Avatar Frontiers Of Pandora Game Audio Asbjoern Andersen


Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (developed by Massive Entertainment/distributed by Ubisoft) is an immersive open-world action-adventure game that lets you discover the world of the Avatar film franchise in a whole new way.

And in this, our biggest-ever game audio story, Audio Director Alex Riviere, Voice Lead Maria Bantin, Audio Lead Mattia Cellotto, Audio Lead David Osternacher, and Technical Sound Designer Franz Bierschwale discuss their approach to building reactive environments, creating bespoke systems for foley and breaths, emitter management, acoustics, and many more.

They also talk about field recording trips to capture unique sounds for the world, working with composer Pinar Toprak, designing weapons, recording dialogue in the Na'vi language, and much, much more!


Interview by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of Ubisoft; Massive Entertainment; Alex Riviere
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It’s so easy to wander off into the world of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – an immersive open-world action-adventure game developed by Massive Entertainment and distributed by Ubisoft. Players can escape into the beautiful, living environments of the game. It’s truly a living world where plants, animals, insects, and birds react to the player, the weather, and each other. It feels like everything is connected, and as a Na’vi character, you’re connected to it all. How did the sound team make such immersion possible?

Here, the game’s Audio Director Alex Riviere and key members of his sound team shed light on their process of bringing Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora to life through sound and music.

Besides crafting the audio and music directions for the game, Riviere was the guardian of how everything translates sonically in the game. He has been hands-on with music production/editing, as well as mixing the overall game, and mentoring/helping the team with features and quests designs for audio in general, audio tech development (sound emitters priorities, acoustic rendering, etc.), creative briefs, feedback, and more.

Voice Lead Maria Bantin managed and supervised the work of the voice design team, spanning between Massive and Ubisoft Toronto. Her main responsibility were building and maintaining the pipelines for all the different voice systems, as well as working with the talent recording production, from casting to mastering.

Audio Lead Mattia Cellotto managed and supervised the work from the Massive audio team day to day. He was also responsible for designing the player weapons and tools.

Technical Sound Designer Franz Bierschwale provided the tools needed to mix the game, both in quests and systemic/open world (such as the systemic snapshots, quests snapshots, audio ‘establishing shots,’ etc.). Franz was the go-to person for any scripting and more technical implementation in the game for the rest of the team. They also worked extensively with Sr. Sound Designer Henriette Jensen on the player foley system.

Audio Lead David Osternacher managed and supervised the work from the Massive audio team day to day, and was responsible for Pandora’s ‘weather’ and the ‘upper plains sound design.

They talk about recreating the sound of the Avatar films to fit a game experience, creating new sounds that fit the Avatar aesthetic, creating immersive and reactive environments full of unique flora and fauna, creating weather that’s reactive to the player and the in-game world, recording the dialogue in the Na’vi language by working with linguists and dialect coaches, taking field recording trips to captures new sounds of nature, designing weapons, building bespoke systems to tackle their creative and technical challenges, working with composer Pinar Toprak to compose new themes that stayed true to the Avatar IP, making a clean mix, and so much more!




Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – Official World Premiere Trailer | Ubisoft Forward


Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – Official World Premiere Trailer| Ubisoft Forward

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is an open-world action-adventure game based on the Avatar film series. Are there specific sounds from the film you had to re-create for the game? You were able to consult with the film sound team as to what went into franchise-specific sounds?

Alex Riviere (AR): There are a lot of sounds that we had to re-create from the movies, things like the sounds of wildlife such as the Viperwolves, the Banshee, the Thanator, etc., as well as flora like the Helicoradians, and more mechanical sounds like the AMP suits, the Scorpions, or Samsons flying units, weapons, etc. We had access to some of the Avatar sound library, but we still decided to recreate everything from scratch because, well, we were making a game! You know the drill.

As the game is canon to the Avatar films, we also have a lot of biomes, regions, fauna, flora, weapons, RDA units, Na’vi clans, etc., that are unique to the game. For all that, we worked collaboratively with Lightstorm Entertainment and Disney. Having their support and ensuring that we were always true to the Avatar creative framework was essential during the game development process. Working collaboratively like this is great to make something interesting creatively, allowing us to add nuances and different perspectives to things we create.

…to craft a soundscape that stays true to the ‘Avatar’ franchise while expanding on it creatively, there were different layers of collaboration.

All in all, to craft a soundscape that stays true to the Avatar franchise while expanding on it creatively, there were different layers of collaboration. When I joined the project, on sound design topics for example, we organized phone calls with Chris Boyes, supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer of both Avatar films. We discussed the sounds of Pandora, the wildlife, as well as sound for weapons, RDA vehicles, etc. He also shared with us some of his work process for Avatar in general. Those discussions were important to get a good feel for the aesthetic we should be aiming for sound design-wise.

During that time, I was also working on the audio vision and the music vision for the game, from an overarching design intention standpoint.

On dialogues, I am sure Maria can tell you more about it, but there were also a lot of specificities here, especially when it comes to Na’Vi pronunciation, Na’Vi language, etc.

Maria Bantin (MB): Na’vi is a whole language created for the Avatar universe by Paul Frommer, professor at USC. The whole team working with the narrative: writers, directors, casting specialist, and us (voice designers), were introduced to the foundation of the Na’vi language by Paul Frommer himself. Na’vi is a living language, with a community that speaks it and even writes poetry, so every Na’vi line in the game had to be cautiously written and pronounced by our voice talents. What you hear the most in the game is English, spoken with Na’vi dialect – just like in the movies. We were working with the creator of that dialect, Carla Meyer – a very accomplished Hollywood dialect coach – and two more dialect instructors, Eliza Simpson and Victoria Hanley.

Every recording session with Na’vi characters was attended by at least one of these specialist, and during cinematic shoots, we even had all three of them on the call. It was an amazing resource, and we learned a lot. They are absolute top pros.

Every recording session with Na’vi characters was attended by at least one of these specialists…

The coaches also attended our walla (crowd) recording sessions – the actors spoke English, using a “babble” script that consisted solely of words using phonemes that are permitted in Na’vi. So we could get the right sonics without having to spend hours training the talents on the language. Then Ubisoft Toronto Voice Designer Johnny Lucas did a lot of voice design magic and we have some Na’vi-sounding crowds, but they all speak English. When you first go to the Plains capital and witness the dance-fighters, that is probably the most prominent example, but they make the world alive almost everywhere you meet the Na’vi.

A very important baseline our coaches brought over from the movie works is that every talent should feel empowered: so the coaches will find ways to work with every single talent to get their best Na’vi dialect. We followed the same idea working with non-dialogue sounds, like the call you use for calling your Ikran or the battle cries – we had inspiration examples for the talent should they need them, but we always chose whatever sound felt most natural to them and their range.

Similar to the music having its specific touches, we wanted to go for a broad spectrum of voices, both for RDA and Na’vi characters. When it comes to casting, which Senior Voice Designer Adam Ritchie put a lot of effort into, we pushed for as much diversity as was available – even flying some First Nations talents from remote parts of Canada (you really do not want to forget one line of dialogue when you do that!). The cast age spans from 5 years old to over 70, and for the RDA soldiers, we based the casting on the forecast for the ethnic diversity on Earth as far into the future as science currently goes. That was the idea of Annie Reid, our narrative director, and we found some incredible talents by steering off the beaten track.

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AvatarFoP_sound-02

From left to right:
Maria Bantin, Alex Riviere, David Osternacher, Mattia Cellotto, and Franz Bierschwale

What were some things you did sound-wise to make the game feel like an extension of the film franchise?

AR: There is a lot to this question. While we wanted to stay true to the original film sounds, we also wanted to expand on them. Of course, we needed a lot of variations of intensities, perspectives, distances, etc. that would not be needed in linear media.

In a first-person game, you can get close, observe, listen, turn around, and interact with pretty much everything in the game. When it comes to being canon to the movies, you have a lot of environments, characters, clans, objects, wildlife, and flora that you haven’t seen (and associate with sounds) in the movies. So those had to be created from scratch, and in this case, instead of working from references coming from the movies and expanding on them, we were the ones providing sonic style-guides to Lightstorm and Disney with demos, design intentions, and real-world examples, to ensure we were always creating things that felt like they belonged to the Avatar universe.

