Download - WwiseCertification En doesnt work
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Wwise101-CertificationCourse
2015.1
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Wwise
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences ii
Wwise101-CertificationCourse
Wwise 2015.1 Revision 51
Copyright 2015 Audiokinetic Inc. and Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences. All rights reserved.The Wwise Certification Course documentation (whether in written, graphic or video form) is supplied as a guide for the Wwise product and
is made available free of charge to all users of the Wwise Certification Website. This documentation is the sole joint property of Audiokinetic Inc.
(Audiokinetic) and the Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences (CRAS, and together we or us), and protected by Canadian copyright
law and in other jurisdictions by virtue of international copyright treaties.
This documentation may be duplicated, reproduced, stored or transmitted, exclusively for your internal, non-commercial purposes. You
may compile different extracts of the documentation to suit such internal purposes, but you may not alter the content of any portion of the
documentation. Any copy of the Wwise Certification Course documentation shall retain all copyright and other proprietary notices contained
therein. The foregoing does not extend to the documentation regarding the Audiokinetic Wwise Technology, which is the sole property of
Audiokinetic. Please refer to the copyright notices included in same.
The content of the Wwise Certification Course documentation is furnished for information purposes only, and its content is subject to
change without notice. Reasonable care has been taken in preparing the information contained in this document, however, we disclaim all
representations, warranties and conditions, whether express, implied or arising out of usage of trade or course of dealing, concerning the Wwise
Certification Course documentation and assume no responsibility or liability for any losses or damages of any kind arising out of the use of this
guide or of any error or inaccuracy it may contain, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such loss or damage.
Wwise, Audiokinetic, Actor-Mixer, SoundFrame and SoundSeed are registered trademarks, and Master-Mixer, SoundCaster and
Randomizer are trademarks, of Audiokinetic. Other trademarks, trade names or company names referenced herein may be the property of their
respective owners.
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Wwise
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences iv
Using the Master Mixer Hierarchy ................................................ 205
Working with Effects ..................................................................... 218
Using the Schematic View ............................................................. 231
7. Finalizing the Mix ............................................................................. 238
Using Soundcaster ......................................................................... 239
Configuring a Mixing Desk ........................................................... 248
Using Control Surfaces .................................................................. 260
8. Optimizing Your Game ..................................................................... 269
Managing Memory ........................................................................ 270
Processor Optimization ................................................................. 290
Real-time Monitoring with Profiler ............................................... 294
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Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 1
Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing LessonContent (Windows)
Table of Contents
Downloading Tutorial Files ....................................................................... 2
Installing Wwise ........................................................................................ 2
Preparing the Tutorial Lessons .................................................................. 6
Playing Cube ........................................................................................... 14
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 2
Congratulations! Youre about to embark on a journey where youll learn
the art and science of integrating sound into video games by using Wwise,
the most powerful game audio integration tool and sound engine available.
Powerful and flexible tools like Wwise can oftentimes feel a bit daunting at
first, but simply follow the step by step approach in this and the following
lessons, and youll quickly become comfortable using Wwise. Youll learn
Wwise by integrating sound into an actual game called Cube. Cube is a
first person shooter game where youll save the world from bad guys while
enjoying the knowledge that you are the one responsible for creating the
soundscape that makes the game come to life!
Downloading Tutorial Files
To get started, youre going to need a few things, including Audiokinetics
Wwise software, as well as various project files that are used to begin most
of the lessons. All of this material is easily downloaded.
First youll need to download the Wwise application and then the lesson
files used for this tutorial.
1. Download the following files:
a. Wwise application: Go to https://www.audiokinetic.com/download/?
id=2015.1#windows and click the Windows Web Installer download
button , found near the bottom of the page.
b. Course Lesson Files: http://cras-wwise.com/lessonfiles/
WwiseLessons_v2015.1.zip
Installing Wwise
Now that you have the files you need, youll need to install Wwise.
1. Go to the folder where the files youve just downloaded are located and
Open the Wwise_2015.1_Setup file.
2. Click Run in the Security dialog.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 3
The Wwise setup will display a window which includes a login area. It
is not necessary to log in with an Audiokinetic user account at this time
as all required files for this class are not restricted and available to the
public.
There are a variety of optional components that can be installed
at this time, including demo content and files related to authoring
games on various platforms. Since the options you select must be
downloaded during the installation process, you should only select the
three components that are needed for the purpose of this tutorial.
3. De-select all components except for Authoring Data, Authoring
Binaries 32-bit, Cube (Demo) and SDK (Common); read and confirm
the license terms and click Install.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 4
Note
While there is a 64-bit computer version of the Wwise
Authoring Binaries, the 32-bit version works on 64-bit
computers and is sufficient for the purpose of this tutorial.
The installer downloads and installs the components that youve
selected.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 5
Upon completion, youll be asked if you want to create a standalone
installer so that you can re-install to other computers without having to
download everything again. This is not necessary.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 6
4. Click Close.
Wwise creates a shortcut on your desktop during installation for the
Wwise launcher.
Preparing the Tutorial Lessons
You now need to launch Wwise to verify success of the installation.
Launching Wwise for the first time will also create the necessary directory
that you will be adding the course tutorial project files to.
1. Launch Wwise from the shortcut that is on your desktop.
The End-User License agreement is displayed.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 7
2. After reading the End-User License Agreement, click Accept at the
bottom of the window.
The Wwise Project Launcher opens.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 8
The Project Launcher opens each time you open Wwise and displays
pertinent information regarding the newest features for the version of
Wwise youre using. In the lower right corner, links to online tutorial
videos are displayed a great supplement to this course. The left
column lists the most recent Wwise projects youve opened and since
you have not yet opened a Wwise project, it is blank.
3. Click New in the lower left corner of the Project Launcher to create a
project.
The New Project dialog box opens.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 9
A Wwise Project consists of various files that allow you to integrate
sound into a game, however, you will not actually be creating a new
project right now. The important thing is that when you opened this
dialog box, Wwise created a folder named WwiseProjects on your
computer which is the default location for Wwise project folders. In the
next exercise, youre going to extract the WwiseLessons_v2015.1.zip file
you downloaded earlier into this newly created folder.
4. Take a note of the path displayed in the Location field, and click Cancel
to close this New Project dialog box.
You can now close Wwise.
5. Click the Exit button at the bottom of the Project Launcher window to
close Wwise.
Youre now ready to extract the course project files to the folder you just
took note of.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 10
6. Open an Explorer window and navigate to your Downloads folder.
Right-click the Wwise Lessons zip file you downloaded, and choose
Extract All...
7. Click Browse...
8. Navigate to the WwiseProjects folder you created earlier and click OK to
store the lessons there.
Note
Since Windows 8.1 the My Documents folder has been
renamed to Documents so your path may be slightly different.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 11
9. Click Extract.
The course project files are extracted to the folder that you specified.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 12
For each of the following lessons, you'll use the game Cube that is
provided with Wwise. Although it was installed when you installed the
Wwise application, you'll need to copy it from its default location to the
Wwise Lessons folder you just extracted in order for the lessons to work
properly.
