Welcome to FMOD

Hello! Its been a while! A long time ago, I may or may not have promised a tutorial on
FMOD, and in either case its been on my to-do list, so Im gonna begin the process in
striking it off here, right now. Welcome to the first post in my series on the use of
FMOD. I was inspired to write this tutorial after meeting some of the FMOD/Firelight
Technologies crew in March 2014 at the Game Developers Conference in San
Francisco. You may have noticed, if youve come across my blog before, that all of my
previous writings on game audio engine tutorials were written about Wwise. So why am
I climbing aboard the S.S. FMOD now? Well, Im not really doing that. Im actually
trying to just ride both horses. Why start now? Approximately five years ago, I rather
disliked FMOD. The program felt kind of nebulous, its usage (which either I
misunderstood, or it did not explain) went over my head, and the documentation for the
software was notoriously under-developed and sparse. In short, the choice to use Wwise
was made for me when I simply could not access the program, and so Wwise was what
I stuck with. Fast forward to 2014, the FMOD Designer is now replaced with FMOD
Studio and, even more excitingly, it is now absolutely free for indie designers to use in
their games. Because of the flexibility that FMOD offers, there can be no excuses
anymore. Any and all interactive audio designers should be expected to know FMOD,
and Wwise, inside and out. These programs are no longer just for the big boys, and are
no longer out of your budget or your reach. I would dare be the person to make the bold
claim that you should never again be working on a game that is not using some sort of
audio middleware ever again.
What gives me the authority to make such a claim? Because, as the FMOD manual so
succinctly describes it: The sound file is not the sound that the game needs. A game
designer, and certainly a game audio designer, does not live in the linear world. You
only have so much space on your CD/DVD/hard disk for menial footstep samples. We
can do so much more, with so much less. Especially in the indie games world, the lines
between the sound creator and implementer are blurred and you will make your job so
much more rewarding, while also increasing your value as an audio designer when
you know and understand how to not only create the sounds your game needs, but how
to implement them something FMOD allows you to do quite easily. It is no longer
acceptable to simply be satisfied with delivering folders full of .wav files to
programmers and expecting them to put them in the game for you. You are much more
than that.
Before we get down to business here, I want to stress one thing. This is not a tutorial on
FMOD, per se. There are going to be few step-by-step directions tailored to fit specific
scenarios. The scope of these lessons will be in attempting to teach newcomers to
FMOD the basic concepts underlying some of the more important functions of the
program and many of its common uses. As always, if you have any questions, need
help, or want to request a specific tutorial on a subject in greater detail, feel free to
email me at Hello@ChrisPrunotto(dot)com, or find me on Twitter and pop me a
message @SoundGuyChris! Now, with all that saidread on to continue!

What Does FMOD Do?

FMOD is a strange beast. At first glance, it looks kind of like Ableton Live. Its got the
features of a typical D.A.W., but it doesnt necessarily behave like one. With very little
exception, in a linear D.A.W., all audio is placed on the timeline to some degree, and
plays back in a very specific order. It is then bounced to a mixed down file that the end
user will hear. In this linear paradigm, every region in the DAW has generally
deterministic properties: A start time, duration, waveform, end time, and so forth. The
complexities of linear audio come from a combination of layering and mixing sounds
atop one another. The opposite of this linear paradigm is, naturally, the non-linear one.
A non-linear D.A.W. allows for what is referred to as generative audio: using audio
with non-deterministic properties in order to create (almost) infinitely unique and very
complex constructions from much smaller components. For example, using only six or
seven footstep samples roughly about four seconds of total audio, one could have a
very nice palette of dynamically generated footsteps with variable pitch, dynamics, and
location. By creating a few parameters to govern the audio engine and feeding FMOD
those parameters from the game, one is able to coax a wide variety of sounds to fit a
wide variety of circumstances from only a relatively small pool of samples without
the necessity of hard coding anything into the game engine, and without making your
programmers spend their valuable time for each and every step of the implementation
process. The best argument for the effectiveness of the solutions offered by FMOD is
quite simply the enormous amount of titles many of which are probably in your own
library which make use of the middleware.

A Quick Rundown Of The Event Editor

Concept: Everything Is An Event!
The first thing to understand about FMOD is that everything in your game happens not at a
point in time, but at a decision in space. Everything that happens in FMOD is an event. An
Event is something that happens in the game world. Jumping is an event. A car accelerating is
an event. The music of a game reacting to the amount of enemies in a scene is an event.
Death, re-spawning, and picking up coinsyou guessed it! Theyre all events. Anything that
triggers some sort of interaction with sound, for the purposes of FMOD, is an event. A typical
game can have hundreds (if not thousands) of events. Now, lets get started learning our way
around the main workhorse of FMOD, the Event Editor. Remember, this all constitutes only
but a basic rundown, and there will be more details will be explained as needed later. Again, as
always, please send me an email if you have questions, or simply refer to the manuals!

Above, Ive got an example of the Event Editor. It is the main window of FMOD and
its likely the first thing you will see. If it isnt, open it with Ctrl+1, or go to Window >
Event Editor. The one I have open is populated with a few modules and an event. On
the left side of the Event Editor is the Event Browser, and Ive marked it inside of a blue
box. The first tab simply shows all of your events, and the second tab displays your
Banks. You wont need to worry about banks until youre ready to publish your sounds
to your game engine, so pay no attention to it for now. The Event Browser is far more
important to our immediate purposes. Events (things that happen) can be nested inside
of other events, or reside in folders. There is also a search bar atop both of these for
when the lists start getting long and unwieldy. As you can see, you can organize events
primarily in 3 ways: Place events at the root level, place events inside folders (and nest
folders into more folders!), and create sub-events inside of other events. This will all be

more relevant and explained when the mixing stage is concerned. For now, simply right
click in the Event Browser and create a new event. Then click the name of it to turn it
yellow and bring it into focus in the rest of the editor.
As you select the new event, take notice of the large, upper middle section of the editor,
which Ive marked by the red box. Its where the bulk of your work will take place. The
controls along the top include the stop/play buttons, a time-code, loop and follow-cursor
buttons, and then a pair of toggles to switch between Track and Strip view. Track view
is the default youre probably looking at right now. Strip View is similar to the mixer
view of a typical D.A.W., but only reflects the routing of the selected event. Well get to
all that soon enough. Youll notice, in my screenshot, two additional knobs. Those
knobs are parameters, and theyre linked to the two tabs directly above the timeline
(Distance and Custom Parameter, in this case). These are parameters which control the
way events play back and are the core of non-linear functionality. Well get to that later,
but youve got to learn what knife is actually for before you cut anything with it. With a
new, blank event, the editor will be populated with two tracks: an Audio 1 track, and
a Master track. Unlike a linear D.A.W., this Master is not the Master Output bus! You
will be placing your modules on the Audio 1 track (and any additional tracks you
create), but the Master is only an aggregate of the rest of the tracks in that event.
Remember that a typical game can have many events playing simultaneously, and each
events master track outputs into the mixer where it is then further routed. Take note of
the narrow strip immediately below the editor pane with a translucent box in it. Its the
Birdseye view of the entire project and its great for navigating around quickly. Just
click and drag to move the view, or drag the edges of the box to zoom in.
Below the Birdseye View is the next extremely important part of FMOD called the
Deck. Its in the green box. You can think of the deck as where your inserts and routing
options in your linear D.A.W.s live. Everything from EQ to distortion to reverb all
resides here. To add them, simply activate the track you want to add it to (for example,
Audio 1) to bring it into focus on the Deck, and then click on the plus sign to either the
left or right of the fader knob to add the effects, sends, or side chains either as pre or
post fader effects. You can also right click on effects to remove them. The deck displays
a lot of information, and its sensitive to whatever is selected pay attention to that,
because FMOD is, again, non-linear and therefore a nearly unlimited amount of routing
possibilities await you!
Concept: The interface of FMOD is extremely minimalist. There are very few buttons and so
FMOD relies heavily on context sensitivity. The Deck often changes based on whatever is selected
at the given moment. One of the best ways to learn about things is to click them and see how
the Deck reacts, or right clicking them and seeing what options are available to you!

In the farthest right area of the screen lie the last two panes. The one in the white box is
the 3D Previewer, and it gives an approximation of where the listener (ie: you!) is, in
relation to the sound event. You can click and drag on the white little arrow to move the
listener and see how that affects the sound, and the built in parameters (which will be
discussed later) can exert additional control over it everything from vertical spatiality,
to surround-sound fields. Please, of course, keep in mind that its called the 3D
Previewer for a reason. Unless youve hard-coded distance properties into an audio
event, the game (once the sounds are implemented correctly) will auto-magically

determine how far away the sound is, and if it should be played from the right, left,
center, or surround speakers. In other words, the editor helps you create everything, but
the engine does all the heavy lifting and the math to place those creations in the game
space.
The second of the two panes, in yellow, is the properties pane where you can use tags to
organize events, create user properties to grab user-specified data and attach arguments
to them (This is something for coders especially! In due time!), and leave notes
describing functionalities and documentation for others. This is useful not only in case
you forget what you were doing after coming back to an event after leaving it alone for
a few weeks, its also helpful to have for collaboration and for when your manager asks
what the heck that thing is for. ;)
Outside of the Event Editor window, there are two other windows to get to know right
now. If you go to the Window menu at the top of the screen, you can select from the
Event Editor (which was just covered), Mixer, the Audio Bin, Event Browser, Mixer
Routing, and Profiler Windows. I will cover the Mixer, Mixer Routing, and Profiler in
later sections. For now, glance at the Event Browser and Audio Bin: The Event Browser
is simple enough. It mirrors the Event Browser on the left pane of the Event Editor
window. It additionally lets you search for events by tag, which is excellent for filtering
and finding related events quickly. The Audio Bin is where your audio resides and lives
in your project when its not being used in the timeline or in the current event. The
Audio Bin is especially useful for managing your audio files, previewing them, and
adding them directly to the timeline from inside of FMOD, as opposed to dragging them
in from the File Explorer. Add sounds to the Audio Bin by either importing them
through the file menu or dragging them from a File Explorer Window/Finder Window
on Windows/Mac. Its also a good reminder that the goal of generative audio is to create
as much as you can out of the basic building blocks, instead of using new samples for
every single event.

So now that were familiar with the Editorwhat

actually goes into it?
If you take second look at the screenshot above, you might notice that most of the
modules in the Audio 1 track of the timeline do not have waveforms in them like you
might be used to with your typical D.A.W.And theres a reason for that, frustrating as
it might be to have to get used to. A single waveform on the timeline is a Single Sound
Module, and its the simplest form of playback in FMOD. Its the very first module
Ive placed on my timeline, and the only one with a waveform in it. It is an example of a
Time-Locked module. A time-locked sound module is any single sound module that is
not set to loop, and which resides directly on the timeline. This means that a Single
Sound Module will play exactly what is on the waveform, exactly where the cursor is at
(unless youve modified it by adding effects to the Deck). You can add a single sound
module by simply dragging it onto the timeline from either an explorer/finder window,
or direct from the Audio Bin. Though generally not as flexible as the other modules, it
does have its place in interactive sound design.

Concept: Use pitch, volume, and playback randomization to introduce exponential variety to
your audio!