AvatarFoP_sound-13

On the topic of expanding based on an original sound reference or vision, in our game, you have things like enemies’ archetypes. For example, while the sounds of an AMP-suit are well-established in the movies, we wanted to make sure you could differentiate the different types of AMP-suits in the game, for gameplay readability through sounds.

This process started with a field recording trip, where sound designers Mattia Cellotto, Julien Loock, and Martin Weissberg went recording all sort of sounds made by industrial robots at the FANUC showroom in Malmo (Sweden). Then sound designers Julien Loock, Henriette Jensen, and Franz Bierschwale did a fair amount of work to add the necessary twist to their footsteps, rattles, hydro movement sounds, etc. so that players could play by sound as much as possible.

The voice team, through casting, recording, and processing, also did a huge amount of work on that aspect for NPCs, to give them a specific ‘character.’

AvatarFoP_sound-18

Sound Designers Julien Loock and Mattia Cellotto recording robotic arms to collect audio materials to design Avatar’s AMP suits

MB: Indeed, working with AMP-suits voices was super interesting! The creative process of voice processing for RDA characters, both mask-wearing soldiers and the AMP-suits, started with recreating the movie sound as closely as possible. Then we had to differentiate between them, just like the other sounds: for instance, the foot soldiers have their own breathing system, whilst AMP-suits don’t have audible breaths, so they feel more dehumanized.

The AMP-suits have different processing flavors depending on their type. Linda Sjöquist, Ubisoft Stockholm Voice Designer, really did work tirelessly on iterating on these.

6 Sound Facts about Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora:

 

Q: Who led the game sound team on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora?
A: The game sound team on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was led by Audio Director Alex Riviere, who worked closely with Voice Lead Maria Bantin, Audio Lead Mattia Cellotto, Audio Lead David Osternacher, and Technical Sound Designer Franz Bierschwale. The game’s sound was a collaborative endeavor involving talent from Massive Entertainment, Ubisoft, Lightstorm Entertainment and Disney, independent sound designers and recordists, and external partners like Formosa Interactive, Formosa UK, Pole Position Production, SourceSound, Wild Ambience, Molinare, and more.

Q: Who composed the music for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora?
A: The composer for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was Pinar Toprak. She won the 2024 IFMCA Award for ‘Best Original Score for a Video Game or Interactive Media’ for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Toprak has previously composed music for video games like Fortnite and Fortnite Battle Royale.

Q: What was one important sound element that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora used from the film?
A: The Na’vi language! Voice Lead Maria Bantin worked with Paul Frommer, a professor at USC who created the Na’vi language for the films. Carla Meyer – a Hollywood dialect coach who created the Na’vi dialect for spoken English – and two more dialect instructors, Eliza Simpson and Victoria Hanley, were also key members of the narrative team, as was Ubisoft Toronto Voice Designer Johnny Lucas, who did a lot of voice design for the crowds, and Senior Voice Designer Adam Ritchie, who handled casting.

Q: Who handled the foley on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora?
A: Player foley sounds on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora were handled by Formosa Interactive, supervised by Alan Rankin. 15,000 individual foley sounds were recorded just for the player’s footsteps and base movements. Additionally, Audio Director Alex Riviere and his team spent a year recording foley at Massive Entertainment, sometimes recording outdoors in Sweden to ‘worldized’ the source as much as possible.

Q: What went into the sound of the Na’vi longbow for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora?
A: Audio Lead Mattia Cellotto handled the sound recording and design for the Na’vi longbow. He recorded a professional archer using a multi-microphone setup that included contact and ultrasonic microphones. The archery recordings were supplemented with in-house foley recordings to tie the draw action to the shooting sounds. To inject a bit of fantasy and playfulness in our bow, less literal elements were added for the arrow’s airborne sounds, including tonal elements derived from slowed-down recordings of wind instruments swung around a static microphone.

Q: What’s the most surprising story behind the sound of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora?
A: To create the fully immersive and interactive world of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the sound team needed many new tools for the proprietary Snowdrop Engine. This included the creation of their Gameplay Driven Mix States system. Information from the player and their surroundings, such as player location, speed, NPC awareness and distance to player, and many other factors, was used to build a system of mix states that allow the team to mix for different situations, bringing different sounds into focus for exploration, combat, flying, etc. This system gave the sound designers the tools to craft a gameplay-aware mix.
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…the foot soldiers have their own breathing system, whilst AMP-suits don’t have audible breaths, so they feel more dehumanized.

Apart from different processing, we discussed with the game designers what kind of characteristics each of the AMP-suits archetypes should have and we based our casting, and then voice direction, on these ideas. That process was unusual in a sense, as we started the discussion when recording a few temp voices for one of the milestone builds. One of our temp talents went all out when recording a Pyro-CQC AMP-suit, and we loved it so we decided they should be all “unhinged” whilst the Grenadiers are way more “clinical.”

On the RDA foot soldiers mask breathing topic, the system was built by Franz Bierschwale alongside the foley, as the breaths follow the soldiers’ walking pace. The interesting thing is that we decided not to give the same masked breaths to the Resistance fighters. The logic is all there but that characteristic, almost Vader-like mask-breathing that worked great for stealthing around RDA bases did not quite add to the experience of meeting our friendly Resistance characters.

AvatarFoP_sound-03

From left to right: Maria Bantin, Alex Riviere

AR: Adding mask breathing to Resistance characters that you primarily meet in friendly locations would increase the noise-floor of those places, where you usually have loads of narrative dialogues, crafting, or cooking activities, etc. Having those mask breathing sounds only on RDA enemy foot soldiers helps with readability in gameplay (while Resistance and RDA foley, like footsteps, can sound quite similar, masks breathing are only on enemies), and helps to showcase that those enemies don’t ‘belong’ to Pandora. They are the aliens and invaders of this moon. It was also actually one of the pillars of our audio vision: to make the game accessible at first glance (i.e., you hear an AMP suit: you recognize the AMP suit sounds or you hear a mask breathing, and you know it’s a foot soldier enemy), but also with depth over-time through replay-ability (i.e., you can analyze what type of AMP suit it is by listening to the sounds if you’ve played the game enough).

In the busy, lush, and vibrant environment of Pandora, it was key for us to avoid sensory overload and help make the game readable and accessible as much as possible.

In the busy, lush, and vibrant environment of Pandora, it was key for us to avoid sensory overload and help make the game readable and accessible as much as possible. It’s an essential but hidden aspect of game audio that makes a game experience like the one in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora more enjoyable, in my opinion.

On the topic of expanding from an original vision and soundscape reference, there are also plenty of other examples and considerations. Take the player character’s Na’vi weapons as an example, like the Na’vi longbow. Aesthetically, you probably want to stay true to the movies, but because we are a game, and because of the first-person perspective (and the fact that you play as a Na’vi in the game), shooting a bow (a stealthy weapon) is not just about the sound made by the object when performing the action of shooting. It’s also about the feedback you provide to the player, the ‘feel’ of the bow, the ‘perceived’ kinetic feedback, etc.

Sounds provide a lot of information about an object’s attributes: the size, the power, the weight, etc., so we iterated (a lot!) on the Na’vi bows to make them feel more powerful than human weapons (like an assault rifle or a shotgun), but also more rewarding and visceral, to unconsciously encourage the players to use their Na’vi weapons more than human weapons.

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AvatarFoP_sound-05

Pinar Toprak is the lead composer for the game. How did you end up working together, and what was your direction for the music of the game?

AR: Music-wise, we wanted to stay true (and pay tribute) to James Horner’s work on the first film, while also coming up with our main themes for our game that really felt cannon. The complexity was to compose themes that were unique but would make you feel instantly that you were in the Avatar universe. Our goal was to maintain consistency with the composition methods to build on the emotional attachment that fans have with the Avatar franchise. And Pinar Toprak did a fantastic job on this!

When it comes to the instrumentation, we strived to stay true to the instruments used in the first Avatar movie for our Kinglor Forest (our Rainforest environment). However, we also aimed to expand on this by adding twists for the other clans and regions unique to our game. This approach allows us to best serve the richness of our world and story. While incorporating a lot of orchestral elements, we aimed to make it feel somewhat unconventional, integrating other instruments not traditionally used orchestrally. The objective was to create a soundtrack that sounds epic and Hollywood, moving away from classic Hollywood western symphonic scores.

While incorporating a lot of orchestral elements, we aimed to make it feel somewhat unconventional, integrating other instruments not traditionally used orchestrally.

We decided early on to use Bulgarian choirs to infuse the soundtrack with a ‘Na’vi’ sound, giving a unique character to the score. Solo vocals were incorporated to add flavors and drama to the score, drawing inspiration from various styles worldwide, including Asian, Scandinavian, Native American, etc.

The instruments for clans/regions were developed in close collaboration with our narrative and lore team to ensure we could highlight the cultural heritage of each clan and region.

The last piece to initiate the collaboration with Lightstorm Entertainment was the creation of music demos. About four years ago, we composed our own vision of Avatar‘s music with our internal composer Ola Strandh. Once everybody was happy with where we were going, it was time to find a composer to translate that vision into hours of interactive music for the game!

…Pinar is brilliant at writing memorable themes and can elevate any emotional scene with tremendous grace…

To find or select a composer on a project, I always use the same methodology: I do a blind test. I like to select composers for projects without being influenced by their names or credits. So I reached out to our music supervisor Simon Landry, and explained the vision to him. We listened to those music references, and then Simon provided demos from different composers without giving me their names. All the demos I had selected came from the same composer: Pinar Toprak.

Considering the high cinematic ambitions we had for the game music, Pinar was the perfect choice. She has great composing and producing skills and is eager to explore innovative ideas regarding interactive solutions. She is very comfortable with the music style of the first film and also added her own style to it. Finally, Pinar is brilliant at writing memorable themes and can elevate any emotional scene with tremendous grace, while also having a great sense for action-adventure music. Creatively and personality-wise, it was a perfect match, and we had a blast working together with the music team of the game!

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Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora - Behind The Music


Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – Behind The Music

Can you tell us more about how you expanded on the iconic and complex music of Avatar for the needs of the game?

AR: First, we decided on a thematic approach. Each clan or faction in our game, such as the Arana’he clan (Kinglor Forest), the Zeswa clan (Upper Plains), the Kametire clan (Cloudest Forest), the RDA (antagonists), and the player’s clan, the Sarentu, would have its own theme. This approach provides building blocks for our narrative campaign and aids in creating an emotional attachment with our characters and story beats.

These cues blend a linear approach (to trigger an emotional reaction) and a systemic approach (for interactivity and contextuality on top of emotional engagement).

We then worked on defining our ‘music cues,’ deciding when to play music in the game, for what purpose, and when not to play music. These cues blend a linear approach (to trigger an emotional reaction) and a systemic approach (for interactivity and contextuality on top of emotional engagement). For me, in this game, defining when you cue the music, and creating contrasts with moments where music doesn’t play, was often as important (if not more) than the dynamic music systems making the music evolve based on what’s happening in the game, moment-to-moment. That isn’t true for all games, but that’s what we wanted from an audio direction standpoint for this one.

Then you have the ‘live sound’ aspect of it. We didn’t want to compromise on the added value of live production, to add nuances and emotional depth to the soundtrack. Also, you can’t get the real Avatar sound signature with just library samples! Such a visually stunning game deserves the most sumptuous arrangements. All our music has been recorded, produced, mixed, etc.

I think we ended up working with more than 200 musicians collaborating on the project all over the world! The integration of musical elements from different cultures and different time periods is truly what makes the Avatar film score such a unique work of art, and we wanted to stay true to this artistic approach.

We recorded 2 hours of music, 50 strings and 10 brass, over 6 days. It was an extraordinary experience.

The main narrative material was recorded in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. We recorded 2 hours of music, 50 strings and 10 brass, over 6 days. It was an extraordinary experience. The acoustics and the warmth of the room really helped to bring out the richness of the sound, creating just the right setting.

After working remotely with Pinar and the team for so long, hearing the music materialize with the live musicians during the Glasgow recording was definitely a highlight of my career.

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    Recorded with the acclaimed Schoeps 3d ORTF system, it has a total of 8 discreet channels, 4 on the lower plane arranged in 2 pair of ORTF similar to a IRT-Cross, and doubled with a higher plane of 4 more microphones. The channel layout of the sound recorded and delivered is as this: L R Ls Rs hL hR hLs hRs (whereas h stand for high). Learn more about this configuration here: https://schoeps.de/en/products/surround-3d/ortf-3d/ortf-3d-outdoor-set.html

    Every file is embedded with UCS-compliant metadata, allowing for intuitive searching and streamlined integration into your workflow. The metadata includes detailed descriptors, location names, and environmental characteristics, making it easy to find the perfect ambience for any scene.

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  • All files are recorded 32bit, 192 kHz, with RØDE NTG1, Line Audio Omni1 and FEL Clippy XLR EM272 microphones, Sound Devices MixPre-6 II recorder. Library contains wav files of driving, interior and exterior foley, mechanical and electrical sounds. It is also available in UCS.

  • Electricity Sound Effects Massive Thunder Play Track 616 sounds included, 217 mins total $29.99

    MASSIVE THUNDER – 616 files of Thunder sound effects, at varying distances and intensities. From low and slow rolling distant rumbles to violently fast and bombastic direct cracking impacts. Massive Thunder comes in at over 3 hours and 37 minutes of short and long scenes of thunder and lightning for every occasion. Recorded during several storm seasons and dozens of independent thunderstorms, with indoors and outdoors perspectives. Massive Thunder’s filenames are in the Universal Category System format with additional Metadata baked-in.

    Don’t need a Massive amount of Thunder and Lightning sound effects? We offer ‘Mini’ sound effect libraries as companions for all of our ‘Massive’ sound effect libraries. All recordings are unique to each library with no overlap. Go Mini today, and upgrade to the corresponding Massive library later, when you need more of that particular sound effect.

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  • Car Sound Effects Jaguar XJ 2010 full size car Play Track 46 sounds included, 60 mins total $65

    All files are recorded 32bit, 192 kHz, with RØDE NTG1, Line Audio Omni1, FEL Clippy XLR EM272 and JrF C-Series Pro+ microphones, Sound Devices MixPre-6 II recorder. The library contains wav files of driving, interior and exterior foley, mechanical and electrical sounds. It is also available in UCS.

Need specific sound effects? Try a search below:


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Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora seems like a large project with quite an extensive scope. How did you deal with collaboration between internal and external teams?

AR: Building the sound design for this game has been a huge collaborative effort, between audio folks in different Ubisoft studios (we had audio people in Malmo, Stockholm, Shanghai, Dusseldorf, Singapore, Toronto, Montreal, and Berlin), but also with a lot of external partners, like SourceSound that were crafting the vocalization sounds for some of the wildlife, Formosa Interactive in the US working with us on the Player Foley sounds, Formosa UK working on NPC weapons sounds, Marc Anderson from Wild Ambience traveling the world to chase specific birds, insects, and miscellaneous fauna sounds for our biomes, Molinare in the UK helping out with cinematic sound design and mixing, or Pole Position in Stockholm supporting with flora sounds and early audio prototypes.

While I’ve spent quite a few years working with internal and external people on different time zones, I’m super happy and kind of amazed we pulled it off. It’s a challenge to keep aesthetic and technical consistency in game audio when you have so many people involved.

My focus at the beginning, working with so many different people, primarily was to ensure that the soundscape sounded cohesive and consistent.

My focus at the beginning, working with so many different people, primarily was to ensure that the soundscape sounded cohesive and consistent. At some point, when music production started to seriously ramp up, and external partners needed my help a bit more, it felt like too much. So while I was focusing on overseeing the overall style consistency, Mattia and Dave started helping a lot more with the day-to-day, acting as supervising sound designers with internal Ubisoft audio teams on top of helping them with planning and priorities.

I am saying ‘help a lot,’ but at some point, they just ended up running the show and owning this thing with internal teams within Ubisoft, so I could focus on music, collaborating with external sound partners, and start interactive mixing sessions.

It’s the same thing with Maria on dialogues. The dialogues scope for this game is quite extensive; we had recording sessions happening all the time for months, in different time zones, and sometimes simultaneously in multiple booths. Maria and the voice team did amazing work, absorbing that workload and keeping things under control.

