For a long while, we used Bishop voice-over clips to act as placeholders in cutscenes in order to get NPCs' lips moving and talking animations firing.
After we all went completely bonkers from hearing Bishop's simmering condescension as he said "You can ask" over and over again in every single cutscene, we came up with a better solution.
I made 12 silent wavs and hex edited the lip synch .fxe's to provide silent placeholders for the cutscenes pending voice-over, so we could have lip anims and talk anims without having to hear "You can ask" ad naseum.
This isn't something we're using in the final release of Purgatorio, just a temporary tool. But it struck me that it would be useful to folks who aren't doing VO for their modules.
So, all you need to do is:
1) drop these into a hak/campaign/override or maybe even in a module directory (never tried them from there).
2) Add the wav of appropriate length to the |Sound| field in the conversation editor on the |Node| tab for the node where you want lip anims
Now the NPCs' lips should move and talk anims should fire while the silent wav plays.
There are skeleton references in the lip synch FXE files. The skeleton references don't seem to have a huge effect on the lip movements for the base N/PC race appearances (human, dwarf, etc.). We haven't tried these with more exotic models such as balor or whatnot.
So these lip synch files+silent wavs are just using the P_HHF skeleton.
I'll add the rest of the skeleton FXEs + renamed silent wavs to this submission unless some intrepid soul beats me to it (which would be great, because working on this only slows down work on Purgatorio).
This .rar contains twelve (12) FXE lip animation files and twelve (12) silent audio clips for getting NPCs lips moving and talk anims firing during a cutscene conversation. The FXEs all use the P_HHF skeleton reference, but the files seem to work at least for all basic appearances (dwarf, elf, human, half-orc, etc.)
Small thing that add so much, Thank you! _________________________ Rethild's Wizard campaign
Posted by Jerry at on04/01/08
Just a small thing I suppose but it adds a great deal to conversation scenes. Thanks!
Posted by charlievale at on03/27/08
Much better than NPCs who stare silently. Thanks. _________________________ Charlie's Pages | Fournoi Forum | Charlie's UI | Charlie's Item Modifier | Charlie's Item Appearance Changer
Posted by nicethugbert at on03/24/08
NEAT! _________________________ NTB's Hills and Valleys Vol. 00
Posted by Goudron at on01/22/08
Very nice, whether it was easy to do or not, this is very useful and has a great impact on the feel of anyone's conversations. I have a problem though: how can I get the lips to flap without having the sound listed in the conversation node? I'd like to have flapping lips, then chuckle, then flap lips some more. I can call the lip flapper sound in the animation script, and that acts as a placeholder for time which is great, but the lips only flap if they're listed in the sound field of the node, and if/when they're interrupted by another sound, the lips stop flapping. Is there a script to make lips flap?
Posted by JayAre at on12/31/07
Yes! This will stop NPC's from appearing like they ALL possess ESP or some other form of mind communicating abilities!!! ~JayAre _________________________ You left the bodies and you only moved the HEADSTONES!!! YOU ONLY MOVED THE HEADSTONES!!!
Posted by Raith at 23:48:59 Voted10.00
Just a note from what I've found. They DO work inside a module file. However, once you save a game and load it, they fail to load again from the module and conversations fly by very quickly. So if using the module file for storage to keep small mods simple is your main function, be sure the module is small enough to be completed in one sitting. _________________________ Raith Veldrin Sands of Solvheil Series | Atlas Gazetteer | Blog
Posted by mlmarkland at 2007-12-1720:09:56
SirNugz - It only says I have not tried them in the module folder, not the other locations. They will definitely work from hak/campaign/override. I have not tested them from the module folder because I don't see any reason to put audio assets inside a module.
Posted by mlmarkland at 2007-12-1720:08:03
Meririnda -- Just renaming the files won't work, you would need to hex-edit the file references inside the .fxes and then also make sure your new names were the exact same number of characters as the old names.
Posted by Nalencer at on12/15/07
I shake my head every time I see a module that doesn't use these. Besides just the ascetic benefits, it's much easier to know who's talking if there are several people around. Great work. _________________________ Development Blog
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