Hello,
I am coming form a music and creative coding background. Most of my work is in the realm of interactive audio-visual installations and sometimes life performances. So far I have been working in Max MSP and a few creative coding frameworks for C++ and Javascript. The main things I need are the ability to programm/compose procedural soundtracks/audio and custom video-shaders that both reakt to realtime input. I have a few questions to evaluate wether Unreal would be a better fit for me than other platforms/frameworks.
I am looking to switch to a game engine for the following reasons:
- more advanced features than most comparable frameworks
- all in one package (video and audio libraries, I don’t have to spend as much time trying to get different libraries playing together nicely)
- easily compile standalone applications for longterm installations that can be handled by anyone without any special knowledge
- high level convenience features while having access to low level code
The problem with most game engines is their audio engine, since I work with procedurally generated audio. However, with MetaSound on the horizon for UE5 and the audio-engine-overhaul in the last updates for UE4, UE might be the right fit for me.
Since UE5 Early Access won’t run smoothly for me and MetaSounds still is in it’s infancy anyway, can the current UE4 audio engine achieve the same level of procedural audio generation (without the visual interface of MetaSound)?
Where would be the best starting points for me if I am mainly interested in (custom) graphic shaders and procedural audio?
Does anyone have experience with projection mapping and UE? Edit: It seems like nDisplay is well suited for this.