Franz’s work has been incredible as well, streamlining implementation and knowledge-sharing across the different Ubisoft audio teams.

Looking back at it now, it feels like it was an essential pivotal moment for us, especially because music production became quite intense at that moment, and I had to focus much more on that aspect of our soundscape. Once music was in a good place and seeing the sound design teams rolling, I could primarily focus on mixing the game until shipping, and support the different music, voice, sound design, and tech teams when needed.

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From left to right: Mattia Cellotto, David Osternacher

Mattia Cellotto (MC): As you can probably understand from Alex’s answer, working on such a big project can be a little tricky when it comes to ensuring a unified vision for the sound of the game.

Luckily, at the time I joined, Alex already created strong audio pillars for the experience, which led to much easier conversations when developing a new feature or trying to onboard a new team member.

Dave and I tried to help by ensuring that new sounds going into the game fit the aesthetic chosen for any given feature. For entirely new areas of the game, we would almost always go back to Alex, to make sure we were not giving inconsistent feedback or steering one’s work the wrong way.

For simpler features or work that expanded on existing ones, Dave and I were trusted to know the answer to the question. We would often ask ourselves, “What would Alex do?!”

In order to keep things manageable for us and the sound designers, we revised review processes whenever necessary and established weekly syncs to review other Ubisoft studios’ content.

In order to keep things manageable for us and the sound designers, we revised review processes whenever necessary and established weekly syncs to review other Ubisoft studios’ content. In short, we tried to facilitate the review process as much as possible to ensure that everything that went in the game would be something we could build upon, to avoid the risk of having content in the game that could blur the vision and potentially become a precedent for steering further away from it.

Personally, I really loved this aspect of the job as it was the first time in my career that the critical listening focus had to be on whether a sound would service the player, the world, or the story, rather than whether it felt clean, satisfying or powerful. It helped me put things in a different perspective and allowed me to better understand feedback I’ve received in the past.

MB: For voice production, having a wide scope meant that, in order to manage it, the team had very defined areas of responsibility, and owned these. For instance, the cinematic part (which is basically the length and scope of a feature film within our game) was owned solely by Tatiana Gomez-Rey, Voice Designer from Ubisoft Toronto. She iterated working directly with Alex, which meant as a lead, I had to think very little about it. It was a true sanity saver.

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In Pandora, everything in the natural soundscape feels quite connected. What went into connecting the player to this world?

AR: Funny that you’re asking. David and I recently made a GDC talk about it! You should check it out if you can!

David Osternacher (DO): According to Alex’s vision and our overarching creative direction for the game, adapting the soundscape of Avatar to an interactive medium would mean that Pandora had to be the star of the show.

When we first discussed this in the run-up to me joining the project, I was incredibly excited. I felt that this could be an opportunity to take ambience sound design in a AAA game – something that is almost always trumped in priority by other things – and really push for a level of detail that we’re rarely afforded in this area.

…Jonas Jensen…is responsible for the initial designs and first iterations for many ambience features which make Pandora and the player always feel connected.

A huge amount of credit goes to Jonas Jensen (Senior Sound Designer on Avatar, now Lead Sound Designer at Ubisoft Stockholm), who built on our audio vision, and is responsible for the initial designs and first iterations for many ambience features which make Pandora and the player always feel connected.

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AR: That’s one of the cool things when you work on a franchise when the overall audio style is already established. That means you don’t have to spend months, sometimes years, to find your audio aesthetic for the different types or categories of sounds.

Of course, there are many iterations, and quite a learning curve to make wildlife sound and feel like they belong to the Avatar IP; but this time you’re saving on aesthetic or creative exploration you can invest in something else. In our case, we decided we wanted to invest this time in making groundbreaking technology that would serve our creative audio vision. That’s where the sonic exploration and iteration went mostly on that project from an audio standpoint, on many signature audio features of the game. It’s a AAA game after all; part of our duty as a AAA audio team is to explore and test things that have never been done before, to push the boundaries, and try to set new standards in the industry. If you don’t do that work, you have to come up with something extremely fresh and new aesthetically in my opinion.

DO: The starting point for this was to make (almost) every sound in the environment 3D-positional, rather than using 2D looping pads. In a very basic sense, this creates a subtle feel of connection.

AR: Exactly! Having ambient sound emitters all positional was a crucial way to build on that ‘logical,’ ‘believable’ approach we were aiming for. It’s an essential way to create a strong sense of escapism and to build toward creating a sense of presence in our game through sounds.

DO: Yes, because the objects around the player stay in their positions when they walk through the world, as opposed to the whole ambience loop moving with them. It also enables us to build a sense of depth in the environment, by triggering specific sounds at different distances from the player. For example, the bird calls or rustling leaves associated with a tree in the world will be switched out, depending on how far away the player is. At scale, with hundreds of audio-enabled trees everywhere, this simple approach contributes to the feeling of depth we aim for, as well as a general sense of scale, connection, and believability.

…we tried to find as many ways as we possibly could in which the world could react to ‘itself,’ to make it feel logical and interconnected.

At a more specific level, we tried to find as many ways as we possibly could in which the world could react to ‘itself,’ to make it feel logical and interconnected. This was often a collaborative process with other teams. For example, we share ‘wind gust’ data with the Tech Art team, so that plants swaying in the wind have the same response visually and sonically. As we ramp up our weather sounds with increasing rainfall, we lower the amount of audible fauna proportionally to suggest that animals are finding shelter and being quiet in increasingly rainy conditions.

AR: That’s an important point that David is mentioning here actually. To make the soundscape feel connected between the different elements of the soundscape, you need to connect it with what you see and what happens visually moment-to-moment, as well as gameplay as much as you can.

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DO: Yes, so for example, animals also go quiet and enter a ‘suspicious’ state when they hear loud sounds which are alien to the world of Pandora, such as human-made machinery. These kinds of machines can then pollute the environment, which in turn prompts us to switch out vast amounts of sounds, such as wind in trees that have lost their leaves, footsteps on muddy soil, ground vegetation that is now dry and brittle, and, of course, all those positional birds, which are now sickly and croaky.

On top of making Pandora feel alive and believable within itself, it was very important to us to create a direct sense of connection between the player and the world. One of the things that Alex envisioned for the players was for them to feel a sense of belonging, and we tried to build that with many moment-to-moment interactions, big and small.

To achieve the moment-to-moment responsiveness we wanted, the system required something like 50 surface materials recorded beautifully by our partners at Formosa Interactive…

It all starts with the simple act of walking around, not so simple in our case, with a hugely complex player foley system designed by Senior Sound Designer Henriette Jenssen. To achieve the moment-to-moment responsiveness we wanted, the system required something like 50 surface materials recorded beautifully by our partners at Formosa Interactive, supervised by the legendary Alan Rankin. Various kinds of debris, resonances for heavy steps or landings, and in addition to that, thousands of custom recorded assets for convincingly moving through dense vegetation in the highly detailed jungle environments was a collaboration between Sound Designer Jacob Buch Johannsen, Senior Technical Sound Designer Franz Bierschwale, and the foley team at Ubisoft Studio Alice in Montreal.

We also tried to build on top of our existing systems where we could. The player can use human weapons, which will cause nearby fauna to shriek in a panic, then enter the suspicious state, and slowly return over time – first at the more distant layers of depth (the idea being that those far away animals will feel safe again more quickly).

When firing human weapons near large metal objects, there is an audible resonance. Insects will change their noise patterns as the player approaches or go silent as they may sense a threat in proximity. Certain birds can respond to voice callouts by the player character, and some of the more exotic species in the Kinglor Forest region will even mimic the various calls the player makes in a convincing way – a very fun feature developed by Jonas, with the help of a custom-built signal matching tool by Kilohearts.

Many of these concepts emerged as we worked on Avatar’s signature rainforest region, owned by Senior Sound Designer Simon Stevnhoved. Simon took over many Jonas’s amazing designs and carried them through to shipping, as well as contributing lots of new ideas towards making the player feel connected to Pandora.

The theme of connection is one that kept coming back at every level, including the development of player abilities and weapons.

