Tutorials · Sound and Music · Chapter 3

Footsteps

Five takes of a step

1. Download Impact Sounds from its page below. Copy the five files into your project’s audio folder, each from where the list says. Then press Refresh in the Assets panel.
2. In Assets, click each in audio and press Play in Details. Each is about a tenth of a second: a heel on stone. 001 and 002 carry a gritty scrape; 000, 003 and 004 are plain.

Where a foot comes down

1. Select knight and click the Animation tab, in the dock under the Viewport. In its Frames mode, click the walk tab.
2. Under Frames, below the frame’s details, type step into Track name, choose Trigger and press Add track. A row step appears, with a cell for each of the four frames.
3. Click the first cell and the third. They light: frames 0 and 2.
4. Press Save in the Animation tab. It writes the track into art/knight.anim.

A Trigger track

A row of a clip’s cells, one a frame, named. When the clip arrives on a lit cell, the track’s name is raised once, for that step: here, the knight’s Audio Source plays its trigger of the same name. walk reaches frame 0 and frame 2 once a stride each, so a step is asked for every quarter second while he walks, and none while he stands, since idle has no track.

Track name, and Trigger or Active

Under Frames: the new track’s name, and its kind, chosen before Add track adds its row. Trigger raises the name once as the clip arrives on a lit cell: a moment, such as a foot coming down, and the kind a sound is asked for by. Active is on for as long as the clip is on a lit cell: a state held across frames, such as a blade’s edge being down.

His Audio Source

1. With knight selected, press Add component and choose AudioSourceComponent. Leave Clip empty, Bus on Sfx, Looping and Autoplay unticked, and Positional ticked. Set Volume to 0.5 and Max Voices to 1.
2. Click the + beside Triggers. A row opens. Type step into its Name, and set its Clip to footstep_concrete_000.ogg.
3. Click the + beside its Clips four times, and open each row: set their Clips to footstep_concrete_001.ogg, 002, 003 and 004, and their Weights to 0.5, 0.5, 1 and 1.
4. Set Mode to RandomNoRepeat.
5. Open its Pitch and set Min to 0.9 and Max to 1.1. Open its Volume and set Min to 0.8; leave Max at 1.
6. Press Ctrl+S.

Triggers

The Audio Source’s list of named sounds: each row a Name and the takes it plays. A trigger plays when something asks for it by name: an animation’s Trigger track, as here, or a script, from chapter 4. A row is played on its node’s own Audio Source, from where the node is, on the source’s Bus, at its Volume and Pitch times the row’s ranges. What a Trigger track starts plays once, however Looping is set.

The trigger’s Name

What asks for it must spell it the same way: the track step plays the row step. A name with no row plays nothing.

The trigger’s Clip

Its first take. It is drawn with the Clips as one more take, at a Weight of 1, first in their order, so footstep_concrete_000.ogg is not listed again under Clips: put in both, it would be two takes, and could play twice running.

Clips

The trigger’s other takes of the same sound, played instead of repeating one. Five takes in all here: the Clip and these four.

A take’s Clip

The recording a row of Clips plays.

Weight

How often a take comes up against the others, under Random and RandomNoRepeat. Under Random a take at 1 comes up twice as often as one at 0.5; under RandomNoRepeat, the take just played sitting out each draw, a plain take here comes up about 24 steps in a hundred and a gritty one about 14. The two gritty takes are at 0.5, so the scrape comes now and then, not every other step. Shuffle and Sequential do not read it. In every Mode, a Weight of 0 mutes a take without deleting its row.

Mode

The order the takes are drawn in. RandomNoRepeat: by Weight, leaving out the take just played, so no take plays twice running. Random: by Weight alone, fresh each time, so a take sometimes plays twice running. Shuffle, as a row comes: every take once in each round, in a shuffled order, whatever its Weight. Sequential: the takes in the list’s order, the Clip first, round and round. The draw is seeded by the trigger’s name and its node, so the same walk plays the same takes on every run, for every reader.

The trigger’s Pitch

A range the take’s speed is multiplied by, drawn fresh each time it plays, on top of the source’s Pitch. 0.9 to 1.1: each step a tenth either side of its take’s own pitch, so five takes sound like many. 1 to 1, as a row comes, varies nothing.

The Pitch range’s Min

The lowest it is drawn at, and it can be drawn: 0.9.

The Pitch range’s Max

The highest it is drawn under: 1.1, which is never quite reached.

The trigger’s Volume

A range the take’s loudness is multiplied by, drawn fresh each time, on top of the source’s Volume. 0.8 to 1: each step as loud as the source’s 0.5, or up to a fifth softer, never louder.

The Volume range’s Min

The softest it is drawn at: 0.8.

The Volume range’s Max

The loudest it is drawn under: left at 1, as it comes, so a step is never louder than the source’s Volume.

Max Voices

How many of this node’s sounds may play at once. Past it, a new one stops the oldest. 1: one pair of feet, one footfall at a time. 0, as a source comes, sets no limit of its own.

Footsteps, heard

1. Press F5 and click the Sound tab.
2. Walk round the hall, and stop.
3. Press F5 again to stop.

The other Modes, and Max Voices

The footsteps

Check it works