Sound

Intro

Playback audio and drive deformation or values.

Get started with audio import and the Sound Behaviour.

info

• Audio export is a Professional feature.
• Embedded audio (e.g. in a .mov) is not currently supported. Please see Assets Window for supported audio formats.

Working with Audio

Dragging an audio file directly from the Assets Window into the Scene Window or Viewport will create a Sound Behaviour and connect the audio file.

In order to hear audio in playback, Audio Playback must be enabled in the settings at the bottom of the Viewport.

Editing audio in Pre-Comps

Setting the in/out points of a Pre-Comp containing a Sound Behaviour will not affect the audio output – audio must be clipped within its parent Composition.

UI

Behaviour

Common Attributes +

File - Drag in an audio file from the Asset Window.

Frequency Scale - Choose a model to sample the audio file's frequencies with:

• Logarithmic - Mirror the structure of musical octaves, where each octave represents a doubling of frequency similar to the way musical scales are organised.
• Mel - Mirror the non-linear way humans perceive pitch differences making it useful for speech.
• Bark - Mirror how humans perceive sound, incorporating the concept of auditory masking and bandwidths.

Frequency Range Hz - Customise the range of frequencies to sample the file within.

Equaliser - Preview the sound file and isolate Frequency Bands. Use the cursor to remove/add bands to be omitted/included. The buttons to the right can be used to activate or deactivate all bands.

Frequency Bands - Set the number of bands to sample.

Volume Clipping - Values that fall below this threshold will be ignored (represented by a red line in the equalizer).

Band Weighting Graph - Use a graph to control the contribution of individual bands to the output value where the position P (0..1) of the curve represents the Frequency Range Hz (L..H). A value V of 0 removes that frequency's contribution, a value of 1 will double its contribution. The default value of 0.5 will leave the values unchanged.

Value Offset - Add/remove a value to the input.

Frame Offset - Offset audio playback in the timeline.

Sub Steps - Can be used to 'smooth' the sound signal. With a value of 0 Cavalry samples the audio file at each frame number. By adding sub steps Cavalry will sample more often. e.g. a value of 1 will sample at frames 0.5, 1 and 1.5 and create an average of those values.

Smoothing Frames - Smooth the sound signal by increasing the number of frames used to create a sample. For example, a value of 2 will sample the current frame and the one before and average out those values.

Performance

When using Sub Steps and Smoothing Frames expect a performance hit of $(smoothingFrames+1)*subSteps$

e.g. Smoothing Frames = 2 and Sub Steps = 4 will create a (2 + 1) * 4 = 12x time penalty on the Layer.

Maximum dB (Output) - The maximum dB value found within the asset connected to the File attribute.

File Length (Output) - The duration of the asset connected to the File attribute (in frames).

Active Bands (Output) - The number of active frequency bands selected in the Equaliser.

Volume Adjustment - Increase/decrease the volume of the audio track.

Pan - Bias audio towards the left (negative) or right (positive) stereo channels.

info

Note that it's not possible to make connections to the Volume Adjustment or Pan attributes. Any adjustments required here should be driven with keyframes.

Falloffs

See Common Attributes.

Advanced

Use Index Context - When checked, Context can be passed to other Layers. For example, this could be used to map each frequency band to each of the individual Shapes within a Duplicator.

Play Audio - When checked, the audio will be audible. This is the equivalent of toggling the speaker icon in the Scene Tree to on.

Example

1. Import an audio asset.
2. Drag the asset into the Scene Window or Viewport to create a Sound Behaviour.
3. Create a Shape.
4. Connect sound.id→shape.position.y.
5. Increase the Sound Behaviour's Strength (depending on the audio asset).
6. Play

The audio will drive the vertical movement of the Shape.

info

The Sound Behaviour outputs in dB (decibels) which can differ depending on the audio asset.

Combining audio tracks

Use the Behaviour Mixer to combine the outputs of several Sound Behaviours.

info

Dragging an audio file directly from the Assets Window into the Scene Window or Viewport will create a Sound Behaviour and connect the audio file.

caution

When using Sub Steps and Smoothing Frames expect a performance hit of $(smoothingFrames+1)*subSteps$

e.g. Smoothing Frames = 2 and Sub Steps = 4 will create a (2 + 1) * 4 = 12x time penalty on the node.