Tutorial Oto.ini Theory Tutorial 2013-09-03

[Cdra]

Hello! I've written up a tutorial about the theory behind the oto.ini--how it works and what it's trying to do. Unfortunately, there are too many pictures, so I can't post it directly here and will instead have to send you over to the UTAU wiki. This tutorial assumes some foreknowledge of how otos work, so it's not advised for beginners, but it might be understandable to them too? It's mostly for people who kind of understand otos but would like to improve their otoing skills.

Go here to see the tutorial!

 

[Ryuuoh DeltaPlus]

This is very helpful indeed. I was hoping that someone make an advanced oto tutorial to help me improve my otoing skills.
(To tell the truth, I already was planning to PM you to ask for hints on how to do otoing.)

 

[shinami]

I think in the VCV section you should mention at least that some people believe that keeping uniform values throughout the oto maintains consistency of sound and timing the best. It just feels like this encourages custom VCV otoing, and while sure it can be pulled off, for the beginner and even then for a lot more people I think a more standard style is the way to go.

Sorry, just a strong opinion I have, because I'm really tired of downloading VCV banks that were oto'd custom-ly and then I have to reoto portions because they aren't on time.

But otherwise this is very good! It really explained your and Cz's CV oto style to me a lot better. And it's a very effective style, so I'm happy to finally start understanding. ouob

(Small question about the new Wiki, I'm guessing they're not going to be migrating information? How do we know this new Wiki will actually recieve views/browzers versus the old wiki? Will this turn out to be like UTAU.me and kinda flop? I know it's too early for asking this as it just came out, just wondering how much the staff will work to make it a viable option.)

 

[Cdra]

@Ryuuoh DeltaPlus: Thanks! That's pretty funny, actually.

@shinami: I didn't really want to touch on uniform VCV because this tutorial is really not for beginners. I think uniform VCV is fine, but it's not great--which is why I'm trying to explain how semi-custom VCV should work. It's also why I explained that I don't recommend large overlap values, which is what tends to make for wiggy custom otos (unless they're just not placing the preutterance right, which is... another matter entirely...).

Still, you're right, I should mention it. I put a small paragraph in the section about VCV that explains my feelings on uniform otos and states how they can work, and includes my personal recommendation of uniform overlap with custom preutterance.

We've been migrating information from the glossary, guide, and popular UTAU pages (particularly JP UTAU), and we're going to lock the old wiki and post a redirect to the current one there (one of the admins on the new wiki is the only remaining admin on the old one, Mario.MD). It's been in the works for months, and Myst is especially good about keeping projects like this (ie websites) alive; plus, there are many active admins on the new wiki (like myself) which is crucial to making it more viable and controlled than the old one.

I personally migrated a ton of pages over, hah.

 

[shinami]

Thanks! Hope I didn't seem too demanding in saying that. ;; It's all a matter of personal views in the end.

Oh, by locked do you mean no more new pages and editing or no more going there period? Because I'd like to be able to access my UTAUs' pages for adding them over later and potentially for other people's who may have left the UTAU fandom or something but they still have data there...I dunno.

But this place sounds pretty good. When I get new material out like a voicebank or something I'll work on getting it on there. *thumbs-up*

 

[Cdra]

Nah, nah. You're right in that I should at least mention it in passing; even if it's personal taste in a lot of ways, it's still good to touch on everything that's relevant. Plus, I didn't ever mention that custom-uniform is my preferred style for VCV, and that's a lot easier to get your head around than trying to set overlap arbitrarily (frankly I have no idea how you would do that). And uniform does work with my oto theory because the critical region is still there between the overlap and preutterance, it just also tends to have extra prefix-vowel-sound there, which isn't the worst thing ever but it bugs me because I'm OCD and don't like letting UTAU squish stuff with STP.

No more new pages, certainly, but I strongly doubt it'll be down for viewing purposes (just for adding new content). I'm not sure about editing, but it'll probably be locked for editing as well? I'm not totally up on the details...

 

[Ryuuoh DeltaPlus]

Oh and a quick question:
Can you differentiate the hard & soft consonants? I'm kinda new to that...

 

[Cdra]

Hard and soft consonants should be obvious from looking at their waveforms. Hard ones have (empty) space before them and soft ones don't. Some consonants change between hard and soft depending on the singer... so it's hard to just list them out. In general, k/t/p are always hard, and s/z/sh/n/m are always soft (though n/m are a little odd for soft consonants even, they're liquid-like). b/g/d are usually soft but might decide to be hard for some singers. The Japanese r is weird and can't make up its mind at all. ch is usually hard but can become soft; j is usually soft but can become hard. ts should be hard but might be soft if recorded wrong. h is sometimes more soft and sometimes more like a glide/liquid. I think f is always soft but it might go liquid, too.

So, bottom line... It's not that straightforward, unfortunately.

 

[Ryuuoh DeltaPlus]

@Cdra: Thankz~ I got the gist of it

 

[KitWistful]

This is super helpful. I'll be sure to direct anyone who's serious about OTOing this way! owo

The only thing that bugs me is that I don't think that the preutterance covers the b in that one picture. I could be wrong. Like you said in this thread, b can be kind of weird sometimes.

You blew my mind with the periodic-wave thing, by the way. I never thought about it that way : ' D

And I didn't know UTAU wiki was doing a revamp! That was one of the first places I went to when I started on UTAU. It was difficult to find decent tutorials other than the User Manual on there, so I'm glad that it's all getting souped up ^o^

 

[Cdra]

In reference to that b, I checked it under the spectrogram. I have no idea what the hell that sample thinks it's doing. @_@

 

[Hentai]

Hentai submitted a new resource:

Oto.ini Theory Tutorial - Oto.ini Theory Tutorial by Cdra

Hello! I've written up a tutorial about the theory behind the oto.ini--how it works and what it's trying to do. Unfortunately, there are too many pictures, so I can't post it directly here and will instead have to send you over to the UTAU wiki. This tutorial assumes some foreknowledge of how otos work, so it's not advised for beginners, but it might be understandable to them too? It's mostly for people who kind of understand otos but would like to improve their otoing skills....

Read more about this resource...