10.Navigate to Program Files (x86)/Audiokinetic/Wwisev2015.1.x build xxxx, right-click the Cube Demo folder andchoose Copy.
Note
Versions of Wwise have four digit build numbers which may
vary depending on when you've downloaded the software. For
that reason a placeholder of xxxx has been given in this step
instead of the specific build number you will see when viewing
this folder.
11.Navigate back to the Wwise Lessons folder you just extracted and
within that folder right-click and choose Paste.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 13
You're Wwise Lessons folder now contains everything you'll need to
complete the course.
12.In fact, your Wwise Lessons folder now has too much! The final step
in preparing your lessons is to remove the already completed audio of
the Cube game. So, drill down to ...\Wwise Lessons\Cube Demo\cube
\soundbanks\Windows, then delete everything in that folder.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 14
Playing Cube
The game youll use throughout this tutorial is Cube, an open source first
person shooter where your mission is to get the monsters before they get
you. You'll now launch a version of Cube that has two distinct differences
from versions of Cube you might find on the Internet. First, thanks to your
efforts in preparing the lessons, this version of the game has no audio; its
your job to add the sound! The other difference is that this version of the
game has a unique ability to communicate details about whats happening
in the game with the Wwise software as the game is being played. This
gives you incredibly valuable information, as youll learn in lesson 2.
In each of the subsequent lessons, youll be asked to run Cube so that you
can hear how the sound design youve integrated impacts the game. Each
time youre asked to run Cube, youll need to perform the following steps.
1. Navigate to My Documents/WwiseProjects/WwiseLessons/Cube Demo/cube and then double-click the cube-profile.bat file to launch the Cube game.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 15
You may get a notification indicating the Windows Firewall has blocked
some features of the program. This is because the profile version of
Cube uses a network connection to speak to Wwise as youll learn in
Lesson 2. Its important that this capability is not blocked by Windows.
2. If you get a Windows Security Alert window, click Allow Access.
The game opens. Each time you run the game, youll begin in an empty
level, which provides you with an opportunity to run around and
explore your sound design without having to worry about the bad guys
finding you.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 16
The game uses a standard FPS keyboard controls. For this tutorial, the
main controls you need to familiarize yourself with are:
W = Move Forward
S = Move Backward
A = Strafe Left
D= Strafe Right
Spacebar = Jump
Left-Click = Fire
3. Briefly play the game and be sure to fire the shotgun.
At this point the game will be silent as you havent yet integrated any
sounds. The visual animation lets you know that the shotgun has
been fired, but its obvious that without sound, the experience is less
than gratifying. In the subsequent exercises, youll discover the basic
principles of how sounds are integrated into a game using the Wwise
sound engine.
As you explore Wwise, leave this profile edition of Cube running
in the background as you will be moving between it and the Wwise
application throughout this lesson.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Windows)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 17
Tip
In Windows, press Alt-Tab to jump back to the Windows
desktop or the Wwise program.
Once youre done familiarizing yourself with Cube, youll need to exit
the game.
4. Press Escape and use the up and down arrows to select quit and then
press enter.
Thats it! Youre now ready to move to Lesson 2, where youll very
quickly take a video game from silence to sound!
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Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 18
Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing LessonContent (Mac)
Table of Contents
Downloading Wwise Tutorial Files ......................................................... 19
Installing Wwise ...................................................................................... 19
Installing the Mac SDK ........................................................................... 25
Additional Support Files ......................................................................... 28
Preparing the Lesson Files ....................................................................... 29
Playing Cube ........................................................................................... 32
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 19
Congratulations! Youre about to embark on a journey where youll learn
the art and science of integrating sound into video games by using Wwise,
the most powerful game audio integration tool and sound engine available.
Powerful and flexible tools like Wwise can oftentimes feel a bit daunting at
first, but simply follow the step by step approach in this and the following
lessons, and youll quickly become comfortable using Wwise. Youll learn
Wwise by integrating sound into an actual game called Cube. Cube is a
first person shooter game where youll save the world from bad guys while
enjoying the knowledge that you are the one responsible for creating the
soundscape that makes the game come to life!
Downloading Wwise Tutorial Files
To get started, youre going to need a few things, including Audiokinetics
Wwise software, necessary support files and the project files that are used
to begin most of the lessons. All of this material is easily downloaded.
1. Navigate to https://www.audiokinetic.com/download/?
id=2015.1#macosx to download the following files:
a. Wwise application: Click the Wwise Authoring (Mac OS X)
download button, , the first of several buttons found near the
bottom of the page.
b. Wwise Mac SDK: Click the Wwise SDK (Mac OS X) Setup
download button, , also found near the bottom of the page.
c. Cube demo game: Click the Cube Demo (Mac OS X) download
button, , listed under the page's final subsection, Samples and
Demos.
2. Additional Services necessary to run Cube: http://www.libsdl.org/
release/SDL2-2.0.3.dmg
3. Course Lesson Files: http://cras-wwise.com/lessonfiles/
WwiseLessons_v2015.1.zip
Installing Wwise
Now that you've downloaded the files you need, youll need to install
Wwise, various support files and the related course materials. Depending
on your browser preferences the .zip downloads may or may not have been
extracted in your Downloads folder.
1. Navigate to your Downloads folder and if necessary, extract any .zip
files and then delete the .zip files.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 20
Your Downloads folder should now contain the five items above.
Note
The Wwise authoring application and SDK have specific
version and build numbers, which will vary depending on
when you downloaded them. To keep our images in this
exercise as generic as possible, we have blurred out these
numbers.
2. Drag the extracted Wwise application to the Applications folder.
Youre about to open the Wwise application for the first time. Since you
did not download Wwise from the Apple App store, you cannot launch
the application by simply double-clicking as usual. Instead, you must
confirm that you want to run this application.
3. Open the Applications folder, right-click Wwise and choose Open.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 21
A message appears asking if youre sure that you want to open Wwise.
4. Click Open.
Wwise opens.
Microsoft Visual C++ is a set of additional files that are necessary to
run Wwise on Mac OS X. If these files are not already installed, youll be
guided through the process of downloading and installing them. If you
already have them installed, you can proceed to step 7.
5. Read the license terms. Upon agreeing, select the acceptance checkbox
and click Install.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 22
6. Upon completion, click Close.
Wwise is now ready to run on your Mac.
7. After reading the End-User License Agreement, click Accept.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 23
Wwise is now installed on your computer, but there are some additional
files you need to install before you can run it for the first time.
The Wwise Project Launcher opens.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 24
The Project Launcher opens each time you open Wwise and lists the
most recent Wwise projects youve opened and, since you have not yet
opened a Wwise project, it is blank.
8. Click New in the Project Launcher to create a project.
The New Project dialog box opens.
A Wwise Project consists of various files that allow you to integrate
sound into a game; however, you will not actually be creating a new
project right now. The important thing is that when you opened this
dialog box, Wwise created a folder named WwiseProjects on your
computer which is the default location for Wwise project folders. In the
next exercise, youre going to extract the WwiseLessons_v2015.1.zip file
you downloaded earlier into this newly created folder.
