FMOD Events assigned to Sound Class / Ambient Volumes

Unreal Engine
1

Hi there,

I often work with ambient volumes not only to apply reverb, but to control sound attenuation within specific areas. To achieve this in UE4 you must first create a custom Sound Class, and make sure you check ‘Apply Ambient Volumes’. (In UDK3 there was an ‘Ambient’ sound class by default, you simply had to assign a sound cue to it) Then you assign your sound cues to this new sound class, and they will be affected by any ambient/reverb volumes.

Is there any way to assign an FMOD event to a sound class so that it can be affected by an ambient volume? Perhaps by extending some code?

Thanks,
Jordan

2

Hi,
That is a feature that is still somewhat lacking at the moment. For global effects based on the listener then snapshots is the recommended approach, but we don’t have a simple way of enabling per instance effects (such as low pass and volume attenuation) based on where the emitters are and what reverb regions have been placed.

It is on our list but we don’t have any concrete date that we can promise for it, unfortunately.

3

Reverb zones have since been added. See the following documentation:

http://www.fmod.com/documentation/#content/generated/engine_ue4/reverb.html

1 Like
4

Hi Geoff

This feature is great! Saves loads of time when adding reverb zones and the Ambient Zone is really helpful for occlusion.

Can this feature be used to apply box-shaped attenuation to an event? Or is there another method that I’m missing?

Thanks,
Matt

5

Bumping this as the Ambient Zone functionality appears to be broken. I tried this a couple of months ago, before updating to Studio 1.07, and it worked fine. However now whenever I try and add the ‘Ambient=1’ to the user properties of the event, it doesn’t automatically move to the right when I press ‘=’. So I’ve tried all the different combinations of ‘Ambient’ ‘=’ and ‘1’ in the user properties and the ‘Exterior Volume’ setting in the ue4 ambient zone setting is set to 0, but nothing seems to work and the event plays normally.

Hopefully this is just me being daft, but it might be worth you guys having a look.

Thanks,
Matt

1 Like
6

Hi Matt, the editor should move to the right if you press the tab key, or enter key. I tested in Studio 1.06 and the ‘=’ key doesn’t move the cursor to the value portion of the user property editor. Let me know if there are issues with this.

Also regarding using the Ambient Zone for event attenuation, we’ll have to look into this. For the meantime, you could probably write something similar in blueprint using the Set Volume function of an event instance.

7

Hi Matt,
Using the latest FMOD Studio integration I can’t repro any problems with 3d sounds. If I drop in the full auto machinegun into a UE4 level with an audio volume and set Ambient=1, then it correctly applies the volume change. Then if I add a lowpass to its master track it also applies the low pass effect as well. If you have a repro could you contact support@fmod.com and we’ll see what’s going on?