MC: The theme of connection is one that kept coming back at every level, including the development of player abilities and weapons. Keeping in mind what David stated about Pandora being the star of the show, we thought of several ways in which the environment could react to a player’s actions, including the aforementioned fauna reactions to firearms.

A similar philosophy was applied to the simple act of wielding a weapon, as environmental precipitations result in individual raindrop sounds playing on the tool or weapon the player is holding, which change based on their specific materials. Another example of this is represented in the firearm’s environmental reflections, which not only change based on the biome the player finds themselves in but are also altered as the player reaches higher altitude areas with their Ikran.

Finally, another example where we tried to enhance the player’s connection to the world was through the audio direction that was taken from the ‘Na’ Vi Senses’ ability.

As this ability is close to what would generally be described as an investigative mode, it would have been easy to satisfy gameplay requirements by dimming ambient audio and enhancing gameplay-relevant sounds. The idea behind the ability, however, is one of deeper connection to the world, so we found ourselves enhancing our ambient beds slightly (fauna in particular) with harmonizers and reverbs, morphing the grounded soundscape into a more ethereal choir which still left plenty of space for the enhanced gameplay relevant cues.

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Can you talk about building the ambiences – winds, plants, animals that went into the backgrounds? Did you record custom sounds? Any helpful libraries?

DO: Going into so much detail with ambiences, in an open world as big as this one, required a massive amount of content. The game’s three regions break down into 24 unique biomes, with full day-night and weather cycles. Each biome needed a lot of care to create a unique identity and atmosphere, whilst all of them needed to fit together in the bigger picture.

AR: The fact that almost all our sounds are 3D-positioned single entities rather than looping beds meant that we had very specific needs for our recordings. One of the guidelines that we set early on in the project was that we wanted to limit the use of library sounds to the minimum. The ambiences of Pandora being our main character in the soundscape, we wanted to build everything with fresh and exclusive content.

All sounds being triggered from single emitters, there is so much layering and processing you could do before it starts to sound ‘fake.’

All sounds being triggered from single emitters, there is so much layering and processing you could do before it starts to sound ‘fake.’ So we commissioned Marc Anderson from Wild Ambience to travel the world for us and record thousands of individual sounds of fauna species and locations reference ambiences for us to build upon. Marc went to West Papua, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, etc. for us to craft the ambient soundscape of our Kinglor Forest.

Then, while we were in production, traveling was prohibited for a while (because…you know why), and we started to re-focus more on studio recording with flora movements, etc. for our Open Plains region.

Then the travel ban ended up lasting longer than originally expected, and that’s where we decided to repurpose our approach a bit in crafting the biomes of the different regions. Instead of trying to make them sound all completely different, we decided to focus on defining the sounds that would differentiate them a bit, to give them a twist in character, while having the biomes within a specific region still sound somewhat consistent.

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Simon Stevnhoven during Sweden recording trip.

DO: When the travel ban was lifted, we also recorded our own source for the Clouded Forest region. Owned by Senior Sound Designer Malin Arvidsson, the region is partly based on the temperate forests of the US Pacific Northwest and Northern Europe, which was a good fit for our Sweden-based team. Malin planned and led an epic two-week, 2,500-mile recording trip around the country, joined by Simon Stevnhoved and myself. We returned with about a Terabyte of recordings of about 6,000 bird calls, bats, frogs, insects, one friendly squirrel, and tons of wood creaks, rivers, lakes, and waterfalls.

We returned with about a Terabyte of recordings of about 6,000 bird calls, bats, frogs, insects, one friendly squirrel, and tons of wood creaks, rivers, lakes, and waterfalls.

Aside from the backgrounds, the intense visual detail in our game world also made it necessary for us to produce a ludicrous amount of vegetation sounds. It was important to create a believable connection between the sound and visuals, like when smaller plants are visibly interacting with the player, NPCs, or the wind at runtime. We implemented a boatload of sounds to reach the fidelity that was needed, with an estimated 11,000 unique recordings provided by Ubisoft Studio Alice in Montreal.

AR: Oh yeah, I remember tweaking, processing, and implementing the vegetation foley sounds in the Rainforest at some point to support the team with sound design tasks as our backlog was over the roof.

Only focusing on the plants that the player or NPC can pass through and interact with, I implemented something like 9,000 different sounds in multiple random containers of plants physics, times 2 for the different first-person and third-person perspectives. That was quite epic! Gladly, one of our sound designers, Jacob Buch Johannsen, took over from me after that and took care of maintaining the Kinglor Forest vegetation sounds, as well as implementing and designing it for both the Open Plains and the Clouded Forest.

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Can you talk about creating sound emitters and setting priorities in the mix, acoustic rendering, and spatialization to make this world feel so immersive?

DO: Trying to play this many spatialized sounds is a challenge, even on new-gen platforms. Together with the Snowdrop Audio Tech Team, we developed an emitter management system to cope with the demands of a large open world, essentially allowing us to limit our sound emitters before they reach Wwise and prioritize them based on various runtime conditions like proximity, or threat level for enemy NPCs.

AR: That Emitter Management tool we developed is pretty cool because it’s also connected to our mixing system. So we have, for example, some main ‘mix snapshots’ that are systemic in the game. Think of things like ‘Exploration,’ ‘PreCombat,’ ‘Combat,’ ‘PostCombat,’ etc. Those snapshots allow us in Snowdrop to redistribute the emitters’ budget on different types or categories of sounds. In Wwise, those snapshots are translated to States that help us mix the game completely differently on the bus level so we can have different focal points and ‘main sound categories’ per snapshot.

DO: On the ambiences side of things, because it is quite complex, we are running on a separate system alongside the Emitter Manager, which we call Spatial Seeds. Originally created by Markus Dimmdal at Ubisoft Stockholm, those Spatial Seeds allow us to populate the world with thousands of ‘Seeds,’ which are basically very lightweight containers doing almost nothing, but can turn into fully functional sound emitters under the right conditions. We track simple runtime conditions like proximity for activating them, so that every little plant in the jungle could potentially have the sound of raindrops on it, but only the 5 plants closest to the player will have an active emitter with audible rain playing. This is crucial for optimization and creating the illusion of having thousands of sounds playing in the world.

We track simple runtime conditions like proximity for activating them, so that every little plant in the jungle could potentially have the sound of raindrops on it…

But it also allows for many creative uses, to increase immersion. One example, sticking with rain: as weather conditions get more intense, we gradually reduce our budgets for fauna in the world, the idea being that animals seek shelter and go quiet. This kind of thing helps the world feel more logically connected and believable, and it also helps us clean up the mix by emphasizing what’s important at any given moment.

And of course, all this converges in Snowdrop’s amazing ray-traced acoustics system, which was built to handle the considerably complex geometry of Pandora’s rainforest environment. But we won’t give away much about that just yet, as Simon Stevnhoved and Kasparas Eidukonis (Senior Audio Programmer) will introduce it in their talk at Develop Brighton in July. Make sure you check it out if you’re attending the conference!

…a vast majority of our world sounds are 3D positioned with an emitter-based approach, that means that at source (before the signal reaches our busses) all the data we have is object-based.

AR: On the spatialization topic, considering a vast majority of our world sounds are 3D positioned with an emitter-based approach, that means that at source (before the signal reaches our busses) all the data we have is object-based. We could leverage both Tempest PS5 technology, and Atmos technology. We did end up ‘down-mixing’ some of our ambience layers in Wwise busses, but primarily because our game ambiences sounds too realistic and too bright or crisp. We did some playtest, and some people complained that it was too much to take.

So for us to be able to create contrasts in the mix, from a spatialization standpoint (but we also did it through other means like frequency sculpting, dry/wet signal balancing, etc.), we decided to reduce a little bit the level of accuracy of our ambiences, so we could keep that for gameplay related type of sounds. At the end of the day, you’re making a game not a full-on simulation, and readability is king in the world of game audio mixing. Always.

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What was the most challenging location to design? (Or what was your favorite location to design?) What were some of your challenges (opportunities) and how did you tackle them?

