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Defining environmental curves for your project

In the Environmental Curves tab of the Wwise Project Settings dialog, you can define the obstruction, occlusion, diffraction, and transmission settings for the sound objects for each platform in your project. Obstruction occurs when an object in the game geometry, such as a wall or pillar, partially blocks the space between a sound source and a listener. Occlusion occurs when an object in the game geometry completely blocks the space between a sound source and its listener. Diffraction and transmission occur when using Spatial Audio Rooms and Portals or Spatial Audio Geometry.

Game developers programmatically define the geometry of the game where the conditions for obstruction and occlusion may occur. Wwise does not compute obstruction and occlusion levels by itself. The physics calculations must be done by the game and the results must be passed to the following function: SetObjectObstructionAndOcclusion() .

[Note]Note

Obstruction and occlusion settings can be used in parallel with an environmental Effect to change sound properties dynamically depending on a source's location. For more information, see Understanding sends.

For more information about how developers program obstruction and occlusion, refer to the Obstruction and Occlusion with Game-defined Auxiliary Sends section in the Wwise SDK documentation.

For more information about diffraction and transmission, refer to the Rooms and Portals Overview and Using the Geometry API for Simulating Diffraction and Transmission sections in the Wwise SDK documentation.

In Wwise, you can define platform-specific volume, LPF, HPF, and DSF curves to apply to sound objects when they are affected by obstruction, occlusion, diffraction, and transmission during gameplay. The values you define are relative and are accumulated with any values already applied to the game object. Volumes and DSF values are accumulated through addition, while LPF and HPF values are accumulated by retaining the highest value.

To define the environmental settings for your project:

  1. Open the Project Settings dialog by doing one of the following:

    • From the menu bar, click Project > Project Settings.

    • Press Shift+K.

  2. Switch to the Environmental Curves tab.

  3. Within the Project Environmental Curves group, click on the "..." button to choose an attenuation ShareSet to be used at the project level. A ShareSet can be used both at the project level and on an individual sound.

    [Note]Note

    To create a new ShareSet for the project environmental curves, add it in the ShareSets Tab of the Project Explorer first.

    To modify the environmental curves, double-click on the attenuation ShareSet selector to open the corresponding Attenuation Editor.

    [Note]Note

    1. Although the ShareSet contains distance curves, they aren't used at the project level.

    2. Curves set to Use Project Obstruction, Occlusion, Diffraction, or Transmission, are treated as set to None.

  4. When you are finished, click OK.

    The Project Settings dialog closes and the chosen attenuation ShareSet will be used for your project.

    [Note]Note

    It is possible to open the chosen attenuation ShareSet from the ShareSets Tab of the Project Explorer later to apply changes to the curves. Live editing is possible.

It is also possible to opt out of these curves or create custom curves per sound. Refer to Applying attenuation and its subsections to see how this is done.

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