Audio

Stylized Water 3 - Underwater Rendering (Extension)

Version: 3.2.7

6.Audio #

An Underwater Area component already tracks if the bottom of the screen is below/above the configured water level. This same information can be used to drive a Low-Pass filter on an Audio Mixer.

This type of filter can create the typically muffled audio effect commonly associated with underwater environments. To ensure that this filter does not affect other audio channels, such as music, UI sounds or dialogue, it’s required to make use of Audio Mixers.

This functionality requires a bit of set up that unfortunately cannot be automated.

If you are using FMOD, then the set up below isn’t required. The lowpass cutoff frequency is set through FMODUnity.RuntimeManager.StudioSystem.setParameterByName("UnderwaterCutoffFrequency", value) and can be used for a lowpass filter instead.

Project setup

Create a new Audio Mixer for environmental sounds. In the project window right-click and Create->Audio->Audio Mixer. (I’ve named it “Environment”)
Double-click to open it in the Audio Mixer panel.
Select the Master channel in the audio mixer
Add a Lowpass effect
Right-click on the “Cutoff freq” parameter and choose “Expose … to script”
Click on Exposed Parameters in the Audio Mixer panel and right-click on “MyExposedParameter” and choose “Rename”
Rename the parameter to UnderwaterCutoffFrequency (exactly!)

That’s the project set up done!

Scene setup

On your Underwater Area component(s), assign the previously created Audio Mixer
On any environmental Audio Source components, assign the mixer as the output. These will then be affected by the Lowpass effect.