DO: Our first goal was to make the signature rainforest experience shine since it’s what Avatar fans know and love. But for me, the biggest curve ball came with the Upper Plains region, because it’s so drastically different from any of the other, forest-based environments in the game. Dealing with wide open plains and windswept fields forced us to completely rethink lots of things. Many of our smoke-and-mirrors techniques for creating the illusion of depth and life in a dense forest didn’t work anymore. There was nowhere to hide our sounds, so if we wanted to keep our grounded and logical approach, we needed to focus on wind as our central component. Birds are used much more sparingly, and while there is still a strong presence of ‘invisible’ insects in tall grass, the most important sound is the wind sweeping through the vegetation.

…the same data drives gusts of wind for both the visual swaying of plants and leaves, as well as the sounds.

We still managed to leverage much of our existing tech, and evolve our features, for example, by populating every patch of grass with Spatial Seeds, for localized wind layers. We collaborated with the Tech Art team, so that the same data drives gusts of wind for both the visual swaying of plants and leaves, as well as the sounds. This visual connection, combined with our fully-positional approach, enabled us to provide the player with a strong sense of feeling the waves of wind moving through the world around them.

We wanted to create depth in a similar way to the forest areas, which meant we had lots of wind layers for different types of objects, at different distances, playing at the same time, and blending into each other as you move through the world.

…Pole Position Production in Sweden…built a variety of crazy contraptions to generate different wind sounds.

Designing the content for this was a big challenge, and needed another large batch of recordings, this time largely from Pole Position Production in Sweden, who built a variety of crazy contraptions to generate different wind sounds.

Wind is generally perceived as a broadband, noisy sound, and playing 25 layers of broadband noise on top of each other didn’t seem like a good plan. So, we really needed to deconstruct our idea of a windy soundscape. Almost no individual layer could be described as noise-based; they’re all focused on textures from movements and friction (or sometimes resonances) of the objects that are causing it. Combining all of that into one coherent sensation of wind took a lot of careful layering and frequency sculpting, both during the asset creation phase, and when mixing in the game.

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One thing that really helped with glueing all these layers together was continuing our drive towards everything on Pandora being connected. In practice, especially for longer sounds like these, that meant finding as many parameters as possible that could be shared across the layers. To varying degrees, all the layers’ volume, or filtering and pitch can be affected by the current wind intensity at their position. This helps create the ‘waves of wind’ effect.

Then there’s the player’s movement speed, elevation, number of trees nearby, and many more things. This eventually adds up and goes a long way towards making all these dissonant parts feel like one cohesive whole.

Viewing some of our existing ideas through a new lense provided us with a good start. Since the Upper Plains are so heavily wind-themed, we felt that we needed to push this further still. Jonas and Kasparas developed the first iteration of our Wind Edge Simulation tech, and I had a fun time when I got to inherit the feature from Jonas, and work on the final version with Kasparas.

The system uses raytracing to detect edges around the player, and places sound emitters on the closest ones.

The system uses raytracing to detect edges around the player, and places sound emitters on the closest ones. Each emitter then blends seamlessly between several wind sounds, depending on the object’s material, but also on how ‘sheltered’ the emitter is in relation to the player’s position and the wind direction. Basically, we blend from blustery (i.e., the wind is hitting the object from the other side, and it is sheltering the player from the wind) to rushing or wispy (i.e., the wind is hitting the object closer to the side where the player is standing). This is a subtle thing in the mix, but it turned out to be one of the most effective ways we have to emphasize the player’s moment-to-moment connection with Pandora as it essentially responds to every single movement they make.

Still with all this, it felt there was one key part missing to really drive home the feeling of being in a high-wind environment without plastering the mix with loud-full spectrum sound and ruining the gameplay and narrative experience. Especially in a first-person perspective, the thing that really provides the feeling of heavy wind is in-ear buffeting, which is a feature that Mattia developed for the game.

MC: To elaborate on David’s point, the in-ear buffeting effect was something we really wanted for the Upper Plains to glue together the spatial ambient elements with the first person experience of this region.

…we employed a dummy head binaural microphone and experimented with blowing air towards it at different angles.

First, we wanted to start from a place that felt naturally relatable in terms of content, so we employed a dummy head binaural microphone and experimented with blowing air towards it at different angles. The tricky part in this process is to capture wind induced distortion that feels natural and connected to the human ear, rather than one which puts the focus on the equipment used to record. When implementing the sounds, having recorded content at a variety of angles meant we were able to tweak the source selection based on whether the player was facing the wind, or was hitting one of their ears perpendicularly or the back of their head.

We further tweaked the implementation to consider in-game wind speed, player altitude and speed, cliff edges, and many other factors which contributed to having an effect that organically oscillated in the soundscape.

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Another challenging aspect of creating the soundscape for the Upper Plains was found in its capital, as the nomad clan that lives there does so in symbiosis with huge elephant-like creatures called Zakru. The capital featured many of these creatures around which the clan-built tents set their living quarters.

…we focused on creating a large yet intimate-feeling snoring sound…

Bringing these fantastic creatures to life was tricky. We wanted to give them an imposing yet calm demeanor and needed to keep in mind that multiple creatures could coexist close to each other. To deliver on this, we focused on creating a large yet intimate-feeling snoring sound for which we coupled animal content from elephants and other large mammals with slowed down recordings of a variety of our audio team members snoring. We added several details timed around the breathing of each animal: as the creature inhaled, the surrounding tents would tense up, stretch, and creak, its stomach would rumble (as Zakru are supposed to be feeding while resting in this area) while upon exhaling the surrounding grass would rustle and tents would relax back to their original position. Each Zakru sounded different and breathed with a different rhythm to make walking around the capital a more natural listening experience. Finally, we added a last touch and acknowledged the player’s presence with a vocalization whenever a Zakru would open their eyes to look at our curious character getting closer to them.

Overall, I look back to this challenge with a great sense of satisfaction and happy to have collaborated with Jacob Buch Johannsen and Simon Stevnhoved on the feature.

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What went into the weapons sounds? How did you make the weapons fit the Avatar aesthetic? What were some overall keywords for the weapons’ designs?

MC: In the early phases of weapon audio design we realized that, to fully support the story and the experience we wanted to deliver, we would have had to approach NPC and player weapons quite differently. We wanted the enemy NPC (RDA, the antagonists) weapons to feel violent and destructive to underline their unwanted presence on Pandora.

For the weapon reflections, we opted for something quite hyper-realistic instead…

However, when it came to player firearms, we wanted a sense of implied power and adopted an opposite approach by removing as much of these explosive elements from the assets as possible, focusing instead on the mechanical and more round, thumping elements of the weapons, to implicitly make our character less disruptive to their environment. During this process, Alex and I tried to remove actual gunshots from our source as much as possible, to end up with something that felt more experiential and less realistic for the onset of the shots.

For the weapon reflections, we opted for something quite hyper-realistic instead, to reconnect the initial action to the surrounding environment and have the alien sound bounce back to us in interesting ways based on the unique biomes present on Pandora.

Moving from firearms to player Na’vi weapons, I recall having an initial conversation with Alex where he said something that remained with me throughout the development of the game: “Our Na’vi longbow should feel like Avatar’s lightsaber.”

AR: Indeed, the idea was to have Na’Vi signature weapon that stayed true to the original aesthetic of the movie somehow, while also providing that immediate satisfying and visceral feedback needed for a game medium. We wanted the Na’Vi weapons, while stealthy, to feel more powerful than firearm weapons. So we prototyped the Assault Rifle first, as it was something we kind of ‘knew’ how to design aesthetically from the beginning, but with a nice twist to it as mentioned by Mattia.

Then Mattia started the work on the Longbow. I think we’ve been through weeks or months of iteration with this one to nail-down the feeling, power, and satisfactory feedback we were after!

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MC: We started capturing source through various recording sessions, aiming to capture something larger than life by making use of contact and ultrasonic microphones on archery bows and capturing very close-up impact sounds thanks to the precision of professional archers.

We supplemented the archery recordings with in-house foley recordings to tie the draw action together with the shooting in the most seamless way possible.

Using a multi-microphone setup gave us a solid foundation for being able to implement Na’vi weapons’ audio in a way that could react to contexts that required a different mix, while the hyper-realistic recording approach enabled us to shift the bows into a deeper domain, more suited to what our 3-meter-tall character would be using. We supplemented the archery recordings with in-house foley recordings to tie the draw action together with the shooting in the most seamless way possible.

