MMI522 PROCEDURAL SOUND DESIGN

Course Objectives

Manual generation of game assets is a time consuming and costly process. In addition fixed, uncontrollable assets do not allow the modification of content with interaction. Procedural content generation is the name given to the set of techniques that focus on designing models that can be parametrically controlled. Procedural content generation and design are slowly becoming the norm in game development. The major advantage of procedural sound design is the substantial reduction in the effort required to record sounds. In addition it allows the game designer to avoid repetition by parametrically modifying the sound synthesis algorithms and the sounds that they generate in effect.

The objective of this course is to equip the students with the knowledge, skills and tools needed to generate natural sounding, parametrically controllable artificial sound synthesis algorithms and sound effects. 

Course Content

Games are interactive applications and game worlds change with interaction. Audio content in games and virtual reality are typically canned recordings that are impossible to modify during runtime, preventing interactivity, causing repetition and increasing the memory footprint. Procedural audio generation by using interactive synthesis algorithms is a solution to circumvent these problems. This course aims to introduce the students to the concepts and underpinnings of procedural audio as well as give them the practical knowhow on procedural sound design for games.

Course Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course the students will:

• learn the basic concepts of procedural sound design,
• learn the basics of human auditory system, auditory cognition, auditory memory
• learn to use the Pure Data graphical programming language
• learn the basic artificial sound synthesis techniques
• learn to carry out modular analysis on sounding objects and combine different components in a meaningful and systematic way
• learn about event-based parametric sound synthesis models
• gain practical experience in designing a variety of sound effects that can be used in games
• design, test, and deploy their first parametric sound synthesis model