FMOD clarification

Unity Engine
1

Hello,

My company may soon start work on a product with Unity, and as a Sound Designer I need to ‘gear up’ appropriately.

Perhaps I have missed or misread something, but I am getting slightly confused at to how FMOD, and its various features, are integrated within Unity, if at all.

For example, this page describes the Unity Engines use of FMOD -
http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/audio

  • as if it is already integrated. Does that refer to the audio tools already in Unity, perhaps using FMOD algorithms with a Unity specific interface? Or perhaps it just refers to the fact that Unity and FMOD can play nice if you want them to.

On the other hand, I have read posts on other forums explaining the need to use tools such as -
http://www.squaretangle.com/FMODUnity.html

Considering just these two pages, the issue is already complicated for someone having a first look. For the sake of all audio designers looking at Unity for the first time perhaps it should be made clearer what features of FMOD are including in Unity, if the full FMOD feature set is not included that should be made clear and appropriate support provided to transition to the full version with Editor etc.

Apologies if I have missed something obvious,

Ro

2

Fmod is fully built in and abstracted. You should ignore the fact FMOD even exists (it is under the hood) and concentrate on the information you can glean from the unity audio docs. Unity - Scripting API: AudioSource

You will need an audio clip, an audio source and an audio listener. The audio source will hold the clip, you can do a first experiment by dragging an mp3 into the project window, clicking it and seeing what options there are, such as decompress on load and so on.

The main camera comes with a listener component (ears for the game world) by default. You could then try dragging the mp3 from project to hierarchy and tinkering with adding components like reverb. Reverb can be added to a camera with a listener or per object.

There’s lots to explore, but the limit of sound in unity is pretty much via the audio classes. They have exposed all the features of fmod in there that they’re currently licensed to expose, or are able to expose.

For really deep sound manipulation you will need to use C++ and unity pro to integrate a sound engine of your choice, otherwise just assume fmod is working “under the hood”. For using audio in unity, you do not need to license fmod providing you aren’t using more than what unity provides.

By really deep sound manipulation I am talking about creating raw synth samples or going overboard. For game purposes, unity probably has exposed everything you will need.

3

Thanks for your thorough response, that makes things clear now.

As an observation (not a complaint!)- I am very familiar with FMOD, and to be honest find it a little shocking that the details on the page in the first link I posted above do not mention the words ‘stripped down version of’ or ‘limited version of’. I know the content on the page is effectively a sales pitch but FMOD is a very comprehensive set of tools, the options implemented in Unity are functional and solid but in comparison very limited.

4

I know how you feel. I am making a faux 70s synth for ipad, and I am quite limited in how to create a sustain affect for the sound, or even just synth some sounds - trivial for full-blown fmod. I would have loved FMOD Designer to be supported so we could have “behaviours” for the samples, but no joy.

5

Good news guys, it can be and has been done, but your programmers will need to set up the FMOD api. I am a sound designer and very amateur programmer and have managed (with some help from various people) to get the Squaretangle plugin and have full FMOD Designer functionality in Unity! Problem is, I can only get up to version 4.26 to work. This is before they decided to introduce an “undo” function. You really don’t know how much you’d miss it till it’s gone! Nonetheless I am working on trying to get more recent versions working.

6

This is totally misleading and I disagree. Yes thankfully we have basic sound tools and features in unity however they are really very primitive. I’m just trying to point out that most games need a major improvement to the audio system and we would all benefit from Unity putting more resources into audio.

7

Huh ? This is interesting … can you link me back to an example or thread where there are details ? Thanks

8

Thankfully there will be low-level access soon enough in 3.5.

9

hippo thanks for posting this good news

10

Check the blog page, if you haven’t already here: Unity Blog

11

Hi,

FYI, we got the fmod designer ouputs (.fev and .fsb) running in Unity 3(with Cues too, yes.). This has been tested on iphone/ipad only so far but I guess this platform is one of your worst technical scenario right? If you are interested into a solution for your game, please contact us and tell us your exact needs at mohydine_at_yahoo.com.
Any platform please, I d love to see where there has been some serious challenges.

Thanks!

Stephane

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12

Hi mohydine!
I’m interested in getting all the events/notes from a module (mod/s3m/xm), could you help me? :slight_smile: