Adding Directional Sound to a Node

This tutorial demonstrates how to include sound in nodes that gets louder and softer when the user pans towards and away from part of the panorama.

Introduction

Directional sound can be used to draw attention to a particular noise making part of the panorama. In this tutorial, the sound of a rushing waterfull will get louder as the viewer turns to face it.

Step 1 - Prepare a tour in the normal way

Adding sound is usually done after the rest of the tour is connected together. For this tutorial, there is just a single node of the view from a lookout.

Behind this is actually a gushing waterfall which the user "might" not pan around to see... so we are going to add a directional sound to make them curious and draw them to it.

Step 2 - Move to the Sounds area

Click the Sounds tab. If the node was selected, a preview of it will be shown in the center of the window. Otherwise, choose the node from the Node popup at the top left.

Step 3 - Choose the sound file

There are two ways to add a sound to the node: (1) by clicking the "Choose..." button at the top right, or (2) by dragging the sound file onto the movie from the Finder. We'll use the latter method.

When the sound file is chosen, the preview movie will be rebuilt to include the sound. The preview movie will then start playing.

Step 4 - Change to Directional Sound

The default sound type is "Play Once" - the sound will play when the node is entered. We want "Directional" sound, so click the lower radio button in the Sound Type panel on the left.

The movie will be rebuilt and a 360° spread out view of the movie will appear in the "Direction" control at the bottom. This control shows (and lets you set) the center of the sound, and its "sound cone" or fade-out setting.

Step 5 - Adjust the Sound Center

By default, the center of the directional sound is set at 0°, which is the middle of the strip shown in the Direction control. As the waterfall in this tutorial is to the left of this, the center will have to be moved. There are two ways of doing this:

1) You can drag the center blue dot of the Direction control

     or,

2) You can pan the movie to where you want the center and click the "Set Direction" button.

Step 6 - Update the movie if necessary

If you have used method 1 to select the sound center, you will need to click the Update button before the sound preview movie will reflect the adjustments.

Step 7 - Adjust the Rear volume

When the sound type is set to directional, the Rear volume slider becomes active. The rear volume is the volume at which the sound will play when the viewer is facing outside the "sound cone."

The sound cone is the area of the panorama that has sound associated with it, and is determined by the two blue dots either side of the sound center dot. The rear volume will be volume of the sound when the user has panned to a part of the panorama past one of these blue dots.

If the rear volume is set to zero (that is, the slider is all the way to the left), the sound will fall silent when the viewer is outside the sound cone. In this tutorial, we want the waterfall to be faintly audible in the background, so set it a little to the right.

Step 8 - Adjust the sound cone if necessary

By default, the sound cone is set to 90°. This means that if the viewer is facing the center then turns left or right by 90°, the sound volume will fade down to the rear volume.

If you want to extend or shorten this fade range, drag either of the blue dots at the end of the sound cone. For this tutorial, we'll leave it at the default.

Step 9 - Update the preview and check

Before proceeding to the next node or exporting the finished movie, click the "Update" button and pan the preview around. See if the way the sound is configured seems appropriate to the node.

This ends the tutorial.

Watch Movie of Tutorial Being Performed  [x:xx]

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