Note
While the project folder path shows c:\users\crossover\My
Documents\WwiseProjects\, the WwiseProjects folder was
actually created in the documents folder located in your user
accounts document folder. This is because Wwise for Mac
runs within a Windows emulation system which takes care of
mapping the default file paths normally used when Wwise runs
within Windows, to paths found on a Mac system.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 25
9. Click Cancel to close this New Project dialog box.
You can now close Wwise.
10.Click the Exit button at the bottom of the Project Launcher window to
close Wwise.
Youre now ready to extract the course project files to the folder you just
took note of.
11.Click Exit to quit Wwise.
Installing the Mac SDK
For Wwise to author the code that integrates the sound into a game,
you need to install supporting software known as an SDK (Software
Development Kit) for each platform or game system you are developing
for. Your Macintosh computer system is a game system, so youll need to
install a Mac-specific SDK to integrate sounds into the game youll use
throughout this tutorial.
1. Navigate back to your Downloads folder and then right-click the
(version-specific) Wwise_Mac PKG file and select Open to run the
installer.
A message appears asking if you want to open the installer package.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 26
2. Click Open.
The Wwise SDK installer window opens.
3. Click Continue.
Youll now be prompted to choose a destination where youd like the
SDK to be installed. The Mac SDK must be installed on your Macs
primary system drive. Using the standard install settings, this will
already be selected.
4. Verify that your system drive is selected, and click Continue.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 27
5. When prompted, type in the necessary administrator account
authorization and click Install to confirm the installation.
6. Once the installer has finished, click Close and close any open windows
that appeared after the installation was finished.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 28
Additional Support Files
Another support file called SDL2 (Simple Direcectmedia Layer) is
necessary to run the game Cube on your Mac. SDL2 provides services such
as graphics and keyboard mapping for the game.
1. Go to your downloads folder and double-click the SDL2 DMG file.
The SDL installer window opens.
2. Using your Finder window, navigate to your root partition (usually
called Macintosh HD) then /Library/Frameworks .
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 29
3. Drag the SDL2.framework file from the SDL window to the /Library/Frameworks folder. (You will need to specify your adminpassword.)
Preparing the Lesson Files
You now need to move the lesson files you downloaded earlier to the
proper folder on your Mac, but you first need to add the CubeDemo
game folder into the Wwise Lessons folder. It's also imperative that the
CubeDemo game folder be renamed so that it includes a space between
the word Cube and Demo. If this change isn't made, the sound design
you implement in the lessons will not be able to be built into the playable
version of the game.
1. Open your downloads folder and locate the CubeDemo folder andrename it to Cube Demo.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 30
2. Drag the Cube Demo folder into the Wwise Lessons folder.
A Wwise Lessons folder containing all of the tutorial content is
displayed. This folder needs to be placed inside a folder called
WwiseProjects. The Wwise Projects folder was automatically created
and placed within your documents folder when you opened Wwise
earlier in this lesson.
3. In the main menu bar select File > New Finder Window.
A new Finder window opens.
4. Use the new Finder window to navigate and open the WwiseProjects
folder within your documents folder.
Assuming youve never used Wwise on your Mac before, the
WwiseProjects folder will be empty. If you have already used Wwise on
your Mac in the past, you may see project folders already in the Wwise
Projects folder. This is OK.
5. Drag the Wwise Lessons folder from your downloads folder to the
WwiseProjects folder.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 31
Inside the Wwise Lessons folder youll find a folder with the Cube game
as well as folders related to each of the remaining lessons.
6. Click the Wwise Lessons folders disclosure triangle.
You can see at the top the Cube Demo folder. It contains the Cube game
youll be using throughout the lessons. You can also see that each of the
remaining lessons has a folder which contains files related to those parts
of the tutorial.
7. In fact, your Wwise Lessons folder now has too much! The final step
in preparing your lessons is to remove the already completed audio of
the Cube game. So, drill down to ...\Wwise Lessons\Cube Demo\cube
\soundbanks\Mac, then delete everything in that folder.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 32
Playing Cube
The game youll use throughout this tutorial is Cube, an open source first
person shooter where your mission is to get the monsters before they get
you. You'll now launch a version of Cube that has two distinct differences
from versions of Cube you might find on the Internet. First, thanks to your
efforts in preparing the lessons, this version of the game has no audio; its
your job to add the sound! The other difference is that this version of the
game has a unique ability to communicate details about whats happening
in the game with the Wwise software as the game is being played. This
gives you incredibly valuable information, as youll learn in lesson 2.
In each of the subsequent lessons, youll be asked to run Cube so that you
can hear how the sound design youve integrated impacts the game. Each
time youre asked to run Cube, youll need to perform the following steps.
1. Navigate to ~/Documents/WwiseProjects/WwiseLessons/Cube Demo/Mac/Profile/bin and locate theRunCubeDemo.sh file that youll use to launch the game.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 33
RunCube.sh is a script that launches the Cube game. This script needs
to be run from the Terminal program found in your Macs Utility
folder. Youll need to associate this file with the Terminal application
and once this is done, launching the game will be very simple.
2. Right-click the RunCubeDemo.sh file and choose Open With > Other...
A window opens asking you to choose the program youd like to
associate with this file. By default, this window only allows you to
pick from recommended applications, for which Terminal will not be
available.
3. In the Enable field, choose All Applications from the pull-down menu.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
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The Terminal application is found in the Utility folder located within
the Applications folder.
4. Press Shift+Command+U to open the Utility folder, scroll down to
choose Terminal, and select the Always Open With checkbox before
clicking Open.
Depending on which version of Mac OS X you are using, you will either
see the Cube demo game appear, in which case you can now proceed to
just after the image in step 6, or if Cube does not immediately launch
you will see the following message.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 35
5. Click OK.
The first time you open Cube, you'll need to use the Open command
found in the right-click menu.
6. Right-click the RunCubeDemo.sh file and choose Open.
A confirmation window appears to confirm if you want to launch the
script.
Click Open.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 36
The game opens. Now that youve associated this file with the Terminal
application, youll only need to double-click the RunCubeDemo.sh file
to run the game.
Tip
Youll be using the RunCubeDemo.sh file in each of the
remaining lessons. For easy access, right-click the file and make
an alias file that can be placed in a convenient location such as
your desktop or on the dock.
When Cube first launches, youll begin in an empty level, which
provides you with an opportunity to run around and explore your
sound design without having to worry about the bad guys finding you.
The game uses standard FPS keyboard controls. For this tutorial, the
main controls you need to familiarize yourself with are:
W = Move Forward
S = Move Backward
A = Strafe Left
D = Strafe Right
Spacebar = Jump
Left-Click = Fire
7. Briefly play the game and be sure to fire the shotgun.
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Lesson 1. Installing Wwise and Preparing Lesson Content (Mac)
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 37
At this point the game will be silent as you havent yet integrated any
sounds. The visual animation lets you know that the shotgun has
been fired, but its obvious that without sound, the experience is less
than gratifying. In the subsequent exercises, youll discover the basic
principles of how sounds are integrated into a game using the Wwise
sound engine.
