Robot Cousin Soundworks

I’m blown away. I have heard audio heaven, and it is programmed via FMOD. Now, years ago, I heard about FMOD and was immediately interested in it, but didn’t know where to go from there. I’m on a mac, so I don’t have access to UDK/UnrealEd to really test out whatever I could make in it (my Presonus and WinXP don’t play nicely together, so sound design via bootcamp just isn’t happening anytime soon). Plus, it was an extremely complex program. Needless to say, I was disheartened by what seemed like a huge brick wall in front of me, made worse by the fact that I could hear the wonderful, gorgeous, dynamic sounds of Bioshock on the other side of said wall.

Well, today, I’m just checking around online, and I pop over to my new favourite sound blog, Designing Sound. Right there, as the recent update was a post about how the FMOD dev team have begun posting video tutorials of FMOD. I excitedly started watching, and didn’t stop until I had seen them all. I didn’t stop because I couldn’t stop.

I think I’m in love. My heart is pounding, I feel dizzy, all I can think about is our future, myself and FMOD. And I wouldn’t be half as excited if I hadn’t brought it up to a few important people at work, and they genuinely took an interest in perhaps integrating this into our programming and games!

Wow. Wowee wow wow wow! /Walken

Now myself and my fellow sound designer can’t stop imagining all of the possibilities that would be opened up to us, if we start using this. Right now, the programmers take our sounds, just as we make them (music and SFX both) and just place them into the games. There may be some looping, or slight volume adjustments, but nothing truly dynamic. And to be fair, doing that is a TON of work, and it’s not like we just put out one game every 2-3 years.

But if we used FMOD (and I’ll admit, FMOD isn’t the only sound API out there, but it seems to be among the sleekest/most user friendly), then we, the sound designers, can have that much more control over our content, and exactly how it works in our games. Right now, if we have a game that involves tiles being smashed like glass, and they want a random sound, that means that we have to create 3-4 different sounds, and the programmers just set them up to play randomly.

With FMOD, as you’ll see if you check out the videos, I could take those same 3-4 smashing sounds, and put them into one smash ‘event’. I would then tell this event to randomize the pitch by a set number of semitones, randomize the volume from 0 to perhaps -3dbfs, increase the polyphony and timing, and voila! I’ve now created a virtually-endless set of sounds to occur, and all the programmers have to do is call on that one event. FMOD handles the rest.

This is something that I will definitely be pushing for. A lot of people may think of FMOD as something that’s used in most big-budget retail games, but it’s actually applicable to anything you may wish to program, outside of Flash.

Here’s hoping. Either way, I will definitely be spending a fair bit of time outside of work playing around with this, now that I at least know how to get started.

Silver Wave 2009 has come and gone, and it was a crazy time. I was nominated for Best Sound Editing and Excellence in Music Composition, both for the same film, “Manic Chiropractic” by Fetal Films (website pending).

There was another short there, “A Dark Radius“, and I must say, it’s score was really, really good. I want to use a bigger word here, but none are coming to me. It was involving, intense, and very, very fitting. Kudos to Ralf Bindels and his work there. Very well done. I bow down to his incredible talent. Something for me to shoot for, definitely.

Another meeting for Project R is going to take place tomorrow, and we’re all in good spirits about it. If you’ll notice, on the page I just linked to, Chris Fulton won Best Comedy (as well as Gia Milani for Best Drama). He was awarded $1,250 worth of equipment rentals and services from William F. White. I believe we already have plans on what aspect of Project R this will be applied to.

Man, I can’t wait until the lid is blown off of this. And I also can’t wait until we get it all done. I mentioned it to my dad and he wanted to know if he could have a very small part in it. Perhaps!

I would also like to take this moment to recognize two other very talented people. Travis Grant won for Best NB Student Film for Crossing the Great Divide (check it out here), and my future brother-in-law Ryan Barton was nominated for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Comedy for his work on Travis’ other short film, Wise Guys in the Park (currently not online). I really want to share the last one with everyone, and will do so if they upload it online. It was, for me, the highlight of Friday night’s screening, and should’ve been included in Saturday’s screening instead, as it would have been enjoyed by a much larger crowd. Of course, Ryan is also featured as the lead in “Crossing the Great Divide”.

In other news…. there is none. If you aren’t listening to the Curtis and Tara show, then you may be listening to something else. It damn well be better, otherwise you’re just wasting your time. Hopefully Curtis and I will collaborate on another project and submit it to next year’s Silver Wave Film Festival.

That wasn’t really other news. All in all, there were some really stellar films shown, and I’m sorry I couldn’t catch them all, but I’ll sincerely do my best to get a copy to check out from the film co-op sometime in the next few months. Congratulations to everyone involved.

Here’s some weird trivia: Last year, the two films that ended up garnering the most awards were the two I was involved directly with (sound editing for “A Lion’s Tale” and music for “Gamer’s Manifesto“). This year, again, the only two I was involved with in any capacity (Manic and Radius) also ended up getting heavily recognized. I am in no way saying that I’m the reason they cleaned up the way they did, I just seem to end up being a part of really, really excellent projects.

I certainly hope that trend continues. Man, I know some really talented people.

Mr Jonathan Rodd, ladies and gentlemen! You can find a link to his stuff to your right. He’s a web and graphic designer, and a good friend of mine. His short film “Harassment” was featured on a very popular website recently that I can’t currently remember the name of…. something about “The Best Damn Short Films Ever” or something. Anyway, it was there, people loved it, and it was good. He was also the co-creator/director/writer of one of my favourite short films, “Dry Noodles”. I wish he’d put it up on the Youtubes.

www.jonathanrodd.com

The demo reel has been updated, along with the Credits for said demo reel, and this site. You can check them out using the links at the top of the page, and that’s where they will stay.

I’m really enjoying this design. I know I didn’t do it all. I didn’t code all of the CSS, I just changed it a bit to personalize it. However, if I needed to change more, at least I know I can (I’ve been studying my CSS for a little while now). It’s such a powerful tool! My php, however, is severely lacking.

No music in this post. Instead, I present you with not one, but two fantastic YouTube clips. One is done by Mr. Curtis Carey (of the Curtis and Tara show) and the other is done by Mirco, a friend of both Curtis and Tara.

Eating Like a Bird

Sloth of the Hills