Audition

Shortcuts

Spacebar - play and stop
\ - fit to window
= - Zoom in horizontally
- Zoom out horizontally
ctrl + left arrow move playhead to previous edit
ctrl + right arrow - move playhead to next edit
0 - display multitrack session
9 - display waveform editor
v - select arrow
r select razerblade tool
t - time selection tool
y - slip tool
ctrl + k - cut all tracks at the position of the playhead
ctrl + g  - group clips
ctrl + t _ adds track
delete - deletes selection
shift + delete - deletes selected clip.

Interface of Audition

To import audio into audition you can just drag and drop the file to where the waveform is, or you can go up to File and click on import. All of the sound files you import will appear in a box where it says files at the top left of the program.

The Box below this is where you can navigate through all the folders on your computer. This box also has several tabs such as effects, where you can add effects to your audio like echoing. You also have markers and properties.

The box to the right of this which says 'Levels' will show you the different levels in your audio file. The Audio you can see at the moment on screen is called a waveform.


Adding Echo's

Adding echoes to your sounds is rather straight forward. You select the audio you want an echo on, for me I selected everything using CTRL + A. Then I navigated to effects, Delay and Echo, Analog Delay.

Once here you have a various amount of different types of echoes to choose from. In my case I chose canyon echoes because it sounded the most like a cave to me. Once you've selected an option you do have the ability to edit the way the echo behaves using sliders.

Importing to udk

Importing audio into udk is rather simple. The audio must be a WAV file else it will not work within UDK. To get my audio from audition into udk I highlighted the bit  I wanted and exported it with the appropriate settings. Then go into the content browser within UDK and click on import and select your file. Once imported you can then drag and drop your file into your level and adjust various settings to suit your needs.

Attenuation

Attenuation is quite easy to set-up. Once the sound is in your level navigate to the properties for that sound and put a tick on the attenuation. Then head to the Unreal Soundcue Editor and make sure to add the attenuation. Once this is done you will be able to see the attenuation radius appear around the sound. Now you can adjust the furthest distance you will be able to hear your sound and the point at which is will be loudest.

looping

Looping is a similar method as the attenuation, you have to put a tick on it in the sound properties and then head over to the soundcue editor. Once there right click and add the looping, then just connect it up and your sound will play on a loop, which is great for adding the ambient sounds to your level. Within the soundcue editor you can also set up timers for your sounds and set up an order for your sounds to play in.

Zoom H4M

The Zoom H4M is a portable digitial sound recorder.
Originally designed for musicians, the zoom has become popular with DSLR video and filmmakers over the portable recorders because it has direct XLR mix iput connecters, and because it can record as many as four channels at once from both the built in mics.

Sounds for my room

I'm going to be creating a cave for my level, I want it to feel very claustrophobic and I think the sounds can make a huge impact the realism of my level.

The sounds I want consist of:

Echoing,

Wind Whistling,

Water Droplets,

rocks being moved,

rustling of rocks,

little rocks falling,

dirt and rock footsteps

Evaluation

Evaluation

First of all, I really enjoyed learning about how audio effects games as I've never really looked into it before, or really never noticed it to question it, it was just there. I did have the certain soundtracks from games I liked, but I never really took into account all the little sounds, the little details which actually take a lot of work. I found the Foley sounds to be particularly interesting to learn about as they use normal everyday objects to make things that sound like something, for example I saw someone use a feather pillow to simulate the sound of a bird flapping its wings. Also, as these sounds are sou subtle they are still really critical in a scene, if removed the scene will feel lifeless and unnatural.

I also liked learning about ambient sounds and sounds that create atmosphere in games as I'm a huge fan of games that  give a great sense of immersion and putting great  soundtracks and sounds into these games will immerse you even more. Then when we had to analyse different scenes to try and pick up the things that create atmosphere its amazing to see how much things can create immersion.

