Adding Sounds in UE4-the basics
As part of the VR group our job is to create an experience in another reality this includes visuals, light, geometry, interaction and SOUND. Although we may not notice little things like the wind rustling through leaves, the creaking of a door opening and the click of a button, the lack of these sounds can be drastically noticed when inside a VR experience. They add to the immersion of the experience and help weave a spell over the user in creating presence.
I had not realised how much value sounds add to the experience until I started looking at tutorials and adding sounds to my own scenes. As a complete beginner to audio here are summaries of tutorials watched and quick reference guide for when trying to recreate the process.
Adding ambient sound
Unreal Engine 4 Tutorial — Ambient Audio (Basic!)
Drag sound from side menu onto scene
Details>Attenuation> Tick Override Attenuation
Drop down menu
Change Falloff Distance (larger outer sphere were the sound starts to fade in)
Change Radius (where the sound it in full volume)
Note: Sound is spatial when waking through with headphones the sound automatically is
Problem: when testing with sounds that already have two channels they don’t not play properly
Importing Sound into engine
Import make sure it’s a .wav file format
Wav- black box with wave form
If double click can edit setting like TRY NOT TO EDIT THIS
sound wave>loop
Volume
Pitch if you down longer length and up shorter length
Creating Cues
Right click> Create Cue
Cue instance of the wav all copies of the wav so change all without changing the raw sound so a sound can be used for different purpose, eg, water running, higher pitch sounds like sizzling oil
Adding multiple wavs into a cue
In blueprint of cue-Select sounds
RC in blueprint> add> random multiple (or what you want)
CONNECT sounds to output. can modify by adding Loop, Delay, Mixer, etc
Recording and cleaning up sounds
How to: Remove background noise & Clean up your Audio (FREE AND EASY)
Recorded various flashlight clicks using Audacity
Then cleaned up background noise by selecting few seconds of recording that didn’t have clicks>effects>noise reduction>Get Noise Profile
Then Ctrl+A (to select whole clip)> effects>Noise Reduction> adjust settings>preview> before clicking ok make sure Noise is set to Remove not Isolate
To export specific parts in clip
Select desired part> file>export selected audio (make sure it is in .WAV so it can be imported into ue4)
Flashlight
Unreal Engine 4 Tutorial — First Person Flashlight
Created a flashlight following this tutorial and added sound of click through skills learnt in previous links. I recorded the sound of me clicking a torch on and off through audacity on my laptop. then edited and separated each click. Added to unreal and edited the blueprints so that when the flashlight is turned on (using the F key) the sound cue of the flashlight click would play. In the Cue is a random node that has 10 different recorded clicks so that the clicks heard when turning the torch on/off are the same but slight variations, to create a more realistic feel.
