RT-Voice - Run-time text-to-speech solution

RT-Voice

Have you ever wanted to make a game for people with visual impairment or who have difficulties reading? Do you have lazy players who don't like to read too much? Or do you even want to test your game's voice dialogues without having to pay a voice actor yet? With RT-Voice this is very easily done – it's a major time saver!

RT-Voice uses the computer's (already implemented) TTS (text-to-speech) voices to turn the written lines into speech and dialogue at run-time! Therefore, all text in your game/app can be spoken out loud to the player.

And all of this without any intermediate steps: The transformation is instantaneous and simultaneous (if needed)!

Features:
Convert text to voice

• Instant conversion from text to speech - generated during runtime!
• Side effect: the continuous audio generation saves a lot of memory!
• No need for voice actors during the testing phase of your game!
• Several voices at once are possible (e.g. for scenes in a public place, where many people are talking at the same time)
• Fine tuning for your voices with speed, pitch and volume!
• Support for SSML and EmotionML!
• Current word, visemes and phomenes on Windows and iOS - including marker functions!
• Generated audio can be stored in files reusable within Unity!
• 1-infinite synchronized speakers for a single AudioSource!
• Simple sequence and dialogue system
• No performance drops!

Documentation & control

• Test all voices within the editor!
• Powerful API for maximum control!
• Detailed demo scenes!
• Comprehensive documentation and support!
• Full C# source code in the PRO version!

Compatibility

• Supports all build platforms
• Compatible with MaryTTS and eSpeak!
• Works with Windows, Mac and Linux editors!
• Compatible with Unity 5.3 – Unity 2018
• Supports AR and VR!
• Works with Online Check
• PlayMaker actions!

Integrations:

• SALSA
• Amplitude
• Localized Dialogs
• Dialogue System
• Dialogue Engine
• Adventure Creator
• LipSync Pro
• SLATE
• Cinema Director
• uSequencer
• Quest System Pro
• NPC Chat
• PlayMaker

Some impressions:










Video:

AssetStore:
PRO edition
Standard edition

Our other assets


Demos:
WebGL
Windows
Mac
Android


Feel free to download and test it.
Any constructive comments are very welcome!


Cheers
Stefan

 

Sounds promising!
Tagged and looking forward to it.

 

Interesting idea. Might be useful, will be fun. Just wondering, what happens if user has disabled text to speech system?

 

In this case, no voices are found and "RT-Voice" can't speak the text. You can catch this case and tell your users to enable TTS on their system.

No further complications will occur - you simply don't hear the text.

I hope this helps!

 

Already have.

 

Looks good! I noticed in your screen shot above that you have additional voices to choose from. Is that because the user installed additional voices on their PC? If so, where would I find those? I'm, looking for something more natural.

Any plans to also integrate this with Windows 10 and Cortana?

Also on your website your "Features" and "More Features" links doesn't load the modal popup.

 

Hi sicga!

Thank you for buying our asset!
If you have any suggestions/questions, just contact us.

Cheers
Stefan

 

Hi Adamz

Thank you for your interest in our asset!

RT-Voice can currently only use the installed voices on a system.
Unfortunately, there are only a few voices available under Microsoft Windows 8.1: 2-3 female and 1 male voice (English). There are (female) voices for all major languages available, but it depends on the regional settings in Windows:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_text-to-speech_voices

I can't do much about it, sorry.
On a Mac, there are like 50 voices for various languages installed. They are much better imho and some are really fun

About Windows10/Cortana: probably ;-) No, serious, atm we still use Windows 8.1 and we will wait some time until the biggest bugs are fixed... But I will take a look in my VM and think about it (without promising anything!).

About the website: thank you for the info, but I already knew it. We had a bit too much work so this wasn't fixed until now. :-(


Cheers
Stefan

 

Is there a way to have it "speak" without using an input field? I just want to use a Text UI element. Do I need to change something in the SpeakWrapper.cs script?

 

Hi Adamz!

I wrote you an email - I hope it helps

Here is the solution for you and other users:
After adding the "RTVoice"-prefab to your scene, create an empty gameobject and add follwing script to this new object.

