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Defining obstruction and occlusion curves for your project

In the Obstruction/Occlusion tab of the Wwise Project Settings dialog, you can define the obstruction and occlusion 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.

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.

Wwise allows you to define platform-specific volume, LPF, and HPF curves that will be applied to sound objects as they are influenced by obstruction and occlusion during gameplay. The values you define are relative and are accumulated with any values already applied to the game object; volumes are accumulated via addition, while LPF and HPF values are accumulated by retaining the highest value.

To create more detailed and complex obstruction and occlusion curves, you can define the shape of each curve segment. A curve segment is any part of the curve between two control points. You can choose from a variety of curve shapes, including linear, constant, logarithmic, exponential, and s-curve.

To define the obstruction and occlusion 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 Obstruction/Occlusion tab.

  3. From the Platform list, select the platform for which you are defining curves for the obstruction and occlusions settings.

  4. To specify different settings for obstruction and/or occlusion volume, LPF and HPF on the selected platform, right-click the link indicator and in the shortcut menu, select Unlink.

    The indicator will turn orange and the settings that you define for the unlinked properties will be used only on the selected platform.

  5. To define volume, LPF and HPF curves for the obstruction and occlusion settings for your game objects, do the following:

    • Enable the Use check box to highlight the corresponding curve.

    • To create points on the curve, double-click a point on the curve.

    • To delete a point on the curve, select the point and press Delete.

    • To delete all the points you have defined so far and start over, click Reset.

      [Note]Note

      For information on zooming and panning the Graph View, adding, moving, and deleting control points, changing the shape of the curve between points, using linear and dB scaling, and other general information about the Graph View, refer to Getting to know the graph view.

  6. To annotate the curves, click in the Notes box and type your note.

  7. When you are finished, click OK.

    The Project Settings dialog closes and your project obstruction/occlusion property curves are saved.

    [Note]Note

    Wwise applies any changes made to your Project Settings only after you click OK. Live editing is not 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 using the Attenuation Editor.


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