As you explore Wwise, leave this profile edition of Cube running
in the background as you will be moving between it and the Wwise
application throughout this lesson.
Tip
Press Command-Tab to jump back to the Mac desktop or the
Wwise program.
Once youre done familiarizing yourself with Cube, youll need to exit
the game.
8. Press Escape and use the up and down arrows to select quit and then
press Enter.
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Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 38
Lesson 2. Quick StartFrom Silence to Sound
Table of Contents
Launch Wwise ......................................................................................... 39
Profiling the Game .................................................................................. 44
Creating an Event .................................................................................... 48
Importing a Sound .................................................................................. 53
Applying an Action ................................................................................. 59
Integrating Sound Into the Game ........................................................... 62
Play the Game! ........................................................................................ 74
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Lesson 2. Quick StartFrom Silence to Sound
Audiokinetic Inc. Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 39
In the last lesson you installed and briefly played Cube, the game youll use
throughout this tutorial. At this point, Cube is a silent game and thats not
very exciting. Youll soon fix this! By the end of this lesson youll bring the
game to a point where one of the games most noticeable visual animations,
the firing of a shotgun, is supported by a shotgun blast sound.
Launch Wwise
Youll begin by creating a new Wwise project. Wwise projects are not
a single file, but a folder with a number of sub folders that collectively
contain the various resource files needed to carry out the instructions of
how youve integrated sound into a game.
1. Launch the Wwise application.
Note
For Windows double-click the shortcut that was added to your
desktop. On Mac youll double-click the Wwise application
found in your applications folder.
The Wwise Project Launcher opens and all available Wwise projects are
displayed.
Tip
On Windows, the right side of the Project Launcher displays
new features from the latest release as well as links to additional
resources. This will not be displayed on the Mac platform.
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The number of projects you see here will vary depending on what other
projects you may have opened on your computer. Most likely you see
nothing in this area at this point. In this case it makes no difference
because you are going to be creating a completely new project for this
lesson.
2. In the lower left corner of the Project Launcher, click New.
A dialog window opens asking what you want to call your new project
and indicates where the project folder is located. The Original files
field indicates where the audio asset files youll import in this later
lessons will be stored. Other optional preset examples within Wwise
also use supporting files which are indicated in the lower box with the
checkmarks. Its OK to leave these selected.
3. In the Name field, type Wwise Project Lesson 2. Click the [] button
to the right of the location field, navigate to your WwiseProjects folder
and select the Lesson 2 folder.
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Note
Mac users: Youll navigate to your documents folder and
choose /Documents/WwiseProjects/WwiseLessons/Lesson 2. Upon selection, the path inthe Location field will be displayed as Y:\Documents\WwiseProject\Wwise Lessons\Lesson 2\. The Y:path designation occurs because Wwise for Mac runs within a
PC emulator and it uses this letter as a drive designation.
4. In the Platforms panel, click Add.... The Add Platform dialog pops up.
Select Mac as your Base Platform.
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Click OK in the Add Platform dialog, then again in the New Project
dialog.
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5. Theres a brief pause while Wwise builds your new project folder. When
complete the Wwise License Manager window opens and explains that
Wwise is running in an evaluation mode. The evaluation mode version
of Wwise is identical to the fully licensed version with the exception that
there is a maximum of 200 media items across all Soundbanks. Youll
learn more about Soundbanks later in this lesson, but be assured that
this is more than sufficient for you to gain an understanding of Wwise.
6. In the License Manager window, click Close.
You now see the Wwise software interface.
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Depending on your screen size and resolution, it may look slightly
different, but across the top youll see a main menu bar, with toolbars
below. These are static and will always be visible. Below youll see
multiple areas called views. Each view provides functionality that can
be used to visualize and manipulate how sound is integrated into your
game. There are around forty different views available within Wwise.
This may seem a bit overwhelming, but it is not imperative that you
know what all of these views do to make Wwise work for you. In fact,
rarely will any one person use all of these views as Wwise is used by
teams of people, many of which have specific jobs that only require
them to use specific sections of Wwise.
Profiling the Game
To integrate sound into Cube, you need to first evaluate the kind of
information that is being sent from the game to Wwise. To do this youll
need to run the special profiler version of Cube that you tested in Lesson
1.
1. Launch the Cube game.
Note
If youre not sure how to launch Cube, review the Playing Cube
exercise at the end of Lesson 1 written for your computers
operating system.
Youll need to now return to Wwise. In fact youll be switching back and
forth between the game and Wwise quite often throughout this tutorial,
so youll want to become familiar with using Alt+Tab on Windows, or
Command+Tab on a Mac to switch between programs.
2. Press Alt+Tab on Windows or Command+Tab on Mac to return to
Wwise.
There are a number of views that work together to show you
information related to reviewing information being received from the
game, but rather than opening them one at a time you can quickly open
them in one step using a layout. A layout is a predefined collection of
views that are commonly used together.
3. In the main menu click Layouts and choose Profiler or press F6.
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The Profiler layout is displayed. You can use the views in this layout
to evaluate information about messages generated in the game and
monitor details about sound engine performance.
Youre going to use the Capture Log view in the upper left to display
information that is being generated in game. To access this information,
you need to connect Wwise to the Cube game that you should still have
running in the background.
4. In the toolbar, click Remote.
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The Remote Connections window opens displaying computers on
the network ( including your own local computer) that are running a
version of the game that uses the Wwise Sound Engine and are designed
to communicate with Wwise.
5. Select your computer from the list and click Connect.
The window closes and because the Start capture on connect checkbox
was selected, youll see the capture button in the toolbar turn red, while
a counter ticks next to it.
Capturing is the process of recording, in real-time, a log of any
information coming from the Wwise Sound Engine in your game
related to the game play, an invaluable asset as you develop the sound
for your game.
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6. Return to the Cube game and fire the shotgun one time.
7. Go back to Wwise to view the Capture Log.
In the Capture Log view youll see a few lines of information,
confirming that Cube transmitted information to Wwise when you
fired the shotgun.
When connected to a game, some Wwise parameters cannot be
adjusted, so once you have the information you need, you need to
disconnect from the game.
8. Click Disconnect.
The capture process stops and Wwise disconnects from the game. You
can now evaluate what just happened.
The information displayed represents errors that were generated
because Wwise does not know what to do with the messages it has
received. These message are generically referred to as game calls and
there are a variety of different types of calls that may be triggered. Youll
learn more about the different types of calls later, but for now you need
to take a closer look at the error description.
9. Drag the right side of the Description column header to the right so you
can view the entire error message.
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The messages in the description area refer to something called events.
Events are a type of Wwise game calls that the game engine sends to
the Wwise audio engine, indicating that something has occurred in
the game. Usually when an event is transmitted to Wwise, its used to
trigger a sound, to modify one of its properties, or even to stop the
sound from playing. Events are given names to identify what the event
is being used for. In this case the Fire_shotgun_Player event name thats
being referenced makes it clear that it is associated with the act of the
player firing their shotgun.
