UE4 Tutorial: Footstep Sounds on Different Materials (Request)

How to use physical materials and character animations to change the way footsteps sound based on which surface the player is on. Topics covered: Animation notifies, blueprint scripting, material graphs, physical materials.
Special thanks to NoKnowledge for the request!
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[@JimboJu1ce]

Wow thanks so much for this!

[@bigtime9597]

I like this tutorial, but there's just one thing I want to make mention of. When alternating between feet, instead of using FlipFlop, go into the sound cue and mix at least three footsteps of the same surface, but different pitches by using a Random node. From there, you can set the 0 input to a value of 0.9, and set the rest to 1. Realistically, your feet never impact a surface in the same exact position or pattern. It's always random, and that has a tendency to affect the way your feet sound. Additionally, if you want to add a bit of thump (like the sound of boots), you can repeat the same process with grass variations 0, 1, and 2, then use the Crossfade by Param node to mix that with a type of shoe or boot variations. Again, use Random and set the 0 input to 0.9. Plug that into the Cue output and you're good to go.

[@MojiiOkay]

If you're applying these to a Landscape material you need to do so within the Layer Info you've created for each material instead of in the Material node.

[@JessicaMarinaRushie]

Thanks :D

[@xf4c347]

I love you man

[@ryanq7518]

thank you so much for this tip. it really helped :)

[@87Anees]

I'm sorry I'm new to un4, can you tell me where I can find that?

[@killadamgamer]

@@87Anees basically when making a landscape, you can create a « layered » material which is one « material ball » like on the videos but with multiple within, which then you can switch with during the making of the landscape. So in that same event graph of layered material, insert the blueprint of this video in there :)

[@relaxingtopology256]

These are things I have wondered about for years. Thank you!

[@VirtualWorlds]

Yet again mate, you amaze me with your indepth knowledge on the engine! Well done mate for bothering! I love watching your channel. Top job! =)

[@earthbornjim9975]

That was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Awesome!

[@VirtualWorlds]

Man! I love what you're doing. You know your stuff! I am really inspired by the content on your channel. I have learned quite alot by watching your content. Your videos have made me work that much harder at making better videos for my channel. Your channel is full of posivtive vibes. 100% from me for your genuine effort. Top respect to you and keep up the good work! =)

[@nicolazara7060]

Exactly what i was looking for, quick and to the point too!

[@intellmove8431]

This has saved my butt in so many ways, thanks!

[@OGSoundFX]

Thanks, this is Awesome ! If anyone had the same problem as me not finding the animnotify trigger, In the animation BP, events can only be used from the Event Graph. So make sure you are on the event Graph and it should work.

[@marcusbridge7011]

Thanks. That was confusing me.

[@Falcon52]

I have tried this now and it works great! Thanks for this tutorial

[@AngusMacnaughtonGames]

Excellent, thanks very much for this tutorial. Super concise and works perfectly!

[@roundishwhale]

thanks for the fast clean and well done tutorial!

[@geri4367]

Add some pitch and volume variation to this and you are all set

[@brutal6129]

@Kuroko no

[@brutal6129]

@max steel use modulator in sound cues

[@digitalmessiah7325]

@@brutal6129 Thanks for the tip :)

[@SimpleDeveloperOfficial]

Thank you so much i had a lot of trouble getting to work on my own but your tutorial helped out a lot.

[@adri4739]

You can use a sound cue to use just one footsteep for each type and use the Modulator node in the sound cue to make different pitchs and volumes for a one sound

[@danj.haynes7411]

Thank you. this helped plenty!!

[@ajryangameaudio]

Awesome, thank you! Subscribed.

[@flori1224]

Helped me lot! Thanks!!!

[@bagsy4884]

You legend, thanks man

[@itzmrk]

nice and clean! awesome

[@m0rph3u5.]

Epically useful.. thanks a million!

