Wwise Key Features

Authoring Application

Intuitive User Interface

Wwise’s workflow-oriented interface enables game developers to increase productivity by:

Using optimized layouts to perform specific tasks.
Using presets to save object property and effect values.
Using ShareSets that allow presets to be shared by many objects.
Employing keyboard shortcuts for commonly used commands.
Extending your layouts over multiple monitors.
Customizing your work environment to suit your particular needs.

Sound Playback Behaviors

Create sophisticated sound designs easily using one or more of the following playback behavior options that are available right out-of-the-box:

Random—plays a series of objects in a random order to avoid repetition.
Sequence—plays a series of sounds in a particular order using playlists.
Switch—determines which sounds to play based on a series of options or alternatives that exist in the game.
Blend—plays a series of sounds simultaneously. Sounds and containers can be grouped into blend tracks where sound properties are mapped to game parameters using RTPCs. Cross-fades between sounds can also be applied based on the value of a game parameter.

Hierarchical Audio Structures

Build intricate audio structures to define behaviors and to control properties for groups of sounds. The object-based hierarchical project structure includes:

A Master-Mixer™ hierarchy, which is a structure of mixing buses.
An Actor-Mixer™ hierarchy, which is a structure of audio assets that includes Sounds, Containers, and Actor-Mixers.
An Interactive Music hierarchy, which is a structure of music assets that includes Music Segments, Playlists, and Switch Containers.

Multi-Action Events Creation and Integration

Use multi-action events to drive the audio in your game, choosing from an extensive list of actions, including play, stop all, mute, and set volume. Create the events, integrate them into the game, and then build and fine-tune the contents of each event without ever having to re-integrate them into the game again.

2D/3D Positioning and Sound Propagation

Create engaging and immersive soundscapes for your game using both 2D and 3D sounds.
Easily define the spatial positioning for 3D sounds by attaching a sound to a game object so that sound propagation behavior is decided in real time while the game is being played.
Alternatively, specific sound paths can be defined for each sound, taking full advantage of a gamer’s surround sound speaker setup.
For additional control over 2D sounds, a panner exists for positioning 2D sounds in the surround sound environment

Attenuation Curve Editing

Simulate natural audio roll-off for 3D sounds with user-defined attenuation curves. With Wwise, you can:

Create fully customizable distance-based attenuation curves that provide total control over 3D sound attenuation properties, including dry volume, wet volume, LFE, low pass filter, and spread.
Choose from a variety of curve shapes, including linear, logarithmic, S-curve, and exponential, allowing for the creation of any type of effect.
Use attenuation ShareSets to define attenuation properties once and then apply these setting to multiple objects and structures in a project.
Apply cone attenuation to provide additional sound directivity possibilities.
Preview distance-based and cone angle attenuation directly in Wwise.

Dynamic Audio Controls

Create dynamic audio content by modifying audio properties in real time based on changes within the game. Wwise offers several tools for matching audio content to game action, including:

Real-time parameter controls (RTPCs), which tie sound property values to certain parameter values within the game.
States or "mixer snapshots", which make global adjustments to a game’s audio properties based on conditions.

Real-time Editing

Increase your productivity and enhance your creativity by auditioning and editing audio in real time in the context of the game.

Extensive Auditioning and Simulation Capabilities

Audition objects and audio events at every phase of the game development process. In addition to testing ideas, creating prototypes, and developing proof of concepts, both in the audio authoring application and in game, you can mix and playback several audio objects asynchronously in real time using the Wwise Soundcaster™. This full-featured simulation environment allows you to control game syncs, such as States, Switches, RTPC’s, and Triggers, in real time opening up an endless realm of possibilities.

Sound Playback Prioritization

Effectively manage the memory and CPU usage in your game by prioritizing sounds using one or all of the following:

A playback limit to regulate the number of sound instances per sound structure and game object.
A playback priority to rank the importance of sounds currently being played.
A volume threshold to manage voice playback based on audibility.

Virtual Voice Management

Save valuable processing power, memory, and bandwidth for streamed sounds by queuing inaudible sounds in a virtual environment. Several options exist, such as Play from beginning, Resume, or Play from elapsed time, to better manage voices returning from the virtual to the physical voice.

Master Mixing Bus

Control the final audio output mix by modifying properties and applying effects to the top-level Master Control Bus. Final volume, pitch, and LFE levels can be adjusted and unwanted audio peaks can be removed using a peak limiter, all at the final gain stage of the sound engine.

Profiling Capabilities

Profile and troubleshoot the overall performance of the audio in game by capturing and logging a wide-range of information sent directly from the game, including:

Memory and CPU usage
Effect performance
Game state usage
Polyphonic voices
I/O
Real-time position and orientation of game objects and listeners within a 3D environment
RTPC usage per game object
SoundBank usage

SoundBank Creation and Content Management

Maximize efficiency by creating and managing SoundBank content for all platforms and languages simultaneously. Populate SoundBanks automatically using import definition files and then tweak them manually. Combine event metadata, sound structure metadata, and audio data in the same or different banks and then use dynamic loading/unloading of SoundBanks based on a given game context, such as region, object, or material. The flexibility available in Wwise allows you to cover every situation in any type of game.

Simultaneous Multi-Platform Editing

Simplify the creation of multi-platform games by using a single project to manage and generate the audio content for games on each target platform. The contents of a project can be adapted to take full advantage of the strengths of each platform by:

Customizing property values per platform.
Including/excluding sound assets per platform.
Customizing asset conversion settings per platform.
Having platform-specific elements seamlessly integrated into the Wwise authoring application.

Localization Management

Easily manage the localization of all audio files in one project. Simply import and apply volume offsets to localized audio assets, in batch or individually.

Interactive Music System

Create dynamic, game-driven musical scores using Wwise’s comprehensive and sophisticated Interactive Music feature set. With Wwise, you can:

Create musical elements, including one-shot stingers, that follow and react to game state changes with seamless and fully customizable transitions.
Apply RTPCs, states, and effects to Interactive Music objects to ensure that the soundtrack is well adapted to the action in game.
Use multi-track content (stems) for added flexibility and control.
Create, simulate, and validate musical transitions without the assistance of a programmer.

Dynamic Dialogue System

Reduce overall memory consumption in your game by using the Dynamic Dialogue system, a lightweight and efficient rule-based method for building and managing dynamic audio for your games. A set of user-defined argument rules is used instead of complex switch container hierarchies that can be very costly in terms of memory usage. Additionally, sample accurate dialogue stitching can be performed for a wide range of uses, including play-by-play commentary and non-playing character dialogue.

Randomization of Sound Properties

Enhance the realism of sounds within the game by applying Randomizers™ to the different property values of an object, including volume and pitch.

Multi-Editing Capabilities

Modify sound properties and behaviors for several Wwise objects at the same time using the Multi-Editor.

Voice Asset Importer

Import thousands of voice assets into Wwise with a click of the mouse using externally created, tab-delimited text files. Sound voice objects and even random container parent objects are automatically created in the Actor-Mixer hierarchy of your Wwise project.

Project Integrity Report

Troubleshoot your project by generating an Integrity Report. Over forty integrity cases are checked as part of this report, displaying information and suggestions about how to deal with any issues.

Project Schematic View

Use the Schematic view to get a graphical, bird’s eye view of each Actor-Mixer, Interactive Music, and Master-Mixer structure created in a project. From within this view, object properties and attributes, including volume, pitch, effects, states, and positioning, are all visible, making it easier to edit properties and to playback objects.

Quick and Powerful Search Options

Find elements within your project quickly and easily using any one of Wwise’s search options:

Search—a quick text-based search tool that displays matches as you type.
Query—a more sophisticated and powerful search tool that uses a series of conditions and criteria to find specific elements within your project. Perform multi-edits on all objects found by the query, to adjust property settings, change conversion settings, and so on. Queries can also be saved and used throughout the development cycle by the entire team.
Reference—finds elements within your project that contain references to a particular object or element.

Rendered Effects

Render inserted effects before they are packaged into SoundBanks. This results in a smaller memory footprint and reduces processing power during game play.

Workgroup Ready

Divide up a single project into separate parts so that different members of your team can work on different parts of the project simultaneously. Each part of the Wwise project, including media assets, can be easily managed by your existing source control application.

Source Control Support

Wwise supports native source control integration through a plug-in interface and ships with workgroup plug-ins for both Perforce® and Subversion. When using a workgroup plug-in, source control operations can be performed directly in Wwise, including check-in/check-out, diff, and resolve.

Sound Engine

Effect and Source Plug-in Support

Use Wwise’s open architecture to create and integrate proprietary plug-ins to further enhance the audio experience within the game. Wwise ships with a variety of effect and source plug-ins, including 5.1 channel reverbs, parametric EQ, and dynamic effect plug-ins, such as compressor, expander, and peak limiter, as well as a sine, tone generator, and an audio input source plug-in. Integration of proprietary plug-ins is made easy by following the plug-in samples, with source code, that are provided for your convenience.

Real-time Effects Processing

Process a wide range of audio effects in real time. All effects have been optimized for performance while maintaining a high standard of audio quality.

Disk I/O Streaming

The completely open and scalable disk I/O architecture in Wwise offers a total solution for managing extremely demanding audio streams. Using the disk I/O manager, you can handle and schedule any type of stream required for a game, including graphics and AI, based on a priority management system. The disk I/O manager in Wwise can also be easily replaced with other I/O technology, if desired.

Environmental Effects

Create a rich audio experience using environmental effects to instantiate reverb effects for every area created in your game. Wwise manages these environments and processes the sound sources with the correct reverb settings, allowing for smooth transitions between game areas. The number of simultaneous environments running in your game is limited only by the amount of memory and CPU that you want to allocate for this functionality.

Occlusion/Obstruction Support

Set the occlusion and obstruction factors using the methods exposed in the sound engine to dynamically affect the volume and low pass filter of Wwise sound objects. The volume and low pass filter curves for occlusion and obstruction are fully customizable for each project in Wwise.

Multi-Listener Support

Instantiate, manage, and customize the audio captured by multiple listeners for split-screen multiplayer console games as well as for more complex implementations, such as sounds captured from a surveillance camera in a single-player stealth game.

Simulate Game Environment

Start testing your prototypes early in the development cycle by using the Game Simulator; a LUA-based script interpreter that gives you access to all of the functionalities of the sound engine. The Game Simulator makes it easy to validate sound behaviors and profile the performance of your audio content on each platform even before the integration of Wwise into your game engine.

Interface between Wwise and World Builder Applications (SoundFrame)

Use the SoundFrame API to integrate Wwise functionality directly into any 3^rd party world building application, including Unreal Editor (UnrealEd), Maya^®, 3ds Max^®, or internal proprietary tools.