Also notice that there is a Game Object column that specifies Local
Player. This identifies which entity in the game the message is associated
with. For example, there may be multiple characters in the game that
carry a shotgun, so the game engine needs to know which character
fired the shot to appropriately play the sound. For example, if the
monster that just fired a shotgun appears to be 50 meters away, then the
sound probably shouldnt be played at the same volume as when our
hero fires his shotgun. This will be explored in greater detail in Lesson
5Creating Space.
For now, the problem is that Wwise is saying that it has no idea what to
do with this event, but youre about to change that!
Creating an Event
For everything that happens in the game that may need an audio response,
a programmer has added lines of code to transmit a message informing
Wwise about what has occurred. This message is referred to as a game call.
Game calls are just simple messages that say things like Hey, the shotgun
was fired, but in reality this message is sent as a string of text or numbers.
When this message is received by the audio engine, any number of things
can happen as defined by you, the game audio designer.
The first thing that you need to do is provide what is needed so that
Wwise can catch an incoming game call. Wwise catches game calls with
something called an Event. Think of it like a game of catch between the
game engine and the audio engine. The ball being thrown from the game
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engine is the game call, while an event is a type of object within Wwise
designed specifically to catch game calls. The important thing to note is
that each game call needs an identically named event to be received by
Wwise.
1. From the main menu select Layout > Designer or press F5.
2. In the Project Explorer view, click the Events tab.
Its in the Events tab where youre going to allow Wwise to understand
the incoming event game calls that Wwise should expect to see
transmitted from the game engine.
Within the Project Explorers Events tab you see a folder titled Events
and within that folder there is an object called Default Work Unit.
Work units serve as the foundation for Wwise. Work units contain
information related to a particular section or element within your
project and help you organize your project.
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In many games, many people or even companies are concurrently
working on different parts of a game. For example, one team may be
working on all of the weapon sounds, while another focuses on ambient
sounds. In this scenario, each team could have its own copy of Wwise
and create their own unique work unit that houses their assigned
events. Later in the production, multiple work units can be brought into
a single project in order to bring all of the elements in a game together.
Note
Work units are actually XML files created within the project
structure of Wwise.
Anything you create in Wwise is referred to as an object. Be careful
not to confuse this with the Game Object term discussed earlier in this
lesson which relates to items within the game. Objects in the Wwise
interface are represented by small square icons. There are over 20 types
of objects, each providing unique functionality for how you can create
and control sound within Wwise. Objects exist within a hierarchy and
typically work units are at the top of this hierarchy. Like the bricks that
make up a building, these objects are building blocks that can be used
for purely practical applications, or they can be arranged in intricate
and creative ways. For now, youre going to create a single Event object
within the Default Work Unit that will serve as a glove that will be used
to catch the shotgun game call that is being transmitted from the Cube
game engine.
3. Click the Default Work Unit within the Events folder.
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When an object is selected, an icon bar is displayed in the Project
Explorer that shows which other types of objects can be housed within
the selected object. When you hover over the icon, a tooltip indicates
the type of object represented by the icon.
4. Hover over the fourth icon to identify it as an Event object.
5. Click the Event icon to create a new Event Object within the Default
Work Unit.
A new event object is created and you are prompted to type its name.
How you name an Event object is critical. It is imperative that the name
of the Event object perfectly matches that name of the game call being
transmitted from the game engine. Just like dialing a phone number, if
youre off at all, it wont connect.
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To ensure that this works well, typically the sound designer decides
what kinds of things the sound engine needs to be aware of, and creates
the events for each of these things in Wwise. The sound designer
then informs the programmer of the event names so that they can
program the game engine to transmit game calls with the same
name. In our scenario, the game engine for Cube has already been
programmed, and the names for the calls have already been defined,
and Fire_Shotgun_Player is the name for the call used each time a
shotgun is fired.
6. Type Fire_Shotgun_Player and press Enter.
Note
Wwise will later create software code based on your project. In
that code, all object name references are handled in lower case,
therefore object names are not case sensitive.
Tip
Selecting an object reveals its associated properties in the
Event Editor to the right which you can confirm by the
Fire_Shotgun_Player - Event Editor in the view's title bar.
Different objects have editors of varying complexity. Most
have a Notes field that is incredibly important because you
can add extra information to avoid any confusion about the
event name. With a name like Fire_Shotgun_Player, the event
likely relates to the shotgun being fired, but not all events
are intuitively named. Notes provide a way to provide more
information to help you and others who might be reviewing
your work better understand what youve created.
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Importing a Sound
Now that you have an event setup to catch the incoming shotgun game
call, you need to bring in the sound that you want to hear when that
event is received. Wwise can create sounds in a variety of ways, including
synthesizing sounds from scratch; however, the most common way to
generate a sound is to use a recorded audio file. Theres no need to go out
and record a shotgun as an audio file of a shotgun blast is already provided.
You simply need to bring it into your project.
Sounds are usually managed within the Audio Tab of the Project Explorer
which is found in the Designer layout.
1. In the Project Explorer view, select the Audio tab.
The Audio tab of the Designer layout is where youll spend most of your
time when designing your games soundscape. The audio tab has three
different hierarchies that each provide unique objects to accomplish
various tasks related to triggering or manipulating how audio works in
Wwise.
With the exception of music, youll keep your sounds within a work
unit within the Actor-Mixer Hierarchy.
Tip
The Factory SoundSeed Air Objects work unit contains objects
related to Audiokinetics SoundSeed sound synthesis tools
that can be used to create various types of sound in place of
importing audio files. SoundSeed offers a lot of diversity in
sounds without using much memory in the game system.
There are many different objects that can be created within the
Actor-Mixer Hierarchy that youll explore over the next several
lessons; however, if you simply want to play a given audio file, this is
accomplished via the Sound SFX (Sound Effects) object.
Note
It is also possible to play sounds through Sound Voice objects;
however, they are generally used for spoken dialogue as they
have specific localization features used when releasing a game
in multiple languages.
2. In the available object row, click the Sound SFX icon.
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3. Name the Sound SFX Object Shotgun_Blast.
The object name appears in red.
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The red lettering represents that there isnt an audio file associated with
this SFX object. Youll need to add the audio file in just a moment, but
before you go any further its important to understand that an SFX
object does not directly represent an audio file. It instead represents
the channel that the audio file will play through. You can equate it to
the idea of a channel on a digital audio workstation. The channel has
various controls that manipulate the actual audio files that are stored on
the audio track that feeds through the channel. Once you understand
this, youre ready to add the audio file to the Sound SFX object.
Right-clicking an object provides many different options related to what
can be done with that object, including importing an audio file to a
Sound SFX object.
4. Right-click the Shotgun_Blast SFX Object and choose Import Audio
Files.
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5. Click Add Files
A dialog box opens prompting you to select the file you want to import.
The file youre going to import is a .wav file. Wave files are relatively
large and you may well think that youd first want to convert the file
to something like an .mp3 file or even reduce its sample rate or bit
depth to reduce the amount of information you are bringing in. This
is not the case. Actually, you want to import your best quality original
into Wwise as a Wave file and dont worry about the size at this time.
