Fings Singing Faces
- Thread starter Fing
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- #18
Babybear said:
Hi BabyBear,
I'll dig out my designs and post them when I get the chance (ASAP).
Cheers
Fing
Fing said:
me too please fing..i want a project for next year
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- #20
Hi Marmalade,marmalade said:not sure if it's been mentioned anywhere, but you could paint the partition pieces silver (or black) to minimise light bleed between the sections
If you have a look at my tune to sign I used black on the outside of the internal partitions to stop spill because I wanted the area around the digits to be black. It seemed to work well. As for the faces, I painted the outside of the border black for the same reason. The internals work ok left as white when you had lights lit on either side. If you painted one side black then it would be reflective on one side and not the other?
painting silver or even using aluminium foil might work, but I've tried this elsewhere and it can give some hard reflections. A soft diffusion works best.
I found the worse areas for spill was the eyes ( I'm being really picky here) I think it could have been fixed by more pixels which would give a greater contrast. But the eyes are a small area and I couldn't fit any more in.
Having said all that it would be interesting to build a test model and try some different techniques for real world results.
Cheers
Fing
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- #21
Hi Everyone,
Here is the artwork for Bruno and Patrick
I mounted my coro ( 1200 x 900) to the wall, then used a projector to display the image, which allowed me to adjust it for size. particularly the eyes, ears and mouth to allow the led pixel modules to fit.....
Then I traced it out in my bestest handwriting. Checked that the modules would fit then cut it out.
Patrick is the easiest as he is mostly straight lines, Bruno is a lot trickier as there are lots of curves. If you want to try your hand at making these start with Patrick lol
patrick has a tooth which was a failure as the led module wouldn't fit. D'oh! Also ignore the wave lines of his hat.
The blue bit on Bruno was just an idea for a guide to fit it to the coro. His face consists mainly of two ovals, I only used the outline. Also the kink in the top of his hat can be removed.
I can't find the trees at the moment.... I think they are on my work computer, not that I was doing this at work.. :
Cheers
Fing
Here is the artwork for Bruno and Patrick
I mounted my coro ( 1200 x 900) to the wall, then used a projector to display the image, which allowed me to adjust it for size. particularly the eyes, ears and mouth to allow the led pixel modules to fit.....
Then I traced it out in my bestest handwriting. Checked that the modules would fit then cut it out.
Patrick is the easiest as he is mostly straight lines, Bruno is a lot trickier as there are lots of curves. If you want to try your hand at making these start with Patrick lol
patrick has a tooth which was a failure as the led module wouldn't fit. D'oh! Also ignore the wave lines of his hat.
The blue bit on Bruno was just an idea for a guide to fit it to the coro. His face consists mainly of two ovals, I only used the outline. Also the kink in the top of his hat can be removed.
I can't find the trees at the moment.... I think they are on my work computer, not that I was doing this at work.. :
Cheers
Fing
Babybear
New elf
Those are great Ill print them out and use then on my overhear projector. quicker than setting up my computer projector.
Gilrock
Full time elf
smeighan said:
Dan and I both got that going. I started it by creating the ability to import Lyrics on timing tracks and I added the capability to breakdown the phrases and words into phonemes and all the timing track display code. Then Dan updated the Faces effect and the model definition code to allow users to define either bitmaps or channels allocated to each phoneme and to attach timing tracks to the Faces effect.
Regarding what I was reading earlier about some of you creating multiple models to create the shapes I'm not sure that's necessary but I'd have to experiment a little. I've mainly done the bitmap faces not channel faces. I thought for each phoneme you could type in an array of channels you wanted to activate for that phoneme so you could define several non-contiguous channels but maybe I'm not remembering it correctly.
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- #24
Hi Gil,
So I owe you and Dan a beer or two ? I plan to put together a bit of a description on how I programmed them and I have a few ideas for possible enhancements that I want to run past you as well.Until then, very quickly, I used the multi node faces, to define a set of states for the eyes, look left, right, closed and so on. I then assigned these to a phoneme and used the faces effect in the sequencer to called up the phoneme i needed. once set up it was very easy to animate the eyes.
Cheers
Fing
So I owe you and Dan a beer or two ? I plan to put together a bit of a description on how I programmed them and I have a few ideas for possible enhancements that I want to run past you as well.Until then, very quickly, I used the multi node faces, to define a set of states for the eyes, look left, right, closed and so on. I then assigned these to a phoneme and used the faces effect in the sequencer to called up the phoneme i needed. once set up it was very easy to animate the eyes.
