Phase 8 - Audio
With the GameManager selected
we're going to put in some music
for our game, so we need an audio source.
So select the GameManager game object,
Add Component, type in 'sou'
hit return and you'll have yourself an audio component.
Then if we click on the circle select
and choose BackgroundMusic as the clip.
Then finally check Loop
So choose the BackgroundMusic clip,
check Loop at the bottom.
I'm just going to keep saving my scene to update it.
We're going to create what's called and audio mixer.
In Unity we have audio sources,
they output all of the sound, they might be on
game objects in the scene, they might be on instantiated objects.
But basically they all need to route in to a mixer
in order to balance them with one another.
So select the AudioMixers
folder in the project.
Click the Create button and choose Audio Mixer.
So this is a Create button on the project window.
Choose Audio Mixer.
I'm just going to rename this MainMix.
Then I'm going to go to
Window - Audio Mixer
So it's control8 on pc, command8 on mac.
And I'm just going to grab this and
dock it somewhere sensible, I like to do it
next to the game view,
I just find that useful, but you might want to
do it during the game so it might make sense to
dock it by the scene view, it's totally up to you.
The idea is that we want to
route each audio source that we've made
during the day in to a particular,
what we call group.
If you've used audio software before you might call these
tracks or channels depending on which package
you use, but Unity calls them groups.
So each group of sounds needs
it's own group. Makes sense?
So our master is where all of those
groups will end up, so what you'll see
if you look at the mixer
Is that we have things on the side
with + buttons, so Groups is one of those.
So if I click on this + button
I can make a new group.
The first thing that I'm going to do is make
a group for my music
Then each time I make a new group
I need to reselect the master because I want
each of those groups to be a child of that.
So I reselect my master,
I hit +, and the next group
I want to make is for the sound effects,
so I just call it SFX.
And then finally we need one
more for our driving audio.
So the idling and the engine sounds.
Remember I'm making these
and reselecting the master each time
so that they're children of that.
So now we need to go through all of our
audio sources and route them in to the
correct group that we've just made.
Then we'll actually do the balancing
but first we need to hook everything up.
So the first thing I'm going to do is select
my Tank prefab, so I go to my
Prefabs folder and I select Tank.
And this should become second nature once we've done
a couple of them but the first thing I'm going to do
is to look at the audio sources there.
So if I zoom in a little bit for you, what you'll see
under each audio clip, the second
parameter there is Output, and that is
which group this is going in to.
So the first audio source we know is for driving,
so I'm going to click on the circle select
and you'll see MainMix and you'll see
CompleteMainMix which is used for the complete game,
so ignore that, look at the MainMix
and we're going to select Driving.
So Engine - Sounds in the first
audio source will go to there,
remember the second audio source was for
sound effects so under Output
we'll choose SFX.
So one more time, the first audio source
should be routed to Driving, the second to SFX.
And that's our Tank setup.
Then the next thing that had an audio source
was our Shell.
and if you expand the Shell you'll see the
ShellExplosion which has the audio source attached to it.
So in the prefab, in the project, just click
the arrow next to it to see the child object ShellExplosion
and then you'll be able to route that also
to the SFX mixer group.
So what else needs routing?
Well we just added our GameManager
and we just put on BackgroundMusic
so we need to set that up as well.
So for that audio source I'm just
going to click the Output
and set that to Music.
So the TankExplosion also has
to be routed as well so in the Prefabs,
TankExplosion prefab,
the audio source there needs setting to sound effects.
The SFX mixer group.
Okay, so now we're ready to mix,
everything is hooked up in to that so I'm just going to show you
really quickly, please don't do this, I'm just going to demonstrate.
So what you'll see in the mixer
is that all of these levels
are moving around and when I actually do something,
the SFX gets a level too.
But nothing is balanced yet, so we're going to do
that but we're also going to use an effect
to make sure that the sound effects can cut
through everything else.
So the Music group, I'm going to set the attenuation,
and by that I simply mean the level,
of the music down a little bit.
It's kind of loud, it's compressed as you'd expect.
I'm going to bring that down to -12, so do that now.
Drag that fader down to -12.
Then I'm going to select the Driving group
and set that way down to -25.
So it's super loud and super obnoxious sounding
and we don't really want that, we'll drag it all the way down
so that it's nice and subtle in the mix.
-25.
Then for the Music we want
the music to be ducked down every time
there's an explosion, so we want the music
level to dip every time a sound effect comes in.
So we do that with something called ducking.
So ducking basically means that you can
use 1 source to decrease
the attenuation of another.
At the bottom of the Music group
I'm going to click on Add.
So here I can add a Duck Volume effect.
And when I do that you should see it on the inspector,
I get this effect, so when you select
any of these groups, so you can see I can click on
them and they highlight in blue.
When I select Music I've just added Duck Volume,
And it says it's first thing is
a warning saying 'No Send source is connected.
There's basically no other group
sending a signal to this group in order to
tell it to duck, so we need to sort that out.
So what I'm going to do is go to my SFX group.
My SFX, I will select it,
and then at the bottom of SFX
I'm going to add a send.
And that send has a receive.
So you need to just basically send the signal of this
to something and the only thing
that we've got is this Duck Volume effect
on the Music group.
So I'm just going to select that
and then how much of this do we want to send?
Well we want to send the entire level
So instead of nothing, -80 decibels,
we're going to drag it all the way to the top.
So we're not going to add this or reroute the signal,
we're just using it to command
that effect, so drag it all the way to the right
I.E. full.
What does Duck Volume mean?
Duck Volume is basically
using one signal to subtract from another.
What you'll see in a moment is that we have
a certain threshold for how much signal
is going to be required to decrease that.
Okay, so I'm going to reselect my Music.
And I'm going to look at that Duck Volume.
What you'll see is that we have a
meter here effectively, so I'm just going to
show you how that works.
So when I play the game
this Duck Volume is waiting for something to be played
from the sound effects, so if I fire something
you see that this yellow comes up
from the left to the right.
But there's a white line
which is representing the threshold
So what I'm going to do is reduce the threshold
so that it starts to
pull down the volume of the music
out of a particular amount of signal coming in
from the SFX group.
so I'm going to pull that threshold down to
round about -45.
So now I'm just going to turn this up
so you can hear what I'm doing.
Now when I actually play it
You can hear the music gets pulled down as that
threshold comes in.
Then what I'm also going to do is change
a couple of other settings there,
I'm going to change my Ratio to 250%,
so it's going to curb it even further,
and my Attack Time to 0.
So as soon as there's any signal at all
that's passing that threshold it's going to come
in to effect.
The attack time is usually how long it waits to
come to full effect, but we don't want it
to wait, we want it to start straight away.
So Attack Time should be 0.
Ratio should be 250. So now.
It's nice and prompt. As soon as I start hitting
the music goes down.
So it's going to be hard for you guys to hear on these speakers
and obviously you can check it out with headphones as well.
But that's exactly what's happening.
So it's time for you to save your scene,
and play it one more time,
because we have completed our training day.
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