Razorwing's Little Voice Work Guide

[Razorwing]

ESF Thread

My knowledge of voice working is largely theoretical, but I would still like to share the findings I've uncovered from working recently together with Opaqe in this field. Opaqe has created voice work for almost all the dialogue which has so far been added to the mod, and it's working perfectly - and to great effect. Perhaps this information will be of some use to future voice workers on our team.

Recording lines for written dialogue in our mod has to be done through The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's Construction Set. This is because a spoken line doesn't just consist of an mp3 file - it has to be paired with a .lip file in order for the spoken dialogue to work in-game. A .lip file contains information that lets the game animate a characters face as the mp3 file is played, and unless both files originate from the same source there's no way to synch it. If you were to just post an mp3 file, we can't animate a character's face from it - we could do our best and it would still come out looking like a dubbed Japanese ninja flick from the '80s.

So, to create voice work for the mod, you could go about it in two ways; either by downloading the latest version of the mod, or by asking for a script. The first way is the easiest for your fellow teammembers, but it's not always the best way. For instance, a modder might be working on a plugin for the mod and would like to arrange for the voice acting to be done before the plugin + voices are added, and in that case he or she could either send you a script or the .esp they've written dialogue in. Another example would be if the modder wanted to give the voice worker extended instructions, for instance if he wants his NPCs dialogue to be acted in a particular accent or tone. In a case like that it wouldn't matter much if you had the mod or not. But anyway, let's proceed my little doc under the assumption that you'll be recording voice work based on information in an .esp, whether the mod itself or a WIP plugin you've been sent.

[GALLY]razorwings_little_voice_work_guide_scr1.jpg[/GALLY]

Fire up the Construction Set and locate the appropriate written dialogue ("Character > Quests..."). The "Topics" tab holds most of the normal dialogue, so go ahead and flip that open. Now you'll see the EditorID's of the *topics* that have been added to the quest shell. Let's explore the GREETINGS topic.

If you double-click on any entry in the "Info" list, you'll see a data sheet for the dialogue line. In the middle of the window is a greyed-out text box called "Voice Filename". The game thinks that these files exist whether they do or not, and tries to play them when the dialogue subtitles are displayed. It won't work if the files doesn't exist, but once the files specified in "Voice Filename" do exist, they will be played automatically if they are placed in the right subfolder in Data\sound\voice\Silgrad_Tower.esm\.

[GALLY]razorwings_little_voice_work_guide_scr2.jpg[/GALLY]

You can double-check if an mp3 file works or not by doubleclicking the entry/entries in the list below the Voice Filename box. If it does, then it will be played out loud and you can hear it. If you look at the "Path" tab of the large info box window you can see both the location and filename the mp3 file *should* have in order to work, so if you don't hear anything but think you should be hearing something, it's very easy to doublecheck if the file is named correctly, and placed in the correct folder.

[blockquote]Now you should be all set to record the line by clicking on the "Record" button. Here's where my knowledge ends, as I don't have any capability to record audio. But I know that in the end of the process you'll wind up with a .wav file and a .lip file. The lip and wav are created with the correct settings if recorded through the Construction Set. If you'd like to examine Bethesda's mp3 voice files in detail I could recommend using Ghostwheel's "TES4 BSA Unpacker" utility. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to use it to unpack the bsa archives that come with Oblivion. The archives you'd want is called "Oblivion - Voices1.bsa" and "Oblivion - Voices2.bsa" and contain all the audio dialogue used in Oblivion. Go ahead and repeat the process for each line you want to record.[/blockquote]

The wav files aren't useable in themselves other than to create .lip files from. You'll need to convert the wavs to mp3 files before they're useable. You can use any program you want to do that; personally I've used a program called Switch on and off to convert audio files for other purposes. It's available as a 30-day trial download. The wav files need to be converted to mp3 files of the following exact specifications:
Bit Rate: 64kbps
Channels: 1 (mono)
Sample rate: 44KHz

Right then, now you should have winded up with the necessary .mp3 and .lip files. Go ahead and stick them in the correct subfolders in "Data\sound\voice\" if they aren't there already. Feel free to discard the .wav files as they aren't necessary anymore (unless you've made a mistake in converting them and need to do it again). Please test them out and double-check that they work. If they do, go ahead and zip up the stuff in the subfolders and supply them. If you zip up the whole foldertree there, that will most likely make it even easier for the recipient. The recipient won't need the esp file back, by the way, since you didn't make any changes in it that are needed; it's all in the file pairs themselves.

Good luck, and have fun!



? A quest shell is a term I coined myself to differentiate between real quests and quests that only exists to control dialogue. The "StRPGeneral" quest shell for instance is a way of controlling dialogue that is only supposed to be spoken by people living in the city. It's a very nifty way of shielding our dialogue from cropping up in the standard game (or other mods), which could have led to broken quests.

Updated December 3rd, 2006 to reflect the change from us using Reich Parkeep as the main release to using Silgrad Tower.