Unity Intermediate: Audio Effects

Name: Unity Intermediate: Audio Effects
Author: Ken Geary

Add audio effects for game background music and item sound effects

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Course: On-Demand

Hello, welcome to this lesson in Unity. In these lessons, you will learn how to work with audio effects in Unity. From the Unity Hub, open the platformer project, open the Level 1 scene, and play the level. We have a player moving with the new input system, a smooth camera follow, pick up to get counted on screen, as well as slide it at changes as it plays at its spikes. Stop Play. What's missing and an essential part of any game or interactive project is sound effects. This can include a music soundtrack that plays in the background, as well as sounds generated when the player interacts with items in the level. Sounds can be universal to the game or localized to a location of an item. Unity supports Wave, MP3, AIFF, and OGG file formats. All sound files will be mono or stereo from 22 kilohertz up to 48 kilohertz. We will visit the Unity Asset Store to download some sound assets to work with. Open a web browser and navigate to assetsdoor.unity.com. Log in to your account. Once you're logged in, search for casual game SFX. Then scroll down and in the pricing section, check Free Assets. Select the Free Casual Game SFX Pack. Click Add to My Assets, accept the terms, then click Open in Unity. The Package Manager panel should appear over the Unity Editor. Select the Free Casual Game SFX Pack. Click Download. When a download is finished, click Import. On Check Wall, that's the top check mark. We're only going to select Certain Files. So we'll select Wave File 12, 18, 26, 29, and that should do it. Click Import and close the panel. Go back to your browser. This time search for casual game music. Again, under Pricing, click Free Assets, then select the Free Casual Music Pack. Click Add to My Assets, then click Open in Unity. The Package Manager panel should appear over the Unity Editor. Click Download. When download is finished, click Import. Once again, uncheck everything. We do this when we select Casual Theme 2. Click Import, close the panel. Let's explore these sound clips and organize them for our project. Open Assets, Free Casual Music Pack, then the Casual Theme 2 folder. Inside this folder should be three music clips. This is perfect for our three levels. Select the first clip, press F2, we'll rename this clip Level 1. We'll do the same for Loop 2 and Loop 3. F2, Level 2, and the last one Level 3. Select Level 1, and in the Inspector, drag up the preview from the bottom if it's not visible. You will see a visual of the Sound Wave form as well as a sample rate and how long the clip is. To listen to the clip, click the Play button. If your sound clips are a series of numbers with no title, this is a good way to preview a sound you may like and rename in a folder to organize your project. These three music clips have a similar theme and will work well for each level. Navigate back to Assets, open the Casual Game Sounds folder. These clips are just numbered, so let's listen to each and give it a name. Select Clip 12, click Play, this sounds like a checkpoint sound. So rename 12, hit F2, and we'll call this Checkpoint. Select Clip 18, preview it, or rename this one Winner. Select 26, play it, we'll name this one Pickup. Lastly, Clip 29, we'll play it. It should be good enough for our Spike Sound. Save the scene. In the next lesson, we're going to add sound effects to our Level and Unity. Thanks for watching!

Intermediate Provider : Ken Geary 3 Lessons · 20m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

Unity can enhance your game with added sound effects for level music and item sound effects. You’ll learn how to use the Unity Asset Store to import sound effect assets for the game. You’ll create an audio player component and adjust each option to allow playing when the game starts and looping sound effects. You’ll add sound clips to the audio player to create background music for each level, and sound effects to the trap prefab item, pickup prefab, and checkpoint prefabs. You’ll code the player scripts to allow playing sound when a pickup item is collected, a trap is collided with, and a checkpoint item is crossed. You’ll also add an audio player and code to the winner splash screen scene using the audio player, an audio clip, and code to load the main menu only after the winner sound effect completes playing.

What You'll Learn

Import sound effect assets into Unity using the Unity Asset Store
Create and configure an audio player component to play on game start and loop sound effects
Add background music to each level and sound effects to trap, pickup, and checkpoint prefabs
Code player scripts to trigger sound when a pickup is collected, a trap is collided with, and a checkpoint is crossed
Add an audio player and code to the winner splash screen to load the main menu after the winner sound completes
Build skills in applying sound effects to prefabs in your game design

Key Takeaways

Unity can enhance a game with added sound effects for level music and item sound effects.
The Unity Asset Store can be used to import sound effect assets for a game.
An audio player component can be adjusted to play when the game starts and to loop sound effects.
Player scripts can be coded to play sound when items are collected, traps are collided with, and checkpoints are crossed.
On the winner splash screen, code can load the main menu only after the winner sound effect finishes playing.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I learn in this course?

You'll learn to add sound effects to your game design, build skills in sound effects for prefabs, and code player scripts to control item sound effects in Unity.

What topics do the lessons cover?

The lessons cover importing sound clips into Unity, adding sound effects to the level, and coding when to trigger sound effects.

How are sound effects added to game items in this course?

You add sound clips to background music for each level and sound effects to the trap prefab, pickup prefab, and checkpoint prefabs, then code player scripts to trigger them.

What happens with audio on the winner splash screen?

You add an audio player, an audio clip, and code to the winner splash screen scene so that the main menu loads only after the winner sound effect completes playing.

What skills does this course build?

It builds skills in Level Editor, Sound Effects, Sound Tools, Unity Container, UnityScript, and the Unity Engine.