Unreal Prison - Sound Showcase video
Unreal Prison
To learn all the ins and outs of the native Unreal Engine 5.0 Audio System, I revamped all audio in a level that was made by Gert Braeckman. I used most of the functionality UE has to offer such as sound cues, sound classes, audio volumes, mixers, attenuation, concurrency and audio effects such as reverbs. Each sound is either recorded and processed from scratch and/or heavily layered and sound designed to get to a unique result. Below you can find some of the highlights of this project.
Ambience
In order to create a unique ambience every time the level gets played, I made use of the functionality UE sound cues can provide. I made a low passed rain layer with thunder hits at randomized intervals to simulate the outside environment of the level (which the player is unable to see). Furthermore, to add more life to the interior, I have an industrial roomtone playing with random industrial hits as well such as doors opening, police passing by and things getting dropped.
Ambience Sound Cue
Ambience Showcase
Footsteps
To create uniquely sounding footsteps each time, I split the footsteps up into seperate layers. There are footsteps for each surface and each of these footsteps are split up into heel and toe samples, which creates a huge amount of variety of footsteps. I also layer the footsteps with some subtle clothes foley to polish the footstep sound.
Footsteps showcase
Footsteps Sound Cue
SPARKS
To get the sound of electricity to play correctly, I implemented the sound of a spark (which is completely self-synthesized) inside of the Niagara particle system. So each time a particle spawns, the sound is played. The sparks also runs through a sound cue that picks a random sample and then applies pitch and volume randomization.
Sparks Showcase
Rat Easter Egg
To give the level more meaning, and to add more lore to the environment, I added a rat easter egg. If you listen closely, you will encounter the rat running through pipes twice before it meets its demise and falls down one of the last pipes in the level.
Rat Easter Egg Showcase
Classes and Reverb Volumes
As mentioned before, I made use of soundclasses and audio volumes. Below you can find out how I structured these.
Audio volume structure
Soundclasses
By pressing the button below, you can download the build of this level and play it yourself!
