Thanks! :D I looked into the MegaGrants just a few weeks ago - that's a good tip, thank you :) It takes quite a while for them to process so I don't think I'll hear back until November. I've no idea about the Free for a Month audio! :') I think Epic curate it - not sure if they can be persuaded on their forum though...?
Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge! I've set up all the sounds correctly as the video and made some cinematics in the sequencer. When I export the audio, it seems like the attenuation does not get exported correctly :( Happen to know why and how to fix this?
Hey, no worries :) I'm sorry though, I'm not sure what's happening there :( I can only think the camera may be too close/far away for the attenuation to be working properly, or that it's something in the export settings.
Is there a way to increase the size of attenuation spheres while in Blueprints? Meaning... You have sound that is supposed to get gradually louder. The falloff would increase, but I can't find a control in BP that allows this. I can increase volume, but not the distance.
If you want to dynamically increase the radius of the attenuation sphere you'll need a reference to the attenuation in the BP, and from that you can get the Attenuation Settings. Split the output and you'll get a million pins. One of them is distance - and I believe (iirc) that you can make a new Attenuation Setting and it will (I think!) respond dynamically to a change in radius if connected to a Tick. Let me know if that works though. I'm sure I did it but it would have been a while ago now :)
Let's say am making a battle Royal game, how should I implement these theories? Like hearing gun fire and explosion from afar, hearing my own footsteps outside and inside or hearing an enemy footsteps coming closer etc.(you get the point) Am developing a game and would like to implement realistic sound effects.
Cool. If you want the audio to perform like it does in other games then I'd say that attenuation, spatialisation, occlusion and the Doppler effect are just initial steps. For example... if you heard gunfire in a valley, forest, or field it's going to sound very different in each space. You could try using these functions to simulate the effect but you'd probably get better results creating the sounds in your DAW, then blending them in the game based on how far away the Player is from the source and the environment they're in. Footsteps sounding different indoors and out can be managed pretty well with reverb imo. Attenuation applied to footsteps allows you to set the distance someone would start hearing the sound at, and you could change this in BPs (e.g. swapping in an attenuation with shorter range in a forest or marsh to simulate sounds being better absorbed by the environment). There's a discussion here about gunshot reverb for indoor and outdoor spaces that might be worth checking out. Although they're talking about reverb it relates to what you're asking about hearing gunfire over distances. www.reddit.com/r/GameAudio/comments/abwps8/wwise_interior_gunshot_reverb/
I used ‘Set audio listener attenuation override’ instead so that spatialization would still be dependent on the camera, and I like how it works, except audio occlusion seems to be from the camera perspective still, any idea how to fix that?
Awesome showcase of the audio engine for UE4. Do you use a mono audio file or a stereo audio file for the torch. What is more preferably for 3d audio sources/spatial audio. Thanks.
Thanks - I appreciate it! I used mono for the torch and do for almost all my sounds. I'd have music and maybe some ambient environmental sounds in stereo. (5.1 and 7.1 surround sound also requires mono so UE4 can target each file to each speaker. UA-cam doesn't play back those formats yet (afaik) so it's not really possible to demonstrate here.) I think it's best to know the purpose of the sound before crafting or importing it. If it's a point sound, coming from one position in space, then mono is best. That's going to mimic reality, and you won't really gain anything by using a stereo sound in a mono way. Hope that helps! :)
@@valkyriesound3888 Thanks for this explanation. Very thorough. I've been digging into your videos and I'm quite keen to implement audio into UE4 using your tutorials. Keep it up. Thanks.
Interesting! There isn't a speed adjustment feature as far as I know. If you want to give the impression the sound has been slowed down, you could use the pitch shift on the Modulation node in the Sound Cue (you could use a Switch node so you can jump between the same sound with / without the Mod node, e.g. setting to 1 when the Player enters a trigger area). Or you could add an Audio Volume to the underwater area and apply a Low Pass Filter at
Interesting.....add a delay on sound attenuation in surface actors, and when submerged, reduce delay to give illusion of sound speed....I dunno, am not an expert on BPs..just trying to figure it out
No worries. You can't add a delay to the attenuation. You could technically do it, but the sound will have played before the attenuation has been applied. What effect are you wanting to create?