Cheers
Fing
Gilrock
Full time elf
Ok I see what you did. You know I believe the phoneme list can be edited by the user to add more I'm just not sure we made all the other dialogs dynamic so they might be fixed to the original 10 phoneme's. If they were dynamic then you could create a phoneme called eyes_left etc. and use that to define and call for those actions on a timing track.
dkulp
Full time elf
The current eyes options are just "Open", "Closed", and "Auto". I could easily add Up/Left/Down/Right. That would require the grids on the Faces dialogs to have more rows/columns, but that's not a major issue.
However, that is set on the effect itself, not on a timing track. Not sure how tied this should be to a timing track.
However, that is set on the effect itself, not on a timing track. Not sure how tied this should be to a timing track.
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- #27
Hi Dan/Gil,
I also used this technique to animate the rotating Bows in the trees, and I used it to "program" the 7 segments in the tune to sign.
Originally I thought that just having the Phoneme labels as a user defined field would make things a bit easier, but now I worry that a new user could accidentally edit them and break the connection the Lyric timing track.
I only used the timing tracks for the mouth animations, all the rest were set in the effect. To be clear, the mouth, eyes, bows are all separate models.
So my present idea would be to create a new effect and call it "States" or such. this would be a copy of the faces effect but without the link to a timing track.
The labels would be user defined, with a default of say "State 1" to "State..n". I would suggest about 10-20 possible states, but a user-defined length would be ideal.
Whether this is possible, practical, or desirable is beyond me. I originally just thought you may be interested to see how I used the faces effect on a non-face.
Thanks for all your work on this program. (esp the Mac version )
Cheers
Fing
I also used this technique to animate the rotating Bows in the trees, and I used it to "program" the 7 segments in the tune to sign.
Originally I thought that just having the Phoneme labels as a user defined field would make things a bit easier, but now I worry that a new user could accidentally edit them and break the connection the Lyric timing track.
I only used the timing tracks for the mouth animations, all the rest were set in the effect. To be clear, the mouth, eyes, bows are all separate models.
So my present idea would be to create a new effect and call it "States" or such. this would be a copy of the faces effect but without the link to a timing track.
The labels would be user defined, with a default of say "State 1" to "State..n". I would suggest about 10-20 possible states, but a user-defined length would be ideal.
Whether this is possible, practical, or desirable is beyond me. I originally just thought you may be interested to see how I used the faces effect on a non-face.
Thanks for all your work on this program. (esp the Mac version
)Cheers
Fing
dkulp
Full time elf
The more I think about this, I really think this is already "done". Each model can have multiple face definitions. Thus, you can have a face definition for each of the various states. I use this for my singing snowman. The HolidayCoro has a bunch of optional things like scarf, button, hat, no-hat. Thus, I my singing snowman has 4 face definitions. Scarf-Hat, Scarf-NoHat, Buttons-Hat, Buttons-NoHat. Probably could have JustHat, Just Scarf, and Just Buttons, and NoHat as well. When I drop the faces effect on the "SingingSnowan" model, I select which of the face definitions I want for that part of the song.
You could easily create "Eyes-Left", "Eyes-Right", etc... definitions that you select when needed.
You could easily create "Eyes-Left", "Eyes-Right", etc... definitions that you select when needed.
Babybear
New elf
Hey Fing
Ok so here is my Bruno. Took a little time as it was done between work and the remodel of my sisters kitchen. Now for the time it will take to make all the effects and separate models. Need to say Thank You for your help. Your drawings worked Great. My goal is to first finish making all my props before doing any sequencing. I have also used your candles.
Ok so here is my Bruno. Took a little time as it was done between work and the remodel of my sisters kitchen. Now for the time it will take to make all the effects and separate models. Need to say Thank You for your help. Your drawings worked Great. My goal is to first finish making all my props before doing any sequencing. I have also used your candles.
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- #30
Hi BB,
he looks really good, I like the colour saturation and spread you've managed to get by using strip instead of nodes, I might try that on the next one ( ha)
I'm interested in what type of strip you used and how many pixels.
I don't know about the candles, they're not mine...
I like the photo of Bruno, especially his brown nose, as that's his full name, Bruno the Brown Nosed Reindeer, he's just as fast as Rudolph, but can't stop as quick....
I just realised I haven't posted the tree plans... i have to find them.
Let me know when you get to programming him, I might be able to give you some ideas if you're using Xlights.
Can't wait to see him in action.
Cheers
Fing
he looks really good, I like the colour saturation and spread you've managed to get by using strip instead of nodes, I might try that on the next one ( ha)
I'm interested in what type of strip you used and how many pixels.
I don't know about the candles, they're not mine...
I like the photo of Bruno, especially his brown nose, as that's his full name, Bruno the Brown Nosed Reindeer, he's just as fast as Rudolph, but can't stop as quick....
I just realised I haven't posted the tree plans... i have to find them.
Let me know when you get to programming him, I might be able to give you some ideas if you're using Xlights.
Can't wait to see him in action.
Cheers
Fing