Tutorial: Adding Custom Voice even if the CK won't

[SinderionsBones]

Adding Custom Voice even if the CK wont cooperate:

 

Edit: Put on creationkit.com in a slightly nicer format. Some further developments from my own experience as well.

 

http://www.creationkit.com/Adding_Voice_Intermediate_Tutorial

 

 

I was personally very discouraged when I realized the official tutorial method of adding voice acting didn't work for some reason on my computer. After some digging, I found it's a common problem. To be honest I've never heard anyone suggest they got voice acting working 100% without having to mess around with it.

 

If the CK always gives these problems, this may also be a general custom voice adding tutorial.

 

What you will learn:

• 
  I. Make a new voice type (This is necessary for custom NPC's if you don't want to add non matching voices to existing voice types)
  II. Apply your new voice type to an actor
  III. Where the game looks for your custom voice files
  IV. Using the CK for what it's good for. Then,
  V. Doing the legwork the CK doesn't and arranging your files where they go
   
  Further consideration:
   
  VI. Compressing your voice files (PLEASE DO THIS 10x file size reduction on my stuff at least.)
   
  

 

I. Making a new voice type

• 
  This is as simple as making any obscure data type that isn't just in a subcategory.
  1. In the Object Windows filter box type MaleUniqueEsbern
  2. In the Category selection box of the Object Window, select *All (Voice types aren't in any category)
  3. Double click on MaleUniqueEsbern in the object selection box.
  4. Rename this object in the ID field something reasonably descriptive for your actor. My guy is Svon, so I called my voice type MaleUniqueSvon. Original I know...
  5. Click YES wouldn't want to go screwing up esberns voice. Selecting YES will create a new voice type with your name.
  

II. Applying your new voice type to your actor

• 
  1. Open your actors base. If you have him in the render window, double click him and click the 'Edit Base' button on the top right of the window that pops up.
  2. In the 'Traits' Tab, in the 'Voice type' drop down box select your new voice type. Again, for me it was MaleUniqueSvon.
  

 

III. Where the game looks for your custom voice files

• 
  After you make a voice type, and apply it to an actor, the game will look in one place for the voice files.
  This will be:
   
  
  • 
    /Data/Sound/Voice/yourmod.esp/YourVoicetype/
    

Again, mine is:

 

• 
  /Data/Sound/Voice/Svonlovesyou.esp/MaleUniqueSvon/
  

ok... my mod isn't svonlovesyou, but that's beside the point...

 

1. Create this directory if it doesn't exist.

 

IV. Using the CK for what it's good for.

• 
  This is where we're going to record our audio, and generate a .lip, or lipsync file so the game knows... timing stuff about it. How the lips move possibly and the length, I don't really care :) This is probably the easiest way to do it.
   
  1. Open a dialog line for your actor. To the screen that has the record button at the bottom for one particular line. If you aren't familiar with this yet. I recommend going to www.creationkit.com and doing some tutorials up to where you are comfortable with these dialogs.
  2. Press 'Record' and record the line, or the appropriate period of time of silence, depening on your prefference. Click done when done.
   
  The following is just what I do. The UI doesn't give any indication of what's going on in the background so you just have to guess >.< this is what I do and it's worked so far.
   
  3. Click the 'From Wave' radio button.
  4. Click 'Generate Lip file'
  5. Click 'Save' I have NO idea if this actually does anything... but it feels good to hit a save button when you're done no?
   
   
  Then,
  

V. Doing the legwork the CK doesn't and arranging your files where they go

• 
  I don't know if it's messed up CK, system configuration issues, a special 'feature' to 'allow' you to have to do all the stuff 4 lines of code could... for some reason you may have to do all the file moving yourself.
   
  I am one of these people. I know there are plenty online unable to fully realize their mods potential because of something wierd and quirky going on in the dialog voice entry setup they have. Here's how to finish the job it's not doing for some of us.
   
  Four lines of code or thereabout, I swear.
   
  The following is my experience. For some, the CK may do it fine and set it up for you. For me it has not till I did it myself.
   
