MetaSounds for Beginners | GameSoundCon 2022 | Unreal Engine

Here’s a quick tour of MetaSounds for beginners who have no experience with procedural audio. Watch to see some practical examples of how to build MetaSounds graphs with a limited set of source assets, and use post processing effects to control what a user will experience.
For more Unreal Engine game audio talks, check out our GameSoundCon recap: unrealengine.com/blog/get-gam...

[@tehf00n]

I can't help but think there are vital things missing from this whole system. Music designers don't want to be forced into an archaic workflow of twiddling synths to generate something they can already get from a VST. So that leaves the wave approach, which is all good I guess. It would seem logical to have at least a midi sequencer in a traditional SMPTE format along with some way to hook in a VST otherwise the progress made is technically a regression and people will opt for only using for niche things and let the dynamic music be created externally and layered in Unreal. We should even go as far as to have MusicXML support for composers. Just my two cents.

[@CamberGreber]

100% this.

[@gab_gallard]

I agree that a MIDI sequencer would be nice, at least something very basic like what Wwise has. Besides that though, this is not a DAW. It's a procedural audio engine. There's nothing archaic here. It's all basic synthesis techniques. If this is archaic, then all music theory should be considered archaic too. Also, while VST support would be awesome, you have to think why only DAWs have it and not game audio tools. The main reason AFAIK is licensing and performance. When you produce a song in your DAW, you are processing your sounds pre-rendering. You don't have to re-distribute each plugin's code with each one of your WAV files, because you are simply baking the resulting processes into an inmmutable file. The code of your plugin is licensed to you, a sole music/audio producer, and only you have access to it, not your listeners. Game Audio is different. Everything has to happen real-time. That would mean that if you wanna use a VSTi or a VST effect in your game, each copy of the game will need to redistribute the code of each plugin in your chain. Since each licensing model is at the discretion of the VST manufacturer, managing the licensing becomes pretty much a legal headache. Some audio companies like iZotope do have especial versions of their plugins for game audio (that's why you have iZotope's Mastering suite in Wwise), but this has to be negotiated with each individual company. As I said, the other reason is performance. Sure, it would be awesome to have something as powerful as Vital or Pigments running natively inside UE, but if an instance is already making your CPU permormance go over 50% inside of your DAW which is optimized for audio, what do you think it will happen when you run it inside of your game, which has to share resources between a multitude of systems? And how do you ensure that each individual plugin, all of which have different system requirements, will work correctly in every console and PC build on the market? It would be a miracle if that works in one platform already. Yeah, so in summary, cool idea but is not worth the effort IMO. Not for now at least. Both Game Engine and Audio plugin tech need to mature before we see anything like that happening.

[@tehf00n]

@@gab_gallard you can dedicated a thread to the audio so that's not an issue but you raise some good points. I would say that when I talk of VST support I am fully supporting licensed works or custom created VST. I would expect some kind of system in place to ensure you aren't distributing illegal VSTs. But I doubt anyone who is selling legit releases of games would want to ruin their years of efforts over unlicensed software or assets of any kind. I would say that although Metasounds is a procedural synth tool, that there are other tools I would expect to come with any kind of VST support. Thanks for the info. Better than 99.9% of youtube comments I've read since 2008 :D

[@garretthogan]

I don't think the intention is to replace a sound designer's DAW. I think the goal is to offer more control of sounds once they've been brought into the engine. I don't think sound designers will stop using their DAW for this, but that doesn't mean this isn't useful.

[@johnoestmannmusic]

Reading the other comments here - I think it's worth keeping in mind that this is not for entry-level audio or music. But there are very powerful use cases here. You can basically create music in which each instrument and composition changes entirely based on what is going on in-game. While he did say that being familiar with Max, PureData, SuperCollider are not essential , it is worth recognizing this is a beast in that world. There is a huge amount of audio potential there.

[@nikxneon6615]

At 11:02 the subtitles say [inaudible]. They should say, "musique concrete."

[@_trashcode]

can i use the level-sequencer to trigger sounds? and if so, is it sample accurate?

[@agent007asdfgh]

Its cool thing!! Does any-body have videos how to use it?

[@user-gx7tb2kv6y]

very helpful!

[@OriginRow]

I have to create a yt list for these sounds categories......for the first time 😅

[@koko-nl5tp]

Can you please share the project file? It would help a lot.

[@brianlaflamme1948]

wish he was actually showing you how to create this stuff instead of just showing you nodes that already exist..

[@powerplay743]

pacing issue!. shoud've done this a little slower.

[@in2webelieve997]

You know you can change the playback speed right

[@fluxus_tr]

that dam topknot is just too hard to not stare at the whole time.

[@user-mv5yw5zy8f]

ward

[@user-mv5yw5zy8f]

00:02:07 Contents

[@user-mv5yw5zy8f]

00:02:39 Instroduction

[@keivanh2001]

very bad presentation

[@manonthedollar]

Awful presentation.

[@cybernihilist]

this is not for beginners

[@gab_gallard]

It's for beginners to Metasounds, not beginners to Sound Design. What he demonstrated are all quite elemental sound design techniques.

[@rockstarpmk]

He's practically mumbling and is rather dispassionate in presentation. I couldn't understand much of this.

[@daniel.lopresti]

Worked in specialty IT distribution for many years; 85% of the trainings/roadmaps/presentations/product updates/etc were like this. Mind-numbing and monotonous. Very hard to stay awake.

[@chrise229]

This was the driest, most unenthusiastic presentation that I have ever seen in my life.