How To Create Beautiful Ambient Sounds For A Game

Patreon: / marshallmcgee
Website: marshallmcgee.com/ (Work Inquiries Only)
All clips in this video are protected from copyright law under fair use for educational purposes.
Credits:
Bird Video: • Singing NIGHTINGALE - ...
Beach Video: • The Most Relaxing Wave...

[@ya_boi_salami]

i can't whistle, my dreams of being an audio engineer... crushed, crumpled, blown to smithereens...

[@metashrew]

time to buy a slide whistle :)

[@Richie131hun]

I can whistle but only by sucking the air inwards instead of blowing out. Try it lol.

[@waterfish3886]

​@@Richie131hun same lol, but for me its not nearly as powerful as others' blowing out

[@Bittamin]

I have you covered: almost every daw has a gigantic stock library that’s completely free use for making music!(it’s part of what you pay for, don’t tell the serum users 😂) for instance logic alone has 1000s of nature sounds that come with the legacy pack 🎉 sure free garage band on Mac does too!

[@aiRxShop]

The trick with lowering the bird call 3 octaves, is so genius and clever. Now that I've heard of that technique it's almost like, "well duh, that makes perfect sense!"

[@le_beatbox]

They did that in Ghost of Tsushima as well, maybe that's where he got the idea from?

[@MarshallMcGee]

@@le_beatbox I haven't played Ghost Of Tsushima but that's very cool, I got the idea from the modern Godzilla sounds where they record rubber and plastic at regular speed and pitch that down many octaves to make roar sounds, so I copied that technique but in reverse basically.

[@Oscar_Armstrong]

I am impressed at how well you imitated the slowed down and pitch shifted bid call

[@sowianskizonierz2693]

a bid call? Are you at an auction?

[@grilledcheesephd]

Professional ambient/meditation music composer here. Learned some fantabulous tips in this video that I’ve just got to try. Thank you!

[@calebgalvan6278]

Having an LFO modulate the the filter your base layer of wind is running through, and adding some resonance to that filter, adds a lot more life to your base wind layer, and replaces some of the constant harshness of the noise with some interesting movement

[@TheFretzone]

There is an interview with the audio director of ghost of tsushima and he said they did that exact technique for some of the bird sounds.

[@MarshallMcGee]

No way that’s awesome do you have the link?

[@TheFretzone]

@@MarshallMcGee I dont have the interview but if you type in google : Ghost of Tsushima : Fake Birds. There is a video on vimeo where they showcase that technique.

[@marcwillysfx]

It's on vimeo. 'The Sound Design of Ghost of Tsushima: Fake birds'

[@SaintJames14]

Waiting for link

[@mySDK3333]

Gordon Hempton is quite cool, he wrote a book about how different biomes sound in different time. Most of the urban people would not know what nature sounds like.

[@seth_piano]

When the bird sounds at -3 octaves played, my cat became VERY concerned. "What? What that? What happening? Confusion!"

[@dan_obie]

I was about to comment the same thing. My cat was legit concerned

[@jumpingman6612]

As a birdwatcher and gem dev, fantastic Why haven't I thought about that? Thank you for this

[@NGTVST]

Another great one, Marshall. I think I still have our collab files back from 2016 (?) lying around on one of my hard drives. Time flies. :)

[@SilvaEshOnFire]

i used your work in my final project for research on sound design and i am going onto study sound design in university, thank you for showing me the importance and impact of audio engineering. If it wasn't for you i wouldn't have found my love for post production. Great video as always!

[@GimmeCookiz]

Some of my guesses for the added sounds at the end there, the boat had a bunch on top of it with stuff like floating or moving or entering it, and then walking on sand/wood on the player. Can't tell if there's some extra stuff on the floating lilies or not, but this sounds nice and busy. Lil thought for standout sounds, or hero sounds!, where in your group of bird sounds there's maybe 1 that has a much much lower chance of playing but is a lot more in your face like a crow's, occasionally having you go "wtf?". Having things that put you on edge in atmospheres feels like something I'd want since it's natural to be a bit spooked in the open

[@WavesNGames]

What the actual amazing eff!? That bird call was so cool! Love the detail you drop in these videos.

[@AXLplosion]

As soon as you slowed down the bird sounds I immediately opened up Audacity and tried it and I'm very happy to know I can now make myself sound like a bird whenever I want.

[@OriginRow]

SFX is gives another life to film/game. And you perfectly nailed it

[@omsine]

you're a friggin genius marshall i just gotta say! thanks for all you do!

[@EthanFilms]

I have watched this 3 times now simply because of how fascinating the method is and how well the video was made. SO cool!!!

[@Jlewismedia]

Ngl that bird technique is the cleverest shit i've ever seen

[@williamtate1293]

In this spirit, there is a program called SoundParticles that has a lot of the same functionality that you described in this video. It's emphasis is on spatialization but also has parameters that let's you control velocity (changing location over time), granular amplitude/pitch, and others. I have no idea how it would implement into a game but for those looking to create similar soundscapes without needing to code your own script, it's a cool place to start.

[@ZachHeyde]

Amazing as always man 🙂👏

[@soejrd24978]

You've got such an amazing interesting channel.

[@NorinDev]

great video, I'll definitely use that ambient sound system in my game:)

[@maxxlancaster4439]

just in time for my honours work for game audio :)) thanks man, your videos are always so helpful

[@Alexgudmusic]

Woah, that's super genius and creative. sound design needs more attention.

