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There aren't super technical burdens to speech synthesis in games; for example, Jackbox Party Pack 7 runs just fine on the Switch and contains a speech synthesi

by cbhl 6y ago

There aren't super technical burdens to speech synthesis in games; for example, Jackbox Party Pack 7 runs just fine on the Switch and contains a speech synthesis engine for "Blather Round". I imagine it's mostly a licensing/cost thing (since a "voice" for a speech synthesis engine still requires hiring an actor and doing a recording session).

Razengan 6y ago
> since a "voice" for a speech synthesis engine still requires hiring an actor That's what I'm talking about. Surely we can do away with that if we try, just as we don't need real people to build 3D models -from- if we don't want them.
- klodolph 6y ago
  I’m not sure what you mean when you say we don’t need real people to build 3D models. If we want 3D models, someone has to make them. That person might be a traditional modeler working in Blender, or a sculptor in ZBrush, or might be someone with a 3D scanner doing photogrammetry. The tools are changing, but it is still people using the tools. Just like how we invented an “automatic programming” system where the computer will do programming for you, and it turns out that once we’ve made automated programming we have more programmers and not fewer. The tools for making 3D models are getting better and easier to use, and as photogrammetry is being used more and more, we see larger teams of modelers, not smaller.
  - zerocrates 6y ago
    They're comparing making a bespoke 3D model of a character as opposed to scanning an actual person, saying similarly you could just create a voice from scratch rather than record a real one.
    - klodolph 6y ago
      I thought that was obvious, so I guess my comment wasn’t clear. A 3D scanner is an artist’s tool. By using a 3D scanner, you aren’t getting rid of artists, you are just changing how artists do their jobs. Vocal synthesizers and vocal transformers, similarly, aren’t making it possible to press a button and get reasonable sounding voice in your games if you don’t have a voice actor making it possible. If you aren’t convinced, then just look at soundtracks. You can press a button and your iMac will spit out the sounds of the BBC Symphony Orchestra violin section. In spite of this, getting a symphonic score is still expensive. It’s expensive enough that TV shows (with sizable budgets) often skip out on the symphonic score and do something cheaper. We haven’t gotten rid of musicians, it’s just that musicians are much more likely to have computers. There is, in theory, nothing stopping you from buying like $200 in software and making a symphony orchestra right now. The problem is that you have no idea how to write a symphony orchestra. For the same reason, if you have an iPhone 12 or something similar then you can start using the LIDAR features and making a 3D model using photogrammetry in moments—except for the fact that you have no idea how to make a 3D model. I think there’s a trap that people fall into, thinking that technology is just around the corner that will get rid of job X, Y, or Z. Often what you end up with is MORE people doing job X, Y, and Z, it’s just that they use computers to do it, and have a different skill set.
      - imtringued 6y ago
        What a lot of people fail to grasp is that there is a fixed cost to staying alive. The big problem for a lot of skills is that the production capacity of a human is not high enough to pay for that fixed cost or just barely profitable enough for the top 10000 humans to have a career in this skill. If you somehow increase the productivity of humans with that skill you are massively reducing the barrier to entry which means more people can make a living out of it.

by cbhl 6y ago

Razengan 6y ago

> since a "voice" for a speech synthesis engine still requires hiring an actor That's what I'm talking about. Surely we can do away with that if we try, just as we don't need real people to build 3D models -from- if we don't want them.

klodolph 6y ago
I’m not sure what you mean when you say we don’t need real people to build 3D models. If we want 3D models, someone has to make them. That person might be a traditional modeler working in Blender, or a sculptor in ZBrush, or might be someone with a 3D scanner doing photogrammetry. The tools are changing, but it is still people using the tools. Just like how we invented an “automatic programming” system where the computer will do programming for you, and it turns out that once we’ve made automated programming we have more programmers and not fewer. The tools for making 3D models are getting better and easier to use, and as photogrammetry is being used more and more, we see larger teams of modelers, not smaller.
- zerocrates 6y ago
  They're comparing making a bespoke 3D model of a character as opposed to scanning an actual person, saying similarly you could just create a voice from scratch rather than record a real one.
  - klodolph 6y ago
    I thought that was obvious, so I guess my comment wasn’t clear. A 3D scanner is an artist’s tool. By using a 3D scanner, you aren’t getting rid of artists, you are just changing how artists do their jobs. Vocal synthesizers and vocal transformers, similarly, aren’t making it possible to press a button and get reasonable sounding voice in your games if you don’t have a voice actor making it possible. If you aren’t convinced, then just look at soundtracks. You can press a button and your iMac will spit out the sounds of the BBC Symphony Orchestra violin section. In spite of this, getting a symphonic score is still expensive. It’s expensive enough that TV shows (with sizable budgets) often skip out on the symphonic score and do something cheaper. We haven’t gotten rid of musicians, it’s just that musicians are much more likely to have computers. There is, in theory, nothing stopping you from buying like $200 in software and making a symphony orchestra right now. The problem is that you have no idea how to write a symphony orchestra. For the same reason, if you have an iPhone 12 or something similar then you can start using the LIDAR features and making a 3D model using photogrammetry in moments—except for the fact that you have no idea how to make a 3D model. I think there’s a trap that people fall into, thinking that technology is just around the corner that will get rid of job X, Y, or Z. Often what you end up with is MORE people doing job X, Y, and Z, it’s just that they use computers to do it, and have a different skill set.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      What a lot of people fail to grasp is that there is a fixed cost to staying alive. The big problem for a lot of skills is that the production capacity of a human is not high enough to pay for that fixed cost or just barely profitable enough for the top 10000 humans to have a career in this skill. If you somehow increase the productivity of humans with that skill you are massively reducing the barrier to entry which means more people can make a living out of it.