This initial effort got us a long way towards getting the sound we wanted, however, when thinking back to our initial ambition, we felt we were missing a memorable element of ‘wonder’ to break out of a completely hyper-realistic sound. To inject a bit of fantasy and playfulness in our bow, we started playing with less literal elements for the arrow’s airborne sounds, ultimately landing on a mixture of tonal elements derived from slowed down recordings of wind instruments swung around a static microphone.

Lastly, we gave the shooting sequence a resolve by implementing beefy surface hits and hit feedback sounds to add a satisfying end to the projectile’s flight.

To inject a bit of fantasy and playfulness in our bow, we started playing with less literal elements for the arrow’s airborne sounds…

This sums up the overall approach that got us the type of sound we were after. Then we went deeper by playing different content based on the amount of ‘draw’ of the weapon. We added bespoke foley elements on top of the character movement, created twanging sweeteners to arrows fired at high intensity towards surfaces such as wood, and recorded individual raindrop sounds as sweeteners for rain hitting the weapon the player is carrying.

Looking back to our weapon roster, I feel it was an honor to be able to go as deep and detailed as we did in our weapon design process. I hope players will find joy in hearing all the little nuances as weapon sounds are altered based on gameplay context, biomes, altitude and many more altering factors!

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AR: Once we had all those components together, we started to work on the pre-dubs for those weapons in first and third person.

In first-person, we wanted to break down every weapon’s action in layers as much as possible. The idea here was to have enough flexibility in the implementation, offering more fun opportunities for the mix, especially for Na’Vi weapons. If you take the player’s Longbow, for example, which is kind of the Na’Vi base bow weapon that you start with, we change the content and the mix for a lot of those layers depending if you’re exploring, hunting, in stealth, in combat, etc.

…I sometimes use parallel compression on the transient layers depending on the surrounding ‘noise,’ so that the player weapon would cut through in the mix.

The idea was to make the weapons sound extremely powerful and satisfactory in combat. We started by muting all the layers that you won’t hear in chaotic combat scenarios, switch the layers you can hear and that matter for the gameplay feedback to content that has more transients and are more ‘beefy,’ and then we play with the mix to tune all that.

For example, I sometimes use parallel compression on the transient layers depending on the surrounding ‘noise,’ so that the player weapon would cut through in the mix. We’re also using side-chaining a lot, triggered by some of the layers, usually the shorter and snappier ones, to make space in the mix without having a ‘pumping’ effect.

For firearms weapons, we took a similar approach. We switch to more impactful layers, to ones that have a gameplay or ‘feel’ aspect in combat, and we reduce or remove/mute entirely the layers that matter less in busy situations.

Funny fact, I ended up removing a lot of (or entirely, sometimes) the blast body sound of the firearms. It’s mostly a low-end thump, a transient layer, some mechanical layers, and the tails playing during combat (the tails being reduced in volume as well and side-chained by other weapons as well as yours). This ended up giving us the feedback, the feel, the weight, the sense of scale, and impact we were after in combat. Most people won’t notice it, because it comes gradually. You’ll be in stealth (or pre-combat) before combat, for example, so we never go from ‘exploration’ sounding weapons to ‘combat’ sounding weapons, which would be too much of a gap aesthetically. The weapons still keep their sonic ‘character’ though, so it all sounds natural to players.

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What can you tell us about the challenges and opportunities of building a game like this one in the first-person perspective?

AR: Well, first, you play as a Na’Vi! So we have to take into account that you are a 3-meter-tall character. You’re fast, agile, and physically capable. But with your size, you’re also kind of weighty. But not too much so your character would still feel agile!

That augmented first-person reality – making you feel in the skin of a Na’Vi – was one of our audio vision pillars. And one of the main challenges is that Na’Vi don’t wear a lot of clothes, or shoes, so a lot of the foley details and feedback need to come from elsewhere to provide the player with the right feel, and avoid any possible feeling of repetitiveness…

Franz Bierschwale (FB): Working on player foley in Avatar has been one of the best experiences I’ve had.

We wanted the player to feel like every movement was their own, everything they touch was right in front of them and we also wanted them to hear the power of the Na’vi in their movement.

Working together with Henriette Jenssen and Jacob Buch Johannsen, we set off with a clear goal: Immersion and Scale. In Avatar, you play from a first-person perspective so you can be fully immersed in Pandora. You are huge compared to a human and very agile, moving through jungles, bogs, cliffsides, grasslands… so our task was an ambitious one indeed! We wanted the player to feel like every movement was their own, everything they touch was right in front of them and we also wanted them to hear the power of the Na’vi in their movement. But we also needed to complement the details of the environment around them.

Our player foley was made in collaboration with Formosa Interactive in the US. In addition to nailing down what a 3-meter-tall barefoot step sounds like, we also had to nail down a list of 30+ materials, debris, and speed variations.

We ended up with a system that gave us steps for each material, but also changed sweeteners and debris sounds and density depending on how fast you are moving and what biome you are in. We’ve added tension sweeteners to specific props in the game that will make weakened logs or rusty containers react to you when you step or land on them. We modulate the level of wetness on the footsteps based on weather intensity and how long you’ve been out of the rain or water. There is a lot going on with our footsteps!

AR: When Franz says there is a lot…I think we recorded something like 15,000 individual foley sounds with Formosa Interactive, just for the player footsteps and base movements.

We ended up recording some more after that for a whole year in our foley room at Massive, and sometimes in the great Swedish outdoors environment, to have things ‘worldized’ at source as much as possible.

FB: Our water sounds were recorded in cold Swedish waters indeed (huge props to Henriette for that one) since recording them in a studio made them sound out of place and ‘roomy’ in-game. She even recorded stereo diving/emerging sounds to get that ‘bubbling through your ears’ effect.

Together with our 3Cs team, we were able to go as far as modulating our wading and turning sounds in water depending on how fast you are turning and if you’re turning up or down current.

Mattia worked on creating the in-ear wind effects, which not only add to the sense of speed when you’re moving quickly through the jungle, but add depth and detail since it listens and adapts to the in-game wind…

For our traversal mechanics, be it mantling, getting lifted by a vine, or thrown in the air, we wanted this experience to make you feel powerful. Mattia worked on creating the in-ear wind effects, which not only add to the sense of speed when you’re moving quickly through the jungle, but add depth and detail since it listens and adapts to the in-game wind and the direction it is hitting the player listener. For mantling, to truly drive the Na’vi sense of scale, we have several layers including materials, tension creaks depending on what you mantle on, and low-end and whoosh sweeteners to add a bit of cinematic embellishment.

We also had moments in the main campaign where we’ve added hand-placed sweeteners for stepping/landing, sliding under, or mantling over certain areas, especially in the more run-down RDA facilities, for example.

Then we have the smaller details. The rain drops hitting your equipped weapon, water dripping from your character for some time after getting back on land, the hand touches on walls, trees, and when sweeping plants out of the way, all have their own distinct sound assets. Jacob, together with our partners in Ubisoft Montreal, made sure every vegetation asset you can walk through has its own unique sound.

In a ‘cooperative’ game, we also had to decide what needed to be heard from a player perspective for their co-op partner (we wouldn’t have all the detailed cinematic sweeteners playing on 3P, for example), and finally make sure that all of these sounds have sounds appropriate to a third-person perspective, meaning processing a lot of these assets to have a bit less weight, fit the 3D positioning correctly, and also optimize these sounds to not sacrifice voice count in the first-person foley.

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What were some of your technical challenges for sound on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora? Can you talk about some of the tools you created to overcome these challenges?

FB: The world of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was quite an ambitious undertaking both in terms of scope and player agency. When tackling the soundscape, we always followed a clear goal of full immersion on whatever the player decides to do in any given moment. This meant creating tools that would help us change and focus the mix depending on the situation our players found themselves in.

…we always followed a clear goal of full immersion on whatever the player decides to do in any given moment.

The creation of our ‘Gameplay Driven Mix States’ system started as a collaboration between many key stakeholders. Together with Alex, David, and Mattia, we discussed different scenarios players could find themselves in and defined mix approaches for each of these. After iterating on the design, we ended up with key scenarios where we knew we’d want to change the focus of the mix at runtime.