Thank you for this tuto! Very useful! I have a question concerning the Doppler effect. When I first start the game and I'm in the attenuation sphere of a cue component with the Doppler effect set, the sound plays with a weird (low) pitch and then if I start moving, the pitch gets back to normal. Any idea why and how to correct it? Thank you
Thanks! Hmm... interesting. Is the cue component in a fixed position? The Doppler effect is experienced by the listener as other objects move past them. If it's the listener that's moving and the cue isn't that could be the reason. In theory, the Doppler effect should work either way, in real life. I'm just about to go to bed lol it's 1am here. But I'll have a look in my project tomorrow and come back to you ;)
@@valkyriesound3888 Haha thank you for your late night reply ! Yes the cue object is fixed. It's actually the same if I move towards it and enter the attenuation sphere. But we almost don't here the brutal apparition because the sound is attenuated at the boundary of the sphere. Thanks a lot, I really appreciate !
I can't reproduce this... In this video, the simple Occlusion part uses the same engine sound cue used in the Doppler example so the Doppler node is active in both uses of the cue - but as you can see the Occlusion one doesn't have any Dopplering effect... :/ Are you on the Epic Forums? If so, could you post screenshots of your Doppler and Attenuation settings on here: forums.unrealengine.com/community/community-content-tools-and-tutorials/1737544-attenuation-spatialisation-occlusion-and-the-doppler-effect If you aren't on the Forums, what are your Doppler and Attenuation settings?
@@valkyriesound3888 So my settings are almost the same as yours in the video, except that the frequency filter of the occlusion is set to 1000hz and the smoothing to 0.5. However, I toggled on prime on load and changed voice to keep running and not playing (forgot the real name) and it seems that I don't hear any Doppler problem anymore !! 👌
Loving your videos mate. I'm learning a ton. I like how you have the ability to create your own game characters like the car and make them work like a normal game. Would you suggest for a sound designer getting into Unreal learn Unreal4 basics first and then blueprints? Thanks in advance :)
Thanks! I'd say Blueprints can be basic - Epic has some good tutorials on their site: www.unrealengine.com/en-US/onlinelearning-courses There are some starter Blueprints ones and some really good audio ones as well. The order I'd recommend is Ambient and Procedural Sound Design, Dynamic Audio, Sound and Space, then Understanding Audio Mixing and Effects :)
This could easily become a long debate :) I'll try to keep it brief! While 48 kHz offers more fidelity, which sample rate you go for depends on a few factors, including target platform, file size, and whether there's a noticeable difference between the same file at 44.1 / 48 kHz. The UE4 manual recommends 44.1 kHz (docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Audio/WAV/index.html). Android and iOS also recommend 44.1 kHz for their mobiles but 48 kHz should be fine for desktops. For tutorials, my approach is to try to follow what Epic recommends and what's in common use, so that the things we look at and make can be used on any device (ideally!). The Engine does support importing sound files using any sample rate (docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Audio/Overview/index.html) but it's about what's going to work best for your target platform / device.
Thanks for the tutorial, you are the best! i have a question... how can we un-enable audio occlusion ? it is like default feature of unreal audio system... there should be an option to remove this feature i think... do you have any idea?
Thanks! :D Audio occlusion is part of the engine but it's only used if you enable it. So long as you don't tick Enable Occlusion in the Attenuation setting it won't get used :)
@@valkyriesound3888 actually i never use any attenuation in my project.. I've been dealing with the occlusion problem since I started the project. (Unreal RPG DemoGame is my mentioned project by the way) I use Wwise for implementation... I wouldn't want to keep you busy with these issues, but that's the case :) Thank you for your kind answer...
@@ucadn Oh, if you're using Wwise then that software enables occlusion by default. You should be able to set the Occlusion Refresh Interval to 0 on your sound, which will effectively disable it :)
I just can’t help but get obsessed with the videos you made! Good job!👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Thanks! 😅
Awesome walkthrough! Really useful even many years later. Thanks for the great content!
Very informative, well put together and about a topic that is poorly covered elsewhere. Excellent job dude, many, many thanks.
Thank you very much! :D
great tutorial keep it up.
Thanks 😊
Really great video, this is definitely the best overview of UE4 audio effects I've come across. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you - glad you enjoyed it! :D
Thank you very much for this solution !!!
Very welcome!
The best tutorial for newbie gets into sound. Some practice and I'll be a junior in sound already :SS
this is so underrated
thank you so much for the video
No worries - and thank you!
So helpful, thank you!
Thanks, glad it was useful!
Outstanding!! have you thought of applying for a MegaGrants to make more tutorials? how could we get Epic to do a Free for the Month focused on sound?
Thanks! :D
I looked into the MegaGrants just a few weeks ago - that's a good tip, thank you :) It takes quite a while for them to process so I don't think I'll hear back until November.
I've no idea about the Free for a Month audio! :') I think Epic curate it - not sure if they can be persuaded on their forum though...?
awesome video
Thank you! :)
Amazing stuff! thanks for putting this together
No worries, glad you liked it! :)
This is a golden source!
