Hello, noobie here trying integrate FMOD for the first time.
I have 4 background music tracks that I am trying to get to indefinitely shuffle loop.
I am using a multi instrument event with shuffle and loop enabled and Persistent set to On.
The issue I am running into is that it will only play through the track once. If it starts with a longer track it just plays that. If it starts with a sorter track it plays that then part of the next track then cuts out. I assume it plays the difference between the longest track and the track played of the next track.
How can I get endless shuffle to work?
Thanks in advance!
Your instrument is ending because it is synchronous and being untriggered. To ensure it plays forever, you must make the instrument synchronous (by clicking the “Async” toggle button visible in the lower-left quadrant of your screenshot) and ensure the instrument is not untriggered (perhaps by adding a sustain point to the event so that the playback position never leaves the instrument’s trigger region).
To explain why this is necessary…
When the playback position leaves an instrument’s trigger region, it untriggers that instrument. Untriggering an instrument tells it to stop playing; either immediately, or after it has finished up what it is doing. Therefore, if you want an instrument to keep playing infinitely, you must avoid untriggering that instrument by not allowing the playback position to move off its trigger region.
Synchronous instruments are defined by playing the part of the waveform that appears under the timeline playback position. In your case, you don’t want the instrument to play the part of the waveform that’s under the playback position; you just want the instrument to continue playing no matter what. As such, setting the instrument to be asynchronous is more in-line with the behavior you want than leaving it as synchronous.
Awesome, this worked beautifully!
After getting this working I am now wondering how I can overlap track playback so one fades in while the other fades out.
If you rather me make a new post I can do that as well!
Thanks so much for your response, it would have taken me a while to figure that out!
That is possible, but takes significant time and effort to set up if your audio files are different lengths - and I can see from your screenshot that they are. Here’s how to do it:
- Delete your current event and create new, empty one. (Or delete all the content in your current event; you’ll have to recreate it all from scratch in any case.)
- Add a timeline sheet to the event.
- Drag each one of your audio files onto the timeline sheet one at a time. (This should result in each audio file having its own single instrument on the timeline.)
- Arrange the instruments such that there are gaps between them and a gap between the start of the timeline and the start of the first instrument.
- Set all the instruments to asynchronous mode.
- At the start of each instrument, add a destination marker. Give these markers unique names. (I like to name them after their associated instruments, but any set of unique names will work.)
- At the very start of the timeline (i.e.: timeline position 0:00:000), add a destination marker. Name this marker “Start”.
- Also at the very start of the timeline, add one transition marker to each of the destination markers in the event other than “Start.”
- Drag these transition markers to have different priorities (i.e.: different vertical positions in the logic tracks) while ensuring they all remain at timeline position 0:00:000. (This is your event’s “logic point,” which is to say, the point containing the logic that determines which instrument plays whenever the playback position arrives at that point.)
- Enable the chance property of each transition marker.
- Set each transition marker’s probability property to 1/n (converted to a percentage) where n is the number of transition markers of lower probability than the current transition marker. If you follow the formula correctly, the lowest transition marker’s probability property should be 100%. (Because transition markers at the same timeline position are evaluated in order from highest to lowest, this ensures that the transition markers have equal probability of firing, and thus that your instruments have equal probability of playing.)
- Add an AHDSR modulator to each of the instruments. Set the attack and release values of these modulators to the duration you want the fade between instruments to have.
- For each instrument in the event, add one transition marker to the “Start” destination marker, and move the markers to a position n ms from the right edge of the instrument, where n is equal to the release property of that instrument’s AHDSR modulator measured in ms. (This will ensure that the event selects a new instrument to start playing n ms before the instrument reaches its end, ensuring a crossfade between the new and old instruments.)
Well that sounds exciting to try!
Particularly the attack and release part! haha
Thanks for the detailed guide, that all makes sense. I will give it a shot!
