Basics
Let’s take a tour of the “Sound” tab on the environment page. From
the main menu, select “Options” and then “Environment”. Or, hit the
environment button on the toolbar.
Environments including visual elements, such as a background image
and animated effects, as well as sound elements. The sound elements
include everything you might hear in that environment – wildlife,
weather, and so on. Different sound clips are played at different
times to create the illusion of being in a real location.
Let’s load up one of the pre-made environments, and see what we can
hear. Select “Ocean Cove” from the drop-down menu. (Notice that
pre-made environments are listed with a green font, while custom
environments are listed in cyan).
There’s the constant sound of waves crashing against the shore and
water lapping between rocks. Occasionally, we hear a seagull or tern
calling in the distance. Each of these sounds is controlled by
applying specific settings to a sound clip, determining how often it
plays, how loud it plays, how it’s positioned from left-to-right,
and so on. Let’s look at those settings now, to see exactly how this
environment was put together. Click on the “Sound” tab.
This screen may look a little intimidating at first, but it’s
actually quite organized. Each darkened region holds the settings
for a single sound clip. The name of the clip is the first piece of
information – for example, “waves (loop).ogg”, “water lapping (loop).ogg”,
and so on. To the left we see a checkbox for enabling/disabling the
sound (useful when you want to work on specific parts of the
environment alone), and an X for removing the sound entirely. To the
right of these two controls are the settings – delay, volume, rate,
and pan. Each setting has two values – a minimum and a maximum. Each
time a sound plays, a value is chosen between the minimum and
maximum, so you can think of each setting as a range. Clicking on
“both” lets you set the minimum and maximum at once. Here’s what the
settings do:
“Delay” determines how frequently a sound plays. Once a sound
has started playing, it will not be triggered again for this many
seconds.
“Rate” determines the pitch of a sound. More accurately, it
determines how quickly the sound-clip is played, which affects
both its length and its pitch. Setting “rate” above 1.0 will raise
the pitch and speed up the clip (creating a sort of “chipmunk”
effect). Setting “rate” below 1.0 will lower the pitch and slow
down the clip (creating a “slow-motion” effect).
Scroll to the bottom of the list of clips. The last clip in the list
is “tern.ogg”, the call of a Tern. It’s set to play once every 30-60
seconds, which means at least once a minute – but no more than twice
a minute. The volume varies between .4 and .6, which gives the
effect of the tern being at different distances. The rate is fixed
at 1.0 (no midget or giant Terns). Finally, the pan is set between
70% left and 70% right, which generally sounds like the tern is
within your field of vision. (100% left or right sounds more like
the object is directly beside you).
Scroll back up the list, where you see “waves (loop).ogg”. Notice
there’s a setting we haven’t discussed, at the far right: Loop. When
this setting is on, the sound plays repeatedly, returning
immediately to the beginning when it reaches the end. Sounds which
are recorded and edited in a certain way can loop without a
noticeable break, which allows us to create continuous sounds like
wind, rain, and waves.
When a sound is set to loop, the settings work slightly differently.
“Delay”, instead of determining when the sound plays, instead
determines how often the other settings should be randomized. In
other words, the sound plays continually, but the pitch, rate, and
volume only change as often as Delay dictates. Setting a small range
for these settings can help to introduce some variation into a
looping sound. However, too large a range can be quite noticeable to
the listener.
Editing an Environment
Now that we know what the various settings control, let’s try
creating a new environment using “Ocean Cove” as a starting point.
(If you’ve made any changes, re-load the environment on the first
screen, then return to the “Sound” tab).
Let’s imagine we’re a little further from the beach: through some
grass, near a small, marshy pond where we can search for frogs.
We’re going to change the Ocean Cove environment to reflect this new
location.
To begin, let’s remove the sound of the Seal and Tern. Scroll down
the sound list and remove “seal.ogg” and “tern.ogg” by clicking the
X at the left of each sound. Disable the remaining sounds by
clicking on the checkbox – this lets us concentrate on each sound as
we work.
Now, we want the remaining sounds of the beach – tide, water, and
seagulls – to sound further away. To make a sound seem more distant,
we should make it quieter, and in some cases reduce the panning
range (to make sure it’s “in front” of the listener). Let’s start
with “waves (loop).ogg” (the tide) – by clicking on “both”, set the
volume minimum and maximum to 0.3. Now enable the sound.
