Animalese Speech System
Sound Design | UE4 |
Wwise Implementation
Created a speech synthesis system based on the Animal Crossing series using Wwise and Unreal Engine 4.
Character Model: Stephan Guadalupe
Phonetic Events
To mirror the sound of the game, I recorded multiple variations of spoken phonemes, a few takes for each letter. These variations are then placed into random containers, where they are rapidly triggered by a character-specific events. By gently randomizing the delay time, the volume, and the pitch of each event, the impression of speech is created.
Punctuation
Depending on the punctuation mark at the end of a sentence, the events will be processed in different ways. Periods play the cues back in their default state, while exclamation points are given additional volume and a wider degree of pitch variation. Commas and spaces have longer delay times in order to create naturalistic pauses in the speech pattern.
Up-speech
In order to capture the vocal phenomenon of up-speech, I needed to understand the length of the entire sentence. Once I had this variable, I was able to use an RTPC to track the percentage of the sentence that had already been spoken. This allows me to sculpt the tone and timbre of the performance from start to finish based on the punctuation mark used.