The beauty of Wwise is that you can later decide how you want to
optimize the files size before integrating into the game. In fact, Wwise
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has extensive features related to this which youll explore in Lesson-8.
Think of it like a photographer wanting to always keep his 25 megapixel
original and only worry about how to crop or compress the image based
upon the need at the time he needs to send someone the image.
6. Navigate to WwiseProjects/Wwise Lessons/Lesson 2/Audio files for Lesson 2/, choose the Shotgun_Blast fileand click Open.
The Audio File Importer opens confirming which audio file you want to
import to the SFX object.
7. Click Import.
The Audio File Importer window closes and you now see that Shotgun
Blast SFX object has turned blue.
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The blue color indicates that an audio source, in this case a wav file,
is properly associated with the SFX object and that the audio file is
currently being referenced in its original imported format.
Note
As you work, you may notice some Sound SFX objects names
are blue while others are white. The color communicates if
the associated file has been optimized through a conversion
process which usually happens when you generate a
SoundBank which youll do later in this lesson. White object
names indicate that the conversion has already taken place,
where blue objects have yet to be converted. At this point, dont
worry if you see the color change from blue to white. Youll
learn more about optimization and the conversion process in
Lesson 8.
Now its time to test your sound and make sure its playing through
your system.
8. Click the Shotgun_Blast Sound SFX object to make sure its selected.
Notice that the Property Editor view displays audio controls for the
Shotgun_Blast such as a volume fader.
Also, look in the Transport Control view and youll see the name
Shotgun_Blast. This indicates that when you press the play button,
youll hear the sound as its going to be played in the game.
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Tip
Spacebar is the keyboard shortcut for the play button.
9. In the Transport Control view, click the play icon or press the spacebar.
You should hear the shotgun blast sound. Youll also notice that theres
a meter in the toolbar as well as a meter view on the right side of the
layout showing you the level of playback.
Applying an Action
Earlier you created the event object that catches the game call transmitted
from the game engine, and youve just created the Sound SFX object that
contains the audio file you want to hear when that event is received. Now
you are ready to connect these two objects together. This is accomplished
via Actions that are created in a selected events Event Editor.
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Earlier you worked with the Event Editor when you created the
Fire_Shotgun_Player event within the Events tab of the Project Explorer.
Although not currently in the Events tab, you may have noticed the Event
Viewer view in the lower left corner is displaying the Fire_Shotgun_Player
event you created earlier. There you see your Fire_Shotgun_Player event
is indicating that it is missing associated actions and therefore isnt doing
anyone any good.
1. Click the Fire_Shotgun_Player [Missing] event in the Event Viewer.
The Fire_Shotgun_Player Event Editor is displayed containing an empty
list with an empty row 1. This is where you indicate what Action you
want to have happen when Wwise receives the Fire_Shotgun_Player
event from the game engine.
2. Click the selector menu button [>>]on the first row.
A list of possible actions is displayed. As you can see, there are a lot of
options, but all you need for now is the first option Play.
3. Select Play from the Action list.
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The play action is added, but the objects column indicates that the
sound associated with this action is missing and play.
This is where you need to indicate that you want to play the
Shotgun_Blast Sound SFX object that you created in the previous
exercise. You can add this by simply dragging it from the Project
Explorer to the first action in the action list.
Tip
To save a step you can drag an object to an empty line in an
action list and it will automatically add a Play action.
Youve now connected the Fire_Shotgun_Player Event to the
Shotgun_Blast SFX Object. Wwise lets you simulate what will happen
in the game by allowing you to play not just Sound SFX objects, but also
the events themselves. Playing the Fire_Shotgun_Player event should
trigger the shotgun blast sound. Before you can do this, you need to
make sure that the Fire_Shotgun_Player event is visible in the Transport
Control view.
4. Look at the title bar of the Transport Control view and verify that it says
Fire_Shotgun_Player. If it doesnt, click the Fire_Shotgun_Player event
in the Event Viewer.
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5. In the Transport Control view, click the play button or press the
spacebar.
Bang! You should hear the shotgun blast, confirming that the
Fire_Shotgun_Player event is linked to the Shotgun_Blast sound you
imported earlier.
Integrating Sound Into the Game
While playing the shotgun sound in Wwise is getting you closer to your
goal, its not complete until you can play the game and hear the result of
your work. In many respects, this last step is like the process of bouncing a
playable mix of a music project, with the exception that there is a lot more
going on than simply generating a single audio file. This is where you get
to see the real benefits of the Wwise sound engine, as it essentially writes
the code necessary to apply your sound design to the game for you.
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Adding an Event to a SoundBank
SoundBanks are the collection of both the code and the audio assets
used at the time the game is played, also known as run-time. Every game
created by Wwise has at least one SoundBank and, in larger more complex
games, there may be many SoundBanks. In this case, youll create a single
SoundBank and place it into the directory where the Cube game engine
expects to find it. In order to achieve this, youll use a different layout.
1. In the main menu, click Layouts > SoundBank or press F7.
In the upper right area of the screen you can see the SoundBank
Manager and, like other areas of Wwise, it contains a Default Work
Unit. Cube has been coded to look for a SoundBank called Main, so
youll need to create that within this default work unit.
2. Click New.
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The New SoundBank dialog box opens.
3. In the Name field, type Main and click OK.
4. Click the [+] symbol to the left of Default Work Unit.
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SoundBanks need to be populated with the events that you intend to
have as part of that Soundbank. Events can be assigned to a SoundBank
by simply dragging them to the desired SoundBank.
5. Drag the Fire_Shotgun_Player event from the Event Viewer to the Main
SoundBank in the SoundBank Manager.
In the lower right view, youll see the event you just added in the
SoundBank Editor.
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Wwise can simultaneously generate SoundBanks for multiple languages
(if youve provided dialogue content and used Wwises localisation
features) and multiple game platforms simultaneously. This is a huge
time saver considering that different game platforms have different
ways in which audio code must be implemented. In essence, Wwise is
like having multiple codewriters that know the specifics of each game
platform working for you. Because of this, you need to specify which
language and game system you want to author SoundBanks for.
Because there are differences in the code written for Windows game as
opposed to a Mac game, Windows users will need to follow a slightly
different set of steps than those used on Macs. Choose the appropriate
version of this next exercise that applies to the system youre working
with. The Windows exercise is immediately following while Mac users
should jump ahead to the exercise called Generating a SoundBank
(Mac).
Generating a SoundBank (Windows)
Because multiple SoundBanks can be generated for a single game, you
must first select the SoundBanks that you want to be generated.
1. Make sure the Main SoundBank, Windows Platform and English (US)
language checkboxes are selected.
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Next you must define the path indicating where the SoundBanks should
be placed within the games file structure. This information would
typically be given to you by the game programmers.
2. In the SoundBank Manager, click User Settings.
3. Select the Override Project SoundBank Paths option, and then click the
path selector button for Windows.
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4. Navigate to your Wwise Lessons folder, and then proceed to CubeDemo\ cube\soundbanks,choose the Windows folder and clickSelect Folder.