  
  • 
    Each time you hit 'record' it records to /data/sound/voice/temp.wav
     
    Each time you hit 'Generate Lip file' it writes it to /data/sound/voice/temp.lip
    

These files are ALL you need for that line of dialog but they're just named wrong and in the wrong place.

 

 

1. Get back into dialog box with the line of dialog you're working on now. (The one with the record button, with the particular line you just recorded. you may have to hit ok and close it, then reopen)

2. Near the bottom, right above 'record' there is a box, it should have one entry in it. pointing to a file in the directory you created in step III.

3. Just above this listbox, is a field you can't edit, with some rediculous file name in it. It will look something like:

 

• 
  YourQuest_YourDialogBranch_00002A82_1.xwm (YourQuest will of course be the name of YOUR quest)
  

The problem is, it didn't move or rename the files that are already ready to be moved. Soo...

 

4. copy temp.wav, and temp.lip, into the directory you made in Step III.

5. Rename them YourQuest_YourDialogBranch_00002A82_1.wav and YourQuest_YourDialogBranch_00002A82_1.lip

6. Wow, how hard could that have been for the CK? Ah well...

 

 

 

If all goes well, when you get that line of dialog in game, it will play this voice file. Now, it works, but I would like you to consider one further step:

 

VI. Compress your voice files.

• 
  At the bitrate the CK records, something like 16k 4400 or some such nonsense, a 4 second file I made is around 270kb. That's 1/4 a megabyte. for four seconds! What will it be for a whole mods dialog? Even just an actors if you add in all the lines for 'Hello' 'Goodbye' 'Stop touching my butt!' Etc...
   
  If you take the simple step of converting your files to the games favorite .wxm format, that 270kb file all fo the sudden becomes a 27kb file. Size reduced by a factor of 10 :D Now you could fit somewhere around 40 similar lines in and only increase your final mods filesize by 1mb. Not essential, but just nicer to everyone that has to handle your mod, from the site that hosts it, to every person that downloads it and has to store it on their harddrive indefinitely.
   
  1. Ok so enough trying to sell it. Lucky for us (me mostly.. I'm getting hungry and it's lunch time) There is already a good thread on this topic. Look for the post where there is a link to the tool to convert your waves. Don't download the whole big kit, just the little 300kb converter :D
  2. Hopefully this thread stays updated:
  
  • 
    

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/470044-how-to-encode-xwma-files/

 

 

I hope this helps you get on with your modding and helps keep voice from being a barrier to great mod creation. I haven't added images because I'm literally copying 90% of this from my notebook where I wrote it for myself. I wants to get on with mah own mod :D If there is need I will add some but I think I was reasonably descriptive. Let's get some more nice quest mods out there to really add content to the game!

 

Happy modding!

 

SinderionsBones

Edited February 27, 2012 by SinderionsBones

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Looks interesting, want to try this soon. Thank you so much. This should be added to the wiki.

[AurelTristen]

Dear sir or ma'am,

I love you.

 

-Aurel

 

I have been BATTLING this issue since the CK came out. I get my quests up and running, and then as soon as I add voices, it falls apart. THANK YOU for this. I'm putting it to work right now.

+1 kudos

 

Update:

Sadly this did not resolve my issue. I still have a mute NPC, and apparently not a soul on the internet knows why (I've posted here about it, on the official forums, and even included a video to show what steps I took.)

 

I find that my CK does place new wav files where they belong, but I thought making a new voice type and compressing to skyrim's native format might help. Why must Skyrim refuse to show dialog if the associated sound file is disliked? Couldn't it just NOT play the sound?

Edited February 21, 2012 by AurelTristen

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Alright Sinderion I'm curious, what if I would prefer to record my audio in a seperate DAw like Cubase and import it. How would one generate the .lip?

[SinderionsBones]

@fatal

 

If you properly name and place the file, then open up the CK and go to the associated line (the place you would hit 'record' if you were making a new file) and hit 'Generate Lip file' It will make it for you from there. Stand by on how to make them in a more batch process. I'm interested in this myself.