However the bad points I think for me was the fact we had to create a story and for me, this is really hard as I struggled in English and cant really do creative writing in general. We also had to create a storyboard for this and I'm not a huge fan of them either, but I can cope a little better on that as I can draw which is my strong point. I know that my story is bad and would be bad, but I wanted to focus on the drawings for the scene more than the story. I thought that we had to work to hard on the actual story considering we are meant to be working on the audio for it. I think when we start to actually make the sounds its going make the project on a whole a lot better than what we've done so far.

Having not done a storyboard in a while as I refuse to do them, I was a little weary how mine would turn out as I find character drawing to be quite hard. However I really like how it turned out, since I had last done a storyboard I have progressed a lot more in my artwork and didn't actually find it that hard to do all of the compositions and camera angles I wanted in my scene. I think if I was to do this again I would of put annotations and arrows indicating where the camera is moving as I think mine is lacking these features but instead it just looks like a series of thumbnails. I think I would of put more time into my story as well, actually thinking about what is going to happen.

In conclusion I have really enjoyed this project so far as were looking into things I've never looked into or considered before and its definitely changed the way I play, and look at games now.

Sound Assets for Story

Sound Assets for Story

The Numbers are linked to the ones on the storyboard.

1.)
This is where the story starts where you see the deer sitting in the sun and it slowly panning out from being quite close up.

The kind of sounds that would be in this scene would be:

Birds chirping in the background
the sound of leaves blowing in the wind
the rustling of leaves and twigs on the forest floor
echoes of other animals in the woods
the deer eating grass
the breathing of the deer
sounds of flying bugs

2.)
This shows the camera after its panned out through the scope of the rifle.

The kind of sounds that would be in this scene would be:

the gunman trying to control his breathing
Birds chirping in the background
the sound of leaves blowing in the wind
the rustling of leaves and twigs on the forest floor
echoes of other animals in the woods
the deer eating grass
the breathing of the deer
sounds of flying bugs

3.)
This shows the gunman walking through the forest trying to track the deer after it ran away and also in search of the strange sound.

The kind of sounds that would be in this scene would be:

the mysterious sound echoing through the woods
the gunmans footsteps
the sounds of his feet walking through leaves
the gunmans strap on the gun
the gunman fiddling with the gun
the sound of water and streams
Birds chirping in the background
the sound of leaves blowing in the wind
the rustling of leaves and twigs on the forest floor
echoes of other animals in the woods
the deer eating grass
the breathing of the deer
sounds of flying bugs

4.)
 This scene is showing the hunter returning to his truck and realising its gone. It's also showing that its quite late as the sun is setting.

The kind of sounds that would be in this scene would be:

the echoes of owls
the howls of foxes
the hunter panting
crickets in the grass
the gunmans footsteps
the sounds of his feet walking through leaves
Birds chirping in the background
the sound of leaves blowing in the wind
the rustling of leaves and twigs on the forest floor
echoes of other animals in the woods
the deer eating grass
the breathing of the deer
sounds of flying bugs

5.)
This is showing the gunman looking for his car and happens to notice the strange lights coming from the woods.

The kind of sounds that would be in this scene would be:

The mysterious sound
the beginnings of loud bass noise's thumping from its engines
the echoes of owls
the howls of foxes
the hunter panting
crickets in the grass
the gunmans footsteps
the sounds of his feet walking through leaves
Birds chirping in the background
the sound of leaves blowing in the wind
the rustling of leaves and twigs on the forest floor
echoes of other animals in the woods
the deer eating grass
the breathing of the deer
sounds of flying bugs

6.)
This scene is showing the strange lights coming through the trees.

The kind of sounds that would be in this scene would be:

The mysterious sound
the loud bass noise from the chip has now increased
the sound of strong winds circling around the ship
the echoes of owls
the howls of foxes
the hunter panting
crickets in the grass
the gunmans footsteps
the sounds of his feet walking through leaves
Birds chirping in the background
the sound of leaves blowing in the wind
the rustling of leaves and twigs on the forest floor
echoes of other animals in the woods
the deer eating grass
the breathing of the deer
sounds of flying bugs

7.)
This is showing the gunman slowly looking up at the lights to reveal that its actually a ship of some kind.

