Adding voice acting to existing mods?

[FidoDog]

Hey, everybody - long time Bethesda mod user, first time poster.

 

Most of the excellent mods posted here and on Nexus don't have any voice acting associated with their lines. It makes sense - voice acting is time-consuming, and it would be jarring to have characters swap between two completely different voices for modded lines.

 

But let's pretend that I could record voice acting for a mod that I like, and that I got permission from the mod's author to publish an unofficial patch for the mod. Are there any modding guides which cover the process of (I'm guessing here):

 

* Opening a FOMOD, .esp, and/or .esm file to view all of the dialog that a mod adds to the game

* Import audio files and associate them with individual lines of dialog

* Save a copy of the mod for MO2, NMM, or Vortex to import

 

Thanks in advance!

[Tefnacht]

Hey. I hate to do this but...

 

Before you think about doing complete voice acting for a mod, you need to learn how to do a single line of spoken dialog with LIP sync (so the speaking actor actually moves their mouth in the game.)

 

This process is so convoluted, complicated, unwieldy and bugged... almost everybody just gives up. You obviously noticed that there are very few mods with voice acting. Even AI voice acting.

 

The reason is this: To make a FUZ file (Bugtheduh's preferred format) you need source audio in WAV format (44100 Hz, 16bit, mono) run the file through an old 32-bit version of the Creation Kit to generate a LIP file, then convert the WAV file to XWM format and finally use another tool (LIPFuzer) to combine the LIP and XWM into the FUZ file the game actually uses.

 

There are so many ways to do this wrong, getting it right is difficult. And you have to do this ridiculous dance for every single spoken line.

 

Again, I hate to do this. The reason we don't have many voiced mods isn't lacking voice talent, it is because “easily modded Bugtheduh games” are actually really hard to mod.

 

And somebody really needs to kick that lying leather jacket in the balls!

[FidoDog]

Oh wow, I can't believe that I forgot about lip syncing! That is a great point.

 

Thank you for the information, it's good to know what I'd actually need to research to do something like this. (And that it would be difficult and tedious!)

 

At least now I know some keywords to search for if I decide to get serious about it. Thanks again!

[izzyknows]

20 hours ago, Tefnacht said:

And somebody really needs to kick that lying leather jacket in the balls!

I tried, but someone beat me to it and he didn't have any balls.

Threw my back out to boot! 😈

[KinataHoru]

On 8/27/2024 at 6:52 AM, Tefnacht said:

Hey. I hate to do this but...

 

Before you think about doing complete voice acting for a mod, you need to learn how to do a single line of spoken dialog with LIP sync (so the speaking actor actually moves their mouth in the game.)

 

Interesting. 

 

I thought this was automated a long time ago and everything can be done now with no problem. With the help of such a tool I added a voiceover to IceStorms store.

 

And if there is no player voice in some quest mod, I add it with falltalk. And I haven't had any problems with lip sync yet.

 

Maybe I was just lucky...

[lucy0505]

Can someone explain to me how to do it step by step so I can automate it? No problem doing some Pyhton or Rust (preferable) executable with all the logic to easen the process.

[Franco Cozzo]

On 5/14/2026 at 8:42 AM, lucy0505 said:

Can someone explain to me how to do it step by step so I can automate it? No problem doing some Pyhton or Rust (preferable) executable with all the logic to easen the process.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/8303

I think this can handle the audio conversion at least, not sure about the rest, I've only used it for audio for the fallout 4 main menu replacers though, not the voices or anything.

 

[lucy0505]

Going to give it a try tomorrow, thank youu!