Keram's Book Report

Notes & Reflections on Books n Stuff I Have Experienced

A Primer on Audio for Games and Interactive Environments in Unreal Engine 4+

Unreal audio

Unreal Engine has incredible tools for spatialized audio and sound design. It is deep, it is robust, it is complex, but also astoundingly easy to implement and deploy once you have a basic hang of things, using Blueprints or even C++.

To get started with your interactive sound design adventure, and assuming you don’t already own an expensive DAW like ProTools, Cubase Pro, Logic or Performmer, then you can use Audacity which is free but also use Cockos Reaper which, though it may take a little while to figure out why, is perhaps the greatest DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) ever made.

Also, register an account at freesound.org where you will source countless amazing sound effects and audio samples in exchange for nothing or some simple attribution.

Next, have an objective. Want to make a sound when a door opens and closes?

Check out this simple and excellent little tutorial

Then you can begin to explore some of the documentation, which will make a little more sense once you have semi-mastered the above tutorial:
Audio and Sound documentation – Unreal Engine

Want to go deep dive into Unreal Engine’s amazing audio features that do a lot of things that leading middleware does from the guy who worked in the massive smash hit Fortnite?

Watch this video

Or how about the awesome and experimental TimeSynth tool in Unreal?

Middleware you should check out is Wwise and fmod, but only to understand all the tools and their richness that is available out there. Truth be told, Unreal Engine’s evolving and expanding audio tools are incredible and can get you a long way!

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