Positioning Tab: Actor-Mixer and Interactive Music Objects

The Positioning tab allows you to define how sounds will propagate in your game. The propagation of a sound will depend on its type of positioning. In Wwise, your sounds can use either 2D or 3D positioning. The main difference between the two types of positioning is the way in which the source channels are mapped to the output speakers. By default, the source channels of a 2D sound are linked together and are played through the front left and right speakers regardless of the position or orientation of the listener or game object. You can, however, use the 2D Panner to balance the volume of each channel so the sound can be heard through different speakers.

For 3D sounds, each input channel can be output to any speaker in a surround environment making it easy to simulate movement of the sound in relation to the listener. With 3D sounds, you can either pre-define the spatialization yourself in Wwise or use the actual position of the game object in game. You can also apply distance attenuation to 3D sounds and then share these settings across many different objects within Wwise using an Attenuation ShareSet.

Positioning for less sophisticated devices, such as game controllers, is not an issue because the motors within these devices cannot simulate a 3D environment. You can, however, use attenuation to reduce the intensity of the motion signal as it moves away from the game player.

	Note
	Although the positioning of busses must be considered in relation to its impact on all objects which go through it, their Positioning tab is now almost identical to the Actor-Mixer and Interactive Music objects' Positioning tab. Only the Override parent option is inapplicable..

General

Interface Element

Description

Inclusion

Determines whether the element is included or excluded. When selected, the element is included. When unselected, the element is not included. By default, this applies across all platforms. Use the Link indicator (to the left of the check box) to determine or to set platform-specific customizations.

When this option is unselected, the property and behavior options in the Property Editor become unavailable.

Name

The name of the object.

Notes

Any additional information about the object properties.

Controls the Mute and Solo states for the object and shows the implicit mute and solo states for the object.

Muting an object silences this object for the current monitoring session. Soloing an object silences all the other objects in the project except this one.

A bold M or S indicates that the Mute or Solo state has been explicitly set for the object. A non-bold M or S with faded color indicates that the object's Mute or Solo state was implicitly set from another object's state.

Muting an object implicitly mutes the descendant objects.

Soloing an object implicitly mutes the sibling objects and implicitly solos the descendant and ancestor objects.

	Tip
	Hold the Ctrl key while clicking a solo button to exclusively solo the object for which the solo button is associated.

	Note
	Mute and Solo are designed to be used for monitoring purposes only and are not persisted in the project or stored in the SoundBanks.

Positioning

Interface Element

Description

Override parent

Determines whether the positioning and attenuation settings will be inherited from the parent or defined at the current level in the hierarchy. When this option is not selected, the positioning controls are unavailable.

If the object is a top-level object, this option is unavailable.

Center %

The amount or percentage of volume that is passed through the center speaker.

For 2D positioning without panning applied, the Center % value applies only for mono sources output to a bus with a center channel.
For 2D positioning, the Center % value applies only for output with a center channel (such as mono, 3.0, 5.1, and 7.1).
For 3D positioning, the Center % value also applies only for output with a center channel; but, moreover, it needs to be set in order to have a signal sent to the center channel.

Default Value: 0
Range: 0 to 100
Units: Percent

	Tip
	For more information on using the Center %, refer to Routing Audio Signals to the Center Speaker.

Enable Positioning

Activates the 2D/3D combo box for specifying positioning settings.

Beyond activating the 2D/3D combo box, the Enable Positioning flag has a very important purpose: it determines whether or not to evaluate the emitter-listener associations for the current game object at this node in the voice graph. It is also possible to have a 2D sound that is Positioning Enabled; this means that we will evaluate the emitter-listener associations (the downstream node will be on a different game object), but not perform 3D spatialization. Here are some examples to demonstrate the usage of the Enable Positioning flag:

A voice in the Actor-Mixer Hierarchy has its Enable Positioning flag set and its Positioning Type set to 3D. This voice will be placed in 3D space according to the position of its game object, and it will be panned and attenuated before being mixed into its upstream bus. A unique instance of the upstream bus will be created for each listener game object that is associated with the emitter game object. This is a typical scenario in a modern game.
A voice in the Actor-Mixer Hierarchy does not have its Enable Positioning flag set. The voice instead mixes into a bus that has its Enable Positioning flag set. In this case, the bus is spawned on the emitter game object, the same game object as the voice. A unique instance of the bus that is downstream (the parent) to the positioning-enabled bus is spawned for each listener of the emitter game object. This setup allows us to perform a submix before panning, attenuating, or spatializing a sound.
A bus has its Enable Positioning flag set. A voice that also has its Enable Positioning flag set mixes into this bus. In this scenario, we are performing 2 X 3D mixes—a submix of a spatialized sound is then spatialized again. In this setup we have 3 game objects: an emitter, a listener, and a game object that is both listener to the first game object and an emitter to the final listener. A setup such as this can be used to simulate acoustic phenomena such as portals.

