Final IK Question, Sharing experience on Helios and Lipsync integration

[coverpage]

Hi,

SALSA Integration
I would like to share my positive experience on integrating SALSA with SLATE:
1. Do not use their extension for SLATE, it has two problems. First, the audio track on their custom clip will play every time you scrub, even if it’s not on their audio clip. And you can’t stop the audio playback. It’s very noisy. Second, the audio doesn’t follow framerate. The audio plays at normal speed no matter frame rate and the lip animation follows this audio. The lip animation therefore won’t sync with the rest of the animation if there’s frame rate drops. I only test while in editor mode to render frames, I’m not sure how it plays out in other platforms, but you can try. SALSA uses a playclip method in their own SALSA class.
2. The solution was that I didn’t use the extension. I simply use the native track in SLATE to play audio from the audio source component on the character (do this by checking “Use Audio Source On Actor” for the property of the audio track). So just play an audio clip in the audiosource component on the character. The lip sync will follow the audio and the audio follows the framerate. Oh yes, and the annoying full-length playback on scrubbing does not occur of course.

Helios Integration
I tried to record using Helios. It seems to work well for their 2d recording.
1. Make the helios2d prefab the child to SLATE’s Camera under the Director Camera. All effects on the render camera must be copied to Helios2d child “render camera”. Arm Helios prefab for recording and it will automatically stop recording once the cutscene is over as the director cam is disabled (thus disabling its children disarming the recording.
2. All the “Director Camera properties” keyframes does not affect helios camera. So you need to add another track using the Helios2d prefab as the actor and copy over the keyframes to its render camera. If you don’t animate the camera properties then this doesn’t matter.

Help with FinalIK
Lastly, I want to ask how do I persist keyframes created while using FinalIK during play mode. I mean FinalIK will only work during play mode, which is when I can create the animation using keyframes. But when I click stop, all the keyframes disappear.

Can you create a convenience setting so that we can make the keyframe persist once we stop.

[Gavalakis]

Hello there,

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience with SALSA and Helios! I am pretty sure others will find it useful. 🙂

Regarding FinalIK, it should (and used to) also work in edit mode, but I haven’t tried the latest FinalIK version yet, so maybe the developer made some breaking changes regarding that matter. I will have to re-check with the latest version to confirm.

Slate was designed so that all cutscene editing and keyframe animation is done in edit mode, so if something about FinalIK does not currently work in edit mode, I will need to fix it 🙂

Meanwhile, can you please let me know a bit more information about your FinalIK setup?
Which FinalIK clips/components are you using that are not working in edit mode?

Thanks again!

Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/97q2Rjh

[coverpage]

I’m using full body IK with a humanoid. There are two tracks on the humanoid actor, 1) Animation track with “Base Animation Clip” set to idle 2) Final IK Track with Animate FBIKLimb

[Gavalakis]

Hello and sorry for the late reply.
I just checked and it seems that there is an initialization issue specifically with FBIK component of FinalIK (the rest of the FinalIK components work fine). It seems that it will only work once in editor after each enter/exit of playmode and until you stop previewing the cutscene.
I will need to take a look to find and fix this as soon as possible and will upload a new FinalIK integration package version.

Thanks for bringing this into my attention.

Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/97q2Rjh

[cloudninja]

@coverpage:

“I simply use the native track in SLATE to play audio from the audio source component on the character (do this by checking “Use Audio Source On Actor” for the property of the audio track). So just play an audio clip in the audiosource component on the character. The lip sync will follow the audio and the audio follows the framerate.”

Could you please detail your steps a bit more?

I added the Salsa3D component to my character; I created a Slate audio track; added a Slate audio clip to the Slate audio track; dragged & dropped my audio onto clip; checked the “Use Audio Source on Actor” but the Salsa lip sync is not working?

with appreciation,

.cn

[Gavalakis]

Hey,

Hmm. Is there an “Audio Source” actually attached on the character and does the audio play?

 

Thanks.

Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/97q2Rjh

[cloudninja]

Yes – there is an Audio source on the Character & Yes, I hear the audio play when I scrub through or play.

thoughts?

[cloudninja]

Ok – got it figured out. It was a problem in my order of operations. I still could use help with my other blocking issue and it is time sensitive as I’m working on a project now. It would be greatly appreciated if this issue could be resolved ASAP: https://slate.paradoxnotion.com/forums/topic/actor-cant-find-pathfind-to/

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