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The updated SoundBank path appears for the Windows platform.
You now need to generate your SoundBank. Generating a SoundBank
is the payoff of all of your work. Its much like bouncing a file in a
conventional digital audio workstation. The result is what gives you and
everyone else the ability to benefit from your work!
5. Click OK to close the SoundBanks Settings window then click Generate
in the SoundBank Manager.
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The SoundBank Generation view is displayed. In this moment, the code
and all necessary files to implement your shotgun sound have been
generated.
6. Click Close.
Youll be generating a SoundBank at the end of Lessons 2 through 8. For
those lessons, the path to SoundBank folder will already be set, so youll
only need to make sure that you check the appropriate SoundBank,
platform and language checkboxes.
7. Skip the next exercise and jump ahead to the Play the Game exercise.
Generating a SoundBank (Mac)
Because multiple SoundBanks can be generated for a single game, you
must first select the SoundBanks that you want to be generated.
1. Make sure the Main SoundBank, Mac Platform and English (US)
language checkboxes are selected.
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Next you must define the path indicating where the SoundBanks should
be placed within the games file structure. This information would
typically be given to you by the game programmers.
2. In the SoundBank Manager, click User Settings.
3. Select the Override Project SoundBank Paths option, and then click the
path selector button for Mac.
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4. Navigate to your Wwise Lessons folder, and then proceed to CubeDemo/cube/soundbanks,select the Mac folder and click Choose.
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The updated SoundBank path appears for the Mac platform.
You now need to generate your SoundBank. Generating a SoundBank
is the payoff of all of your work. Its much like bouncing a file in a
conventional digital audio workstation. The result is what gives you and
everyone else the ability to benefit from your work!
5. Click OK to close the SoundBanks Settings window then click Generate
in the SoundBank Manager.
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The SoundBank Generation view is displayed. In this moment, the code
and all necessary files to implement your shotgun sound have been
generated.
6. Click Close.
Youll be generating a SoundBank at the end of Lessons 2 through 8.
For those lessons, the path to the SoundBank folder will already be
set, so youll only need to make sure that you check the appropriate
SoundBank, platform and language checkboxes.
Play the Game!
Now its time to see the result of your work in the actual game. To hear the
changes youve made, youll need to re-launch Cube, so you must first quit
the currently running game.
1. Return to Cube, press the Esc key and then use the arrow keys on your
keyboard to select quit, and press Enter.
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2. Open Cube once again.
This time the game will open with the SoundBank you just generated.
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3. Click to fire the shotgun.
You now hear the shotgun sound you implemented using Wwise!
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Lesson 3. Designing a Soundscape
Table of Contents
Adding Sounds to a Project ..................................................................... 78
Using a Single Sound For Multiple Applications ..................................... 85
Changing Object Parameters ................................................................... 87
Using the Source Editor .......................................................................... 90
Applying Multiple Actions to a Single Event ........................................... 91
Using Randomization .............................................................................. 95
Granulate Your Sounds ......................................................................... 104
Verifying Your Work .............................................................................. 121
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Now that youve attached a blast sound to the animation of your character
firing a shotgun, youll now look at other parts of the visual sequence that
accompanies the sound and think about what else you can do to enhance
that experience. As you work through the steps that need to be done,
youll also be looking at how to do as much as possible with as little as
possible, for this is what defines a game audio designer's worth. This is
because while modern game console systems have incredible power, that
power is shared with systems that support graphics, physics, and artificial
intelligence. Also consider that many games are played on mobile devices
where system resources arent as vast. Depending on the games technical
restraints, audio may be given a small budget with regards to memory
and processor usage. Because of this, an audio game developer makes
their mark by learning how to fuse great sound and creativity within the
technical limitations provided. In many cases, its the designer's creativity
that provides unique and interesting solutions for working within technical
constraints. Fortunately, Wwise provides a vast set of tools specifically
designed to help you rise to this kind of challenge.
Adding Sounds to a Project
For this lesson youll start by using a pre-saved project file that already
has the shotgun blast sound effect you used in the last lesson already
integrated.
1. Launch Wwise and click Open Other at the bottom of the window of
the Project Launcher.
2. Navigate to your WwiseProjects > Lesson 3 folder.
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A Wwise project is not a singular file, but instead a specific structure of
many different folders and the files contained within. In most cases, you
wont need to directly work with the content inside these folders as the
necessary items will automatically be created and updated as you build a
project. Projects are launched from a Wwise Project file which is located
on the same level as these folders.
3. Select the Lesson 3 project file found within the Lesson 3 folder and
click Open.
4. In the Actor-Mixer Hierarchy, expand the Default Work Unit to reveal
the Shotgun_Blast Sound SFX object you created in the last lesson.
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Instead of first creating the Sound SFX object and then adding a sound
to it, youll take a different approach by simply importing the audio
files to the desired work unit, and let Wwise automatically create the
necessary Sound SFX objects.
5. In the Actor-Mixer Hierarchy, select the Default Work Unit.
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Note
You may see that the Shotgun Blast Sound SFX object appears
in blue instead of white. Blue indicates that the audio file being
referenced is the original imported file, while white designates
that the file has been converted. Unless the object appears in
redindicating a file is missing, the color difference does not
change the operation of the exercises used throughout this
tutorial. If you prefer, you can convert all of the audio files in
your project at any time by going to the main menu bar and
choosing Project > Convert All Audio Files. Youll learn more
about conversion settings in Lesson 8.
6. In the main menu, choose Project > Import Audio Files or press Shift
+I.
Tip
Using key commands for things you do on a regular basis will
make you much more efficient as you work. Wwise displays
key commands for features found in the menus, so you should
take the time to learn them.
7. In the Audio File Importer, click Add Files.
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An Explorer window opens where you can navigate to the file that you
want to import.
8. Navigate to your Lesson 3 folder in WwiseProjects. Open the Audio files
for Lesson 3 folder, choose Shotgun_Pump and click Open.
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The Audio File Importer window displays the current location. Youll
also see an Object Type/Action pull down menu indicating that the
imported file will automatically have a Sound SFX object created to
contain it.
9. Click Import.
The Shotgun_Pump Sound SFX object is displayed within the Actor-
Mixer Hierarchys Default Work Unit.
10.Click the Shotgun_Pump SFX object to view the Sound Property Editor
with the parameters for the newly created object.
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In the Contents Editor (under the Sound Property Editor), the
Shotgun_Pump.wav file is shown as the source that feeds the
Shotgun_Pump Sound SFX object.
11.To listen to your newly imported audio file, make sure that the
Shotgun_Pump Sound SFX object is selected in the Project Explorer
and then click the Play button in the Transport Control View, or press
the spacebar.
You hear a single mechanical click of a shotgun being pumped.
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Using a Single Sound For Multiple Applications
You may have noticed that when you watch the animation sequence of the
player shooting the shotgun that there are actually two phases to pumping
the shotgun. First, the character pumps the shotgun inward, which on a
real shotgun ejects the empty shell and then pushes the pump forward
which loads the next round into the chamber. Each of these movements
makes a mechanical clicking noise; however, the audio file that you just
imported does not contain two clicks.
