Help Voice Files

[slydog999]

How do I import voice files to a topic?

[madmongo]

That's a pretty vague question.

 

There are two parts to voices in topics, the sound file, which is usually a .wav or a .ogg, and the lip file (.lip). The sound file has the sound (yeah I know, duh, Captain Obvious) and the lip file has the lip movements. Withou the lip file, the NPC's lips won't move as they speak, which is very weird.

 

The GECK as it ships is missing its lip file generator. Bethesda has updated the GECK a couple of times since its first release and still hasn't bothered to put the lip generator in it. They seem to like making things difficult for us. If you poke around online you might be able to find a copy of it. If you also have Oblivion installed on your computer, the same lip generator is in the \sound\processing folder. Just copy that folder to your FNV directory and you're good to go. I believe the Skyrim Creation Kit also has a compatible lip generator installed that you can use (again, just copy it to your FNV folders).

 

Now the question is (since this isn't obvious from your one-line post) where is your sound coming from? If you are going to be speaking into a microphone, just bring up the topic and hit record near the bottom of the window. Don't forget to save it when you are done. If you don't like what you just said or you made a mistake, flubbed the line, whatever, then don't hit save, and instead just hit record and try another take. When you click save it only saves your last take. If you have the lip generator installed, the GECK will automatically create both the wav and lip files.

 

If your sound is coming from a wav file that already exists, it needs to be in the exact location that the GECK expects it to be in and it has to have the exact name that the GECK wants it to have. If you look down near the bottom of the topic, you'll see the file name that it wants, without the wav extension, which will have the topic name in it and will also have what looks like a bunch of random letters and numbers in it (they aren't random). Sometimes the easiest way to make sure your file ends up in the right place is to record a quick 2 second hello or something into the microphone and save it, then go under the \sound folder and find your mod and voice type etc. until you land on the files you just created. If you have to create all of the folders yourself it's very easy to make a mistake. This way you make sure that the folder names are right and everything is in the right place. Then delete the wav and lip that you just generated, and put your wav file that you want to use in its place. You can copy the file name from the topic screen and paste that into the file name of the wav. The file names are too long and contain too many letters and numbers so changing the name by hand isn't recommended.

 

Now you have a wav but no lip. You'll need to close the topic and re-open it, as the topic window doesn't refresh when you change the files. Now you should see a Y under your wav near the bottom, and you should see your wav file listed. Select your wav file, click on from wav and click on generate lip file, and the GECK will create the lip file for you. You can also do this to create lip files from any dialog you may have recorded before realizing that you didn't have a working lip generator.