Talking Creature

[Ibsen's Ghost]

I am setting up this thread in the hope that I can achieve an idea of mine regarding a mission currently in development.

I am hoping to get creatures such as ogres, rats, lions, mudcrabs and perhaps some more humanoid creatures set up as NPCs so that they can talk to the PC. Ideally, I would like the humanoid creatures to have lip-synching, if possible.

I am aware of this thread: Creature Dialogue? in which Seniosh and Saiden Storm discuss how to do this for a lich NPC but I am utterly, utterly clueless with Nifskope (I don't even know what it is!) and I was hoping that it wouldn't be too much trouble to have someone do this for me (pretty please :poorme: ) with all credit duly granted, of course.

Muchos muchos kudos to anyone who can help me out here!

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Okay, the news from Saiden Storm on this issue is as follows:

Regarding lip-synching

"For a lip file to function at the very least you need to have a model that has the proper tri/egm files (these files hold the morph data required to get lip sync to work) and Oblivion's lip sync FaceGen holds 42 facial morphs that contain all the morphs for facial customization, lip synching and the vamp morph -> of those it seems 16 are devoted to just the lip synching systems -> which means someone would have to create at the very least those 16 morph targets for every model you want to add lip sync dialog to -> there is also the problem that creature models are not set up properly to be morphed for lip sync so someone would also have to go over every model and prep them with working eye lids, mouths, tongues and eyes -> also quite a few of them have skeletons that are not set up properly for head tracking.

Just converting the Skeleton Creature (which is by far the easiest to set up for lip synching) would be a large amount of work in itself but would be the obvious starting point for a task such as this."

My first general impression from this is that this is not likely to become a reality. Our guys are busy on all sorts of projects and I wouldn't expect some of their more crucial work to be laid aside for a mere one-use 'cosmetic feature' such as this. Nonetheless, it is clear that there would be immense kudos attached to whosoever chose to take up the challenge. Clearly, skeletons is the way to go and I could use this in my project. However, my first choice was ogres but if you imagine this applied to liches and goblins as well then you potentially have a really ground-breaking resource on your hands....goblin cities whereby you might actually meet and talk with the Goblin King, for instance?

Mission Context

I will check back with Saiden and see if it is true, as I think it is, that having a creature operate as an NPC (without the lip-synching) is not too hard or too time-consuming. If so, I'm more than happy to go with this option.

[ShadowDancer]

While the lip-synching may be difficult, there could be some ways around it, at least in some cases. While an actual talking creature is difficult and the facial animations would be a more intensive route to go for this, there are some interesting possibilities in this CS thread. We did some experimenting with trying to make creatures talk and thought none of the solutions were perfect, and especially not mine, they do have possibilities. Taking the example from the "Creature Dialogue?" thread of a talking lich would be much easier to do with the clothes concept on an NPC and even using headings if necessary to make him turn towards the player or watch him as he walks by. While the lich wouldn't move its lips, their is no reason to really assume that it would in the undead state that it is in. Additionally since a lich is in theory a mage that had some advanced knowledge, a hollow sounding voice out of no-where may not be all that much of an oddity. Perhaps somewhere along the way the lich learned something of "the calling" of the Dwemer or the Psijics as seen in the Publisher's Note in the Chimarvamidium book from Morrowind.