Next are the two copies of “water lapping (loop).ogg”. Set the
volume to 0.1 (using “both” again). Change the panning on the first
copy from -0.7 to -0.5, and change the panning on the second copy
from 0.7 to 0.5. Now enable both sounds. For “splash.ogg”, set the
volume (both) to 0.1, and the panning to -0.5/0.5. Enable the sound.
At this point we’ve recreated the sound of the beach, but further
away than before. Now let’s bring our seagulls back out of hiding.
For the first seagull sound, set the volume to 0.2/0.4, and the
panning to –0.6/0.6. For the second, set the volume to 0.1/0.3, and
the panning to –0.4/0.4. Re-enable both seagull sounds.
Now that we’ve taken care of the beach, let’s add in the sound of
the frog pond. Scroll up and click on the “add sound” button. In the
“atmosphere” folder, choose “creek ambience (loop).ogg”. The sound
appears at the end of the list. Turn on looping, and set the volume
to 0.7. This sound clip recreates the sounds of small insects in the
grass at the edge of a creek or pond. Let’s add a cricket sound to
give our pond a little more interest.
Click on the “add sound” button again, and in the “critters” folder,
choose “cricket.ogg”. Turn on looping, and set the volume to 0.1
(both). Set the rate to 0.9/1.0, and the panning to –0.7 (both).
Let’s give our cricket a friend – add another copy of the same
sound, and apply the same settings, but pan this one to +0.7.
Finally, we need our frogs. Click “add sound”, and from the
“critters” folder add “frog.ogg”. Set the delay to 5/30, volume to
0.3/0.6, rate to 0.8/1.0, and pan to -0.7/0.7; this will give us a
decent variety of frog positions and croaks.
Now, click the “Environment” tab, and let’s save our new environment
under the name “Frog Hunting”. If you re-load the “Ocean Cove”
environment, you’ll see our changes have made quite a difference –
it really does feel like a different location, further from the
beach and the waves.
Play around with other environments and see what you can come up
with. If you want to create a new environment from scratch, just use
the “remove all” button to clear out all the existing sounds and
start fresh. Remember to use a new name when you save!
Using Groups
Groups are an added feature that can help you to organize sounds,
speed up editing, and help you to re-use your work in several
environments. To see how groups operate, let’s load up the pre-made
“Silver Creek” environment.
Click on the “sound” tab. Looking at the sound list, we see this
environment is made up of 10 sounds. About half these sounds relate
to the creek itself, while the other half are surrounding wildlife.
So, let’s try organizing the environment into two groups.
Click on “Create Group” (not “Add Group”) and type in the name
“creek”. You will see that a new entry has appeared in the sound
list, on a green background, with its own controls. The checkbox
lets you enable/disable all the sounds in a group, while the X
deletes the group and all the sounds it contains. Volume allows you
to reduce the volume of the entire group, while keeping the same
relationship between sounds in a group.
Let’s move some sounds into this group. The first sound in the list
is “creek ambience (loop).ogg”. Click “Move” at the right-hand side,
and a menu will appear. Select “creek”, and the sound is moved into
the creek group we created. Now, do the same for both copies of
“creek gurgle (loop).ogg”, as well as “splash.ogg” and “sloshing.ogg”.
Time for some magic. Click the checkbox beside the creek group, and
all the creek sounds shut off! Now it feels like we’re in a very
quiet forest. It’s almost a bit too spooky, so let’s bring back the
creek. Try setting its volume to 0.6, for the sound of a creek
further away.
Let’s create a second group, called “wildlife”. Move all the
remaining sounds into this group. It’s time to try a new setting.
Click the checkbox marked “exclusive” on the wildlife group. What
does this do? Listen and see if you can figure it out.
The “exclusive” checkbox forces only one sound in the group to play
at one time. The frog, crow, woodpecker and grosbeak just became
more polite: they won’t interrupt each other!
Something sounds funny about our far-off creek: the frog is too
loud. Let’s move her out of the “wildlife” group and into the
“creek” group, so the volume will match. Click the “edit” button on
the wildlife group. Notice how just the sounds of this group are
listed now, and can be edited as always. Click “move” beside the
frog sound, and move it to the creek group. Then click “done”. Now
our frog is back by the water where she belongs.
As a final touch, let’s add a light shower. Click “Add Group”. A
list of pre-made groups is included, to help you build environments
quickly. Select the group “rain”, and it will be automatically
added. It’s too loud for a light shower, so let’s set the volume to
0.4.
We’ve created another new environment – and it was even faster this
time using groups. Let’s save it under the name “Silver Creek, Light
Shower”. It’s easy to imagine yourself sitting under a tree near the
creek, keeping out of a light summer shower.