Trench Rammers
When creating a sound effect for a movie you’ll know that the audience is only going to hear it on one specific occasion, and you’ll likely build it up through editing and layering different sound elements to get just what you want.
Figure 01 ‘An explosion’
Most games, like sports, are about skill and mastery, so the player will be repeating similar actions again and again, and consequently they will be hearing the same sounds again and again. The trouble is that we’re very sensitive to this kind of repetition, since it just doesn’t happen in real life.
Video: Explosion Baked
The obvious answer is just to have loads and loads of sounds but it would be far too much work to create 30-40 versions of every sound in the game (plus there are obviously limitations as to how much we can fit on a disk!).
If we look at our ‘explosion’ sound again we can see that the final sound is made up of different characteristic components, and this idea is key to starting to think about procedural approaches to sound design.
Figure 02 ‘Explosion Components’
What we want to do is to keep these components separate when we import them into a game so that we can recombine them in different ways at run time. A lot of sounds in games aren’t ‘sounds’ at all, they are systems of sounds. This kind of procedural approach requires a different way of thinking, and sometimes different kinds of sound assets, since we often want to isolate the individual components that make up a sound.
When we bring these components into a Sound Cue in the Unreal Engine we can build a system of playback, and by having a few different versions of each component we can randomly combine them to create variation.
Figure 03 ‘Procedural Explosion’
Video: Explosion Components
By taking this approach we don’t need thousands of complete sounds in our game to be able to get thousands of different sounds out of the system. Randomizing the combinations of layers can vastly increase the number of potential outcomes with only a few additional sounds.
By taking this approach we don’t need thousands of complete sounds in our game to be able to get thousands of different sounds out of the system
In the above example we have four sets of three possible sounds that can potentially be heard so this will give us 81different sound outcomes. If we added just one other ‘Crack’ element then we’d get 108 potential sounds.
We can increase this variation even more by adding some slight randomized delays and modulations of pitch and volume to each element, giving us.. erm… a very large number of possible outputs.
Figure 04 ‘Adding Delay and Modulation nodes’
Video: Explosion Delays and Modulation
Another thing we might want to do is to change the sound depending on what was being blown up, or the materials of nearby objects. Again by keeping these material components separate we can choose to layer them into the Sound Cue when appropriate by using a switch.
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Nature & Countryside Ambiences High Desert Ambiences 1: Miniature Play Track 10+ sounds included, 94 mins total $35In High Desert Ambiences 1: Miniature, get a mini-nature collection of desolately beautiful sounds of the American southwest as the sun brings to life the songs of desert wildlife. This collection features sounds that will make you fall in love with the desert with the trickling of distant rivers, smooth cricket chirps, echoey caws from ravens so close you can hear the details in their wings flaps, snorts from a cautious yet curious mule deer, choruses of birds at dawn, and much more. Most recordings are well over 4 minutes, with one half-hour night-time track that will make you want to take out your tent immediately. For a mini-nature collection of lush, peaceful nature sounds from the heart of the American Southwest, here’s High Desert Ambiences 1: Miniature.
2% for the Planet:
Two percent of the price of this library is donated to an environmental cause. I view it as an “artist royalty” for the planet!KEY FEATURES:• Sounds in this library are NOT included in High Desert Ambiences 2 and 3.
• This library contains a small selection of both “active” and “quiet” nature sounds from the high deserts of West Texas.
• If you need more “active” or “quiet” nature sounds check out: High Desert Ambiences 2: Active Nature or High Desert Ambiences 3: Quiet Nature.
• Featured on Designing Sound: “Our Favorite Sounds of 2016”
• Desert dawn and evening choruses
• Distant flowing river, songbirds, and insects
• Ravens soaring and squawking in a stark and resonant valley
• Lengthy night-time cricket chorus
• Partially audible and ultrasonic bat clicks up to 70kHz
• Ghostly distant animal calls
• Mule deer warning snorts and jumping movement
• Files ranging from 31 seconds to 30 minutes
• Rio Grande dawn chorus along the Texas/Mexico river border
• Locations: Near Marfa, Texas (in a mountain valley at an altitude of 6,000 ft) and Big Bend National Park along the Rio Grande River, Texas/Mexico border.
• These desert ambiences are extremely quiet, so I have included descriptive markers to signal interesting events in an otherwise featureless waveform. These markers can be read in programs such as RX, Reaper, and Soundminer. The markers are also included as .txt files in the sound files folder.
GEAR USED:
• Sennheiser MKH 50/30 MS pair
• Mid/Side recordings decoded to LR stereo
• Sound Devices 702
• Rycote AG MS Blimp
• ***Note – the name of this library was changed from High Desert Ambiences 1 to High Desert Ambiences 1: Miniature on 11/28/17. This was a name change only. No audio files were updated. -
Diffuse City is the unique urban ambience sound effects library you didn’t know you were missing. It captures the urban environment in its many forms – all based around the idea of diffuse ambience.
The Diffuse City library is purpose-built for the times an environment needs to be felt, but not be distracting.
Every track in Diffuse City was recorded with some sort of real life “filter” in mind; be it distance, elevation, time of day, physical material – Anything to provide the feeling of city life with out the specificity of many urban ambience libraries. No distracting close car pass-bys or people talking; only great natural ambience beds.
Diffuse City was recorded in big cities, suburbs, small towns, and rural settings over a span of two years. It was largely recorded over very late nights, when very few people we’re around. Occasionally, however, a car would pass by… a gun would go off… While these were edited out of the recordings, they are included as “extras” in the library. Perfect for adding some flavor to a moment that’s authentic to the environment it was recorded in.
