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Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 28 Sep 2011, 13:54
by smcameron
I started working on an explosion sound effect generator. It's still pretty rough at the moment, and currently doesn't have any knobs to tweak or anything like that, but I anticipate adding some tweakable parameters sometime in the future, and will probably have a command line (very portable) front end well as a gtk front end (somewhat less portable.)

It requires libsndfile to write out wav files, but right now, no other weird libraries, just the c lbirary and math library. (If I get my act together with proper filters, I could see it maybe requiring an fft library, probably fftw.)

In any case, it's here: http://smcameron.github.com/explodomatica

Maybe someone will find it useful.

And oh yeah, feel free to contribute, esp. if you know about DSP and/or audio.

-- steve

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 28 Sep 2011, 16:44
by Tranberry
This is the kind of stuff I like when people make, great idea!

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 28 Sep 2011, 17:38
by qubodup
Yay for alternatives to [as3,b,s]fxr!!! :heart:
{l Code}: {l Select All Code}
$ ./explodomatica somefile.wav
Calculating poor man's reverb.............................................................done
Saved output in 'somefile.wav'

all.jpg

4 test sounds vorbis file: http://ompldr.org/vYWtmZA

Added it to http://alternativeto.net/software/explodomatica/

PS:
Image
(video)

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 29 Sep 2011, 04:50
by smcameron
I have added a few options since yesterday...

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}
scameron@hermes:~/explodomatica$ ./explodomatica
usage:
explodomatica [options] somefile.wav
caution: somefile.wav will be overwritten.
options:
  --duration n    Specifies duration of explosion in secs
                  Default value is 4.000000 secs
  --nlayers n     Specifies number of sound layers to use
                  to build up each explosion.  Default is 4
  --preexplosions n
                  Specifies number of 'pre-explostions' to generate
                  Default is 1
  --pre-delay n
                  Specifies approximate length of the 'ka' in 'ka-BOOM!'
                  (it is somewhat randomized)
                  Default is 0.250000 secs
  --pre-lp-factor n
                  Specifies the impact of the low pass filter used
                  on the pre-explosion part of the sound.  values
                  closer to zero lower the cutoff frequency
                  while values close to one raise it.
                  Value should be between 0.2 and 0.9.
                  Default is 0.800000
  --pre-lp-count n
                  Specifies the number of times the low pass filter used
                  on the pre-explosion part of the sound.  values
                  Default is -0.000000
  --speedfactor n
                  Amount to speed up (or slow down) the final
                  explosion sound. Values greater than 1.0 speed
                  the sound up, values less than 1.0 slow it down
                  Default is 0.450000
  --noreverb      Suppress the 'reverb' effect
scameron@hermes:~/explodomatica$


Also, I fixed a bug that was causing the noise function I wrote to set every other sample to zero -- which is where I think that weird guitar-flanger ringing sound was coming from (as it seemed to go away once I fixed that.)

BTW qubodup, what are you using to make those waveform pictures? (I presume the ones on the left are frequency domain and the ones on the right are obviously time domain.)

-- steve

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 29 Sep 2011, 06:10
by L
As a gamer, wannabe free game dev and madman I strongly approve any effort making it easier to make things explode.

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 29 Sep 2011, 18:59
by qubodup
Should you or anybody else consider making a ui for this or another sound generator, I would like to bring this as a UI [edit]inspiration[/edit]:
Image
http://www.essl.at/works/flow/download.html

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 29 Sep 2011, 22:22
by charlie
This is the GUI you are looking for:
http://opengameart.org/content/audio-kn ... liders-etc

Image

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 01 Oct 2011, 00:06
by Tranberry
+1 in both regards

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 01 Oct 2011, 23:51
by L
Read charlie's post in a "these are not the droids you're looking for" tone.

Charlie = jedi master.

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 04 Oct 2011, 01:27
by smcameron
I was thinking something more boring, and more like this:
Image

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 04 Oct 2011, 11:02
by qubodup
Neat!
I have some suggestions, some might bee too much:

mock.png

add history where each change is recorded and "g" indicates that the sound has been generated.
add progress bar which appears when generation is in progress (perhaps when play too?)

the progress bar could also appear where the 'generate' button is, like it does in the ubuntu software center ('install' button)

An alternative to the history would be an auto-save mode, which would save each generated sounds to current or ~/.explodramatica/ with a timestamp in the filename.

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 05 Oct 2011, 05:48
by smcameron
There is now a --input option to explodomatica which allows you to feed an arbitrary sound into the algorithm instead of feeding white noise into the algorithm. May be useless, but was easy to do, and might be mildly entertaining.

use it like:

explodomatica --input something.wav output.wav

something.wav should be 44100Hz, mono recording, and should be not too long, a few seconds probably.

