Scenarios occur where you’ll want to play various sounds in a particular order, but the sounds belong to different entities within the Scene. Let’s say that in the park with all these birds, there is a dog, and that dog barks at the bird in the tree, which then rustles around in the branches before taking flight. In this situation it wouldn’t be appropriate to add the barking dog into the Chirping Bird Object, because then the dog would take on the position and size attributes given to the bird.
In this exercise you’ll explore how you can give the dog its own position in the Scene, but still provide a way to time the dog’s bark in relation to the chirping bird.
It’s possible for a parent Object, like the Chirping Bird, to contain a mixture of both Soundsets and other Objects.
- Right-click the Chirping Bird Object and choose Add Audio > As Objects and navigate to theLesson 7 Tutorial files and import the Dog Bark.wav sound.
In the Inspector you see the Dog Bark Object sits underneath the Chirping Bird and Rustling Soundsets. Note that you will not see the Dog Bark Object appear in the lower timeline, but you’ll still hear it. - Play the Scene.
Currently, the dog barks at the exact same time that the bird rustles, followed by the chirps. You want to make it so that the rustling occurs as a reaction to the dog, so you can add a small delay to the Rustling Soundset. - Select the Rustling Soundset, enter Start Delay of 1 second in the min field, and play the Scene.
Now they play in proper time, but the dog and bird both occupy the same space. Because the Dog Bark is a separate Object, it can be given its own position in the Space. - Select the Dog Bark Object and using the Canvas, move it slightly back and to the left, then Play the Scene.
Now the Dog has its own space in relationship to the Bird. This configuration would suffice as long as you don’t need to change the positional relationship between the dog and the bird; but what if you want the bird to fly away when the dog barks. You could add a motion path to the Bird, but remember that the Dog is a child of the bird, so wherever the bird flies, the dog would follow. Considering that making the bird fly is exactly what you’re going to do later in this exercise, you’ll need to address this. To resolve the problem, you can place the bird and the dog into another parent Object. You can think of the parent Object as being the origin point for sub-Scene within the overall Scene. Once the relationship of the Objects within this sub-Scene are set, you can move this sub-Scene wherever you want. - In the Inspector, select the Scene Root and then click the [+] symbol at the top of the Inspector to create a new Object, and name it Dog and Bird.
The new Dog & Bird Object is created. You can now easily move other Objects that have already been created into the new Object to establish the new hierarchy. - Drag the Dog Bark and Chirping Bird Objects into the new Object, and then press play.
You hear that the timing still sounds the same, but now you can add a motion path to the bird without impacting the dog’s position. - Select the Chirping Bird Object and add a motion point.
You’ll have the bird fly into the distance to the rear-right of the Space. - In the Inspector, set the Impulse type to Velocity and set the second motion point 5 meters per second and the X,Y, Z coordinate to 8, -8, 8, then press Play.
You hear the dog bark, scaring the bird which flies away into the distance.
TIP: If you hold option and double click a parent Object, the underlying Soundsets will be displayed in the lower timeline.