Question Original Sound-Libray ?

[DanVR]

Hello All,
I'm new to the VAM universe.

While I'm still looking around for tutorials and guides in order to learn the basics.
I must mention that I didn't even try the all triggers thing, I do have to explore it of course but I'm really curious about this:

Is it possible (supported?) so I'll record many ORIGINAL SOUNDS and make an on-going (keep update) audio for a character (female or male)
Not just for moans, but for triggering other situations, such as: individual words, laughs, short and long sentences.

The idea is to make so many different audio pieces with specific voice, then built interactive scene based on different triggers using these voices.
Then each trigger will have it's own random "similar" audio to play, so the character will react with so many different ways but yet using ORIGINAL audio.


if so, what plugins do I need to download?
What are the file formats I need to export? (wav, mp3, ogg, etc..)
and what else should I do in the process to make it work?
Any step-by-step tutorial or guide I can follow myself and try it?


Thanks ahead and sorry about my bad English.

 

[Sally Whitemane]

Is it possible (supported?) so I'll record many ORIGINAL SOUNDS and make an on-going (keep update) audio for a character (female or male)

That's possible. Record it, converted to supported format if necessary (see below), copy files to VaM\Custom\Sounds, load them into VAM via [Scene Audio]-tab > browser for very basic testing.

Not just for moans, but for triggering other situations, such as: individual words, laughs, short and long sentences.

In general once you have set up your audio-sources in the [Scene Audio]-tab you can play them on any Sound-Atoms like an AptSpeaker or AudioSource.
To play it a trigger is needed. Example:
Add Atom > Triggers > UIButton > *select it* > open buttons [Button Trigger]-tab > Add Click Action > settings ... > Receiver Atom: AudioSource > Receiver: AudioSource > Receiver Target: Play Now > Clip Type: URL > Clip Cat.: web > Clip: *your file from scene audio tab*

Note that in VR your audio can be spatial or normal. Every AudioSource has a checkbox to enable or disable this.

Now I know you wrote "Not just moans" - but maybe you can expand on the popular VAMMoan Plugin by @hazmhox .
As the name already suggests this is focused on sex stuff. It does have various voices and various intensity states.
I don't know what kind of sentences you want exactly. Maybe they can be added randomly to an intensity states if it's ... I donno - dirty talk or something.

What are the file formats I need to export?

This is for the build in Unity based audio (Stuff used via [Scene Audio]-tab) - not the web-browser (that's another story).

working file containers: WAV, MP3, OGG
not working: WEBM, MKV, MP4, M4A

working codec: PCM for wav, VORBIS for ogg, MPEG Audio Layer III for MP3 *duh*
not working: AAC, OPUS

Filesize wise the obvious choice here is to use vorbis encoded ogg-files. Has the better compression compared to the very outdated MP3.

 

[hazmhox]

To answer some of your questions, I wrote an article about that (I should still convert it to a tutorial) : https://hub.virtamate.com/threads/sound-design-how-to-create-a-good-design-for-a-vam-scene.386/

Go for OGG ( size and quality ).
Never use mp3. (the article explains why)

From here, I would code a plugin myself. With the goal you're trying to achieve, doing that through usual scene scripting is gonna be a nightmare. So I'd build a library with Unity, then code a plugin like VaM to handle a procedural randomization and an easy to use trigger system.
You will not find a step by step tutorial for this specific case but you'll need to :
- Know Unity
- Know a bit of C#
- How to build custom assets (assetbundles)

All these aspects can be found on several tutorials on the hub here tho!

And that's "pretty much" it.
If you don't know a lot about all of this (which might be the case since you're asking a so broad question), know that it is already a pretty advanced implementation / project.

 

[DanVR]

Thank you so much @Sally Whitemane and @hazmhox I appreciate the detailed step-by-step explanation and links.

I'm going to try follow it and if I'll have some questions I'll let you know.


