Real-time foley?

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JoelB
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Real-time foley?

Post by JoelB »

I must say, ever since playing the demo I've been a fan of Trespasser - especially the audio. I remember a feature being toted as "real-time foley". When pushing or banging objects together it seems like it would almost always be a unique sound. Now, given the amount of, er, 'research' that's been done with the Trespasser source, do we have any sort of idea how the audio actually worked?

I've been trying to think about what the 'real-time foley' was, and how they did it. If I were to do it (and I'm no audio programmer), I'd create some fairly long looping noises for basic materials - metal, cement, grass, etc. Then, depending on the materials being used in the collision, pick the two corresponding sounds and pick a random point in each loop, and start playing them, so long as the collision was occurring. This would work fine for pushing two objects across each other, but it still wouldn't really explain the sounds when two objects have a brief collision.

How much do we know about Trespasser's audio, and has there been much digging into how it worked? Was it really anything special, or am I looking through rose-colored glasses?
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Re: Real-time foley?

Post by machf »

It takes more than that into account... there are other factors such as the force and speed.
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Re: Real-time foley?

Post by awesome24712 »

And then there's mass, density, and a whole bunch of algorithms (not that I would know what they are).

But indeed, Trespasser's audio is some of the best I've seen!
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Re: Real-time foley?

Post by JoelB »

machf wrote:It takes more than that into account... there are other factors such as the force and speed.
Ah, yes! That would make sense. Given the limited number of sounds in the sound bank, does it alter the pitch according to the speed/force?

For example, a rock being thrown against a metal drum would use a higher pitched version of the drum noise than a drum being pushed across the ground?
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Re: Real-time foley?

Post by JoelB »

awesome24712 wrote:And then there's mass, density, and a whole bunch of algorithms (not that I would know what they are).

But indeed, Trespasser's audio is some of the best I've seen!
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so! I'm quite surprised that other games haven't given it the same care and attention as what the Trespasser crew did.

So thinking about it, it takes the following into consideration:
- Material types of collision (which would include density?)
- Speed of collision
- Mass of colliding objects
- Duration of collision? (The duration of the clips played would be relative to the duration of the collision?)
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Re: Real-time foley?

Post by awesome24712 »

Hey JoelB, don't try to double post, just edit your first post, okay? :)

I don't think the duration of the collision is a factor. When you drop a hammer on the ground, you could say the the duration lasts until you pick it up, but you don't here the same sound forever, do you?

And I think Trespasser might change the pitches of its sounds, but it's not influenced by how the objects hit. How the objects hit determines the volume, though.
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Re: Real-time foley?

Post by JoelB »

awesome24712 wrote:Hey JoelB, don't try to double post, just edit your first post, okay? :)

I don't think the duration of the collision is a factor. When you drop a hammer on the ground, you could say the the duration lasts until you pick it up, but you don't here the same sound forever, do you?

And I think Trespasser might change the pitches of its sounds, but it's not influenced by how the objects hit. How the objects hit determines the volume, though.
I double-posted somehow? Strange.

As for duration of collision, I'm thinking in an instance where you've got something like a barrel/drum being dragged across the ground. The two objects are in contact with each other for an extended period of time. It would seem odd to me to play a bunch of short clips in succession to represent a longer lasting sound.
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Re: Real-time foley?

Post by awesome24712 »

Well yes, a barrel rolling down a hill would make a sound for an extended period of time, and there are "drag" sound files in the TPAs for different materials, but I've never heard any of them in Trespasser.
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Re: Real-time foley?

Post by RexHunter99 »

There is no 'limited' sound bank, this isn't some SNES game where the developers ran out of room before they realized they forgot to add audio, Trespasser's audio files had roughly thousands of samples of effects, the mixing process as far as I could see, is fairly complex and would take a fair amount of processing time itself, the samples blend with one another based on ratios, so a result effect could have a sample that you can only hear roughly 3% of and the other sample(s) take up the rest of the audio buffer at the time.
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Re: Real-time foley?

Post by JoelB »

Sorry, I should have been more specific when I said 'limited' sound bank. I imagine they wouldn't have had the time/resources to record every single material type interacting with every other material type, and instead recorded each material interacting with a generic material. Supposing there was 20 different material types in the game, that would mean they could have potentially recorded 20^2-20 (380) sound clips. If there were 100 different material types that would mean potentially recording 9,900 sounds. Instead it would make more sense to record a few known specific material type interactions and use a general material for the ones that aren't specified.

For more specific examples they would have recorded sounds (such as a bullet type material interacting with a metal material, bullet and dinosaur, hand patting a dinosaur, etc.), but when a specific combination isn't recorded it would default to using a generic material.

Any idea if this is more or less what they did?
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Re: Real-time foley?

Post by tatu »

JoelB wrote:Sorry, I should have been more specific when I said 'limited' sound bank. I imagine they wouldn't have had the time/resources to record every single material type interacting with every other material type, and instead recorded each material interacting with a generic material. Supposing there was 20 different material types in the game, that would mean they could have potentially recorded 20^2-20 (380) sound clips. If there were 100 different material types that would mean potentially recording 9,900 sounds. Instead it would make more sense to record a few known specific material type interactions and use a general material for the ones that aren't specified.

For more specific examples they would have recorded sounds (such as a bullet type material interacting with a metal material, bullet and dinosaur, hand patting a dinosaur, etc.), but when a specific combination isn't recorded it would default to using a generic material.

Any idea if this is more or less what they did?
The sounds were recorded by Soundelux Media Labs and not by the Trespasser team. They probably had some database and mixed the stuff together.
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Re: Real-time foley?

Post by machf »

It's likely they used the Hollywood Edge SFX library... or parts thereof.

http://www.hollywoodedge.com/

It's a *huge* library, I tried looking at the gunshots they have but there are lots...
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Re: Real-time foley?

Post by Draconisaurus »

Hey I know this is a pretty old thread but I am rather surprised no one directed this fellow to the sound listing machf created which lists every sound used in the foley table, to say nothing of the foley table itself. I don't actually remember where these things are located anymore but this would be a nice place to remind us of them...
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Re: Real-time foley?

Post by machf »

The links are in my signature, in case you didn't notice...
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Re: Real-time foley?

Post by Draconisaurus »

Ah, no I didn't notice. Anyway I guess if he still cares at some point he can look through those.
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