Unreal Engine 5.1 | Creating Soundscapes

[@DanReynoldsAudio]

Awesome, thank you so much for making a video on Soundscape, I'm really glad people are digging it; but more than that, it's really helpful to us when you make such thorough tutorials for the community! Some quick errata: 1) Move by trace allows you to conduct a trace from the random spawn location and if the trace collides with something, it will move the sound to the collided surface. This allows you to "stick" sounds to the surface of the ground or the ceiling, etc. instead of just in space around the player. 2) Color points are an advanced metadata wherein you can define a numerical density for areas of space, which allows the designer to only allow sounds to spawn in spaces where those kinds of sounds belong. Some cool notes to add on: In 5.1.1 Soundscape Palettes with no Playback Conditions will activate as soon as they're loaded. Similarly, in the Soundscape Project Settings, you can add Soundscape Palettes to the Project's default Palette Collection, which will always be available the entire project, ready to activate. Those two things can make getting Soundscapes up and running a lot faster and no need to go into Blueprints. With that said, the dynamic nature is very useful.

[@maximejacobs1952]

Hi, I'm trying to do a day/night cycle with your plugin. If you have time, can you give me some advice on how to do it? Indeed, I first wanted to do a trigger on the metasounds within the colors. However, it doesn't seem to work because I can't point to them. Maybe the best method would be to have palettes for day and palettes for night?

[@DanReynoldsAudio]

@@maximejacobs1952 That's an interesting point, I will have to think about how someone could target a MetaSound on a Soundscape Color. But yeah, that's how I would do it right now. A Palette for each time of day that matters. You could do 4: Dawn, Mid-day, Sunset, Midnight. Dawn you have your morning chorus, Mid-day is when you have your cicadas and grasshoppers, Sunset things start cooling down, some lingering bird song; and Midnight you have your crickets or night frogs (depending on biome, etc.), night birds, other nocturnal animals, etc.

[@maximejacobs1952]

@@DanReynoldsAudio Great, thanks a lot for your answer! Indeed, this seems to be the best method.

[@gavinhislop]

Are you saying you can set up soundscapes without blueprints at all?

[@Jimorian]

I know what you mean about repetitive sound loops (3:30), one of the first ones I remember noticing in any media was as a kid watching the old show Emergency. Whenever there's a fire scene, they have a loop with sounds of hose spray, pumps running, but in the middle there's a very noticeable line of a guy shouting "get out of the way!" about every 15 seconds. It got so ingrained in my mind from noticing it every time, that I've spotted this same sound loop being used in other movies and television shows occasionally, once even while there was a fire being fought on a space station!

[@Gichanasa]

The classic Wilhelm Scream…

[@mitchellrcohen]

Thank you for your detail 🫶🏻

[@TheSoundFXGuy]

Awe dude! You didn't have to do that but I sincerely appreciate it.

[@mitchellrcohen]

Bro I love you. Thank you so much.

[@GrzegorzStyczen]

Fantastic tutorial, thank you

[@twelvegrain1111]

Just new to Unreal and your videos have really helped me grasp how the engine handles audio. Thanks you!

[@UnrealEngineLearn]

Subbed with notifications. Content of this caliber is rare. Thank you for everything you do

[@EdddSpeedruns]

Wow thanks for explaining Soundscapes in depth, this was really helpful!

[@iamlucasf]

I was looking forward to this video! The new features in UE 5.1 are incredible and learning how to use them with you makes it even better. Thank you!!

[@GuitarWisdom]

Fantastic video thank you. Just a dummy check for anyone struggling to get these sounds to attenuate: he doesn't show it here but you do need to set attenuation on the metasound by clicking source and then assigning an attenuation to the metasound. It's not enough to set the attenuation in the soundwaves.

[@TheSoundFXGuy]

Thanks for mentioning that. I had every intention of including it in the tutorial but after filming for a couple hours to make a 30 minute tutorial it completely slipped my mind lol. Much appreciated.

[@JohnTosom]

Thanks for explaining colors and palets behaviors

[@spcarso]

Exactly what I was looking for. Perfect description of how all this works. Can't wait to get it into my project.

[@spcarso]

Soundscapes make a HUGE difference in VR. Just playing around with different 'colors' and their attenuation really sets you in the world.

[@jrp1021]

Super helpful tutorial with well thought-out examples

[@territorygameofficial]

Cheers! gonna work on converting my ambience over to this

[@SugarBayStudios]

Thanks a lot for your high quality content, your videos are the best. You're helping my a lot with sound implementation !

[@carlsvensson6970]

These videos are good lessons. Your are a great lectuarer.

[@aquincygoodman]

Wish there was a full, deeper video on the last ten minutes of this video.

[@boggledeggnoggler5472]

Thanks!

[@TheSoundFXGuy]

Thank YOU!

[@StevenDiLeo]

great explanation, love it! can't wait to use this feature :)

[@Eliazer]

I guess you can do a lot of these things (like pitch and volume randomization) from within the meta sound, so the main attraction of the soundscape is is the random positional settings (and the tagging system, of course) since you could set several loop layers and a random array of birds/sounds in a single meta sound?

[@tarekwayne9193]

Yeah good points, I was wondering what the advantage was over doing this in a metasound.

[@CrownKing2499]

Amazing, thanks for covering it! :)

[@Afflictionability]

awesome tutorial my guy

[@TheSoundFXGuy]

Thank you!