Thank you :D
great tutorial
Thanks! Getting that Millennium Falcon to behave was more of a challenge than I expected :)
Wow you really put a lot of effort into editing! have a like!
Thank you! :D Editing is a trial of labour and love haha :)
Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge! I've set up all the sounds correctly as the video and made some cinematics in the sequencer. When I export the audio, it seems like the attenuation does not get exported correctly :( Happen to know why and how to fix this?
Hey, no worries :) I'm sorry though, I'm not sure what's happening there :( I can only think the camera may be too close/far away for the attenuation to be working properly, or that it's something in the export settings.
Is there a way to increase the size of attenuation spheres while in Blueprints?
Meaning... You have sound that is supposed to get gradually louder. The falloff would increase, but I can't find a control in BP that allows this. I can increase volume, but not the distance.
If you want to dynamically increase the radius of the attenuation sphere you'll need a reference to the attenuation in the BP, and from that you can get the Attenuation Settings. Split the output and you'll get a million pins. One of them is distance - and I believe (iirc) that you can make a new Attenuation Setting and it will (I think!) respond dynamically to a change in radius if connected to a Tick. Let me know if that works though. I'm sure I did it but it would have been a while ago now :)
THANK YOU
You're welcome! :)
Let's say am making a battle Royal game, how should I implement these theories? Like hearing gun fire and explosion from afar, hearing my own footsteps outside and inside or hearing an enemy footsteps coming closer etc.(you get the point) Am developing a game and would like to implement realistic sound effects.
Cool. If you want the audio to perform like it does in other games then I'd say that attenuation, spatialisation, occlusion and the Doppler effect are just initial steps.
For example... if you heard gunfire in a valley, forest, or field it's going to sound very different in each space. You could try using these functions to simulate the effect but you'd probably get better results creating the sounds in your DAW, then blending them in the game based on how far away the Player is from the source and the environment they're in.
Footsteps sounding different indoors and out can be managed pretty well with reverb imo. Attenuation applied to footsteps allows you to set the distance someone would start hearing the sound at, and you could change this in BPs (e.g. swapping in an attenuation with shorter range in a forest or marsh to simulate sounds being better absorbed by the environment).
There's a discussion here about gunshot reverb for indoor and outdoor spaces that might be worth checking out. Although they're talking about reverb it relates to what you're asking about hearing gunfire over distances.
www.reddit.com/r/GameAudio/comments/abwps8/wwise_interior_gunshot_reverb/
I used ‘Set audio listener attenuation override’ instead so that spatialization would still be dependent on the camera, and I like how it works, except audio occlusion seems to be from the camera perspective still, any idea how to fix that?
I don't, sorry. I think this is because occlusion is contained within the attenuation object. It might require a C++ solution rather than BP.
Awesome showcase of the audio engine for UE4. Do you use a mono audio file or a stereo audio file for the torch. What is more preferably for 3d audio sources/spatial audio. Thanks.
Thanks - I appreciate it!
I used mono for the torch and do for almost all my sounds. I'd have music and maybe some ambient environmental sounds in stereo. (5.1 and 7.1 surround sound also requires mono so UE4 can target each file to each speaker. UA-cam doesn't play back those formats yet (afaik) so it's not really possible to demonstrate here.)
I think it's best to know the purpose of the sound before crafting or importing it. If it's a point sound, coming from one position in space, then mono is best. That's going to mimic reality, and you won't really gain anything by using a stereo sound in a mono way.
Hope that helps! :)
@@valkyriesound3888 Thanks for this explanation. Very thorough. I've been digging into your videos and I'm quite keen to implement audio into UE4 using your tutorials. Keep it up. Thanks.
No worries - and that's good to hear! :D
I wish your voice was louder than game audio. Apart from that i loved the video.
Sorry, this was an early one and I was still cutting my teeth :p
With UE 4.26 released, is there a way to edit sound travel speed in water...oh wait maybe an edit in attenuation !?
Interesting! There isn't a speed adjustment feature as far as I know. If you want to give the impression the sound has been slowed down, you could use the pitch shift on the Modulation node in the Sound Cue (you could use a Switch node so you can jump between the same sound with / without the Mod node, e.g. setting to 1 when the Player enters a trigger area). Or you could add an Audio Volume to the underwater area and apply a Low Pass Filter at
@@valkyriesound3888 hmmm, thanks for the suggestion, even though it is a shame they didn't thought of it...
No worries. You can still get the same effect using Delays and LPFs ;)
Interesting.....add a delay on sound attenuation in surface actors, and when submerged, reduce delay to give illusion of sound speed....I dunno, am not an expert on BPs..just trying to figure it out
No worries. You can't add a delay to the attenuation. You could technically do it, but the sound will have played before the attenuation has been applied. What effect are you wanting to create?
