A trigger for a cinematic cutscene using this function does not make Reforged models “speak”. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that Reforged widely uses the “Cinematic - Play Dialogue…” function.
It’s a cool function and all, but, it requires voice files in order to make the portraits lip sync. Short of recycling voice lines from campaigns, this is not something map makers can easily utilize.
Unfortunately, this means that portraits will be fairly static while speaking in Reforged mode, which takes away an extra little level of immersion during custom-made cinematics.
Custom models imported into the game still speak in Reforged, presumably because they have “generic” talking animations while Reforged models seem to not.
If you want the lip-sync in Reforged you have to use a dialogue since it’s the name they given to an “istance” of FaceFX engine inside the game.
A dialogue does not require a real sound. It does require a sound variable, but that sound could just be an empty sound of the length you need to have it displayed.
A dialogue is a set of sound variable, animation set, spoken text and speaker name linked togheter using certain functions in the editor (mostly hidden).
You should definitely use dialogues and I understand that customizing that is a problem right now. I cannot make it easy as it was in classic, but tomorrow I’ll post a tutorial on how to link all those things togheter in order to use any sound, with any lip-sync, with any spoken text and speaker name.
It should get you started at least on making that damn portraits move their mouths! 
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Interesting stuff. I was not sure how to go about utilizing the dialogue function, but it’s great to hear you’re offering a tutorial for the community on this! Still, for things such as custom campaigns (whenever these are released) I imagine this will add up to a very large amount of variables needing to be tailored and worked on for each instance of dialogue.
I look forward to seeing the tutorial either way. Could you make sure to drop a link to it here when it is finished for others to see?
I am not sure if this warrants a separate thread, but I have also noticed that in Reforged, imported custom models will speak in cinematic transmissions, but they will not speak any unit responses. No voice lines when being poked, being sent to do something, etc. presumably because they do not have these facial animations which Reforged utilizes for its models.
Sure, here it’s the link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDDW3VapLNg
That’s because I think the engine is calling the default “talking” animation when you use certain actions but no more when you are clicking on the unit. I think that “talking” animations are deprecated and only dialogues should be used instead. I don’t know yet how to do so for unit responses tough…
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