UPDATE:
I found a GREAT example of what I'm trying to do, but not just using a MIC for audio recognition (amazing but I have no clue how to setup such thing as a newbie it's probably super advanced) but also starting with other triggers for example: pressing (mouse or VR) on Right Hand = 1 random voice out of specific 40 options (a range of options the male/female may say), press on other part, will play 1 random audio of ANOTHER section (no the same that was on the HAND or other part or button) this is probably very hard to make, unless there are plugins already I can try.

Playing rang of audio on specific trigger so it won't play just RANDOM out of the all directory, unless there is a way to play random based on Sub-Directories that a nice option (also easy to organize and update more and more voices in the future). but I have no idea since I'm still learning the basics of VAM.

This is the example I found which is VERY impressive, but as I mention I want to start simple not necessarily with audio recognition, which I'll sure want to try as well after few basic triggers tests:

 

[hazmhox]

Voice recognition is extremely simple, there is an existing plugin, you just connect a sentence to a set of actions. You will not have to code anything if you just want to control something else with your voice.

If you don't want to code anything, you can try audiomate, that might work :
https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/audiomate.2142/

 

[DanVR]

Voice recognition is extremely simple, there is an existing plugin, you just connect a sentence to a set of actions. You will not have to code anything if you just want to control something else with your voice.

If you don't want to code anything, you can try audiomate, that might work :
https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/audiomate.2142/

Thanks for the tip! unfortunately I'm not a programmer and I can't code, I will look at this plugin and will do some tests as I learn.

One issue which I'm not sure if related to the way each different plugin works is that usually I can use audio files from 1 directory only.
That limits my idea of separating different SUB-DIRECTORIES to use for different type of sounds: talking, scream, whisper, moan, etc.. or even wider verity of my own way to split to more deep "filtered" sub-directories per person voices that I would like to record different people and make a keep-on-update archive that keep growing.

I guess that "AudioMate" will allow me to make collections so it may solve the issue I've mentioned above, but I will have to test it and see if it's not too hard to use for a newbie of course.

For voice recognition - I looked for a plugin on the hub but didn't understand how to install it manually (copy past and how to run it) since all I tried so far was within VAM just pressing "download" this one I ran into (can't remember the name) didn't appear... also I have no idea how to manually install .VAR files and how to find them inside VAM later since I didn't tried it, I guess it's supposed to be simple.

I'm curious if the voice recognition you've mentioned supports other languages, so I can use my own language and I wonder if it's limited by some way or I can expand it with my plan to build a HUGE library of voices + sentences.

If I'll manage to make this work, it will be an amazing experiment to add and update more and more voices, male + female to create a BANK of many situations that won't "answer" the same, but each case will randomly pick out of it's SUB-DIRECTORY (or collection) one of the "same" type of answers to the trigger, that's what I'm hopping to make.

Again, thanks head for the help and sorry about my bad English.

 

[Sally Whitemane]

One issue which I'm not sure if related to the way each different plugin works is that usually I can use audio files from 1 directory only.
That limits my idea of separating different SUB-DIRECTORIES to use for different type of sounds: talking, scream, whisper, moan, etc.. or even wider verity of my own way to split to more deep "filtered" sub-directories per person voices that I would like to record different people and make a keep-on-update archive that keep growing.

I'm not sure I understand why you assume you are limited to 1 directory.
Maybe I miss something - I have never used AudioMate.
From the back of my head I only remember there was some kind of security related restriction.
I believe Plugins are not allowed to access anything outside the VAM folder?!
Don't quote me on that - can't find a source right now to verify.

The creation workflow would be like this:

• While creating and testing all your custom Sounds to go and stay in \Custom\Sounds\...
• There is nothing(*) stopping you from creating paths like \Custom\Sounds\burps\ or even \Custom\Sounds\speech\japanese\male\voice1\
• Once happy and finished you probably want to share your work. Using the Package Builder inside VAM you create a compressed VAR-file in \AddonPackages\yourname.1.var That VAR-file will then contain only your selected files and same \Custom\... directory structure of your VAM folder. The VAR is just a ZIP-file that can be opened with all kind of compression tools. So you can verify that too.