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using System.Collections;
3. using Crosstales.RTVoice;
4.  
5. public class RTVGame : MonoBehaviour {
6.  
7.    void Start() {
8.       Invoke("SayHello", 2f);
9.  
10.       Invoke("Talk", 6f);
11.  
12.       Invoke("Silence", 9f);
13.     }
14.  
15.    public void SayHello() {
16.       Speaker.Speak("Hello dear user! How are you?");
17.    }
18.  
19.    public void Talk() {
20.       Speaker.Speak("Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua.");
21.    }
22.  
23.    public void Silence() {
24.       Speaker.Silence();
25.    }
26. }
27.  

Then hit "run"

The script does this:

• After 2 seconds, it speaks "Hello dear user! How are you?" with the OS-default voice (if your OS isn't "English" it would probably sound a bit strange).
• After 6 seconds, a Lorem ipsum-sentence is played
• After 9 seconds, RT-Voice should be quiet

Hopefully, this explains the basic usage - you can use your own way of letting "RT-Voice" speak (e.g. by commenting the "Start"-method and then calling "SayHello()" from a button click or use the text of an input field).

If you want a list of all available voices, use "Speaker.Voices()" -> for more API-calls and examples, please see the documentation (starts at page 6).


Cheers
Stefan

 

Thanks for this. Although on Windows I get an error:

The given 'voice' or 'voice.Name' is null! Using the OS 'default' voice.
UnityEngine.Debug:LogWarning(Object)
Crosstales.RTVoice.<Speak>c__IteratorC:MoveNext() (at Assets/crosstales/RTVoice/Scripts/Provider/VoiceProviderWindows.cs:86)
UnityEngine.MonoBehaviour:StartCoroutine(IEnumerator)
Crosstales.RTVoice.Speaker:Speak(String, Voice) (at Assets/crosstales/RTVoice/Scripts/Speaker.cs:144)
RTVGame:SayHello() (at Assets/MyFiles/RTVGame.cs:16)

 

This isn't an error - just a warning

The reason for this:
The method "Speaker.Speak()" has two parameters - the first is the text and the second is the OS "voice", which is optional but results in your described warning.

Here is an updated example:

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using System.Collections;
3. using Crosstales.RTVoice;
4.  
5. public class RTVGame : MonoBehaviour {
6.  
7.    void Start () {
8.       Invoke("SayHello", 2f);
9.  
10.       Invoke("Talk", 6f);
11.  
12.       Invoke("Silence", 9f);
13.  
14.       foreach (Voice voice in Speaker.Voices()) {
15.          Debug.Log(voice);
16.       }
17.     }
18.  
19.    public void SayHello() {
20.       Speaker.Speak("Hello dear user! How are you?", Speaker.VoicesForCulture("en")[0]);
21.    }
22.  
23.    public void Talk() {
24.       Speaker.Speak("Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua.");
25.    }
26.  
27.    public void Silence() {
28.       Speaker.Silence();
29.    }
30. }
31.  

Now, it uses (if available) the first English voice to speak the text in the "SayHello()"-method. It also prints all available voices to your console and you can choose a voice and use it like that:

Code (CSharp):

1. Speaker.Speak("hello world", Speaker.VoicesForCulture("en")[0]));

 

Version 1.1.0 is submitted to the store and adds much more value:

The generated audio from the TTS-system is now available inside Unity!
This means, you can use it with awesome tools like SALSA ;-)

We also added a promo video:

Have a nice weekend!


Cheers
Stefan

 

Here is a very simple demo showing RT-Voice and SALSA working together.
Please follow this steps:

1. create a new Unity 5 project
2. import the SALSA-package
3. import the RT-Voice-package - make sure you're using the latest version (1.1.0 or higher) from the store
4. import the demo-package found here
   
5. open Assets/_Scenes/RTVoiceSalsa
6. Hit run and hf

Here are the actual demos:

Windows
Mac

I hope this helps you jump-start using our products ;-)
If you have any further suggestions or questions, just contact us.


Edit:
Deleted the links since this demo is part of RT-Voice since 2.3.0

 

Thanks Stefan, this is an awesome update of RT-Voice! And will pair nicely with SALSA!

As a small caveat for customers using this with the current release of SALSA v1.3.2, it is necessary to collapse the SALSA custom inspector for proper operation with RT-Voice. This requirement is removed in v1.3.3 which is currently pending review by the UAS team and we expect it to be approved in the next couple of days.

 

We've just finished version 1.2.0 and will submit it tomorrow.
There are many new features added, but the most useful should be the support for Unity's "SendMessage".

Therefore Localized Dialogs & Cutscenes (LDC) will fully support "RT-Voice" with their upcoming release.

Happy time!