 

Update: Sometimes... I have no idea why sometimes. It does properly place audio files in the directory. I've had it doing it right for two scenes, but not for another, and not for some of their dialog. I guess the moral of the story is go check and fix what it's messing up ....

 

 

If anyone is feeling motivated, feel free to copy paste to the wiki or something (including the above update, you just have to basically babysit the CK and make sure it's doing it right >.< )... I know it's more involved than that.. but yeah. I have no interest whatsoever in credit, just the info being out there since it's taken me almost 2 weeks to finally figure this out as I've been developing some mods. I haven't been able to find anything that's just start to finish, how to make a custom voice for your custom NPC.

 

Will post about the .lip file if it's worth an edit.

Edited February 21, 2012 by SinderionsBones

[SinderionsBones]

@Aural

 

After working on finishing up some scenes and getting full quests working now fully voiced, I feel a tad more qualified to address your issue. I have some questions:

 

Is the NPC in question BRAND NEW? not a copied character? I've had this problem. I tried to copy one of the starter npc presets. FAIL. maybe it was just not knowing about the voice type thing.

 

Does the voice type have 'Allow default dialog' checked? I haven't messed with this, but I'd imagine not having it checked would make the character mute if there was a problem with finding their voice files.

 

Try making a new NPC, starting from scratch as in the creationkit.com tutorials. See if you can get voice working then, if so, consider recreating your NPC. BACKUP your MOD FIRST though if you go that far lol.

[Korodic]

I certainly will be favoring this for future reference. :thumbsup:

[gahnzz]

@SinderionsBones

 

Quick question... I want to create a mod that will add a greater variety to established NPC's (like guards, bandits, necromancers etc.) I'm not looking to redo the LIP files, just want to import additional audio assets for the engine to pull from so that you aren't hearing the same 5 voices over and over again... Is that even possible given the CK in it's current state?

[SinderionsBones]

@SinderionsBones

 

Quick question... I want to create a mod that will add a greater variety to established NPC's (like guards, bandits, necromancers etc.) I'm not looking to redo the LIP files, just want to import additional audio assets for the engine to pull from so that you aren't hearing the same 5 voices over and over again... Is that even possible given the CK in it's current state?

 

As they touch on in one of the quest tutorials on creationkit.com, the only issue with this is to make new files you need the original voice actors... or someone VERY close. Doing it is not the issue at all. In fact go over to the last few tutorials on the creation kit site related to quests and dialog and they talk about how to edit things like npc's hellos and goodbyes. The engine is built for doing exactly what you're talking about with minimal fuss EXCEPT NPC's talking with several different voices would be very odd.

[gahnzz]

@SinderionsBones

 

Quick question... I want to create a mod that will add a greater variety to established NPC's (like guards, bandits, necromancers etc.) I'm not looking to redo the LIP files, just want to import additional audio assets for the engine to pull from so that you aren't hearing the same 5 voices over and over again... Is that even possible given the CK in it's current state?

 

As they touch on in one of the quest tutorials on creationkit.com, the only issue with this is to make new files you need the original voice actors... or someone VERY close. Doing it is not the issue at all. In fact go over to the last few tutorials on the creation kit site related to quests and dialog and they talk about how to edit things like npc's hellos and goodbyes. The engine is built for doing exactly what you're talking about with minimal fuss EXCEPT NPC's talking with several different voices would be very odd.

 

Actually, I'm more interested on focusing on non-named NPC's. There are common things said by everyone regardless of city, gender, etc. "Arrow in the knee" for example. I don't want to have people impersonate the named NPC's so that it matches... I want to have a mod that just adds a great deal of variety to the radiant dialogue (said mostly by guards, etc) but also yelled out my forsworn, necros, bandits and whatnot. I've exported all the dialogue and I know where the .fuz files are... just not how to throw my pre-recorded audio files from other people into the pool that the engine uses when assigning a radiant voice... "keep your hands to yourself, sneak thief..." that sort of thing.