Large Metasound/Preset Workflow Issues

Development Audio
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1

Hello I currently have a pretty large Metasound with some decently complex logic (involving a few metasound patches inside etc) and this Metasound has many inputs which I need to play around with. 20 wave arrays, and 1 pan and volume input for each wave array, plus a bunch of other inputs (so all up, at least 70-80 inputs).

I created a generative ambient system inside this Metasound, with custom logic so it works in a particular way that I want. I now want to use this Metasound as a preset 20 times, where for each Metasound I can change the waves used, and all the input values.

Currently UE5 simply doesn’t feel designed to allow me to do this without massive headaches, so this is both just a feedback post to hopefully encourage some workflow changes for Presets, but also I’m curious if there are any recommendations on how to get around this currently.

Check this screenshot below:

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There simply doesn’t seem to be a way for me to easily control these 20 different instances (whether using presets or not).

If I use presets:

  • The visuals become crazy
  • I can’t easily change input values due to the visuals. I have to basically go through the input list 1 by 1 and change the numbers. There’s no way for me to just “see” the values without having to click through every single one of them

If I use duplicated Metasounds

  • I of course can’t make any changes to the underlying Metasound as I’d have to duplicate the changes across all the Metasounds.

I’m assuming there’s no way around this currently, but if there is I’d like to learn!

Otherwise, one of my biggest gripes with the Preset system is the lack of ease-of-use. It feels close to interacting with an excel spreadsheet atm. It would be great if:

  • We could have a visual interface where we can much more easily be able to see and interact with input values
  • The interface is customizable to suit our needs (imagine being able to set it up so that all these volume inputs are setup like a DAW mixer)

On my team I’ve generally been one to really want to use Presets due to the parent-child nature of it. But others on the team have not been so keen on using it due to the lack of ease of use / visual interface.

Hoping that in future patches this gets improved!

Thanks :slight_smile:

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2

There is a way to setup a custom interface with MetaSound Presets so you can create more intuitive-looking interfaces for non-technical users.

You can also organize your inputs into groups/categories using “dot” notation. E.g. MyThingA could be split into 3 things if you do, “My.Thing.A”. This way you can make drop-downs and organize it a bit better.

There are some things on the roadmap to make this sort of thing easier to manage for sure.

I’ll forward this ticket to some of our technical sound designers for pro-tips on how to deal with this issue at Scale.

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I did see that in 5.6 there was the addition of user preset widgets, hopefully that helps as we’ll be moving onto that shortly.

How exactly does the input categories work? I just need to name the inputs using dot notation and they’ll automatically be categorised into drop-downs?

And also looking forward to hearing about the pro-tips, thanks!

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>I just need to name the inputs using dot notation and they’ll automatically be categorised into drop-downs?

Yep.

I’ll re-ask my tech audio folks about this thread.

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5

Awesome, the dot notation is great! Definitely helpful for organisation.

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Couple small bits of feedback regarding this:

  • It’s quite tedious having to select every single member and copy paste a category name into the name field. It would be great if you could just select multiple members and just add them to a new or existing group. Just having some batch editting tools in general for this will help make this feel a lot more user friendly. Takes way too long to edit 50 members. And worse if you want to make changes.
  • Currently everytime you ‘enter’ a new name into a member name field, it automatically scrolls back up to the top of the member list AND unfolds all groups, so every time you have to scroll all the way back down just to select the next member to change a name for. Just makes the process that much longer when renaming a lot of members.
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