If you see two instances of the Master Audio Bus in the Voice Graph when you do not expect to, it is a good indication that you forgot to set the Enable Positioning flag at some point in your signal chain.

2D/3D combo box

Specifies that the object positioning is 2D or 3D. An RTPC can be set to switch between both at runtime.

By default, 2D objects are only played through the front left/right speakers if there are no propagation behaviors. The position and orientation of the listener in game are also ignored.

3D objects are played through all speakers in a surround environment. The speakers through which the object is played are based on the actual position of the emitter in relation to the listener. The positioning for 3D objects can be one of either User-defined or Game-defined.

Distance-based attenuation can also be applied to 3D sound and motion objects.

Enable Panner

Allows you to balance the volume or intensity of each channel so that a sound can be heard through any of the speakers in a 2.0 to 7.1 Audio Bus.

The 2D Panner works independently of the number of channels within the source.

	Note
	The 2D Panner has no effect on an ambisonics output.

Opens the 2D Panner.

Attenuation

(Selector)

The list of attenuation instances that can be applied to the object.

To remove an attenuation instance, select the None option.

Opens the Attenuation Editor where you can define the distance-based attenuation settings for the selected attenuation instance.

If you use a ShareSet, any changes you make to the attenuation settings will be applied to all objects using this ShareSet.

Mode

Determines whether the attenuation instance is a unique instance or shared across several objects within your project. The mode can be either:

Define custom - To create a unique attenuation instance whose properties will not be shared between objects.
Use ShareSet - To use a ShareSet of an attenuation, which means that attenuation properties can be shared between objects.

Displays the selected ShareSet in the ShareSets tab of the Project Explorer.

Position Source

User-defined

Specifies that the object's spatial positioning is defined by creating a path in Wwise. You can define a set of fixed propagation behaviors that will ignore the position and orientation of the game object. With user-defined positioning, you also have the option of following or ignoring the orientation of the listener.

User-defined spatialization is useful for game interfaces, menus, non-localized ambiences, and voices.

Displays the Position Editor (3D User-defined), where you can create animation paths that define the spatial positioning of the object.

The Edit button is only available when the User-defined option is selected.

Follow Listener Orientation

Determines whether the position of the animation path is locked to the orientation of the listener.

When selected, the path moves with the listener. This means that the sound will always be heard through the same speakers regardless of the orientation of the listener. When this option is not selected, the listener moves independently of the path. This means that the sound will be heard through different speakers as the listener turns around.

For example, let's say you are using User-defined positioning to create non-localized bird sounds in your game. You have a one-point path that is located in the front-right quadrant. As the listener turns around in game, the following will occur:

Follow Listener Orientation (ON) - The bird sound will always be heard through the front right speaker.
Follow Listener Orientation (OFF) - The bird sound will pass through different speakers.

This option can be useful for creating non-localized ambient sounds.

This option can only be tested in game because the listener concept has not been integrated into the Wwise authoring application.

Game-defined

Specifies that the object's spatial positioning is defined by live game position data.

When Game-defined is selected, the propagation properties defined in Wwise are directly related to the position and orientation of the listener and game object in game.

Update at each frame

Determines how often positioning information is updated. If selected, the object's position is updated at every game frame. If unselected, the object's position is determined when it is first played and then not updated after that.

Spatialization Mode

Specifies how the positioning of the source is calculated to simulate movement within a 3D space.

None: The source is played according to its original channel configuration regardless of any movement.
Position: The position of the source is reflected by a sound being heard through specific speakers within the surround environment. Panning strictly depends on the position of the emitter relative to the listener, and corresponds to the source's original channel configuration when Spread is 100.
Position + Orientation: The position of the source is reflected by a sound being heard through specific speakers within the surround environment. Panning depends on both the position and the orientation of the emitter, relatively to the listener.

Refer to Effect of Orientation for a discussion on Position and Position + Orientation modes.

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