Welcome to the FMOD Studio developer preview. This post is to explain what this means, and what is included in this release and what is missing/yet to come.
We will work over the next few months to get all planned functionality in.
Major features included in Studio at this point
Multi Track Editor with timeline, browser, effect deck, metering.
–1a. single sound/multi sound, events within events, sound scatterers, audioweather realtime weather synthesis.
–1b. 2d & 3d panner interfaces, automation by parameters, modulators, pre and post fader effect placement (on a track, or the whole event - ie the ‘master’ track).
–1c. iZotope and McDSP effect support (some of these are currently disabled we’ll get this back in in the next few weeks)
–1d. Side-chaining (currently supported by FMOD Compressor effect)
Mixer interface
–2a. sends/returns, VCAs, solo/mute, effect deck, metering
–2b. realtime mixing while connected to game (requires runtime)
–2c. iZotope and McDSP effect support
–2d. Side-chaining (currently supported by FMOD Compressor effect)
Pro DSP effects - AudioGaming AudioWeather, McDSP, iZotope (some of these are currently disabled we’ll get this back in in the next few weeks)
Perforce support - per event check in/ check out.
unlimited undo/redo
Control surface support - comes with Nucleus profile.
Major features still to come
Mixer snapshots - trigger mix and morph mixer snapshots from timeline etc. (coming Q3 2012)
Interactive music features (coming Q4 2012)
Profiler - scrub through game history, debug event triggers and parameter changes. (coming Q1 2013)
Localization and platform functionality. (coming Q1 2013)
Any chance you’ll release the API download for OS X down the line? I’ve been helping run a game audio club at New York University for the past couple of years, and we generally favored teaching FMOD since (aside from the benefit of an uncluttered interface) both Designer and the event API were available on both Windows and Mac.
cool - we just updated to 5.00.01 now with some more fixes. Yes - we’ll release a mac OSX API very soon. We’ll be releasing an initial tranche of platforms, this will include 360, ps3, mac, linux
I’m having trouble with nested events. I guess I’m not sure what exactly triggers a nested event to start playing (or if I have to press play on all of them?). Also, it seems that once “Higher Level Parameter Control” is automated as outlined in the manual, the nested event’s parameter stops responding to changes made in the parent event either from the timeline or a parent parameter… and changes made to a nested event’s parameter from within the nested event are never reflected in the parent event window. There’s a lot of really cool potential here, but I can’t seem to get it to work as I would expect it to. This wasn’t explicitly pointed out in the “known issues” part, so I figured I’d ask.
Nested events begin to play when the parameter cursor enters their modules in their parent events.
This is working as intended. While Studio’s interface does not yet support it, you will eventually be able to nest multiple instances of the same event in different places throughout your project. An event module represents a single instance of the nested event, and each such instance has its own parameter values. The event editor window that opens when you double-click on an event module edits the nested event as a whole, and not any specific one of its instances, and therefore does not alter the parameter values of any particular event instance. For the same reason, changes to the parameters of a specific instance of a nested event will not be reflected in the nested event’s event editor window.
If you do want to change the parameter values of a specific event module, select the module and adjust the dials that appear in the Deck.
We recognize that the differences between a nested event, its instances, and its modules are not made clear in the current Studio interface. We’ll fix that.
Hi hotelsinus,
Sure we will add this. What operating system are you using? Just set the sound card you want to be ‘default device’ in control panel. Right click speaker icon in try, choose Play Back devices and use the list of devices to set the default. Setting the speaker mode (using configure) will automatically set Studio to the same speaker mode (ie 5.1)
Added copy and paste for audio tracks, return tracks and effects
Added copy, paste, and delete menu items and shortcut keys
Added zoom in, zoom out, and zoom to fit menu items and shortcut keys
Multiple trigger regions can now be copied and pasted
Added option to set module colors in the Event Editor
Added ability to assign a name to sound modules by double-clicking on title
tab in the deck
Added Sort by Name functionality to Audio Bin, Events Browser, Mixer Routing,
Tag Browser and VCA Browser
Custom ordering is now possible in the Tag Browser and VCA Browser
Removing audio files that are referenced in sound modules now warns user
and cleans up sound modules if deleted
The Submit dialog now remember the Submit and On Hold status of items
Added sidechain compression
Studio now supports migration of Designer’s Event 3D Cone properties to
Angle parameter with automation curve on Master Track
Added ability to edit game parameter name and range
Added ability to open audio file in external program via Shift+W or context
menu of selected single sound modules, audio files in audio bin or File menu
Crash reporter now appears as soon as application crashes and will reopen
application afterwards
Added recent files menu item
Improvements to indication of selected items
Fixed issue that prevented custom sorting of items in the Audio Bin and
Events Browser
Fixed issue where Studio was unable to load project if project is readonly
Fixed issue where audio files are not moved to project recycle bin on saving
project if the audio files are readonly.
Fixed modulator tab not showing for nested event parameters
Fixed FMOD Delay effect delay buffer being cleared when changing delay time
Fixed selection of owner’s effects deck for the current automation tracks
Fixed native file menus hiding floating windows
Missing audio assets are now highlighted in red text in Audio Bin
The Submit dialog now expands the tree view by default and expands the branch
on adding new items
Studio now set the module colors to match Designer when importing a Designer
project/workspace
Studio now migrates Sound Def name to sound module name when importing
Designer project/workspace.
Added progress indicator when opening project files
Copying automation curve now flattens curve if destination units is not
compatible with the source (e.g. dB to Hz) as well as constraining points of
the curve if the destination effect parameter has a different range
Hi!
I’m a teacher in music production and game audio and I’m looking forward to the final release.
Some questions:
Will Fmod Studio be available with a non-commercial license option? Any limitations?
Will Fmod Studio have support for VST and other audio-plugin formats?
Also:
I’m having trouble with multimodules (I’m on OSX 10.6 and Windows 7 64 bit)
There is no sound coming to the master out. It’s the same with nested events.
Problem:
I was stopping the cursor in “the middle of the multimodule” (with spacebar), then “return to zero” (Return button). Then I was pressing play (Spacebar)
This still don’t gets any sound to master out.
Problem solved:
Let the cursor “play through” the whole multimodule, then return to start (with return) and press play (spacebar) OR place the cursor after the multimodule and then “return to zero” (Return). There is also possible to not stop the cursor in the middle of the multimodule instead just press Return to automatically return to zero and play from there.
I don’t think this is clearly written out in the manual, but maybee I missed it.
/Patrik