 

Yeah, we support now also Dialogue System for Unity!

Have a nice weekend!

 

We submitted the new version 1.2.0 to the store. It adds also support for THE Dialogue Engine - please take a look at their post.

This means, RT-Voice is now working with SALSA and all the major dialog systems!


Now, I'm off for LD33 - happy jamming!

 

The Dialogue System for Unity version 1.5.5 is now available on the Asset Store with support for Stefan's excellent RT-Voice. It's very easy to use: Just drop an RT Voice Actor component on your speakers, and they'll automatically speak Dialogue System conversation lines and barks. You can tweak the component to specify gender and age range, and it will use the best match available on the player's system. It also includes an additional example that ties in SALSA with RT-Voice and the Dialogue System for fully lipsynced interactive text-to-speech.

 

Hi Tony

I'm so happy that your awesome Dialogue System for Unity supports now RT-Voice!
Thank you very much for your effort!

Cheers
Stefan

 

Hi Stefan,
I wrote a similar implementation myself but I would like to switch to yours after seeing your integration with Dialogue System and SALSA is already complete. I would like to see you add additional choices for voice APIs to support Linux and Web builds via MaryTTS (which could allow for consistent voices across all operating systems) and Google speech APIs that read WWW requested audio in as resources for purely web-based builds. I was planning on doing these myself but I would much prefer to see them integrated for all RT-Voice users. Google's voices are very nice also for use on desktops with batch pre-generated audio files if you support that.

Here's someone who started with RT-Voice and then implemented MaryTTS with SALSA already:

Just a head:

In a scene:

Here's a free implementation of Google Voice APIs:

http://www.phaaxgames.com/unity-scripts/

Another thing my version does is generate pre-recorded files while running the platform that has the desired voice so those pre-recorded files are available to play as clips instead of being generated at real-time on alternate platforms.

Do you have this feature already?

Thanks for making this so I can stop maintaining my own custom voice system and utilize yours!

Alex

 

Hi Alex

Thank you very much for your interest in RT-Voice!

Some of our main goals were to have the TTS-voices as fast as possible ("RealTime" in RT-Voice) with no dependencies on any external service.
We also decided that RT-Voice will generate the audio on-the-fly without storing any files. Otherwise, it would not fit it's main purpose: read whatever you must at anytime.
It's totally generic and freely configurable through our users - we don't force them to use a specific system for their text. They can use whatever they want.
It is a system that fits the constant changes during the dev-process without the hassle of regenerating audio files. It's also meant to surprise the user with real-time audio, like "Hello <Avatar name", "The weather is <Weather>" and all ingame-text (like UI-elements, manuals etc.). It's not a replacement for human voice actors - it's a replacement until you're ready for the final cut.
Short answer: no, we don't store audio files - but there are solutions available at the store.

Furthermore, we targeted the Windows- and Mac-platforms since they are the only "reliable-out-of-the-box-solutions". On mobiles the API changes almost in every version, which is hell to maintain, and Linux has no standard solution available.

When we designed this asset, we also thought about MaryTTS and the Google Voice API.
But we decided not to implement those for the following (additional) reasons:

MaryTTS:
it must be installed on the target platform (which adds over 30MB to builds) or on a dedicated server and it requires Java. This seems for us too complicated for most users.
We also noticed too much delay when we generated the voices on a server (especially with many simultaneous requests) and you can end up having a lot of network traffic (server and clients).

Google Voice-API:
Unfortunately, this trick is no longer working:

http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?ie=UTF-8Text-to-speech is silly. I wear a hat, sometimes. Sometimes!l="+countryCode+"en_gb="+result

After more than a few requests, you must enter a Captcha - Google fixed that a while ago. Besides, it was limited to 100 characters per request, which makes it unusable for longer text passages.

In a nutshell, we can't help you out. But we will re-consider MaryTTS and decide what we will do. Furthermore, as soon as new solutions open up we'll evaluate them for our asset.


I hope you can understand and agree with our point-of-view.
Have a nice weekend!

Cheers
Stefan


Edit:
MaryTTS is supported since 2.7.0

 

We recommend this awesome run-time text-to-speech system. It's easy to use, a great price, and it works great with SALSA lip-sync.

 

^ I second that! The Dialogue System for Unity has RT-Voice and SALSA support, and the example scene using all three was super easy to set up. It took hardly any effort to get characters audibly conversing with full lipsync. Even if you're planning to eventually use prerecorded voice actors, RT-Voice is a great way to prototype your conversations beforehand.

