How can I fix lip-sync issues in a Skyrim companion mod?

[Addison41]

I’ve been trying to make my own custom companion mod for Skyrim, and I’ve hit a weird wall. I recorded all the dialogue and got the AI packages working, but the voice just doesn’t sync with the facial animations at all during conversations—it’s like a badly dubbed movie. Has anyone else run into this lip-syncing nightmare and figured out what usually causes it? I’m wondering if it’s something obvious in the Creation Kit I’ve just completely missed.

[ZacharyB]

That lip-sync nightmare hits everyone sooner or later. My hunch is the mouth movement data is not being driven by the actual voice line, so you hear the line but the mouth moves on a wrong cadence.

[Emma.P]

In Creation Kit terms lip-sync for custom voices usually needs phoneme data or a dedicated talk animation. If you only wired up audio and not the phoneme map you’ll get misaligned mouth shapes no matter how clean the audio is.

[NathanL]

Sometimes it’s just the tempo. If your recording is faster or slower than the expected cadence the lip-sync will look wrong. Try re-recording at a classic game tempo or adjust the line length to keep timing sane.

[JoshuaPT]

A language or phoneme mismatch is a sneaky culprit. If the voice type you used isn’t aligned with the mouth shapes for that language the lips can drift out of sync even with perfect audio.

[Jason97]

Have you tried a tiny test line with a known good phoneme set and watched the lip-sync in the face animation window. If the mouth shapes don't line up there the problem isn't the AI package it is the data plumbing.

[RobertLL]

Have you double checked that the dialogue line is assigned to a voice type that supports lip-sync. If you used a random sound bank or a mismatched voice type the game will struggle to map phonemes.

[JoshuaIG]

Maybe focus on the performance of the scene rather than perfect lip-sync. Sometimes a strong delivery and good timing elsewhere carries the moment even when the mouth is off.