StudioListener.cs should fetch Rigidbody from parent

Unity
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1

When using StudioListener.csin my games, I always drop it onto the Camera object which usually sits under the Rigidbody component of the player object. Form my personal experience, I found that this is the most common way to structure a “player” in Unity games. Additionally, it seems that this is the preferred way as Unity places it’s own listener component on the camera object.

To better illustrate the hierarchy I’m talking about:

Player (rigidbody, gameplay components)
|
+-- Head (camera, listener)
+-- HUD (UI)
+-- VFX (particles, etc)
+-- SFX (audio emitters related to player)
+-- Body (3D stuff)

Today an audio engineer from our team noted, that built-in parameters, such as distance were not working for spatial audio. I was confused initially as we we’re passing 3D parameters via RuntimeManager.AttachInstanceToGameObjectin our SFX. Then I looked into the code that ships with Unity FMOD and noticed that StudioListener.csuses gameObject.GetComponent<Rigidbody>()and does no additional checks to test if the listener is under a Rigidbody. Due to this, using the structure I showcased the listener does not attach to a Rigidbodyand the built-in parameters fail silently in FMOD.

My suggestion would be to use gameObject.GetComponentInParent<Rigidbody2D>() in StudioListener.csinstead of gameObject.GetComponent<Rigidbody>(). This way it’ll still work for users who place listener components on Rigidbodies as GetComponentInParent first checks the owning game object, but it’ll also cover the cases as I’ve shown. Alternatively private Rigidbody rigidBody; should be serialized to allow specifying it manually.

1 Like
2

Thanks for the information and suggestion, it does sound like a good idea to use GetComponentInParent instead of GetComponent although we only use the rigidbodys to get the velocity for use with doppler. We don’t use the rigidbody for positioning at all, we use the gameobject which the listener is attached to.

Can you elaborate on this at all? From my testing, the distance parameter is behaving as expected even when no rigidbody is assigned.

3

You’re correct, if the RigidBody (RB) is null Doppler still works, tho I’m referring to built-in parameters which you can access in FMOD. After I made an adjustment to the listener script so it fetches RB from the parent, the audio engineer on our team noted that these parameters started working. I’m not 100% sure if they were referring to distance or just linked this param by accident as they we’re trying other parameters during that moment and just copied the link to the header they clicked on. As I’m not working directly in FMOD Studio, I cannot verify which parameter it is exactly, just forwarding my findings from Unity side :sweat_smile: