I’d like to write my own DSP sound effect in UE4, a vocoder to be exact. My first idea is to add a Source Effect like the existing Source Effects from the Synthesis plugin that come with the engine. Is this the way to go or how could I approach this?
This was in 2020 so I’m wondering how you did?
Looks like the new DSP in UE5 will allow this better perhaps? I also want to do this, unless Antares can make a plug-in for UE5 that’s licensable.
MetaSounds are admittedly probably the easiest way to add custom stuff at the moment. There’s a tutorial on how to make your own MetaSound Node here, it’s reasonably light-weight. If what you’ve got in mind can be described in terms of operations like addition, multiplication, or delays, you might even be able to get away with creating it in MetaSounds directly without altering any code.
If you specifically want to make a Source Effect or a Submix Effect, though, that’s still very much possible. Not sure if there’s a step-by-step tutorial on this anywhere, but the process I usually recommend when trying to do new effects for the first time is:
- Look at the Unreal Engine code of a relatively simple Source Effect (or Submix Effect, if that’s what you’re going for)
- Try and get either a copy of this Source Effect or a dummy Source Effect to just show up in engine, by doing some searching and copy-pasting of when the original Source Effect gets registered
- Once the above works, rip out and replace the interface and DSP code until it does what you want