[@JazzMac36251]

Regarding the bounding boxes, that's a cool idea! I recently did something similar with raycasting in Unity C#.

[@sub-harmonik]

cool video, might also be nice to modulate the upper parts of the wave filter to simulate foam/wave breaking

[@bananaaudio]

Exceptional upload as always. Learned some new things that I'm going to have to try!

[@tolson-vkn]

What an absolutely tragedy that I've not seen your work in the last year. Time to bell. Great video!

[@stellar4677]

i need to rewatch this with headphones

[@Valenspire]

That's really cool, I ended up setting up sound really similar in the game I messed with, I didn't really look up how it's done or anything. I took inspiration from skyrim cause they did such a good job with the ambient sound of that game. The bird trick was really awesome, I did not know about that, I think I have to try that!

[@cheney7231]

You can use pitched down cat vocie to make exotic bird song.

[@wazawoo]

Omg. This is insane. I would love to know the details of how you did the frequency analysis of the beach sounds and applied that to white noise

[@dwsel]

Sounds and looks great!

[@composerkirk]

Excellent video, and I'm happy that I got the audio challenge on panning lol! Quick question though: for getting in the boat, what was your reasoning on keeping that sound in stereo? I expected it to be more from the POV of the camera and not the character. Thank you!

[@VladaPersonal]

Incredible! Thanks!

[@whzbwkkfu]

Great video! Always enjoy your work - my only egotistical complaint is too infrequent uploads ;-) For sounds, I'd like to hear more on I'll stick with game-related sounds: Would love to hear what thoughts a sound designer would have when designing "reward" sounds for games, such as level-ups, power-ups, mission completion, etc. Another idea is just "alien sounds". Huge fan of Starcraft and I absolutely adore the sounds scheme for both Protoss and Zerg.

[@Jaredvic]

oh cool, i wanna see you make an eastern whipbird sound :P

[@geddijaddimembummi8546]

this tips so good!!!

[@andrewa3825]

So interesting. these are such high quality videos

[@momchilo4388]

This is epic ty!

[@kharmatic9394]

This is awesome

[@Voltraxfr]

i love your videos, please teach more sfx stuff

[@AlexGioada]

Omg we should make a game togetherrrrrr

[@morgan0]

if you try hard enough, you can even make engine sounds with your mouth while slowly breathing in, try it out it's fun!

[@kironikolov6668]

always making sure to turn off adblocker for you Marshall

[@MizManFryingP]

Marshall is back!!

[@THEKHAYYYAM]

MARSHALL!, DROP ANOTHER VIDEO, AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!

[@Carkoon]

Another great video! Did you have a chance yet to play around with MetaSounds?

[@juliusjohnson8046]

Really helpful video! One question I have is about the filtering of the pink noise based on the beach sound clip. Did you just put a filter on the noise that had an EQ shape similar to the sound clip, or is there another plugin/tool/process you used to pull that off?

[@OmoNok]

Great video man! I would change walking sound on sand its to dirt like to me

[@letsplayConfused]

at 3:14 when the horizontal bar fills green, the outline starts missing.

[@morgan0]

the wind/waves noise would probably sound more realistic with realtime filters. for waves, constant low red/brown noise, with modulated high bands. and wind noise depends on speed, so just moving a bandpass cutoff would probably get you most of the way there, but that recording is quite nice sounding. it would be really cool but also very overkill to model gusts and pressure changes, and other fancier phenomena.

[@morgan0]

ah you did end up emulating gusts of wind

[@TheBestEpicProGamer]

Lmao. You deserved my sub

[@Tim3Lime]

Watching this as a technical artist, it is wild how many parallels there are to sound design and making visual graphics. Making sounds using different white noises and then playing around with it until it sounds good, using real life recordings (parallel to photogrammetry) and combining it with procedural sound ect. I mean when you think about it, it makes sense but still, never really thought of that.

[@Ilov534]

lets goo

[@clothildeschulz9518]

Awesome ! I was wondering about the workflow behind event sender/listener system, is it audio that is sent or is it triggers/ parameters only ? I really like the idea of sounds reacting with each others but I just wonder how you set it up in a practical way

[@MarshallMcGee]

Just triggers and parameters! It sends an event trigger and two floats. A duration, and a pre-delay time.

[@laxelford3533]

16th view Also speaking if the annoying neighbors. Ive been working on a redesigj and when im laying out sounds to start i dont use headphones. Poor bastards Side question what plugin did you use to get the snapshot of the oceans frequencies?

[@srgttamtam]

Since ur working in ue5, what’s ur take on the soundscape system for something like this?

[@MorriganJade]

As someone who dabbles at times with voices, and can do a Joker like voice, and can whistle quite well and is on the verge of learning metal vocals; hearing you talk about neighbors, my mind instantly went: "oh, they already think I'm crazy" 😆

[@westingtyler2]

5:10 you should say what this sound scanning tool is

[@LethalChicken77]

2:22 NO. ONLY BIRD SOUNDS.

[@e.ercekiraz902]

Hi Marshall! Where can I contact you to ask some questions? Thank you!

[@user-qv2sq4gf7z]

the stardew valley fish icons?

[@ettiSurreal]

another way to implement animal sounds: add animals

[@ryanmcmahon6043]

Land creatures??? Where dem seagulls at?... It would be great if you could better marry the visuals with the ambient audio. I haven't wrapped my head around how to sync shaders with audio since shaders tend to just stay by themselves over in the GPU. But if leave rustles were synced with the foliage shader getting a gust. And wave noise increasing synced with the wave shader picking up