Overview

This Tutorial explains how to setup Ambient Sounds in your Wwise Project and CRYENGINE.

Setting up Ambiences in Wwise and CRYENGINE

Setting up Ambient Sounds in Wwise

CRYENGINE offers two Audio Entities which can be used to setup Ambient Sounds in your Level.
They are called AudioAreaAmbience and AudioAreaEntity and both are attached to a Shape in the Level to define the Area in which the Sound is playing.

These are not to be confused with the AudioTriggerSpot, as AudioAreaAmbience and AudioAreaEntity do not use the standard Wwise Attenuations.
Therefore, their setup in Wwise has to be different in order to create a working implementation of your Audio Content.

Preparing the Wwise Project to Work with Area Sounds

As first step to setup your Wwise Project to support Ambiences in CRYENGINE go to the GameSyncs tab and create a new GameParameter called "area_fade_distance"

Select the newly created GameParameter and set it's range in the Property Editor from 0 to 1 (default value =1).

This Parameter is going to be used later on in CRYENGINE to attenuate or increase the Sound when moving closer to or further away from an Area connected to the Audio Entity. Therefore, make sure to connect the newly created "area_fade_distance" Game Parameter to a global ATL RTPC within the Audio Controls Editor.

Setting up a Basic Ambient Sound Object

Import a .wav file in Wwise containing your Ambient Sounds and make sure that the resulting Sound Object Play Mode is set to Continuous and Loop Infinite .

Select the Sound Object in Wwise and click on the RTPC tab in the Property Editor.
Now click the >> Button (underneath the Y axis Field) and select the Voice Volume property from the Popup List.

A new >> Button opens for the X axis. Click on this button and select the newly created "area_fade_distance" GameParameter.

After this your setup should look like the one displayed in the screenshot below:

In the Positioning Tab of the Sound Object create an Attenuation which only affects the spread, but not the volume over distance.

Like this the Ambience is spread out completely when you are entering the Area and diminishes when moving away from it.

Now create a new Event for the Sound Object, regenerate your Soundbanks and connect the Wwise Event in the Audio Controls Editor as explained here.

Result

Congratulations, you have now created a Wwise setup that can be used with the Audio Entities inside CRYENGINE.
To learn how to setup your created Wwise Event inside CRYENGINE then take a look at the tutorial ATL and Ambient Sounds in Levels.