Hi, I’m just starting out with Unreal and hoping to begin my first VR project - a fairly simple animated music video using basic geometric shapes, but before I start down the wrong path, I was wondering if anyone could tell me, what are the possibilities of driving animation parameters with audio data? For example, could I drive scale, rotation and translation of objects? Could I drive objects along a motion path, or trigger particles and effects, or even have fully rigged character movements driven by audio?
Can I only work with volume data, or could I drive things with pitch? Can I use multi-stem tracks and will everything stay sync’ed?
If anyone could point me to any examples, or documentation or just give me some friendly advice of where to look I’d be really grateful. I’m hoping to hire a programmer and before I begin, I’m wondering if what I’m asking is even possible?
Thanks,
H
Hi Hobsonz! Welcome to the forum and the Unreal Engine!
You’ll want to check out the Stickied topics on working with the new Unreal Audio Engine, especially the Envelope Follower setup.
I would also recommend checking out Blueprints Tutorials since most of the data you’ll be working with will probably be implemented within Blueprints. There is not yet a process for analyzing FFT data for splitting your spectra, but if you’re handy with code or if you’re already an audio programmer, you can implement one–in which case, you’ll want to look at the code gen @minus_kelvin implemented for Source Effects and Submix Effects.
With that said, moving objects on a motion path, triggering particles, effects, post processing, and animation montages are all possible via Blueprints. So it’s just about bringing data into Blueprints and figuring out how to map the data you get to the data you want to drive.
So your first step is to acquaint yourself with the Unreal Engine, the new Audio Engine, and Blueprints and the Envelope Follower will be a good place to start modulating from a sound source.