* Except the Windows filesystem limit maybe if you create reaaaaaaally deep long paths.

no idea how to manually install .VAR files ...

They just have to be copied / moved to \AddonPackages\ In case you moved new VARs there while VAM is running there is a purple "Rescan Packages" button in the Package Manager to let VAM know about it without the need to restart.

 

[DanVR]

I'm not sure I understand why you assume you are limited to 1 directory.
Maybe I miss something - I have never used AudioMate.
From the back of my head I only remember there was some kind of security related restriction.
I believe Plugins are not allowed to access anything outside the VAM folder?!
Don't quote me on that - can't find a source right now to verify.

The creation workflow would be like this:

• While creating and testing all your custom Sounds to go and stay in \Custom\Sounds\...
• There is nothing(*) stopping you from creating paths like \Custom\Sounds\burps\ or even \Custom\Sounds\speech\japanese\male\voice1\
• Once happy and finished you probably want to share your work. Using the Package Builder inside VAM you create a compressed VAR-file in \AddonPackages\yourname.1.var That VAR-file will then contain only your selected files and same \Custom\... directory structure of your VAM folder. The VAR is just a ZIP-file that can be opened with all kind of compression tools. So you can verify that too.

* Except the Windows filesystem limit maybe if you create reaaaaaaally deep long paths.

They just have to be copied / moved to \AddonPackages\ In case you moved new VARs there while VAM is running there is a purple "Rescan Packages" button in the Package Manager to let VAM know about it without the need to restart.

Your tips are VERY HELPFUL thank you so much!
I didn't realize I can use SUB-DIRECTORIES inside Sounds, I thought it is "the way it is" because I still didn't try much with sounds and VAM in general (few days of playing with it, have much more to learn).

I didn't try AudioMate, I'm going to try it now and read all your tips while I do it, so I can test the some ways to trigger some random sounds on different Sub-Directories, I guess that's the first step I hope that I'll be able to accomplish.

I'll try to run AudioMate first, I tried to find it on Plugins under a character that is already loaded for first try but so far I couldn't find it there consider I downloaded it within VAM... so I think I should download it from Chrome and put it inside \AddonPackages\ as you mentioned. maybe then it will appear on the side-directories, because I do see other plugins I tried.

Gonna do some tastings again! thank you so much for your kind supportive step-by-step help, I appreciate it!

 

[DanVR]

I just messed around with "AudioMate" plugin, I tried the demo as well but couldn't make it work...
The only way I can hear sounds was by pressing manually on the "PLAY" button of each clip.

Also, loading WAV files worked only once, then it just did nothing when I tried loading WAV or complete folder, it won't appear on the "Clip Library" unlike the Demo .amc file

So I don't get the actual trigger in-scene interaction, but if I press PLAY on one of the Clip Library list, it does play them... so I'm not sure if I messed up with the Receiver Atom/Node (which is Person and the AudioSource I've added and placed where I wanted) or if I did some other mess which probably I did...

I actually wrote my very first review there hopefully to get an idea how to make it work by somebody to make a short video so I can see what steps I missed or didn't do correct (even after following the step-by-step demo instructions)

From what I've seen so far (once I'll get it to work) "AudioMate" is defiantly what I was looking for... so thank you @hazmhox !
Back to test some more... maybe it will work after some few more tries.

-

UPDATE:
I could finally LOAD to the Clip Library list, I had to RELOAD the plugin (probably it's a refresh thing, I have no idea)
But that didn't solve the other issues that I mentioned...

If anyone can make a short step-by-step video showing how to make it work from scratch (not necessarily the demo if there is an easier example) I would love to try and follow, then there is a better chance that I'll spot what I was missed and why it didn't work for me:
- Import custom WAV files (and full directory) to the Clip Library and SEE it's appearing there
- Making a trigger based on collection in-scene (not just pressing "PLAY" on the plugin)

That will be awesome if anyone can share. Thanks ahead!