 

If there is a possibility to use it with Adventure Creator?
I'm using Salsa with Adventure Creator and it would be great if RT-Voice could support this workflow.

 

If you happen to be using the Dialogue System for Unity's Adventure Creator integration, just add an RTVoiceActor component.

Otherwise try posting a feature request on the Adventure Creator forum. The developer is very responsive to requests. If he determines it's a good fit, there's a high likelihood he'll add support, especially since AC already supports SALSA.

 

Thank you TonyLi, i already own your Dialoge System but i'm actually happy with the way Adventure Creator is handling all the Dialogs and Texts and i don't want to make the developing process more complex without the proper need.

I don't know which developer should do the first step to integrate RT-Voice to Adventure Creator.
Let's see what Stefan is thinking about a patch and then i can also write a request in the AC Forum.

 

Hi Hormic

Sorry for the late reply!
I was very busy these days and didn't saw your post :-(

I think, it should be no problem to make it work with AC - I will send them an email.

As soon as I get some news, I let you know!

 

finally... I've been waiting for something like this for ages... now for those of us challenged at coding, is there any chance in making some actions (like speak, pause, stop, pitch...) for playmaker??

 

Hi Cel

We will add PlayMaker-support for all our products in the upcoming weeks.
I hope this is good news

Stay tuned,
Stefan

 

Hi,

I'm a user of RT-Voice PRO version 1.4.1.

Since I have upgraded Windows10 (first release to the latest) and Unity5.3.0 (5.1 to 5.3), RT-voice doesn't work. It gives an error "No OS voices found". I have checked OS voices by control panel and it works fine, it has 3 voices (2 English, 1 Japanese). Would you help me to solve the problem?

 

Hi Hayasim

Of course - we're here to help our customers!
We use Unity 5.3 and Windows 10 on a daily basis, but we didn't notice this problem...

It would be nice, if you could you contact me via email.
That would be great since I don't always check the forums and we can discus the issue in detail.

Thank you!


Cheers
Stefan

 

Hi Stefan,

Thank you for your quick reply! I'm sooooo sorry, I found that it's just my easy mistake.(build setup was switched to Webplayer for some reason. ^^;; Now, it's working with no problem.
Thanks a lot!

 

No problem - don't hesitate to ask any further questions

 

Hi Stefan,
I bought RTVoice and imported v1.4.1
I opened up the demo scene "Dialog" (and all the others) but I get always the same error messages:

Code (CSharp):

1. ERROR - Could not find the TTS-wrapper: 'F:/unity/arisinggames/sos/Assets/crosstales/RTVoice/Exe/RTVoiceTTSWrapper.exe'
2.  
3. No voices for culture 'en' found! Speaking with the default voice!
4.  
5. The given 'voice' or 'voice.Name' is null! Using the OS 'default' voice.

Unity version: 5.2.0f3
OS: Windows 10

Any suggestions?
Thanks, Boris

 

Hi Boris

Could it be, that there is no "RTVoiceTTSWrapper.exe" under "F:/unity/arisinggames/sos/Assets/crosstales/RTVoice/Exe/" ?

If that's the case, could it also be, that you're using git with a .gitignore entry for "exe"s?

If not, please create a blank project and import RTV again. Then check under "crosstales/Exe" if there's the file "RTVoiceTTSWrapper.exe". If that's the case, test the demo scenes. If they're not working, check the file permissions of the file (must be set to executable and unblocked).

On the other hand, if there's no file, there must be something wrong with the asset package - please download it again from the store.

I hope this solves the issue.


Cheers
Stefan

 

Thanks Stefan.
The cause for the error was that I moved the folder "RTVoice" to another one (.../Assets/vendor/RTVoice).
Is there a way to make it work under this folder?
Thanks

 

Hello again

This can be changed inside the file "VoiceProviderWindows.cs" in the method applicationName(), like this:

Code (CSharp):

1.       private string applicationName() {
2.          if (Application.platform == RuntimePlatform.WindowsEditor) {
3.             return Application.dataPath + @"/vendor/RTVoice/Exe/RTVoiceTTSWrapper.exe";
4.          } else {
5.             return Application.dataPath + @"/RTVoiceTTSWrapper.exe";
6.          }
7.       }

I will extract this part into the "Constants.cs" and leave it outside the DLL for easy modifications. This is part of the upcoming version 2.0 (which will be released at the end of December/early January).

