From the creators of Dehumaniser, Krotos has created an all-in-one solution for designing any custom vehicle sounds.

Some of you may be familiar with the VST/AU/AAX version of Igniter which was released earlier this year. Igniter Live is a version of our Igniter Technology, ported, optimised and customised for use in Wwise.

Why Igniter Live?

Authentic vehicle sounds can be some of the most challenging sound effects to capture or create, they can also be some of the most expensive.

 

Available in two versions as a VST/AU/AAX plugin, the current version of Igniter allows you to create any real-world or sci-fi vehicle and engine sound effects with ease and is the only solution of its kind to come jam-packed with over 20 performable vehicles and 1,943 audio assets from vehicles including Aston Martin, Ferrari, Porsche, Tesla, Harley Davidson, Huey UH-1H, AgustaWestland 119x, CH-47D Chinook, Bombardier Challenger, Cessna 560XL, skids, sweeteners and much more. Recordings come from Watson Wu, The Recordist, Sounding Sweet, George Vlad, Echo Peak and Flysound. Thousands of dollars worth of recordings that will also save you hours of editing.

After a great deal of feedback from game developers across the industry, we’ve been working closely with Audiokinetic to bring this early access version to Wwise. The project also announces a new and on-going partnership between Krotos and Audiokinetic, bringing cutting-edge audio tools to game audio middleware.

The Igniter workflow

Igniter Live consists of a 3-part workflow:

1. Igniter Live Granular/Loop Wwise Authoring Plugin (for playback in the authoring tool/runtime)
2. Analysis Tool (to design your own granular/loop systems for use in the plugin)
3. Igniter Live Synth Wwise Authoring Plugin (for playback in the authoring tool/runtime)

Each of these parts are available for licensing with Audiokinetic. You may choose to license one or all plug-ins, depending on the needs of your project. You may choose to license the granular/loop source plugin only, taking advantage of the range of vehicles which are included with the plugin, or add the Analysis Tool for designing with your own assets. You could also choose to license the synth plugin only, for complex synthesis options in non-engine use cases, like music or SFX.

This is the only commercially available system that allows you to design granular, loops and synthesis systems, combining them as you see fit, and bringing them effortlessly into Wwise. It also includes the same vehicle sounds as our popular VST/AU/AAX plugin, all of which are included at no additional cost.

Furthermore, for multiple project integration, there is no additional license required to re-use assets designed with the Analysis Tool. Simply design a vehicle once, and it can be used in multiple titles, DLC etc… giving you the freedom to design and reuse over time (as long as that project also licenses the Igniter Live runtime plugin).

 

Development

The Krotos team prototyped the various stages, working closely with a whole host of industry developers to get an idea of how professionals would want this kind of tool to work, and what they felt were the key features it needed to include. We were very pleased to see how the granular engine could handle a large range of use cases, whilst discovering that our loop systems are very powerful in of themselves.

Our Analysis Tool also brings a new approach to adjusting analysis to any source material. Every vehicle, and recording is different, and we offer a host of tools to tweak the analysis quickly and easily to get great sounding results from vehicles that usually fail to satisfy using granular approaches. Use our draw tools to straighten out or correct automatic analysis, or experiment with tracking various harmonics as you see fit.

We’ve also aimed to take the heavy lifting out of vehicle design with a suite of automatic features, detecting tracked harmonics, matching dedicated onload with offload recordings, and allowing you to audition the entire behaviour of a vehicle (engine versus exhaust, onload versus offload) and tweak from within a single application. Once designed, these can then be easily exported as engine or exhaust packages and imported into different instances of the plugin in Wwise, ease of mix or spatialisation.

We’ve re-thought how you can use Loop Systems in Wwise. With Igniter Live, you can use a single Wwise voice to smoothly transition between up to six loops, saving on resources and maintaining quality. The workflow also encourages the design of loop systems at high speed in a customised workflow for engines, including pitch analysis, tracking, automatic calculation and placement of transitions between static loops. Although this system excels at engines, it can also be used for loop systems for other purposes.

With the Analysis Tool’s setup, including our pitch tracking and matching tools, combining granular and loop systems has never been so easy. Use granular content to design pitch matching loop systems, introduce a pitch matched loop at any point in the RPM range, or add an idle or max revs loop to an otherwise all-granular implementation with ease.

To get started with Igniter Live, we’ve included a large selection of range of factory asset vehicles to preview and include in your projects. Unlike other engine solutions on the market, all of these vehicles are included with the licensing cost of Igniter Live, and come with a range of race cars, everyday vehicles, motorbikes, helicopters, jets, bi-planes and more.

A full list of these vehicles is below:

• Aston Martin Rapide
• Audi R8
• Ferrari 348
• Land Rover Defender
• Subaru Impreza
• Toyota Chaser
• Dacia 1310
• U650 M Tractor
• Mercedes Actros
• Bucker BU 131
• Honda Civic
• Subaru Crosstrek SUV
• Ford F150
• Harley Davidson 99 Hog
• Porsche Carrera
• The Huey UH-1H
• Cessna 560XL

Igniter Live 

Igniter Live also includes a synth source plugin, with extensive synthesis features. This is a wavetable synth with multiple waveforms (allowing you to import your own wavetables!), waveform blending, FM and AM (with independent modulation waveforms) on up to four parallel oscillators. It’s an incredibly powerful synth at your fingertips, for many purposes at runtime.

The synth can even be used to create sci-fi vehicles or other runtime sound design. It can also be combined with the granular plugin to create unique results. Our Analysis Tool displays the frequency values of any point in the granular source material, which can be used to hook up to any oscillator, extending the sound of any real-world vehicle easily, and taking your sound into sci-fi territory like never before!

Tune in for a live demonstration of Igniter Live on our Twitch channel April 2nd!

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