Question Adding Narration Audio

[827]

what's the easiest way to add an audio .mp3 file to a scene? it would be narrating a scene, so it wouldn't need to be associated with a particular body part. is there a way to do this in the scene animation tab as an animation trigger?

 

[Matt_]

Use timeline and audio trigger

 

[827]

Use timeline and audio trigger

would you be able to provide more details on how to do this? i've only edited some things in existing scenes via timeline and am not too familiar with it. thx.

 

[MacGruber]

If your scene is made using Scene Animation rather than Timeline plugin, you can also just trigger from there. However, in the long term you really want to look at Timeline (or IdlePoser for completely different approach), as Scene Animation is very limited.

Anyway, for the moment, all you need:

1. Go to the Scene Audio tab and add your MP3 file or files to the scene:
   • 
2. Add an AudioSource atom to the scene. Person atoms and the AptSpeaker atom are also AudioSources, you can use them as well, although the name for the "Receiver" field of the trigger is different (it's HeadAudioSource and AptSpeaker_Import instead of AudioSource).
3. Trigger the audio from wherever, in your case an Animation Trigger in your scene animation. Each audio source has a "queue", like a playlist in your MP3player. There are various triggers like PlayNow, PlayNowLoop, Stop and a few others. If you don't care about the queue, just use PlayNowClearQueue. Under ClipType = URL you find the files you added to the SceneAudio tab. There are also a number of VaM embedded sounds under ClipType = Embedded.
   • 
4. For a narrator who is speaking "overhead" instead of being in the room, you possibly may want to disable the Spatializer and shift SpatialBlend all the way to 2D:
   • 

If you eventually have more audio files, say more than 30-50, you may want to look into more advanced ways of playing audio. That would be LogicBricks with Audio AssetBundles, which has way better loading performance (like 50x) and also helps managing the amount of files better.

 

[827]

If your scene is made using Scene Animation rather than Timeline plugin, you can also just trigger from there. However, in the long term you really want to look at Timeline (or IdlePoser for completely different approach), as Scene Animation is very limited.

Anyway, for the moment, all you need:

1. Go to the Scene Audio tab and add your MP3 file or files to the scene:
   • View attachment 239680
2. Add an AudioSource atom to the scene. Person atoms and the AptSpeaker atom are also AudioSources, you can use them as well, although the name for the "Receiver" field of the trigger is different (it's HeadAudioSource and AptSpeaker_Import instead of AudioSource).
3. Trigger the audio from wherever, in your case an Animation Trigger in your scene animation. Each audio source has a "queue", like a playlist in your MP3player. There are various triggers like PlayNow, PlayNowLoop, Stop and a few others. If you don't care about the queue, just use PlayNowClearQueue. Under ClipType = URL you find the files you added to the SceneAudio tab. There are also a number of VaM embedded sounds under ClipType = Embedded.
   • View attachment 239681
4. For a narrator who is speaking "overhead" instead of being in the room, you possibly may want to disable the Spatializer and shift SpatialBlend all the way to 2D:
   • View attachment 239682

If you eventually have more audio files, say more than 30-50, you may want to look into more advanced ways of playing audio. That would be LogicBricks with Audio AssetBundles, which has way better loading performance (like 50x) and also helps managing the amount of files better.

thank you very much! this is extremely helpful!

 

[CheersMate]

If your scene is made using Scene Animation rather than Timeline plugin, you can also just trigger from there. However, in the long term you really want to look at Timeline (or IdlePoser for completely different approach), as Scene Animation is very limited.

Anyway, for the moment, all you need:

1. Go to the Scene Audio tab and add your MP3 file or files to the scene:
   • View attachment 239680
2. Add an AudioSource atom to the scene. Person atoms and the AptSpeaker atom are also AudioSources, you can use them as well, although the name for the "Receiver" field of the trigger is different (it's HeadAudioSource and AptSpeaker_Import instead of AudioSource).
3. Trigger the audio from wherever, in your case an Animation Trigger in your scene animation. Each audio source has a "queue", like a playlist in your MP3player. There are various triggers like PlayNow, PlayNowLoop, Stop and a few others. If you don't care about the queue, just use PlayNowClearQueue. Under ClipType = URL you find the files you added to the SceneAudio tab. There are also a number of VaM embedded sounds under ClipType = Embedded.
   • View attachment 239681
4. For a narrator who is speaking "overhead" instead of being in the room, you possibly may want to disable the Spatializer and shift SpatialBlend all the way to 2D:
   • View attachment 239682

If you eventually have more audio files, say more than 30-50, you may want to look into more advanced ways of playing audio. That would be LogicBricks with Audio AssetBundles, which has way better loading performance (like 50x) and also helps managing the amount of files better.

@MacGruber I was playing with switching between multiple scenes using only SubScene loads and struggled with swapping out the audio files without doing a mergeLoad. This AudioAB logic brick seems like the last piece of the puzzle. Never know what you'll stumble across reading the Q&A's

I followed your amazing tutorial on creating Unity Asset Bundles to make a simple CUA a while back and just wanted to verify this is essentially the same process for creating "Audio AssetBundles". i.e. Unity -> Assets -> Import New Asset -> Add all your audio files and create assetbundle file.

 

[MacGruber]

I followed your amazing tutorial on creating Unity Asset Bundles to make a simple CUA a while back and just wanted to verify this is essentially the same process for creating "Audio AssetBundles". i.e. Unity -> Assets -> Import New Asset -> Add all your audio files and create assetbundle file.

Yes, pretty much the same. You should check the import settings for your files, though. These need to be different based on what kind of audio you have.
Gonna direct you to this thread: https://hub.virtamate.com/threads/audio-assetbundles-better-than-linked-mp3.38454/