share a link to the file via a file sharing service like drop box or google drive. At the very least, maybe we can see if the problem repeats on my system.

Report · Apr 04, 2025

Thank you for the response! I am using the free business lady from Graphicsmama. I have used her previously, and did not have this issue. It is a wonderful puppet that can look straight at the camera, or 45% left or right, and can look partially up or down and speak when doing so. She can also walk right or left. From what I can tell from my testing, none of the Character Animator puppets can do these things.

I have a good quality result from my work-around, so this has become a non-issue for me.

Report · Apr 04, 2025

I'm glad that you were able to find a solution. Most of the third party puppets are not rigged more use of the motion library since it is so new. But if your puppet can walk, then adding body tracking and the motion library will be easy.