[@Seniorsgdi]

very informative and simple to understand thanks a lot

[@JasMasKas]

Thank you !!!

[@NatesPlayzGamez]

great vid bud :) TY very much :) have a fantastic day :)

[@underscore00]

That's so nice :) thanks so much! You too!

[@JoelLagunaYomama]

Awesome dude, my game sounds so much better now!

[@francpujolar2481]

perfect dude

[@mattparkinson3954]

Thanks for this, hopefully it still works on the recent version of unreal.

[@m0rph3u5.]

Thanks alot mate, great video ... straight to the point , one more subscriber here ;)

[@underscore00]

Much appreciated! Thanks man :)

[@JDMCSGOCONTENT]

nice work

[@deluxepopper]

Someone that speaks fast and zero "um's and "ah's".. You just got a "Briliant!" approval :D.. Cool stuff.. Using the scalar function on UV's was something i have not seen before. very useful.. I am more into C++ programming in Unreal i keep wondering while learning if the BP Anim notify approach is an efficient way to call soundfiles or if this ends up beeing a bottleneck when using tons of different soundfiles for left and right foot, different filtering when walking, running, crouching e.t.c.. Have you experimented with this to have any knowlegde? Subbed your channel.. keep it coming Cheers

[@simba1523]

I wanted more than 2 sounds. I made a Cue sounds file tied all my sounds into a random node then to output. I then removed the flipflop and tied the play sound directly and selected my cue file in the play sound node. I now have 6 variations of footsteps for one material.

[@OCanalDeVideoGames]

new subscriber, great channel

[@coreydavies550]

Brilliant tutorial! Everything’s working fine for me with floor surfaces (specifically with solid wood, creaking stairs and a creaking attic floor), but I am also trying to trigger different footsteps for when the player walks on various carpets, rugs, mats and other thin-layered dampening objects on top of the floor surfaces. As you may have guessed, it isn't working when I set the phys material of a carpet to ‘PM_carpet’ to try and trigger the corresponding footstep cue in the anim blueprint, so what do I have to do to get it to work? It seems as though it’s only working on floor surfaces so I imagine that it’s because I need to get the carpet to recognise the third-person characters’ feet in order to make a trigger possible? I’ve tried a lot of strategies so far with no progress since getting the main footsteps working (which I’m really happy about), so I’d really appreciate some advice with this if possible 😁

[@underscore00]

Hi, thanks for watching! So it could be a number of things that could potentially be set incorrectly, I suggest first of all double-checking that you have the physical material set in your carpet material and have the necessary nodes set in your animation blueprint. Secondly, it could be how you're doing the carpets and stuff - This method works fine with static meshes, but you'll run into trouble if you're using decals to make the carpets work. Lastly, you can try setting the line trace from 'visibility' to 'camera' to see if that makes a difference, and also make sure that if you are using static meshes for your carpets that they have collision enabled. Oh and also that the carpet collision is the one that the line trace hits first, before the floor material. Hope that helps! Let me know how you go :)

[@7249xxl]

Awsome. I used your technique with others to compile a full blueprint footstep module for 3d characters with jumping noices etc. Quick question: How would one turn this into a 3d audio sample for other players?

[@DiegoHodgeAudio]

What if we wanted to use different sound cues for walking, jogging or running on each of the surfaces?

[@dragonny4master]

I would create different notifiers for walking, jogging and running animations. So each notifier event handler will have different set of sound cues.

[@waomae4411]

Thanks for got a sub :)

[@auldashy]

New subscriber here. This is awesome! Can you make a texture that shows quills or spines coming out of a character randomly?

[@Ali107]

Can you teach us how to make it in a landscape material with multiple textures that are painted on it?

