Record Speech Tab

The record speech tab is the main window of the program. In this window you control your voice characteristics and enter your speakable text.

Speakable Text

The Speakable text input box takes regular type text and xml mark-up friendly text. With xml you can specify various characteristics which can change through your text script. This is completely optional but allows you greater control over your speech output. The xml markup is SAPI compliant so any SAPI tag can be used. Here are a few examples of what xml speech markup can look like:
• To emphasize a word of phrase, enclose the text you want emphasized in the "emph" tag.
  This text is <emph>very</emph> wordy.
• Spell the word instead of pronouncing it.
  Now I know my <spell>ABC</spell>s!
• You can set the volume level mid-sentence and whisper a phrase.
  Some people like to <volume level='25'/>talk really soft.
• You can set the pitch of the voice for custom intonation.
  Papa can you <pitch absmiddle='10'/>hear me?
• You can set the rate of the voice for custom speed.
  Super cali fragilistic <rate absmiddle='-10'/>expi-ali doshess?
• You can even change the voice used.
  Marco <voice required='Name=Audrey16'/>Polo
• You can insert silence anywhere in your statement.
  Here comes silence for half a second <silence msec='500'/>
You can avoid xml altogether if you want. The speech engine will detect your intent by reading any pronunciation you give it as well.
• Use exclamation marks and question marks to achieve more eyebrow movement as well as emphasizing the speech input.
  I will sound chill.
  But i will sound excited!
• Use new lines to designate breaks in phrases or intent.
• Underscores(_) are recognized by some voices to mean a pause.

Voice Preferences

The voice preferences section allows you to control the entire speech phrases characteristics in four ways. Voice allows you to specify a voice. Every SAPI5 compliant voice installed on your computer will appear in the drop-down menu. You can choose a desired voice or leave it blank for the default.

Volume values are from 0 - 100. 100 is the loudest.

Pitch values are from -10 - 10. 10 is the highest pitch.

Rate values are from -10 - 10. 10 is the fastest rate of speech. You can change each of these dynamically in your speech input by overriding the settings with xml tags (see above).

Animation Preferences

Use the Strength scroller to adjust to amount of strength to apply to each morph. Scrolling to the right emphasizes the facial gestures like yelling or scolding. Scroll left softens the morphs as in a mumble or whisper. The default strength value is 1, meaning no special strength modification is applied to the morph.

You can choose what to animate with the checkboxes. Examples: If no checkboxes are checked, nothing will change on your Poser scene except the number of frames and the background sound. If the Mouth option is the only option checked, the eyebrows will not have any keyframes added to them in your timeline. Blink is for eye blinks, the program will search your character for a morph called blink in the title. It determines the best plan based on how many blink morphs it finds etc. Use the Limit option to chop the values if they are below zero or above 1. Limit will override the strength slider if the final morph value is above 1 or less than zero.

Keys is used to add smoothness and bounce to your animations. With the option set to 1, each Poser frame is set as a keyframe. When set to 3, every third frame in Poser will be a keyframe. Set to 10, every tenth frame will be a keyframe. All frames in-between the keyframes will be interpolated in Poser.

The Trim Frames checkbox allows you to stop PoserSpeak from trimming or adding frames to your Poser scene. PoserSpeak will only add/or remove frames if this option is checked. If you uncheck this box, make sure your Poser scene has enough frames in the timeline for your speech. When you start PoserSpeak this option will be checked by default.

Play controls

Below the Speakable Text box are a series of control buttons and a place to enter a wav file name. If you enter a name for your new wav file it will be created for you inside your wavs folder in the PoserSpeak program folder. If you do not enter a wav file name, the default name "Untitled1" will be used. Keep in mind that if you apply an unnamed wav file to your Poser scene it will overwrite the last Untitled wav file. To avoid confusion, name your wav files. If you used the recommended installation path then wav files are stored at C:\Program Files\3dtrue\PoserSpeak\wavs.

Next to the wav file name box are the player controls. Preview will speak whatever is in the speakable text box without saving it to Poser. This allows you to preview your entered text and tweak it if necessary. If you enter a really long text string and want to stop PoserSpeak from Previewing or Recording, press the Pause button. The last button Save will record your speech, and build the morph target coordinates once complete, PoserSpeak will exit and you will need to press the "APPLY" python button in Poser to see your changes.

Background Sound

You can keep the existing sound track in Poser and record on top of it under the background sound section. Click the "Active" checkbox to add the currently selected sound as a background sound. You can also choose a different sound by clicking the button next to "Active". You can also mix the volume of the background sound with a dynamic slider. The higher the mix value (drag to right) the louder the background sound is in relation to your speech.

Currently PoserSpeak will only mix audio wav files that are 16bit mono wav format at 22050 khz. This is the default output of all SAPI5 voice engines.

Morph Routing Tab

This page will allow you to override the built-in morph translations PoserSpeak creates. On this page you can send the speech to any morph your character has. PoserSpeak determines the best location for each facial morph, this tab page let's you override PoserSpeak's determinations. Currently PoserSpeak utilizes templates to determine morph targets. These templates are a collection of 21 separate facial poses for a standard poser 4 character, and 21 poses for a Poser 6 character. The differences between Poser 4 and Poser 6 is rather large and having two templates helps PoserSpeak assign your morphs better. You can customize these facial morphs if you would like. This allows you to take your speak engine even further.

Use the "Load Last Recorded" button to adjust the preferences to match what you last used for a particular character. This memory system uses the name of the figure in Poser as a reference point. On your Poser stage, if the figure you want to speak is "JamesCasual" then PoserSpeak will save the morph settings you choose and load them the next time a figure named JamesCasual is selected and animated with PoserSpeak. If the "always" checkbox is placed, then the recorded preferences for "JamesCasual" are loaded when PoserSpeak opens automatically. This will in effect override the guessing routine. If "Always" is checked then you will find it very easy to go back and forth between Poser and PoserSpeak without having to re-adjust your morphs. If always is not checked and you want to use the last morph settings you saved, then you must press the "Load Last Recorded" button in the morph tab. Unchecking "always" will re-activate the guessing system the next time PoserSpeak is run.

NOTE, this section is not recommended for normal use. Instead it's for folks who want to customize their PoserSpeak. To customize, locate the bin folder inside PoserSpeak. inside the bin folder are two folders called: P4, and P6. Copy (do not move) these folders into your favorite Poser installation by putting them in your runtime\libraries\face folder. Now you can load each face morph and pose to your liking, resave the face morphs and finally put the new changes inside the bin folder.

You may also add custom template folders as well. PoserSpeak can recognize other template folders jut like the P4 and P6 which are included. To create your own morph template, see the PoserSpeak bin folder's P4 and P6 folder contents as examples. Upon inspection, you will discover that they are facial pose files as explained above, and a small text file called sets.txt. Sets let's PoserSpeak know which of the thousands of possible morph name's your figure can have which morphs are grouped as mouth morphs, brow morphs and eye morphs. Each morph is delimited by a colon in the text file. The "sets.txt" file is required for PoserSpeak to use your custom template properly. Also keep your facial templates to a minimum for the faster execution of PoserSpeak. Jessica for example has 50 possible morphs, only 12 are used by PoserSpeak. These twelve are listed in the p6/sets.txt file. This makes PoserSpeak run much faster than if all 50 morphs were considered animated. Once you have written your sets.txt file, you should see each choice appear in the dropdown list in the Custom morph window. The custom morph window is separated by these three groups: mouth, eyes, and brow.

Installation Tab

Installing PoserSpeak