I see that we can export video so that's good. But now that we have audio support it would be nice to be able to export that as a nice guide track in other programs.

We have that in our near plans.
Thanks for the vote :)

I would just like to add that I desperately need this feature as soon as possible. It's really hard to keep track of audio sync in LightWave and Final Cut Pro without ipi audio export. Thanks!

I'd like to see this feature added too.

In the meantime, here's my workflow. I don't know if this info helps anybody here but maybe it will offer some ideas:

First, I lock the audio during animatic or previs, well before recording mocap, and then we perform the mocap to the locked edit. During motion clean up and editing (in my case, I do this in Motion Builder but it really doesn't matter which animation program you use,) I slip the motion clip on the timeline to sync it to the audio--this only takes a few seconds. After that, the motion is always in sync to the master audio track in Lightwave (3D), Fusion and AE (compositing), or Vegas Pro (final editing).

For longer productions, it can be more practical to output audio from a specific shot or sequences rather than the entire production. When I do this, I make sure I burn the frame numbers and timecode. This has been critical for our current CG project because it's a music video with many performances that sync with music and lyrics.

Naturally, we perform/animate/render handles for each shot, just in case. We like to add four frames to head and tail. I think the most I've had to slip is 2 frames but usually it stays spot-on.

At the moment, we're finishing up a 2D cartoon short (no mocap in this one,) but the workflow is the same--the audio for the entire show was locked down before we started animation--this keeps everything in sync through animation, compositing, and final editing.

Curious to hear how others do it. :)

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Hey Greenlaw, thanks for this.

I used to use animatics in my cel animation days, but those are long gone. I hate locking things down! My scenes aren't what animators usually call scenes, which are actually shots. My scenes can be 10 seconds to 10 minutes, with lots of drama dialog and dozens of shots which get sort of pre-edited in LightWave (and fine tuned in fcp - never used Vegas). I keep Audacity open not just to play the audio, but so I can edit it anytime I want. I often edit it so many times keeping track of versions would be crazy. Sometimes I have go back to ipi Recorder so I can guesstimate where the dial was on any given occasion. I'm very good at lip-syncing so it's not usually too much of a hassle, but it would be easier if ipi exported audio.

I'm a little confused about your reference to burning TC. How do you use that in Recorder? I'm picturing a monitor playing back live action with TC in the view of one of the ipi cameras, but I think you must have meant something else.

--Hal

Re Timecode...sorry for the confusion...I meant after motion capture in Recorder. Performance is synched to audio played on set just to make sure the timing of the animation is correct. Synching of tracked animation is done in the animation program--this is where timecode is helpful because here I can slip the motion/animation to match my animatic in the edit.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Seeing that you're a LightWave user too, maybe this tip will be useful.

I usually edit my mocap in Motion Builder, but sometimes I like to make global animation adjustments in LightWave. As you may know, when slipping a fully animated rigged character with mesh on the timeline in Layout by grabbing all the keys in the Scene Editor or Graph Editor, things can get a bit, uh, 'chunky'. To speed things up, I temporarily set my screen to single viewport and set the preview quality to bounding box. Since we have animated bones in the scene that are still visible, I can use that as a reference to get the animation synched to the frame with the audio. This allows me to smoothly slide the entire animation with all the bones and animation keys selected in the character. Once I get the entire animation in place on the timeline, I switch the preview quality back to a more normal view setting.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Hey Man, that was 9 months ago!! I Still need this. Still in the pipeline?

Sorry, the plans have changed since then. Audio export will be available in upcoming V3.

I suppose if it took some time to develop you deserve to get paid for it!