Impacter is a new source plug-in prototype inspired by the spirit of the original SoundSeed Impact Plug-in. It allows designers to load “impact” sound files into the plug-in and generate sound variations using cross-synthesis, as well as manipulations using intuitive physically-informed parameters. Impacter’s functionality and capacity for cross synthesis can be stretched and creatively misused to explore novel sound design possibilities as well.
While Impacter is being offered as a prototype, it should fit seamlessly into your authoring workflow, and its game runtime is a lightweight and stable synthesis algorithm that won’t break your memory or CPU budget.
Impacter’s properties allow designers to manipulate the physicality of the source sounds:
- Mass uniquely stretches or compresses the length and pitch of the sound to change its feeling of size or weight.
- Velocity affects the intensity of the impact, changing the timbre and amplitude of the sound.
- Position shapes the timbre of the sound as if the impact was occurring at different places on a surface. Think of how a drum skin sounds different at the edges compared to the middle.
- Roughness adds a metallic inharmonicity to the sound.
Randomizing parameters and cross synthesis combinations makes Impacter a powerful variation generator:
- When using Impacter with a collection of files, the plug-in will randomize the choice of impact and body with each play event.
- A small set of footstep sound files for example suddenly becomes many more variations.
The functionality of Wwise has been extended to support Impacter:
- There is no need for an external analysis tool or handling of analysis result files
- All the analysis is handled within the Authoring plug-in
- Resulting synthesis model is packaged into the project’s soundbanks.
Impacter UE4 Demo
- The Impacter plugin-in prototype comes with an example Unreal project demonstrating the use of Impacter in a simple game environment. The project is located at: SDK/plugins/Impacter/Unreal/ImpacterUE4Demo
Versions & platforms
This plug-in is compatible with the following Wwise versions: 2021.1
This plug-in runs on the following platforms.