[@TacticalGamingNetwork]

agree

[@ChronicalV]

just to let anyone know doing it in a newer version of ue4, you need to tick the boolean to true for the branch in the animBlueprint, otherwise it won't fire

[@jankloub8553]

could you please clarify in more details? I followed tutorial and I have footstep sound only on one type of surface but not on the another

[@jankloub8553]

@Solar Cypse thank you very mcuh for follow up- to tell the truth I found out that I did not set up Physics material Physicas properities 1:27 so shame on me

[@dsiul11]

can you give explain more please? this is not working for me

[@maxscoped671]

Changing volume of it in game setting

[@CrumbleMemes]

Hey @underscore when I go to type in animnotify it doesn't show up as add event animnotify Fixed - i created an animation blueprint off my skeletal mesh and dragged into into my animations folder

[@Divuar]

Gave the 1000th like yaaay

[@byLovebird1]

How can we set this up with landscape layers?

[@ultimateducc]

could you please make a tutorial on making a certain object following a specified path for a specified time, thanks.

[@joshuaknight6551]

Little vague. Like an AI walking? Or a particle moving? Or like a box on a conveyor? There's several ways such as time lines AI move to interlerp by a Delta etc. Tag if you're still trying and I'll see if I can help

[@TheKwiji]

will this work on a object with multiple physical materials? Multiple material id?

[@samohickey]

Very nice.

[@samohickey]

I subscribed when I saw this. Lookin' at more of your videos now! :D

[@underscore00]

Thanks! Good luck! Let me know if you need anything explained more than I do in the videos, and be sure to show me any cool stuff you make ;)

[@samohickey]

@@underscore00 thank you! That means a lot and I appreciate the support. I still haven't put my sounds in the game yet, but when I do I will shoot a video your way to thank you. :)

[@ChronicalV]

3:20 what does the multiply do? I'm using my own materials imported with the assets, and I don't have a texture coordinate node either, so do I need to do this step?

[@HawkinsBrosGaming]

I've added the notifys to the end jump animation but it isn't working. Do I need to do something else?

[@LechuckNorris75]

The same for me, :( did you find a solution?

[@HawkinsBrosGaming]

Lechuck Norris sadly not, if I find a solution I’ll let you know

[@gameswownow7213]

hi there, very helpful vid. but im noob and i need to know, for exemple, if i have a full map already finished, and it's whit a lot of meshes i need to apply whatever surface sound to each mesh? especialy many of them are placed with the brush (rocks and others). and what if i want to apply on a voxel plugin where is different landscape material... if its not to much

[@tcsproduction6924]

great tutorial, how to tell my ai that i'm making noise while walking on the surface? thanks

[@fosterboy1587]

Great video can you show this in first person would be great

[@GAMEBR0VIP2462]

i added a notif on jump land idk if its needed but seems to work how i expected

[@jaspercatapang]

Great tutorial! I'm wondering what adjustments would have to be done if it's to be applied on a floating camera representing a first person character, I mean, there's technically nothing to animnotify? Thanks!

[@underscore00]

Yeah, it's super easy! I'm using this same system for my game, Daybreak, which uses a first person character. You can do something like get the characters velocity and if it's above 0 you can play a function on a timer with the flip-flop code from this video, and then stop the timer when velocity = 0. To get proper timing for the footsteps, it's probably worth using animnotifies. One time I even added the first person arms to a character and set the mesh to invisible, just to use the animation blueprint for stuff like this.

[@jaspercatapang]

​@@underscore00 Thank you so much! I'll implement your suggestion. Cheers!

[@earthbornjim9975]

@@underscore00 I used this on a First Person character also and used anim notifies using the default 'FirstPerson_Run' animation and just put the notifies where it looks like a foot would be hitting the ground and it works really well. However, if I am walking on whatever surface and I shoot my gun while walking/running, it no longer plays the sounds until I stop firing. I am assuming this is happening because the animation is changing from 'FirstPerson_Run' to ''FirstPerson_Fire'. Do you know of any way around this so the sound still plays while i'm firing or is this how it's supposed to normally work anyway?

