Overview

The foley and footstep system allows to sync movement sounds with the animation. It also offers to alter the sound based on the character while using the same animation.

Features

• Character based Footsteps and Foleys.
• Animation synced Footsteps and Foleys.
• Material based Footsteps.

Technical Detail

To enable character based foleys and footsteps it requires "CharacterSounds" entries inside the Entity Lua script.

Following example is taken from the player.lua which can be found under Game\Scripts\Entities\actor.

       footstepEffect = "footstep_player",    -- Footstep mfx library to use
      remoteFootstepEffect = "footstep",    -- Footstep mfx library to use for remote players
      bFootstepGearEffect = 0,        -- This plays a sound from materialfx
      footstepIndGearAudioSignal_Walk = "Player_Footstep_Gear_Walk",   -- This directly plays the specified audiosignal on every footstep
      footstepIndGearAudioSignal_Run = "Player_Footstep_Gear_Run",  -- This directly plays the specified audiosignal on every footstep
      foleyEffect = "foley_player",      -- Foley signal effect name

After specifying the Footstep Effect Library this entry has to be created in the MaterialEffects.xml table under \Game\Libs\MaterialEffects.

The corresponding effect depending on the material defines the actual FMOD SoundEvent to play. This is done in the Effect Library stored under \Game\Libs\MaterialEffects\FXLibs.

Footsteps do take the FMOD parameter "speed" into account. This parameter offers to modify the sound depending on the game-world speed of the entity.

Now the "footstep" entry is required on each animation for the correct timing. This is done in the Character Editor inside the Animation Control Tab and stored in the animevents file.

The following example is taken from Game\Animations\human_male\human_male.animevents.

With clicking on "New Event" and naming it "footstep" it generates a valid signal which will be send when the animation hits this specific point.

Once the Effects and SoundEvents are being specified the corresponding animations require the "foley" entry and effect selection to function correctly.

Please do notice that the Character Editor does not have a surface type and therefore uses "default" material. It can be changed by typing in an existing surface type into the "parameter" field.

Don't forget to remove it after adding the footstep entries otherwise it will override the surface type coming from the MaterialEffects table.

Character based Foleys do not require to be run through MaterialEffects.xml table since they are not depending on the material.

Therefore it requires an Effect Library specifying the FMOD Sound Events for the different foley actions inside the foley_player XML under Game\Libs\MaterialEffects\FXLibs.

 
...
  <Effect name="gear">
    <Sound>
      <Name>Sounds/physics:foleys/player:gear</Name>
    </Sound>
  </Effect>

  <Effect name="gear_slow">
    <Sound>
      <Name>Sounds/physics:foleys/player:gear_slow</Name>
    </Sound>
  </Effect>

  <Effect name="gear_medium">
    <Sound>
      <Name>Sounds/physics:foleys/player:gear_medium</Name>
    </Sound>
  </Effect>
  
  <Effect name="gear_fast">
    <Sound>
      <Name>Sounds/physics:foleys/player:gear_fast</Name>
    </Sound>
  </Effect>
  
  <Effect name="bodyhit">
    <Sound>
      <Name>Sounds/physics:foleys/player:bodyhit</Name>
    </Sound>
  </Effect>
...

CVars and tips

• Since Footsteps and Foleys are depending on the Animation the collaboration between the Audio and the Animation department has to be strong.
• The data stored in the animevents file does reference the name of the animation. Defining a naming convention, animation folder structure and even placeholder animations early helps to stay on top of the sheer amount of assets.
• The animevents does work like a XML file so can be opened with any text editor. This can be helpful by copy/paste as well as checking naming convention and general debugging.
• Just putting footsteps and foley entries onto the Locomotion Animations (e.g. _RELAXED) will cover most of the cases already. After that the Additive Animations can be populated with footstep and foley entries.
• mfx_DebugVisual = Enables visual debugging for the MaterialEffects system.