With this overview, it came down to designing a tool that would take information from the player and their surroundings, such as player location, speed, NPC awareness, and distance to player, amongst many other factors, to build a system of mix states that would allow the team to mix for different situations, bringing different sounds into focus when you are exploring, in combat, and flying, but also in more specific situations as Stealth, Flying, and Combat – identifying between combat in the wild or combat in an enemy base, etc. We ended up with a system that gave our sound designers the tools to provide a gameplay-aware mix.

Once we had the open world taken care of, we were presented with a second challenge: a detail-driven campaign that had matched the highly cinematic signature of the Avatar films. So together with Alex, we set off to create tools to recreate a cinematic approach in our open world campaign.

This was driven by two key tools: Quest Beat States and Establishing Shots. Quest Beat States was our response for scene/mood setting. For every quest, we would play through and look at it as a linear experience and decide what we wanted to accentuate in every key moment of a quest.

Establishing Shots are a tool we use to set a mood over time or space.

Establishing Shots are a tool we use to set a mood over time or space. An example could be increasing tension over distance as a player approaches a certain key location in game, manipulating the overall mix together with more curated sound effects, to give a feeling of a cinematic tension riser.

And now it was up to us to see how we set up those tools. Maybe we wanted a state to exist whilst only in a specific space in the quest or we needed it to be active for a given amount of time after a character line. This is where the modularity of the Snowdrop Engine really came in handy. Since every quest could play in a slightly different way, flexibility was key when setting up these different states, and with the tools we had at our disposal – together with the support of our Audio Programmers Martin Löwgren, Kasparas Eidukonis and Hang Zhang – we managed to tackle everything from simple corridor progression beats to more complex narrative approaches like timed setups synced to precise quest moments to accentuate key moments in our story through sound.

We have many systems developed by the Narrative Tools team that govern what type of dialogue content can be played, and then there is the Voice Manager system.

MB: For the dialogue part, one of the biggest challenges was the same as what Franz described: maintaining immersion in an open-world game where a player can step off the quest path – and return to it – at any moment. We have many systems developed by the Narrative Tools team that govern what type of dialogue content can be played, and then there is the Voice Manager system. It is basically a scripting tool made by our audio coders, allowing the voice design team to govern which type of voice lines the player is allowed to hear at any time, depending on the situation.

Aik-Ming Chong, Voice Designer from Ubisoft Singapore, made a very complex, yet transparent system that saves the player from dialogue information overload. The Gameplay Driven Mix States system that Franz mentioned decides what type of content will be heard rather than some other. For instance, if in Combat state, we will prioritize Combat Barks over Friendly Barks, etc. Using the same mix states system also means that all the sonic content is cohesive.

Another important tool to cover the stitches between the story and the open-world mechanics is the Radio Interrupts and Resume system, developed by Ryan Maxwell, Voice Designer from Ubisoft Toronto. Ryan came up with a whole list of possible scenarios that Scott Jenkins, Narrative Tools Architect, then turned into code. That cross-team effort resulted in a game system that interrupts the radio calls if the gameplay situation would make it unrealistic. We had a lot of iteration, from tech to writing, to make it work as naturally as possible.

The voice design work was done closely alongside the foley development, so the experience of first-person traversal could be cohesive.

Lastly, a super important part was the player breathing system. Avatar is very much a parkour game and we wanted to have the voice of the player character really convey the feeling of being in a Na’vi body: tall, strong, agile, and connected with the world.

There are many triggers coming from gameplay, but how should we decide what should play if several triggers are true? What started with a pretty rudimentary Wwise logic setup for mutually exclusive events eventually turned into a Snowdrop engine module governing what is allowed to play on a character’s dialogue emitter at any time, with frame accuracy. Again, great work by the audio code team!

The voice design work was done closely alongside the foley development, so the experience of first-person traversal could be cohesive. We do have a lot of shared logic, but for some cases – for instance, damage received – we had to go for slightly different solutions for “exactly how hurt did I get this time,” because voice is specific, and for one thing, you must be able to take breaths between making any sound.

And I cannot forget to mention that all this logic and content had to be tirelessly tested. Oftentimes, by fixing one issue we created two new ones. For us as designers, it can be easy to lose ourselves in tiny details, but Bryce Sigouin, DevTest Audio Specialist from Ubisoft Toronto, worked tirelessly to make sure all the elements work together from a player perspective.

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Avatar uses Massive Entertainment’s proprietary Snowdrop game engine. Why is this a good fit for the game in terms of sound?

FB: There are many benefits that come with using a proprietary engine. Mainly the fact that you work side by side with the team developing it. Having the support and direct line of communication with the whole engine team enables us to not only adapt already existing tools, but to create new ones, where the intention and use cases for designers can be clearly expressed and iterated on even as development progresses. The availability of this close, easy collaboration with the engine team is what allows us to adapt our tools to the needs of our game and our design rather than the other way around.

The engine’s node-based scripting system allows for both fast prototyping and iteration.

On top of this close collaboration, the modularity in Snowdrop gives designers a huge flexibility when working on different features. We can confidently go to the engine team and have an idea like, “We’d want our Emitter Manager to be driven by our gameplay mix states” and met with little to no blockers. Just knowing that (most of the time) it can be that easy really lifts the weight off the team and allows for bigger ideas and freedom of creativity.

The engine’s node-based scripting system allows for both fast prototyping and iteration. It is such a malleable workflow that each designer can adapt it to their specific needs at any given time. It has allowed us to greatly facilitate review and iteration processes at every level, and also gives a huge number of opportunities for how we implement our sounds.

Since Snowdrop has been adopted by many other projects, not only do we get to contribute to the development of new tools that may be of use to other teams, but we also benefit from other teams’ development as well. And this opens opportunities where maybe other teams have already solved a problem we have, or have even foreseen issues we haven’t hit just yet. This has really made working in Snowdrop an easy, quick, and incredibly flexible experience.

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What have you learned while working on the sound of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora? How did this game help you to further your sound craft?

MC: Having had the chance to work on the project in both a hands-on and lead role, this experience has taught me the value of having a more detached view from the ‘final result,’ and looking at the game as a player rather than exclusively as a sound designer.

That said, I am still grateful for having had the chance to work on features that went very deep with regards to attention to detail, making this project a sound designer’s dream come true for me.

…when it comes to workload and planning, nothing should be left in a vague, unresolved state, no matter how small.

Finally, I think the most valuable lesson I learned while working on the game is that when it comes to workload and planning, nothing should be left in a vague, unresolved state, no matter how small. Luckily, with David, Patrick Görtjes (our audio producer) and Alex, we were able to develop a good system to spot any potential feature creep ahead of time and tried our best to safeguard the team from unforeseen workload.

MB: I can pretty much second every word that Mattia said, with a special mention for production. Another thing is feedback: with voice content, you always get a lot of feedback, from different teams. It is super valuable, always, but the learning curve was also to appreciate that not all feedback is actionable.

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From left to right: Maria Bantin, Alex Riviere, David Osternacher

FB: This game has been a treasure trove of lessons. As Mattia and Maria mentioned, there are so many moving parts in a game with this scope that you inevitably learn to take a step back and have a more holistic approach to your work. You start to understand all the different moving pieces. Not only do you add a soundscape to a story or to a world, you start telling that story through sound and you contribute a narrative and gameplay tool and not just an aesthetic. And that is probably one of the most valuable take aways for me, is that the team work that came not only from our fantastic audio team, but all teams involved, who would listen to our needs and helped us push for a better, immersive audio experience.

AR: For me, it’s more of a confirmation than a learning after shipping this game, but I love working with people. That collaborative energy, the attention to details, the craftmanship, the fact that we all learn from each other independent of our seniority level or our role, or discipline in game development, and the fact that we ‘feed’ each other creatively. Collaborative work is the key to not only achieve cool things creatively, but also to make it fun along the way. If you have fun making your game, it is likely that it will be perceived by the players later on!

On that note, I want to thank so much all our teams at Ubisoft that collaborated to make this game happen, as well as Lightstorm Entertainment and Disney, and all our external partners for helping us make this game sound amazing!

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A big thanks to Alex Riviere, Maria Bantin, Mattia Cellotto, David Osternacher, and Franz Bierschwale for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

 

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  • Motorcycle Sound Effects Scooters Play Track 197+ sounds included, 164 mins total $99

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