Metadata – and markers:In addition to thorough metadata, each ambience in Diffuse City is embedded with markers highlighting unique moments that aren’t easily visible in a waveform. Software like Soundminer v4.5 and Reaper can display these markers, making it easy to identify distinct sonic moments in an otherwise nondescript waveform.
Markers in Reaper
There are 10 areas of focus in Diffuse City:Elevated City • Distant Highways • Underground City • Distant City • Under Bridges • City Rumble • Empty Parking Lots • Alleys • Industrial • Window Contacts
Hear examples and learn more about each one below
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By getting information from the game about what type of material is being blown up we can use this to control the switch, and therefore which material components of sound get added to the overall explosion sound.
Figure 05 ‘Explosion Materials’
In writing the book we made a conscious decision to term this kind of sound design, that is typical in the current practice of game audio, ‘Procedural Sound Design’ to differentiate it from ‘Procedural Audio’.
Andy Farnell, who coined or at least popularised the term ‘Procedural Audio’ sees it as any kind of system where the sound produced is the result of a process. He describes these ideas more fully here. So under that definition, as soon as you set up any kind of system of playback you could see it as being procedural audio.
However there has been a lot of important work and progress in terms of procedural audio for games in the last few years (see http://proceduralaudionow.com/), and this has encompassed a variety of techniques, but there has been some emphasis on the idea of these procedural systems being synthesis based, which ultimately is probably the most flexible solution for interactivity.
This is a specialist field which we don’t go into in any depth in the book since there are other great books out there on this (not least Andy’s book ‘Designing Sound’). In the book we attempt to describe the range of procedural approaches by saying, “This approach to sound design exists on a spectrum from procedural sound design, where we tend to be manipulating pre-existing assets, to procedural audio, a term more frequently used when systems of synthesis are used to generate the sounds themselves (with much in between that combine both approaches)”.
To throw another thing into the discussion, when discussing music systems we also use the term algorithmic, which again could be used to describe any kind of system of playback. Although we could just call this procedural music (as others such as Karen Collins have done), but we felt it worth preserving and highlighting ‘algorithmic’ given the long history of algorithmic techniques explored for music in the past, which a search for ‘procedural music’ is going to miss.
Video: Explosion Materials
Now we have all the elements of a sound as separate components we can also do other things with them, like spatialize them around the player in different ways. For the Game Audio Implementation book we built a simple system that will throw sounds around the player for people listening in 5.1 or 7.1. This could be used for elements of the explosion itself or for debris.
Figure 06 Diagram
Figure 07 Detail
This was done in Unreal’s Blueprint system – which looks a bit daunting at first but once you get the hang of it you can pretty much do anything you might dream up!
Figure 08 Blueprint
Video: Explosion Spatialized
By using a procedural approach to sound design we now have an explosion sound that’s different each time, is ‘aware’ of the different materials involved in the explosion, and spatializes around the player in stereo, 5.1 or 7.1.
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COMPATIBLE WITH ANY VIDEO SOFTWARE CRAFTED BY INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS INSTANT DIGITAL DOWNLOAD
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This bundle includes sound effects from different genres and subjects, so you’ll have everything you need right at your fingertips. Whether you’re working on a film, game, podcast, or music project, this bundle has got you covered.
With the Ultimate Sound FX Bundle, you can speed up your workflow and take your creativity to new heights. Imagine having access to a vast library of high-quality sound effects that perfectly match your project’s needs, all in one place. No more time wasted on sifting through endless sound effect libraries – this bundle has it all.
Don’t let sound effects be a pain point in your creative process any longer. Invest in the Ultimate Sound FX Bundle today and experience a smoother, more efficient workflow that unleashes your full creative potential.
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User Interface (UI) Sound Effects Interactive Play Track 3917 sounds included, 225 mins total $149.99
Introducing ‘INTERACTIVE’ by Rock The Speakerbox: Your ultimate organic Game UI Sound Design Toolkit. Elevate your UI sound design with a comprehensive sound effects library crafted to meet the exacting demands of modern game development. ‘INTERACTIVE’ is a massive toolset designed to empower you with a diverse range of components for creating immersive, dynamic and organic sounding UI.
Structured into three packages:
Construction Kit (3151 Sounds):
Unlock a world of possibilities with a massive set of generic components like clicks, whooshes, pops, and textures, alongside elaborate recordings for specific contextual needs such as coins, paper, medieval weapons and many more. Explore elemental textures like water, wood, stone, etc for added depth and a comprehensive arsenal of percussive and tonal instruments.Building Blocks (606 Sounds):
Streamline your workflow with pre-designed sounds of basic UI components, including impacts, clicks, whooshes, specific contextual actions and textures (clattering coins, rustling paper, igniting fires, alchemical reactions, growing vegetation) plus tonal and musical feedback for different moods (positive, negative, rewarding, warning, triumphal, holy)Designed (160 Sounds):
Choose from four sets of ready-to-use sounds tailored for the most common UI actions in different game styles (Casual, Dark, Medieval, Modern).Each of the four sets gives you following UI sounds:
• Confirm
• Select
• Notification
• Purchase
• Open Menu
• Back/Close Menu
• Positive Light
• Positive Heavy
• Negative Light
• Negative HeavyWith 699 sound files, each offering more than 5 variations in average, ‘INTERACTIVE’ delivers a total of over 3900 sounds – ensuring that you’ll never run out of options to bring your creative vision to life. This library gives you everything you need to captivate your audience and create immersive UI soundscapes that truly resonate.
Very interesting for procedural audio fans such as myself. Thanks Asbjoern.
Glad you enjoyed it, Marco!
Great article!!