The real star of the show is the cyan module next to the single sound module, in the
example above. This is whats called a Multi Sound Module. To create one, right click
on the time line and select Add Multi Sound. Thats how youll make all modules,
actually. The multi sound modules primary function is to act like a playlist. It contains
multiple sounds and plays them back either in order, or at random, each time the
cursor enters the module, regardless if it enters from the front, back, or snaps to the
middle of the module (As an aside, unlike the single sound modules, the position of the
cursor over the module itself has no bearing over the start position of audio playback.
Playback will always begin at the beginning of the sample). To add sounds to a multi
sound module, simply click the module to bring it into focus on the deck, and drag and
drop sounds into the playlist. The die button and loop buttons assert global
randomization and global looping for the module. Once youve added sounds, clicking
them in the playlist will focus them on the right hand side of the deck, where a second
loop button can assert local looping for just that sound. Bear in mind that a sound that is
looping will continue to loop until the event is explicitly stopped. With high polyphony,
you may experience some undesirable playback where events stack upon themselves
endlessly and annoyingly. Always test your functionality both in the FMOD Designer
and in your game!
The next module (green) is an Event Sound Module. An Event Module, when activated
by the cursor touching the module, will trigger another event contained within it. This is
not unlike simply pressing the play button on the nested event. You can create
incredibly powerful events that control and automate the parameters of other events by
nesting them together like this. Creating a blank module (right clicking on the timeline
and adding an Event Sound Module) will essentially insert a blank, new event in the
module which you can populate as desired. You can alternatively open the Event
Browser and drag the event directly onto the timeline this is known as a referenced
event. Its important to note though, however, that even if the cursor leaves the Event
Module, the event contained inside the Event Module will not stop until explicitly
ended.
The fourth module is the Scatterer Sound Module. Its essentially a multi sound module
with a few extra parameters to allow for continuous spawning of sounds to create truly
generative audio. Its especially useful for sounds that do not require precise spatial
awareness. It works great on ambient sounds like birds singing in trees or leaves
blowing in the wind. When selected, the playlist portion of the deck functions exactly as
the multi-sound module. The left-hand portion is the where the master section
(influencing global volume and pitch) and scatterer sections reside. The scatterer section
has two ribbons and four knobs. The upper ribbon influences the (randomized) range of
time between spawning of sounds. The lower ribbon is the min and max distance (again,
randomized) to be applied to each sound. Because this ribbon influences 3D spatiality,
setting the range to 0-0 will effectively make the sound 2D. Its also important to
remember that the units are arbitrary. Your game will decide whether 10 means 10
inches, feet, yards, miles, or light years. Its also very important to remember though
that most audio in games is represented by spheres! Its no good to generate a sphere of
ambiance around your player with birds singing in it because you might end up with
them buried underground! Placement and spatial awareness is everything in game

audio! Place the ambience where the ambience goes. The polyphony knob allows an
adjustment for how many sounds may play at once, and the volume and pitch
randomization knobs will do pretty much exactly what you expect. The Total Sounds
dial will let you define exactly how many sounds you want generated. You can set it for
infinity to have the Scatterer simply run forever, but if you only want a specific amount
of sounds generated, you can set it from anywhere to 1-32. Once the total amount of
sounds has been generated, the Scatterer will shut off.
The next two modules are the Programmer Sound Module and Audio Weather Module.
A Programmer Sound Event simply allows the game to decide at run-time what sound
will be played. Its useful but an explanation of it is outside the scope of an introduction
to FMOD, so Ill discuss the programmer event at a later time. The Audio Weather
module is an external plug in that is included with FMOD Studio. It allows for
incredibly realistic rain and wind effects and shows just how powerful the paramaters
system of FMOD really is. To use it, simply add it to the timeline, select it, and adjust
the rain/wind knobs that appear in the deck, or change the character by selecting a new
one from the drop-down list. While fun to use, please remember that Audio Weather is
an external plug in and is not included in the free for indies licensing of FMOD. It
costs $4,500 to license for the first platform of release, and $2,000 to license for each
platform thereafter. If one were interested in finding more about the licensing for
AudioWeather and other AudioGaming products, please feel free to contact
sales@fmod.com with any questions you may have.

Congratulations! Your journey into FMOD has begun!

As Ive iterated and re-iterated, these are only the primary tools of FMOD. Its what you
will use to lay out and transform your audio from the linear kind to the nonlinear kind.
Spend some time getting acquainted with the modules and how they work. Click some
buttons that you arent sure about. Lay things out, turn some knobs, and keep playing
them over and over and see what happens. Learn what you can do and what you cant
do. Dont worry if everything is still linear! Creating non-linearity comes next! Add a
bunch of tracks and see why things sound the way they sound. Start messing with the
Deck and experiment to learn what things do. You cant break anything, so dont let
fear stop you from clicking something if you dont know what it does (it sounds silly to
say, but Im serious!). Youre always only an F1 keystroke away from the manual. The
next lesson will cover parameters.
Things to try out:

Add a single footstep sample to the timeline and have it loop. Introduce a few
semitones of pitch randomization by clicking on the sample and alt-dragging the pitch
knob on the deck.
Add a few more footstep samples and change the pitch and volume randomization of
each of them, individually.
Add a single multi-sound module with a dozen footsteps in it and have them play back.
Then introduce pitch shift randomizations as well.
Add a music base and have a random melody play each time it loops (hint! use two
tracks! A base track, and a melody track containing a multi-sound module!)
Experiment with nesting events and getting a feel for the Event Sound Module. Learn
how it works and what it does.

Create some ambience with some looping multi-sound modules and a few scatterer
sounds.
Give AudioWeather a whirl!