Support for importing FMOD Designer projects

FMOD Studio
1

HI

Wondering if projects created on FMOD Designer will be/are fully supported within FMOD Studio?
Thanks :smiley:

2

You certainly can import Designer projects. We’ve tried to make the process as painless as possible: Just open the .fdp in Studio and Studio will open it as as FMOD Studio project. Save it under an appropriate filename, and you’re done.

Unfortunately, there are a few features of Designer that aren’t yet supported in Studio, are handled so differently that importing would require substantial changes, or which we simply haven’t yet added to the import process. If you try and import a Designer project that uses any of these features, you may find that it’s missing the content that we couldn’t import.

Off the top of my head, here’s a list of importing ‘gotchas’:
[list] - Be prepared to lose any content built in the interactive music system. Studio handles music completely differently; You will have to reproduce any interactive music content from scratch.

  • Templates are not imported, but events that use templates will be imported with their template-controlled properties intact.
  • Imported projects lose any user properties and notes. (This is a known bug; They really should be preserved.)
  • The ‘allow sounds to be repeated’ and ‘allow silences to be repeated’ checkboxes of simple events can’t be imported into Studio because random playlist behavior in Studio is always what we call ‘shuffle random.’ We’re planning to add more options in future.
  • Studio doesn’t have the distinction between simple events and multi-track events that Designer did, so the properties that appear in both the simple event editor interface and the event property sheet or banks view are rolled into a single value in Studio.
  • The ‘Spawn Intensity’ and ‘Spawn Intensity Randomization’ event properties is not imported into Studio, because Studio handles spawning sounds too differently. We will allow importing of this property eventually, but it will take us time to implement.
  • The ‘Max Playbacks’ event property doesn’t have a direct equivalent in Studio, which uses ‘voices’ instead.
  • ‘Priority,’ ‘Steal Priority’ and ‘Max Playbacks Behavior’ have been streamlined in Studio, so you might see some slightly altered behavior. Most users won’t notice any difference, but there’s a slight chance that you might need to tweak some event properties in Studio if your project was unusually complex.
  • 3D Position Randomization is not currently imported into Studio. Studio handles 3D position randomization through Scatterer Sound Modules, which hadn’t been implemented when the Designer project import code was written. We’ll allow 3D position randomization importing eventually, but in the mean time you’ll have to reconstruct it manually.
  • 2D sounds are handled a little differently in Studio to how they were in Designer. We import what we can, but expect a few things to be slightly different.
  • The ‘3D Doppler Factor’ event property is not be editable in Studio, largely because we’re still working on a plan to make it more user-friendly and flexible.
  • 2D speaker levels are handled somewhat differently in Studio, so expect some slight differences in behavior.
  • Studio does not support the same automation curve types as Designer, so you may notice some minor changes to automation.
  • Some layer effects that existed in Designer are not yet supported in Studio.
  • The looping behaviors of sound instances in Designer are handled somewhat differently in Studio. You may need to make some tweaks.
  • Studio does not import the sound-instance specific volume level that can be applied in Designer by clicking and dragging the top edge of a sound instance. This is a bug, and shall be fixed; In the mean time, you will have to adjust the volume properties of imported sound modules manually.
  • Crossfades are handled somewhat differently in Studio to how they were in Designer. Expect some minor changes.
  • There’s no facility to edit parameter velocity or seek speed in Studio. We do technically import and support them, and you can see them working in imported projects, but they’re a little inconvenient.
  • Parameter loop behavior is not imported, and the only event parameter that can be assigned equivalent behavior at this time is the Timeline.
  • Studio does not support ‘key off on silence’ behavior, yet. Events that make use of this feature will not work.
  • Sound defs are not imported, but sound def instances are imported as sound modules of various types. This will only pose a problem if you are in the habit of re-using sound defs in many separate events.
  • If your sound defs made use of the ‘Play Count’ property, be warned that we haven’t yet implemented an easy equivalent into Studio.
  • Studio Banks contain events, instead of the sound files that they contained in Designer. We automatically assign your events to banks based on the sound files that they made use of. However, this can sometimes result in events being added to multiple banks, which Studio does not yet support. We’re working on it.
  • Studio does not yet have any support for language-specific bank settings.
  • Reverb is handled very differently in Studio. You will have to reconstruct it.[/list:u:34pds8iy]

That might seem like a long list, but we’re working on shrinking it, and there’s a reasonable chance your project won’t suffer from any major problems. Good luck!

3

Roundcrisis, for additional notes, you can take a look at this thread of mine:

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=15747

These are some things that I came across while trying to import a project of mine. I take it that some of these things may have been fixed, but I can’t confirm.

Sean