Any decent text to voice synthesizers ?

[behughes]

 

I have looked into this myself, and also for software that can emulate vocal timbres, but I haven't found anything out there. Honestly, I know there are companies that do great work with this, particularly for people who lose the ability to speak (like Steven Hawking or the late Roger Ebert), but most of these fall pretty short and they sure as hell aren't free to download.

 

I've been developing a technique for voicing NPCs that involves using existing dialogue recorded by Bethesda, chopping it up and carefully editing it phrase-by-phrase, word-by-word, in Ableton Live, then tweaking the pitch, duration, and inflection of each syllable with a program called Melodyne. In order to know if a phrase, or partial phrase, or even just a single word already exists as recorded dialogue for a given VoiceType, I export the dialogue via the CK into a text file, copy/paste it into an Excel file, then use the search features and filters in Excel to find what I need. This is pretty time consuming, but it's quite effective. If you choose to go this route and would like more specific instructions on how to do anything I've described, feel free to send me a PM. I might even consider posting a tutorial.

 

Another thing you could consider is using a different VoiceType for your Altmer warrior and seeing if you can't create a basic follower that way. The VoiceType used by most Altmer males doesn't have any dialogue for follower NPCs, but the VoiceType used for Bosmer like Faendal does. You could set your character's VoiceType to whatever Faendal uses (can't recall off the top of my head), then create any custom dialogue you need using the technique I mentioned above.

 

Or, as many have suggested, you could find one of the many talented voice actors on the Nexus and see if they'll voice your character. I don't know much about creating and fleshing out custom VoiceTypes though, but I'm sure there's a tutorial around somewhere for that.

The fact that i forgot about Bosmer voice types just shows how much i know about anything ... That idea of yours about modifying existing voices doesnt look bad,but from what you described seems complicated for someone like me,definitely dont consider making a tutorial,just make it,it could help people with more knowledge and skills than me,and who knows,maybe i even get better and use it myself ... fat chance ... Oh and ,just an idea,you could (or anyone else) make a program where all of that would be possible to be done on one place,cutting sentences and putting them together," tweaking the pitch, duration, and inflection of each syllable".Just an idea,dont throw me in Chaurus pit for it :tongue:...please dont...i am really scared of those things :unsure: ... Hm,maybe there is something like that already,but either way,just wanted to put it out there ...the idea of a program not the Chaurus pit ....dear god ,no ...

 

 

Haha, I'm not very good at teaching or describing things, so I'm hesitant to make a tutorial. However, if any of my mod projects ever got off the ground, I'd need to teach my team how to assist in the process, so maybe I will :D

 

And I suppose you make a good point that alot of the steps in my process assume that modders know the basics for audio editing. Ableton and Melodyne are both professional audio projection programs, so they have a bit of a learning curve.

 

Your idea for an all-in-one program isn't a bad one, but I'm no programmer, and even basic audio editing software is pretty hard to make. Of the two, Melodyne is probably the one that has most of those features built in. It is a program used by music producers to tune up vocal takes and fix the musicians' timing errors. In any case, I won't throw you into the chaurus pits for the suggestion... they freak me out too :D

[MortemTheModder]

guys really? Just give him the voice synthesizer. http://www.acapela-group.com/voices/demo/