Install as a Blender extension.
Download the file for your platform:
🪟 Windows | 🍏 macOS | 🐧 Linux |
---|
Drag and drop the .zip
file into the Blender window.
rhubarb
executable is working by pressing the Check rhubarb version button:Capture
in the current scene by pressing the Create capture button in the RLSP: Sound setup and cues capture
panel.Note: Generally, each time you see a button is disabled, hover the mouse cursor over the button and a popup will show the reason.
Select a sound file.
Audio Scrubbing
Cache
and Sync to Audio
.sound strip
in the Sequencer
by pressing the Place as Strip button. You can set the start frame here, but if you change the start frame later, you need to remove the strip and place it again.Press the Capture button. The list of Cues should get populated. Note:
Esc
will cancel the running operator.rhubarb cli
is also able to utilize multiple threads, but only for longer sound clips. It runs single-threaded for short sounds.⌄
button beside the Capture
button, such as extended-shapes usage or Dialog file. The dialog file is a sound transcription that can improve accuracy, but only works for English.You can preview the captured cues by clicking on the cue lists. Too short or too long cues are highlighted in red. You can also start playback, and the small icon will follow the cues. However, there is probably some refreshing bug, and sometimes the icon doesn't refresh unless the mouse cursor is moving over the panel.
Open the other panel RLSP: Cue mapping and baking
and select the Object
you want to animate. For bone animation, select an armature. For shape-key animation, select a mesh.
For each Cue type
, select the appropriate Action. Note:
Use the ?
button to show a hint about the expected mouth shape (copied from the rhubarb-cli
page).
Usually, your Actions
would have a single keyframe on the first frame (a.k.a. pose). But multi-frame actions are supported as well.
It is possible to map the same Action
to multiple Cue types
. For instance A
and X
.
Using Action-sheet
where multiple cues are on different frames of the same Action
is supported too. Use the custom frame range button to select the desired (sub)range:
There are action-filters available that can be used to narrow down the selection in the dropdowns. Use this, for instance, if all your poses are flagged as an asset. Or if you want to make invalid Actions (with a missing key) show up as well.
Select or create NLA Track
. For 2D animation use a single track. But for 3D two tracks are preferable since it allows the placed Action strips
to interleave and fluently blend their influence.
You can tweak the Strip placement settings
. For 2D animation the In Out Blend Type
should be No Blending
Press the big Bake to NLA button. This will bring up an additional dialog with a few more baking options and information:
Capture
(cue list) to be baked. It matches the one selected earlier in the RLSP: Sound setup and cues capture
panel. Note it is possible to bake multiple Captures and bake them one-by-one reusing the same mapping.Start Frame
here.Object to bake
option indicates which Objects
should be considered for baking. By default, all Objects
with non-empty mapping will get baked at once. For example, there could be mapping on the Armature with the basic animation. Additionally, there could be mapping on the mesh with some corrective shape-key Actions. Or it could be useful where there are separate Objects for the tongue and teeth.Review errors/warnings and press the Ok button. Note:
Actions
and make room for new Strips
.After the baking is done, review the baking report. The report is shown only when there were any baking errors/warnings.
Open the NLA Editor
. You can tweak the position/length/blending of the NLA Strips
. Some default Strip properties can be changed in the Strip placement settings
section. However, the Bake to NLA
would have to be run again (removing the existing Strips
first).
Hint: In Blender, it is possible to change a property of multiple objects at once. For instance, to enable auto-blending on all strips:
a
key).2x Shift-click
any of the already selected strips again to make it active. This should show the side panel.Alt+click
the Auto Blend In/Out
to distribute the change to all the selected strips.If needed, the NLA Tracks
can be baked into a single new Action
. Note, if you have both a normal-action track pair and a shapekey-action track pair, they have to be baked one-by-one.
Pose mode
(for normal-action tracks).a
to select all.b
key and box-select strips if you don't want to include all tracks.NLA Editor/main menu/Edit/Bake Action
.Visual Keying
and Clean Curves
options:A new Action
will be created and selected in the Action Editor
. The two RLPS tracks can now be disabled or removed (mouse-hover on the track name and press x
).
Any Blender version newer than v3.2. Test results:
Version | System | Total | Passed | Failed | Errors | Skipped | Status |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
4.2.1 LTS | Windows | 44 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 2 | ✔️ |
4.1.1 | Windows | 44 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 2 | ✔️ |
4.0.2 | Windows | 44 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 2 | ✔️ |
3.6.13 | Windows | 44 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 2 | ✔️ |
3.5.1 | Windows | 44 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 2 | ✔️ |
3.4.1 | Windows | 44 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 2 | ✔️ |
3.3.20 | Windows | 44 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 2 | ✔️ |
3.2.2 | Windows | 44 | 33 | 7 | 2 | 2 | ❌ |
3.1.2 | Windows | 44 | 33 | 7 | 2 | 2 | ❌ |
3.0.1 | Windows | 44 | 33 | 7 | 2 | 2 | ❌ |