SSE Editing range of ambient sounds

[KiokothePirate]

How do you change the distance that an ambient sound effect is heard?

 

I'm building a player home with a waterfall in an underground chamber beneath the house. The problem is, when I go into the house in-game I can hear the waterfall the moment I step inside. Even though the waterfall is 2 levels below.

 

I know I could place the underground chamber into its own cell, but that isn't desirable as I'd prefer NPCs to be able to sandbox down to the chamber.

[cumbrianlad]

are you using a sound marker? If so, which one? There are a number but the WaterfallSmall ones are your best bet. try AmbWaterfallSmallQuietLP.

 

If they're still too noisy, you'll need to first make a new sound descriptor. Just copy the vanilla one for a small waterfall. You'll see a box for 'Static Attenuation (dB)'. Increase the value and the sound volume will fall away faster, so that the player can't hear it unless they are closer.

 

Then make a new sound marker and assign your custom waterfall sound descriptor to it. Add that sound marker into the game.

 

After that, you'll need to tinker with the value for attenuation in your descriptor until you're happy.

 

if that doesn't give you the result you're after, ie You want the waterfall noise quieter or louder when you are close to it, you'll need to make a brand new sound output model and assign that to your sound descriptor, but I'd guess the simpler method will work. I did that in a player home mod to sort out the sound of nirnroot being heard all around the house.

 

Or do the waterfalls make a noise without a separate descriptor? The Nirnroot does and you need then to do the step of making the new sound descriptor and add it directly into the form for the waterfall. You'll need to duplicate a waterfall to do this otherwise you'll alter the sound of every similar waterfall in the game.

[KiokothePirate]

If I decrease the maximum attenuation for the Output Model would I still need to adjust the Static Attenuation in the Descriptor?

[cumbrianlad]

Sorry for the late reply.

 

I didn't notice the response.

 

Short answer... it depends!

 

You can play around with all three.

 

If you Imagine two spheres, one bigger than the other, both centred on the sound marker, the inside one is at the minimum attenuation distance, the other is at the maximum attenuation distance.

 

Maximum attenuation distance is when the sound cuts off entirely and can't be heard. So if the player stands anywhere outside the big sphere they can't hear the waterfall at all.

 

Minimum attenuation distance is where the sound starts to get quieter. If the player stands anywhere inside the small sphere they hear the sound at its maximum volume.

 

If they walk from the edge of the small sphere, the sound gets quieter until it stops when they reach the big sphere.

 

Static attenuation is an amount that makes the sound quieter overall. If you lower that the sound is quieter everywhere inside the big sphere by the amount you set by the same number of decibels.

 

If you greatly reduce the maximum attenuation distance but don't touch the other two, you could find a weird situation where the player hears nothing until they are a couple of metres away and then the sound suddenly ramps up to full volume... not at all natural.

 

if you just adjust static attenuation, you just get an overall quieter sound everywhere and this could be enough to sort your issue but do it too much and you get the opposite weird effect where it seems like the tiniest sound can still be noticed hundreds of meters away.

 

If none of that works for you, then you might consider making the underground chamber in a separate cell. That way you don't hear it at all anywhere in the house but when the player opens a trap door and enters the cavern... boom! Waterfall sound.

 

If you wanted to be really fancy, you could add more than one sound marker. A loud one in the cavern and a much smaller and quieter one positioned just above the trapdoor inside the house, as if some of the sound is audible through the trapdoor.

 

Sadly the game engine isn't clever enough to know that sounds get reduced by floors, walls and closed doors. It's why you hear bandits muttering to themselves in an imperial fort and the other side of a metre thick stone wall.

[KiokothePirate]

Thanks for the explanation. That's pretty much how I've been imagining the min/max attenuation stuff. If only there were a visual representation of the audio range, just like the lights. I know putting the underground chamber in a separate cell would fix things, but I'm trying to make sure that NPCs (followers/spouses) can sandbox down into the chamber. So I'm going to continue to fiddle around with the min/max attenuation.

