Visemes are a concept introduced to me by the guys at Di-o-matic. Visemes are the visual representation of phonemes in lip sync animation. When a character you are making a lip sync track for moves his or her mouth it is oftentimes used to simulate speech.

While there are a large number of phonemes in language there are only a few visemes.

If you are making facial morph targets for your lip sync you actually only need about eleven.

Vowels consist of A, E, and O. And actually U/W can be represented by the same viseme.

Consonants are even easier. B, M, and D can be represented by one viseme. S needs it’s own but C and H can be represented by one viseme.

Then there will be the tongue visemes these consist of L which needs it’s own viseme. T, H, and D can be represented by one viseme. And finally N.

Lastly you have the teeth which only consists of one viseme. F and V.

Hopefully this is helpful to all you lip sync animators. I will possibly be putting some visual representations of these at some point. I’m learning as well so most of my time is spent on modeling and texturing for 3d characters at this point but as my project progresses I should have some nice samples to show.

If you are a local with lip sync animation experience I’d love to hear your thoughts. Don’t hesitate to shoot me an email at sumo911@hotmail.com!

Brad