I’m reformatting my project to include Nested Events so I can have them all triggered by one FMOD Audio Component in UE4 instead of having multiple components for each event.
My concern is that it could be harder on FMODs DSP/CPU or cause problems with it. Is there anything to be aware of?
Everything seems to be working fine, but this is the first time I’ve used Nested Events this much on a project and I wanted to know if there are any best practices or things to avoid?
For example, I noticed that a Nested event doesn’t retain any Parameter properties from the original nested event, but the new event that is referencing them now becomes the “controller” .
Just any general tips on using Nested events, Multiple 3D parameters on each one etc.
Do the nested events retain their original 3D properties or does the new master event override those?
Hi JB,
There are a lot of variables to really determine whether nested events or separate events are more resource heavy. These really have to do with your project and how you’re using your events. There should not be too much of a difference, but the only real way to tell is to perform an A/B test with separate events and with nested events to see if there’s any performance hit.
If you have set your nested events parameters to expose recursively then it will be the parent events that control the parameter values, though this shouldn’t have any impact on performance.
In regards to the “best practices” when using nested events, try to treat the signal chain as if you are using buses. For example, if the parent event is to be spatialized, then the nested events don’t need spatializer effects on them, or if all are going to be EQ’d the same then just use one multiband EQ on the parent event’s master track. Other than that, you can use nested events just like regular instruments.
I’m not sure what you mean by “retain their original 3D properties”. A nested event cannot have a different 3D position to its parent. Whilst nested events can have differing spatializer settings to the parent, the submix from the nested event would eventually hit the master track of the parent event and the properties of that spatializer would affect the signal. A workaround for this “double attenuation” is for the nested events to have no spatializer effects, but the tracks they are on in the parent event to have the spatializer effect and no spatializer effect on the master track. So you can have one track with a short distance attenuation, one track with a long distance attenuation, and the 3D position of the parent event would affect both as expected. This would only work in FMOD Studio 1.10.00+.
Thanks,
Richard