 

Update:

 

My only issue right now is that I can't seem to make sense of the units of measurements being used.

 

The original max attenuation was 2000, with which the sound could be heard clearly all through the house.

 

Changed it to 1000, same thing. 500 the sound was quieter, but could still be heard throughout the house.

 

450 and the sound disappeared almost immediately after stepping out from under the waterfall.

 

490, there was silence upon entering the house and upon first walking into the cavern, but then the sound kicked in and could be heard throughout the house.

Edited March 29, 2019 by KiokothePirate

[KiokothePirate]

So I tried swapping out the waterfall for a nice little creek, which I remembered having a much quieter sound. But it too can be heard throughout the house.

 

I fear I may have to cut off the cave and stick it in it's own cell, but before I do that, does anyone know or can anyone take an educated guess at what the setting for the min, max, and static attenuation would be to get the noise to fill a medium size room?

 

Default settings were:

Min Atten. 150

Max Atten. 2000

Static Atten. 14.10

[acidzebra]

https://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Sound

https://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Sound_Output_Model

https://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Unit

 

I think you may want to review these pages to get a better understanding of what checkboxes and sliders you might want to set where.

[gurugeorge]

Sorry for the late reply.

 

I didn't notice the response.

 

Short answer... it depends!

 

You can play around with all three.

 

If you Imagine two spheres, one bigger than the other, both centred on the sound marker, the inside one is at the minimum attenuation distance, the other is at the maximum attenuation distance.

 

Maximum attenuation distance is when the sound cuts off entirely and can't be heard. So if the player stands anywhere outside the big sphere they can't hear the waterfall at all.

 

Minimum attenuation distance is where the sound starts to get quieter. If the player stands anywhere inside the small sphere they hear the sound at its maximum volume.

 

If they walk from the edge of the small sphere, the sound gets quieter until it stops when they reach the big sphere.

 

Static attenuation is an amount that makes the sound quieter overall. If you lower that the sound is quieter everywhere inside the big sphere by the amount you set by the same number of decibels.

 

If you greatly reduce the maximum attenuation distance but don't touch the other two, you could find a weird situation where the player hears nothing until they are a couple of metres away and then the sound suddenly ramps up to full volume... not at all natural.

 

if you just adjust static attenuation, you just get an overall quieter sound everywhere and this could be enough to sort your issue but do it too much and you get the opposite weird effect where it seems like the tiniest sound can still be noticed hundreds of meters away.

 

If none of that works for you, then you might consider making the underground chamber in a separate cell. That way you don't hear it at all anywhere in the house but when the player opens a trap door and enters the cavern... boom! Waterfall sound.

 

If you wanted to be really fancy, you could add more than one sound marker. A loud one in the cavern and a much smaller and quieter one positioned just above the trapdoor inside the house, as if some of the sound is audible through the trapdoor.

 

Sadly the game engine isn't clever enough to know that sounds get reduced by floors, walls and closed doors. It's why you hear bandits muttering to themselves in an imperial fort and the other side of a metre thick stone wall.

 

I came across this post while searching for info about precisely this problem. I'm playing SSE again, and I'd been playing your bog standard fort with bandits, I was walking by a wall and I was startled to hear what sounded like a bandit talking right next to me. Then I realized of course he must be behind the wall, in the building.

 

Then I thought, "God that such a classic Skyrim horror, I wonder if there's a mod for that?" But I couldn't find one anywhere. Then I searched and searched, and there seems to be precious little info, except what you've said here. How confident are you that the game doesn't understand walls in terms of sound propagation? If you're sure, then do you think some sort of kludge or workaround might be possible? (Thought, off the top of my head - could you reduce the volume/add a lowpass filter or something, or play with the "Mute When Submerged" function, depending on how far the AI reckoned it would have to go to get to you, or something like that?)

 

(I recall the Witcher 3 did propagation and attenuation very well - conversations in other rooms are properly quieter and slightly muffled. But I suppose Skyrim is quite an old game now - we tend to forget that because graphically it can keep up very well with mods.)

Edited October 7, 2019 by gurugeorge