The kind of sounds that would be in this scene would be:

the loud clap that knocks the gunman out
The mysterious sound
the loud bass noise from the chip has now increased
the sound of strong winds circling around the ship
the echoes of owls
the howls of foxes
the hunter panting
crickets in the grass
the gunmans footsteps
the sounds of his feet walking through leaves
Birds chirping in the background
the sound of leaves blowing in the wind
the rustling of leaves and twigs on the forest floor
echoes of other animals in the woods
the deer eating grass
the breathing of the deer
sounds of flying bugs

8.)
This is showing the walkers in the woods the next day and finding that the gunman is actually dead. The scene then ends with the mysterious sound.

The kind of sounds that would be in this scene would be:

the walkers talking amongst themselves about what to do, whether he is alive, they call an ambulance as well.
bugs flying around
Birds chirping in the background
the sound of leaves blowing in the wind
the rustling of leaves and twigs on the forest floor
echoes of other animals in the woods
the deer eating grass
the breathing of the deer
sounds of flying bugs

StoryBoards

Storyboards

Storyboards are graphic organizers that visualize scenes in movies or games in a form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualize a motion picture or game. Storyboarding was developed at the Walt Disney Studio during the early 1930's, after several years of similar processing being in use at Walt Disney and other animation studios.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storyboard

Storyboards are created in multiple steps, they can either be made digitally on a computer or hand drawn. The main characteristics of a storyboard are:

Viualize the storytelling.
Focus the story and the timing in several key frames, which is very important in animation.
Define the technical parameters: description of the motion, the camera, and the lighting etc.

The first thing to do is to create or download a storyboard template, These look much like a blank comic strip , with space for comments and dialogue. Then sketch a thumbnail, some directors sketch thumbnails directly in the script margins. However most filmmakers rely heavily on the storyboarding process.

There are four different storyboard layouts, each of the storyboard layouts targets specific multimedia products. The different types consist of:

Linear,
Hierarchical
Non-Linear
Combination

Story and Storyboard

Story and storyboard



It was a beautiful sunny, Sunday afternoon in the Canadian forest. Sun shafts were beaming through the leaves creating crazy patterns across the forest floor forming a circler shape in a clearing in which a deer was sat. The deer was was just sitting there enjoying and taking in the warm sun. The camera then begins to pan out towards the edge of the clearing, still focused on the deer. The camera continues to pan out to reveal a scope with the cross-hairs focused on the deers head. The gunman is trying to control his breathing so he can make the perfect shot to kill the animal when suddenly there is a loud, deep and powerful sound which echoed through the whole forest. The gunman looked around in shock as he had never heard such a sound before, he then turned back to where the deer was to see it had darted off.

By this time its getting quite late but the gunman decides to follow the deers trail as he hasn't managed to catch anything all day, but also to look around to try and pinpoint where this mysterious sound came from.
An hour passes and with no luck on finding the deer or this sound the gunman starts to head back to his truck parked at the edge of the woods.

The gunman approaches to where his  truck should be, by this time its sunset and nearly dark, and its not there, its disappeared. As the gunman looks around to try and find any sign of it he notices some strange lights in the woods ahead of him, he quickly sprints over as it could be his truck. Pushing through the bushes and trees the gunman notices its became windy rather strangely, but the lights are now a few feet away. As the gunman reaches the lights the wind had picked up significantly, then suddenly the same loud noise heard earlier appears, this time it was much, much louder. The gunman slowly looks upward towards the lights to reveal what seems to be a massive floating sphere liked object covered in a chrome like matierial. Then suddenly everything goes black.

The next morning two walkers are walking through the woods when they come to the same clearing where the deer was the previous day, it was still sat there a long with the gunman that was laying next to it. The couple try to speak to him but they hear no answer or movement. They walk over slowly and the deer darts off again, the man isn't breathing. The camera then pans out to the edge of the clearing to reveal the mysterious sound.