Thank you for this tuto! Very useful!
I have a question concerning the Doppler effect. When I first start the game and I'm in the attenuation sphere of a cue component with the Doppler effect set, the sound plays with a weird (low) pitch and then if I start moving, the pitch gets back to normal.
Any idea why and how to correct it?
Thank you
Thanks! Hmm... interesting. Is the cue component in a fixed position? The Doppler effect is experienced by the listener as other objects move past them. If it's the listener that's moving and the cue isn't that could be the reason. In theory, the Doppler effect should work either way, in real life. I'm just about to go to bed lol it's 1am here. But I'll have a look in my project tomorrow and come back to you ;)
@@valkyriesound3888 Haha thank you for your late night reply !
Yes the cue object is fixed. It's actually the same if I move towards it and enter the attenuation sphere. But we almost don't here the brutal apparition because the sound is attenuated at the boundary of the sphere.
Thanks a lot, I really appreciate !
I can't reproduce this... In this video, the simple Occlusion part uses the same engine sound cue used in the Doppler example so the Doppler node is active in both uses of the cue - but as you can see the Occlusion one doesn't have any Dopplering effect... :/
Are you on the Epic Forums? If so, could you post screenshots of your Doppler and Attenuation settings on here:
forums.unrealengine.com/community/community-content-tools-and-tutorials/1737544-attenuation-spatialisation-occlusion-and-the-doppler-effect
If you aren't on the Forums, what are your Doppler and Attenuation settings?
@@valkyriesound3888 So my settings are almost the same as yours in the video, except that the frequency filter of the occlusion is set to 1000hz and the smoothing to 0.5.
However, I toggled on prime on load and changed voice to keep running and not playing (forgot the real name) and it seems that I don't hear any Doppler problem anymore !! 👌
Cool! Glad you got it fixed :)
Loving your videos mate. I'm learning a ton. I like how you have the ability to create your own game characters like the car and make them work like a normal game. Would you suggest for a sound designer getting into Unreal learn Unreal4 basics first and then blueprints?
Thanks in advance :)
Thanks! I'd say Blueprints can be basic - Epic has some good tutorials on their site: www.unrealengine.com/en-US/onlinelearning-courses
There are some starter Blueprints ones and some really good audio ones as well. The order I'd recommend is Ambient and Procedural Sound Design, Dynamic Audio, Sound and Space, then Understanding Audio Mixing and Effects :)
@@valkyriesound3888 This is very helpful thank you for the guide! I'll check them out
No worries! Enjoy :)
just as a fyi its probably best to use 48khz than 44.1 as 44.1 is cd format and 48hz is natural pcm without conversion.
This could easily become a long debate :) I'll try to keep it brief!
While 48 kHz offers more fidelity, which sample rate you go for depends on a few factors, including target platform, file size, and whether there's a noticeable difference between the same file at 44.1 / 48 kHz.
The UE4 manual recommends 44.1 kHz (docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Audio/WAV/index.html). Android and iOS also recommend 44.1 kHz for their mobiles but 48 kHz should be fine for desktops.
For tutorials, my approach is to try to follow what Epic recommends and what's in common use, so that the things we look at and make can be used on any device (ideally!).
The Engine does support importing sound files using any sample rate (docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Audio/Overview/index.html) but it's about what's going to work best for your target platform / device.
@@valkyriesound3888 great response! Good to know.
@@raedius_music no worries, thanks for watching!
@@valkyriesound3888 so if you are only making a pc game, should you use a higher rate? for example, do you think alien isolation used more than 44.1?
Thanks for the tutorial, you are the best!
i have a question... how can we un-enable audio occlusion ? it is like default feature of unreal audio system... there should be an option to remove this feature i think...
do you have any idea?
Thanks! :D Audio occlusion is part of the engine but it's only used if you enable it. So long as you don't tick Enable Occlusion in the Attenuation setting it won't get used :)
@@valkyriesound3888 actually i never use any attenuation in my project..
I've been dealing with the occlusion problem since I started the project. (Unreal RPG DemoGame is my mentioned project by the way) I use Wwise for implementation...
I wouldn't want to keep you busy with these issues, but that's the case :) Thank you for your kind answer...
@@ucadn Oh, if you're using Wwise then that software enables occlusion by default. You should be able to set the Occlusion Refresh Interval to 0 on your sound, which will effectively disable it :)
@@valkyriesound3888 yes! it solved my problem! you are the most beautiful person in world :)
Haha thank you... I think :')
Thank you, great video
Thanks!