I have a game with many different convolution reverbs.
I’m wondering how I can best organize my FMOD project in a manable way, when I have multiple levels in the game, with multiple different reverbs.
As far as I can tell, the best way to manage all these reverbs as sends on the mixer group that should have reverb.
For example: I have a Character group, for the main character, where all the events for movement sound etc will go. For the first couple of minutes of gameplay I have 3 different convolution reverbs. So my Character group has 3 sends. The send levels are then set by snapshots.
I would start each level with triggering the snapshot for the one appropriate reverb and turning down all the other. Then do that for each new room the player enters.
My problem:
As the game progresses I will have many more reverb sends on that group - maybe 20. Along with the other effects this will get messy, since I have so many custom convolution reverbs. Is there a way to organize this better?
If you want to avoid having too much clutter due to having both effects and a large number of sends sends on the same return bus, one easy option would be to replace all the of the sends with one send to a new return bus, and to place your large collection of sends on that new return bus. Using this kind of “stopover” bus would reduce the number of sends on the initial bus to one. (Of course, you’d need to prevent the stopover bus from producing output that might muddy your mix, so you’d probably place its sends before its fader, and set said fader to -oo dB.)
That being said, be aware that the convolution reverb effect is a relatively expensive effect. If you find that you’re running low on resources, consider restructuring your project to reduce the number of convolution reverb effects that are active at the same time.
Ok, gotcha. That makes sense.
Maybe I could do one stopover bus per scene/level and then use the mixer views to show the different scenes/levels.
For now I actually think it’s fine to lump all the sends on the same group. I have three convolution reverbs on the first level, and pictured myself 10 level later with 30-40 sends to different convolution reverbs, but I think I will reuse some of the impulses, realistically having fewer reverbs.
The reverbs does not spend CPU when they are not outputting anything, right?
I will not have any signal going into more than 1 or 2 reverbs at a time, so CPU should not be a problem even though there might be many reverbs in the mixer?
It is true that any bus that is neither receiving input nor producing output is automatically destroyed to conserve resources. However, a send set to -oo dB does output a signal (albeit a signal of silence) and so keeps the return bus it targets (and any effects on that bus) alive.
If you want to avoid this issue, one possible solution is to place your convolution reverb effects in events, rather than on return buses, and to use transceiver effects to send the signal to them rather than sends. Because event instances can be created and destroyed from your game’s code, this gives you fine control over which convolution reverb effects are active (and consuming resources) at any given time.