[@dubtube6691]

Great tutorial 👍

[@vojtecheffenberger3672]

You could maybe more easily to setting and clearing soundscape states using the new audio gameplay volumes, make your own component with only the set state on listener enter and clear on leave, the execution will happen even if player spawn inside volume

[@AllenYoung-rj5mc]

This video is great! But I wonder how to make Soundscape Plugin work when packaging the project. Soundscape sound sources aren’t in the scene in Packages (Dev/Shipping).

[@MartinBarreby]

I get this behavior where it stops spawning sounds after like 20-30 seconds. I can't figure out why, but probably some setting somewhere that I have missed. I think the camera position should not affect it, but just for the sake of it I just started the level and let it play without moving anything and I still get this. I have a looped sound spawned once and it keeps playing so the audio isn't cut out for some reason either. Update: I found the issue but I don't understand why. So I skipped using the tags in the level blueprint and created a new blueprint actor that on start just spawnd a soundscape palette and then play node to start playing it. Then I placed the that actor in the level. Not sure but also felt like there was a difference in the rate of things spawning, and like they were spawning faster at a higher rate. 2nd update(!!): I guess it was because I never used the Soundscape subsystem node and add pallette collection nodes. Just "Spawn Soundscape Palette" don't use the soundscape system at all. So using this exact setup as in this video, but in an actor that is added to the level instead of doing it in the level blueprint worked just as well. So it had nothing to do with using an actor. I hope my missteps can at least help others. :D

[@LetsPatrick]

Hi, first of all thank you for your videos! these help me a lot! I have one request: could you make a video about the sound attenuation and how to work with it. And I would be happy if you could show how you can make it so that when you go into a house the sound is duller and when you go into a hall there is an echo. Thank you for your work. greetings from Germany

[@TheSoundFXGuy]

I'll see what I can do!

[@LetsPatrick]

@@TheSoundFXGuy best man

[@moozgit]

Thank you so much for this video! I'm trying to figure out how to set up the Blueprint for multiple trigger boxes as you did at the end of this video. Do you have a follow up video on this process? Thanks!

[@TheSoundFXGuy]

I'm not sure I fully understand your question. At 27:00 I show the BP on the screen and walk through it.

[@moozgit]

@@TheSoundFXGuy I'm just having a hard time recreating it - can't find the 'set' or correct 'select' nodes🤦‍♂

[@TheSoundFXGuy]

So the "Set" node is from the Location Selection variable that I created. You'll see that on the left side of the screen under variables. This is just a basic Int32 variable. When you drag it into your BP, you have the option to Set or Get. If you choose Set, you'll get the node that I have. This allows you to update the variable during runtime. The select node can be obtain by simply right clicking anywhere in your BP and typing "Select" into the context menu. If you're still running into issues, my Discord server is linked in the description of the video. We have a forum section in our Discord for users to ask questions and get help from one of our many Discord community members. @@moozgit

[@cloudymau8739]

Hey! Love your videos and what you do. Can you create a tutorial on how to add dynamic sounds to a 2D sidescroll game character?

[@beatblastdeath]

Hello, The Sound FX Guy. Would make a demo video about engine sounds using Meta Sounds. I've been checking the video and there are these old videos which have some of the nodes missing and renamed and I can't seem to find out. I've been facing lot of issues regarding the same. I hope you'd look into it and make a small video regarding the engine sounds and the nodes which are missing and any alternatives that can be used.

[@amedeoserra1747]

Thank you so much for this tutorial! It really helpful for my thesis. I have a question: after setting everything when I play the game, the soundscape will stop after a while. Sometimes one color stops, sometimes another one and I dunno how to fix this.

[@TheSoundFXGuy]

Without seeing how you have things set up, it's hard to tell but you're welcome to join my Discord server (linked in the description of the video). We have a Q&A Forum section that you're welcome to post screenshots of your issue in. We have a very helpful community there.

[@CrownKing2499]

What if I want to have specific ambient sounds triggered in 3D space at some trees in a forest, that's something where I still would need to add attached sounds cues or at least create a system of randomly triggering it at the tree locations?

[@TheSoundFXGuy]

I didn’t include it in this video because I just wanted to cover the basics but you can dynamically add/remove additional colors during runtime. So for example you could create a general forest soundscape that plays all over a wooded area but maybe you want to add a specific bird sound when a player approaches a specific tree. You could have a trigger volume around that tree that will add that extra color when the player enters the volume and remove it when they step away. There are a couple other ways to do this as well but this would probably be the easiest way.

[@YiannisKalogiannidis]

Where is the "clear state" in Unreal Engine 5.4?

[@doggy.collar]

Does all of this have to be in the level blueprint? COuldn't I just as easily make a trigger blueprint separately?

[@TheSoundFXGuy]

@@doggy.collar you absolutely can. It was just easier for the tutorial to do it in there.

[@Albert-ww1kj]

Thanks a lot for all the tutorials. Do you think it is possible to sync the audio playing? Like when i'm having beats or melodies in my soundscapes?

[@TheSoundFXGuy]

The whole premise of soundscapes is that they’re random and procedural. I would recommend using other means for music systems.

[@Albert-ww1kj]

@@TheSoundFXGuy Thanks a lot for the fast reply! Ok i see so i could use Soundscape for Ambience and do the timed stuff with blueprints (Quartz i think).

[@TheSoundFXGuy]

@@Albert-ww1kj correct

[@sierrafoxtrot1331]

Any idea why my tags are not clearing when I leave the trigger volume? I have re-watched a few times now and I cant figure it out.

[@TheSoundFXGuy]

Without seeing screenshots of your setup, I can't say for certain. You're welcome to use the link in the description of the video to join my Discord. We have a whole community of helpful people and a Game Audio Help forum for questions such as this.

[@KGunasekhar]

can you please share the map list on asset store