larrygj

I am not yet conversant enough with Houdini to be able to take that pdf tutorial and use it as a basis for creating a setup using the voicesync and voicesplit CHOPs. It appears you have been able to do so. Would you be willing to share your file so I can see how you did it?

My main interest is also animation, primarily in cartoon characters for short satirical videos who engage in dialogue.

I am encouraged by the depth and customization possibilities in Houdini, but I am amazed at the lack of interest on the part of both the creators and users for anything dealing with voice/lip sync. There is an old file that apparently came with Houdini 4.0, voiceCHOP.hip, which provided a framework for analyzing a voice recording and extracting the phonemes to fit the sound, and then using that information to deform a mouth mesh. But that has been deprecated, and though there is still a voicesync node available, as far as I can tell nobody knows how to use it. A tutorial and associated .hip file would be a great help.

If Houdini ever gets really serious about providing tools or instruction on how to help automate lip sync, I think the number of new users would significantly increase.

The documentation shows what appears to be a robust CHOP for analyzing a WAVE file for visemes that the user creates for mouth shapes linked to phonemes. Just search for “voice sync.” And apparently this capability goes back to Houdini 4.0. There is an old PDF attached that references a voiceCHOP.hip file to get you going, but that is no longer available as part of the current Houdini 16.

It is tantalizing yet annoying that there is no easy way (at least that I know of) to access these features. Why? I hope somebody out there cracks this stuff and lets us know how to use it.