[@underscore00]

@@earthbornjim9975 Well you're exactly correct about why it's not playing during your fire animation - the easiest solution to this that I can think of is to use the animnotify method for the first step like in the video, but then play the second footstep sound after a delay, without an animnotify. That way the second footstep should play even during your fire animation, but it might still be a bit hit-and-miss.

[@earthbornjim9975]

@@underscore00 i'll look into it. thanks.

You can erase the flip flop and use an sound cue y'know ?? 😃

[@underscore00]

I know, but I'm old school lol I've always used this method

[@mchicherin]

@@underscore00 Hardcode is not an oldschool, it's a hardcode

[@hanythabet4027]

Thanks for that. My cues have many sound varations and was wondering how to use them!

[@IloveyourcHAnneliTsrEallYgOodU]

how would you do it for terrain because I added the psychic material but it only works for geometry

[@mrchilled85]

great video but i have to ask something i cant seem to do it with my material due to having a number of layers any idea on how to do this ? thanks and keep up the great work

[@mrchilled85]

edit no need i worked it out by opening my layers and you can set the phys material in there :)

[@mr.d7689]

Hi I'm new to game development, do you need to apply this to every single NPC/ enemy etc or is there a way to trigger specific footsteps sounds specifically to the landscape?

[@fabianoperes2155]

You have created 2 differente geometries for the ground. What if you have a single ground geometry and use a brush to paint different materials on it, would it also work?

[@Casanova646]

I have a material that has multiple layer blends that I use to paint my landscape but they all hook up to one M_LandscapeMaterial node and only accepts one physical material. Is there a way I can have different physical materials for each of my layer blends?

[@jello788]

How do you program backpedal walks?

[@jesseg.3371]

How would you add it to a Material Function that's blended in a Master Material? The Physical Material option isn't there in the Material Function.

[@amigo401]

Hi how can i add this into landscape auto material ? where i use material function

[@elijahgames192]

i restarted twice and i can't find/place the PM into the material settings

[@momomadi2]

hello ---- how can we do Footsteps Sounds on slope based landscape material ??

[@user-ry3fq9il1y]

i cant get this work in my landscape,i uesd version 4.24,please help.....

[@byLovebird1]

have you found a solution? I have the same problem

[@user-ry3fq9il1y]

@@byLovebird1 Upgrading to 4.25 can solve this problem,That's how i fix it

[@byLovebird1]

@@user-ry3fq9il1y sadly, I am already using 4.25 , but thank you. Good luck with your projects.

[@moretinshop]

​@@byLovebird1 another late reply but any solutions to this yet? i've got around this by setting the "default" output pin of the switch node to play my desired footstep for the landscape, which works for me as I only have one landscape, but interested in the proper solution if there is one!

[@byLovebird1]

@@moretinshop I had a custom asset pack, I can't tell you exactly how to apply my fix to your project, but in my case, for every material that I had inside the landscape, I created a Physics Material, then checked the material I am walking on using Anim Notifiers for the Walk/Run animations. I am also a beginner, so I don't know if this is the proper way. Good Luck with your project!

[@giuseppe_bufalo]

is there a way to do this without a character just by adding a timeline?

[@YoshiCrystal]

is there a way to add more footstep sounds?

[@LeonelAmaral14]

use a sound cue with a random node

[@AcidAlfa]

If you have more than 2 footsteps make a cue and select them all and create a Random node and connect it to the output. Don't put flipflop in the animationbp and you're ready

[@isaaccox7896]

I don't have a default wood or grass physics material and when I try to make one it doesn't show up in the blueprint please help

[@underscore00]

You have to add them in your project settings under 'physics'

[@isaaccox7896]

@@underscore00 oh thanks it works now

[@theguardiank1156]

Can u make a camera where it changes in Combat Mode and Comes normal after the combat like in Batman games plz request

[@underscore00]

Probably! lol I haven't played the batman series, but if you can send me a clip with the camera effect you're describing, I'll definitely take a look!