Meanwhile, there are two possibilities:

1. Upgrade to the PRO version and change the path as mentioned above.
2. Send me an email with your invoice and I can send you a DLL 2.0 beta-version in the next few days.

I hope this helps!


Cheers
Stefan


Edit:
This is no longer an issue in RTV - the path of the asset can be changed inside the "Configuration"!

 

Good morning Stefan,
thanks for the great support and the quick replies.
As I have the PRO version I could change it and it works like a charm.

 

Hi Boris

I'm happy that it worked!
If you have any further questions/suggestions, don't hesitate to contact me.


Cheers
Stefan

 

Hi Stefan,

We just bought the RT-Voice plugin, and are very excited by the possibilities. We are working on a machinima short film (unfortunately without any coders) that is basically a big cutscene...We are looking for a simple way to fire different voice texts on a timeline ( like Usequencer or CinemaDirector) without using Playmaker if possible. It works well with the 'send message' demo, as we disable the _scene behaviour at start, and enabling it at a certain time. But unfortunately it is impossible to change the text as it is hard coded in the script. Could you help us ? We are sure that It would be interesting for RT-Voice to support those assets....
Thanks,..


Eric

 

Hi Eric

I'm not quite sure if I understand what you're trying to accomplish.

Imho, the best way to do this would be with a simple "Speaker.Speak"-method call and the appropriate parameters like in the "Simple"-demo (Simple.cs). You could also take a look inside the "Speech"-scene.

I could also write you a little template-script for your time line if you could provide me your texts and the matching "time stamps".

If you're stuck, please write me an email.


Cheers
Stefan

P.S: I consider new co-operations with various other asset store publishers... But time is the enemy ;-)

 

Hi Stefan,

I have RT voicePRO. I use "Speaker.Speak"-method in my scripts.
Speaker.Speak(speechText,audioSource,selectedVoice);

It works nice but there is a latency especially in windows desktop (1 seconds, 2 seconds, etc.) . I also test your sample scene and demos you gave upper post of this forum. There is same problem also.

I have use these samples in Windows8 (somehow weak computer) and windows10 (powerful computer); however, there is still same problem. How can solve this problem?

It is really important and urgent because this project is being developed for private company and it has dead-line.

The project like a dialog manager. Our software (robotic) and user talk together but with this problem fluency of conversation is lost.

 

Hi Ümit

I'm trying to explain the differences between the two "Speak"-methods:

• Speak(): This method calls the TTS-system and let it generate a wav-file. This file is then passed to Unity which reads it as an "AudioClip" (that's probably causing the delay).
• SpeakNative(): This method calls the TTS-system directly and let it speak. Therefore, there should be no (or only a marginal) delay.

There are two ways to solve the problem:

1. Generate all AudioClips in advance by calling "Speaker.Speak(speechText,audioSource,selectedVoice, false);" and play the AudioSource when it's needed.
2. Use "Speaker.SpeakNative(speechText,audioSource,selectedVoice);"

I hope this helps!



Cheers
Stefan


P.S: I also wrote you an email ;-)


Edit:
To get rid of the delay, just use the events "OnSpeakAudioGenerationStart" and "OnSpeakAudioGenerationComplete"

 

Hello,

Are their any plans to have this work on mobile (iOS, android)?

Thanks,
jrDev

 

Hi jrDev

We already did some extended research on the mobile-topic, but it's really a pain... In every Android and iOS-version something changes and to support all the various devices and versions will be the opposite of fun. There is also a (even more) limited set of voices (iOS has afaik only "Siri").
So, we won't support mobile devices in the near future. :-(

But we will deliver the best experience on Windows/Mac and are constantly improving "RTVoice" for this use-case.


Cheers
Stefan

P.S: there are already many assets for mobile and TTS in the store. But I don't know them, so I can't give any advice...


Edit:
RTV supports now all platforms!

 

Ok,

Thanks for the response anyways.
jrDev

 

Hey Stefan,

Does RTVoice have Playmaker actions?

Thanks,
jrDev

 

Hi jrDev

Unfortunately, we don't support PlayMaker out-of-the-box by now.
BUT: we will add all necessary actions in the next minor release 2.2.0

I hope this is good news!


Stay tuned,
Stefan


Edit:
PlayMaker actions are included since 2.2.0

 

We've got a new trailer video for RTVoice:

Have fun!


Cheers
Stefan