You could load a single recording of two pumps that is pre-timed to
match the animation sequence, but that makes the audio file longer and
therefore takes more memory when loaded into the game. Remember
that preserving memory resources is something that you should always
seek to achieve, so this might not be a good strategy. Its also common
that the timing of animation sequences may change as the games
development progresses, so youll take a different approach and use this
single mechanical click for both the pump in and pump out sounds, using
less memory and providing more timing flexibility. While youll be using
the same sound file, youre going to use two separate Sound SFX objects,
one for pump in and on for pump out.
1. Right-click the Shotgun_Pump Sound SFX object and choose Copy.
You now need to create a copy of the object within the same work unit.
2. Within the Actor-Mixer Hierarchy, right-click the Default Work Unit
and choose Paste.
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Wwise creates a duplicate of the Sound SFX object but adds an _01
extension.
One of these Shotgun_Pump objects will serve to create the pump in
sound, while the other will be the pump out so its best to name them as
such.
3. Click the Shotgun_Pump object, pause, and click again to rename it to
Shotgun_Pump_In, and then press Return.
Tip
You can also rename an object by pressing the F2 key, right-
clicking and choosing Rename or by directly entering into the
Name field within the Property Editor.
4. Rename the Shotgun_Pump_01 object to Shotgun_Pump_Out.
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The Shotgun_Pump_Out object is now selected, so you can see that this
object that you copied is referencing the same Shotgun_Pump .wavfile.
Changing Object Parameters
While both of the Shotgun_Pump objects indicate they are referencing a
file with the same name, this does not mean that the Shotgun_Pump.wav
audio file was duplicated. It means that the same audio file is being
referenced by two different sound objects, which does not double the
amount of memory necessary to play these objects. Its similar to the
idea of a Digital Audio Workstation where a single audio file may be
placed on multiple tracks to be edited and processed in different ways.
In the same way, youll now make modifications to the parameters of
Shotgun_Pump_Out object to differentiate it from the pump in.
1. Verify that the Shotgun_Pump_Out object is selected and if not, select
it.
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The Sound SFX Property Editor view to the right displays settings that
affect how the audio file contained within the selected object will play.
There are numerous parameters available that you will explore later in
this lesson as well as throughout this tutorial, but one very important
parameter in game audio is pitch. Youll find the pitch parameter
displayed just below the volume fader. This is very convenient for
the game audio designer because usually in audio production tools,
the pitch control is not prominently displayed even though you use
it regularly. This is especially the case in game audio where pitch
adjustment is constantly used, oftentimes to create the illusion of
having an abundance of different sounds using only a single sound
played at varying pitches. This strategy preserves precious memory.
Youll use this approach to differentiate the pump in and pump out
sounds.
The pitch parameter value is expressed in musical cents. On a piano,
there is 100 cents of pitch change between any two keys that are side by
side, whether theyre black or white keys. The pitch parameter default
value is 0, meaning that the audio associated with the object will play
back at its original pitch.
To adjust the pitch value, theres a small black dot below the pitch
property that when clicked brings up a slider.
2. Click and hold the slider head (black point) just below the current pitch
value.
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You can now adjust the slider to the left or right to adjust the playback
pitch. Start by adjusting the value to 1200, which is a musical octave.
3. Press spacebar to hear the change.
The Shotgun_Pump audio file plays an octave higher, resulting in a
sound that plays twice as high and twice as fast. This is obviously too
much, so now set the value to something thats a little more believable.
This time youll directly enter a value.
4. Click the current value, type 200 and press Return.
5. Play the object once more to hear the change.
Now you have a pump out thats a bit more believable and slightly
different from the pump in.
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Using the Source Editor
Although the pump out sound is playing at a slightly higher pitch, its
still identical in every other way. While its a short sound, theres still a
rhythmic pulse created by the pump mechanisms mechanical action.
People tend to notice these subtle cues, so you can give the pump out its
own distinct feel by slightly altering where the sound starts playing from.
This is accomplished using the Source Editor.
1. Make sure the Shotgun_Pump_Out SFX object is still selected and
then in the Contents Editor, double-click the audio source icon for the
Shotgun_Pump audio file.
The Source Editor opens.
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The Source Editor provides a way to look at details related to the source
audio generator. Wwise provides several methods of generating sound
including tone generators and the specialized SoundSeed synthesizers.
Clicking the Source Editor when these tools are being used displays the
interface for these particular generators. In this case, since the source
audio generator is an audio file, a waveform view of the audio signal is
shown. This display also serves as a simple waveform editor, which lets
you adjust where playback starts and ends.
For the pump out, youre going to start playback at a later time in the
audio file. You can easily do this by dragging the Trim Start control
to the position that you want playback to start from. By reading the
waveform, you can see where the rhythmic pulses of the mechanical
noise are. Ideally, you want to begin playback just before one of these
sections.
2. Drag the Trim Start control about a fourth of the way into the
waveform, just before one of the peaks in the waveform.
This change to the start position only occurs when the audio file is
played from the Shotgun_Pump_Out sound object and doesnt change
the way you heard the Shotgun_Pump_In object. In summary, the
Sound SFX object may use the same source audio file, but each can have
a unique start time, providing differentiation between the objects.
3. Play the Shotgun_Pump_Out object to hear the difference, then close
the Source Editor window.
Applying Multiple Actions to a Single Event
Now that youve set up the pump sounds, you need to get them to play
at the right time. Visually, when the player fires the shotgun, you see
the blast, followed by a pump-in and finally the pump-out action. You
could ask the game engine programmer to provide separate pump-in and
pump-out game calls so you could then create corresponding events as
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you did with the original Fire_Shotgun_Player event used for the shotgun
blast. Or, you could look to see if theres a way to achieve what you need
without programmer interaction, because this saves precious time for
both you and the programmer. Since the shotgun blast and the pumps are
all part of the same visual animation and that animation never changes,
the timing between the blast and the pump-in and pump-out visuals
are predictable. You already have the Fire_Shotgun_Player event for the
shotgun blast, so you simply need to trigger the pump sounds to happen
at a pre-determined time after that event. This can be accomplished by
delaying the Play actions.
1. In the Event Viewer, select the Fire_Shotgun_Player event.
You can see in the Event Editor the Play Shotgun_Blast action you
configured in the last lesson. Theres no practical limit to how many
actions can be carried out for a single event, so youll simply add the
Shotgun_Pump objects into the action list. This time, however, instead
of first creating a Play action and then adding the object to be played,
youll simply drag the objects from the Project Explorer into the action
list. To do this you need to select both of the Shotgun_Pump objects.
2. Press and hold the Shift key and select the Shotgun_Pump_In and
Shotgun_Pump_Out objects.
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Note
If you dont hold down shift first, the moment you click on one
of the Shotgun_Pump objects, the Event Editor will change to
the Property Editor and you wont be able to complete the next
steps.
3. Drag either of the selected objects to the action list in the Event Editor.
The objects are now added to the Event Editor below the Shotgun_Bast.
While these actions are listed in numerical order, its important to know
that these act