[@user-ry3fq9il1y]

i alread set physical material in layerinfo,but it still doesn't work, i can't print physical type in blueprint,nothing shows in printed

[@DzageRxDD]

I does everything like you for mu FPS but i didnt hear sound effect. I have animation for my character and i added notify in walk and sprint. Any idea?

[@underscore00]

Could be that your materials dont have the right physical material set or your line trace not hitting the ground... Did you make sure you have your volume turned up? XD

[@TheAxebeard]

Great tutorial, but I'm using splines for my streets in my game and the ray traces seem to ignore the spline meshes and go to the landscape terrain underneath. Any ideas?

[@underscore00]

im not in front of the engine right now, but there should be a way to set your line trace to anything that has collision enabled. I'll double check asap and get back to you!

[@TheAxebeard]

@@underscore00 Hey, I appreciate it! I still haven't been able to figure this one out.

[@IPortnovv]

@@underscore00 same problem. sounds do not work on landscape materials

[@IPortnovv]

@@TheAxebeard Change collision thickness for landscape to 1

[@Admiral_Jezza]

@@IPortnovv Thank you, was searching through the comments to find why and this worked.

[@Juice-qw5dt]

i’ve got the notifiers and stuff and i’ve done things correctly but theirs no sound. is the line tracing incorrect?

[@metal9lover9maniac]

@3:47 It sounds like you say, "our grass have a scorpion from before", and the closed captioning also says it LOL!

[@leandamian2928]

Hello, with flipflop can I add 2 sounds only? How do I add more than 2?

[@RealBadcat5550]

Does this also work for first person? I used a template from scratch without any character in it. So I'm trying to do this from scratch.

[@speedfreakpsycho]

I tried it Seems like the character cant detect the surface its standing on.

[@speedfreakpsycho]

Fixed it, line trace was not deep enough. Increased the trace distance and it was ok.

[@thesensur6214]

Hey, This would be great for my project. However I am using sprite animation. Is there any way to do this with sprites? Please reply

[@underscore00]

Yes absolutely! You can still use the line trace technique shown here, and fire it from your pawn so the method should work in exactly the same way. Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any more questions :)

[@WKAFLKA]

Are you able to do this for an FPS? I thought it would be much easier as animation isn't an issue, but I cannot find where to trigger the footstep noise.

[@yarethpellot118]

hello, i had it running yesterday and now in multiplayer replication it wont work :/

[@lutschkieselstudios148]

Use "Try Get Pawn Owner" instead of GetPlayerCharacter if you want a AI to footstep. Wondered why I hear my bots so clearly :D Thx for this guide

[@GothManLover]

What if it's not player character but AI? what command should I use? 5:53

[@Xiaoxiao738]

If I drag from the Out Hits off the Line trace I don't get the option to Break Hit Result.

[@VillagerBudz]

im having the same issue, have you found a fix yet? EDIT: I just figured this out, you have to turn off "Context Sensitive" in the top right hand corner of the search box

[@BoxGamesJardelAntunes]

ohhwww thanks my bother!!! Very nice + 1 escrito em seu canal

[@aqueleindie]

vey o meu não aparece o treco lá de "animnotify"

[@T0rresDev]

I follow ALL your steps but for some reason, the ADD ANIM NOTIFY EVENT doesn't appear in my character blueprint. can you help me please?

[@badfilmmaking3413]

I am using the new unreal engine so I can’t add notifys for the animation how do I do it

[@Locaster1986]

Only at a specific point now in the time line you can add notifications. If you pass the mouse over the time line you will see several horizontal bands in one of them near the top you can add, right click one by one. This change was really strange, very hidden.

[@trololl27029]

can you make a model of it

[@letterborne]

Awesome tutorial! There is just one thing not working right; I used two physical materials, Wood and Rug, but only the first one is working, which is the wood. Meaning that whatever sound I play when dragging off the first pin in the switch on EPhysical Surface node (which happens to be the wood one) always plays, no matter what surface I'm actually on. Even if it's a material that doesn't have any physical material applied. Does anyone know the fix for this?

