Attenuation, Spatialisation, Occlusion, and The Doppler Effect - UE4 Tutorial

In this tutorial we cover Attenuation, Spatialisation, Occlusion, and the Doppler Effect.

We look at each parameter and what they do, and look at where and how we can use these effects in-game.

00:00 Start
01:58 Attenuation
06:00 Spatialisation
09:55 Occlusion
13:34 Complex Mesh Occlusion
14:41 The Doppler Effect

Title music by Valkyrie Sound

Attribution:

Credits:

Visual Assets from Epic Games, Synty Studios, and Bad Rhino Games

House Photo by Ярослав Алексеенко on Unsplash
Eagle Photo by Steve Smith on Unsplash
Waterfall Photo by Mike Lewis HeadSmart Media on Unsplash
Machine Cogs Photo by Isis França on Unsplash
Vegetables Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash
Speakers Photo by Ikhsan Sugiarto on Unsplash
Archery Target Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash
Smiling Lady Photo by Huyen Nguyen on Unsplash
40 Year Old Man Photo by Jonas Kakaroto on Unsplash
Crowd Photo by Dimitar Belchev on Unsplash
Everyday Life Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
Alcohol Photo by Adam Wilson on Unsplash
Mountain Photo by Andreas Gäbler on Unsplash
Simple and Complex Mesh from the Unreal Engine Manual

Website References:

YouTube References:

Media References:
Death Proof, 2007, Dir. Quentin Tarantino, Production Company Troublemaker Studios, Distributed by Dimension Films
Grand Theft Auto 5, 2013, Developed by Rockstar North, Published by Rockstar Games

[stefanwesley]

I just can’t help but get obsessed with the videos you made! Good job!👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

[Prototiphrom]

The best tutorial for newbie gets into sound. Some practice and I'll be a junior in sound already :SS

Awesome walkthrough! Really useful even many years later. Thanks for the great content!

[RipperD]

Really great video, this is definitely the best overview of UE4 audio effects I've come across. Thanks for sharing!

[smileymaster]

Amazing stuff! thanks for putting this together

[strideknight]

Very informative, well put together and about a topic that is poorly covered elsewhere. Excellent job dude, many, many thanks.

[krzysztofbogdanowicz]

Thank you very much for this solution !!!

[mekano]

this is so underrated
thank you so much for the video

[ZombieGuyDevelopment]

Wow you really put a lot of effort into editing! have a like!

[shadesofskittles]

I wish your voice was louder than game audio. Apart from that i loved the video.

[rifz]

Outstanding!! have you thought of applying for a MegaGrants to make more tutorials? how could we get Epic to do a Free for the Month focused on sound?

[virajramsharan]

Loving your videos mate. I'm learning a ton. I like how you have the ability to create your own game characters like the car and make them work like a normal game. Would you suggest for a sound designer getting into Unreal learn Unreal4 basics first and then blueprints?
Thanks in advance :)

[jrsound]

Awesome showcase of the audio engine for UE4. Do you use a mono audio file or a stereo audio file for the torch. What is more preferably for 3d audio sources/spatial audio. Thanks.

[loregodd]

Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge! I've set up all the sounds correctly as the video and made some cinematics in the sequencer. When I export the audio, it seems like the attenuation does not get exported correctly :( Happen to know why and how to fix this?

[cxlso]

Thank you for this tuto! Very useful!
I have a question concerning the Doppler effect. When I first start the game and I'm in the attenuation sphere of a cue component with the Doppler effect set, the sound plays with a weird (low) pitch and then if I start moving, the pitch gets back to normal.
Any idea why and how to correct it?
Thank you

[ZimCrusher]

Is there a way to increase the size of attenuation spheres while in Blueprints?
Meaning... You have sound that is supposed to get gradually louder. The falloff would increase, but I can't find a control in BP that allows this. I can increase volume, but not the distance.

[DiegoHodgeAudio]

I used ‘Set audio listener attenuation override’ instead so that spatialization would still be dependent on the camera, and I like how it works, except audio occlusion seems to be from the camera perspective still, any idea how to fix that?

[ucadn]

Thanks for the tutorial, you are the best!

i have a question... how can we un-enable audio occlusion ? it is like default feature of unreal audio system... there should be an option to remove this feature i think...

do you have any idea?

[reginaldarmah]

Let's say am making a battle Royal game, how should I implement these theories? Like hearing gun fire and explosion from afar, hearing my own footsteps outside and inside or hearing an enemy footsteps coming closer etc.(you get the point) Am developing a game and would like to implement realistic sound effects.

[raedius_music]

just as a fyi its probably best to use 48khz than 44.1 as 44.1 is cd format and 48hz is natural pcm without conversion.