[@LeonelAmaral14]

having the same problem, found any solution?

[@LeonelAmaral14]

NVM I found a solution select trace complex check box and it should work if you having the same trouble as me

[@UnrealArtist]

LOL i was watching this tutorial, and i thought i will request bev to make a tutorial like that xD , then i saw it is you. wtf m i doing? :D :D I hope particles effects will work the same, it will be good if you make a tutorial for that too, i mean dust on the ground, water splashes while in the water ,,

[@87Anees]

Everytime I run it sounds like a hundred footsteps behind me, please help!

[@Admiral_Jezza]

Is there a way to make it work on landscapes? EDIT: Change landscape thickness to 1

[@SalemAccure]

I can only find Collision Thickness on Landscape Details, is that the one>?

[@gamerreviews71]

Im using the landscape layer materials, I have the sound working on meshes, and on dirt, but when i try to play a 4th sound connected to it to grass, the sound refuses to play for some reason. the first 3 sounds connected work just fine, but the 4th one refuses to work. How do i fix this?

[@gamerreviews71]

when i change the grass material to a dirt material the dirt sound plays, when i try the grass material, the grass sound does not play. for some reason its only working with 3 sounds and no more connected to the location node

[@joshuaknight6551]

I would like to see mobile packaging. There's a wizard. Small stuff like one map... But how do you set up the downloader/installer for Google play? I.e. Check for expansion, request expansion if not present, and download (how to send query to Google play)

[@underscore00]

Yeah there's a bit of an art to it. The last time I published a game for Android was UE4.10, and even then it wasn't easy; things would appear differently from the editor, random bugs would appear out of nowhere, and depending on code, sometimes the app just wouldn't load at all. We got it packaged and put on the market, though. I can make a video about it no trouble!

[@joshuaknight6551]

@@underscore00 I can package NP. Do have some issues like them not showing up or running exactly the same but usually can figure it out. My biggest issue right now is the wizard. With the 100MB limit You have to make the main package and have it install updates. I can't find ANYTHING on setting up the nodes for pulling the updates and installing them if they didn't automatically install. I would greatly appreciate any info on that.

[@waomae4411]

why it doesnt trigger the sound? on 4.20.3 theres no skeleton notify on it simple add notify

[@underscore00]

So you can't add notifies? That would be why it's not working :/ The other reason could be that your linetrace at the animnotify isn't going down far enough to hit the surface - just double-check your linetrace to make sure it's hitting the ground.

[@waomae4411]

i already add the notify @@underscore00 is this possible error on capsule component scale 0.8 and i put 150 z on it?

[@underscore00]

If there's no skeleton notify, just add more notifies with the same name, it should still fire off the same node in your animbp. The Z value should be fine, but if you have the notifies and you're not hearing anything, then my best guess is that the line trace isn't hitting the surface.

[@n1lknarf]

why are you adding the line trace? I can see it for a decal but why for a sound?

[@amirebrahimi8709]

Hey There , How Can We Set Footstep for a Firstperson without any animation ?

[@blooperss]

Just play a footstep sound when the character moves, and stop the sound when it stops moving.

[@dinosawrmems8339]

I'm trying to get this to work in my landscape, it works on solid surfaces like wood and if a place a rectangle down a give it a grass physical material then it also works. But it doesn't work in my sculpted landscape, I've set the physical material for all the different layer infos and I've tried other things aswell but I just can't get it to work. Please help!

[@thevirus5k]

me too :(

[@user-ry3fq9il1y]

me too

[@blooperss]

how do you add a scaler? I don't even know what it is...

[@blooperss]

Nvm turns out it's scalar and that's why I couldn't find it.

[@ugzbeats4813]

lol you helped me a lot..

[@channelmoved3114]

I dont have notifiers?