-- steve

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 06 Oct 2011, 02:00
by smcameron
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4o3jl8JN6w

Got the GUI hooked up and working... probably not bug free, but you can make explosion noises and play them back and save them and so on. Loads of audio code lifted from word war vi, so consequently it requires the hated portaudio library.

-- steve

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 06 Oct 2011, 18:28
by hc
Seems to be great for gunshots, too.
Now, what's only missing are some sliders for repetitions and burst-fire.
Maybe with small time variations between repetitions. :)

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 07 Oct 2011, 01:01
by smcameron
I think burst fire would more likely be accomplished by having multiple single shots and mixing them realtime in game. That would also allow you to not have "that same old burst pattern" become recognizable to the user as you could generate the burst pattern in real time.

-- steve

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 08 Oct 2011, 15:33
by qubodup
I remembered about these puredata sfx generators, in particular the bomb factory should be relevant to this thread.

/me goes check out the generators.

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 26 Oct 2011, 05:54
by smcameron
Did a little more work on this thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpusX4sHSgc

-- steve

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 27 Oct 2011, 00:34
by qubodup
I love this tool.

Usability suggestions:
Tooltips should appear when hovering over labels too.

Make "White Noise" a radio button and add a "Custom Sound" option and a "Select WAV" button to that. (or are non-wavs supported?).

Indicate the current input file. (how? tooltip is probably not good, since checking the file name is something one wants to do quickly just to be sure it is right.)

Currently it is possible to change settings while generating. I don't know whether it would be better to not allow that. If allowed, make sure to get the values when "Generate" is pressed.
Should you decide to disable settings-changing during generation, also consider making the "poor man's reverb" checkbox disable the reverb settings. It might make sense to position the checkbox above the reverb settings then as well.

You could also provide brown and pink noise.

Also: I herd u liek procedural sfx so I let u put procedural sfx in a procedural sfx generator so u can generate procedurally while u procedurally generate.

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 30 Oct 2011, 01:40
by smcameron
qubodup {l Wrote}:I love this tool.

Usability suggestions:
Tooltips should appear when hovering over labels too.

That's a one liner. Wish granted.
Make "White Noise" a radio button and add a "Custom Sound" option and a "Select WAV" button to that. (or are non-wavs supported?).

Indicate the current input file. (how? tooltip is probably not good, since checking the file name is something one wants to do quickly just to be sure it is right.)

Currently it is possible to change settings while generating. I don't know whether it would be better to not allow that. If allowed, make sure to get the values when "Generate" is pressed.
Should you decide to disable settings-changing during generation, also consider making the "poor man's reverb" checkbox disable the reverb settings. It might make sense to position the checkbox above the reverb settings then as well.

Yeah, I had similar thoughts as well, but wanted to hurry up and hear what the guitar explosion sounded like, so... I'll probably get around to most of this.


You could also provide brown and pink noise.

If I knew what those were and how to make them[. I'll try to find out.
Also: I herd u liek procedural sfx so I let u put procedural sfx in a procedural sfx generator so u can generate procedurally while u procedurally generate.


Heh. Maybe I should some how hook it into this:
http://countercomplex.blogspot.com/2011 ... music.html

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 30 Oct 2011, 14:29
by qubodup
I actually only knew about Colors of noise from audacity's noise generator.

PS: I approve of 'add it quickly rather than add it ideally intuitively usable'. :)

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 03 Nov 2011, 02:25
by smcameron
A guy named Finn Kuusisto has got a good start on a java port, so all you windows guys are in luck now.

https://github.com/finnkuusisto/JExplod ... master/src

-- steve

Metal Sound Generator

PostPosted: 25 Jan 2012, 22:38
by qubodup
Hopefully relevant:
copyc4t of freesound.org pointed out Power Station Industrializer to me, which I managed to compile after some sed-pain-fun on arch linux!
(Arch Linux User Package here)

2012-01-25-232229_634x553_scrot.png

I made a video recording to show off what it does.

See this script file for hints (contains sed lines) on how to compile on other platforms/distros!

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 03 Apr 2012, 19:44
by smcameron
In addition to the java port of Explodomatica, there's now apparently a mac OS X port by the same guy that ported word war vi to the ipad.

http://komsoft.ath.cx/~pawelp/?x=entry: ... 217-155657

http://code.google.com/p/ppiecuch-proje ... loads/list

-- steve

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 03 Apr 2012, 21:19
by leilei
I did try the java explodomatica, it's not useful at the moment because there's no way to lowpass the main explosion. It always sounds like a burst of air in a plastic bag


Sad no Windows versions are done for most of these cool sound tools :( makes production hard.

Re: Explosion sound effect generator -- Explodomatica

PostPosted: 03 Apr 2012, 21:33
by Julius
Wait what? compains about no *windows* version?

...If I had a penny for every time I though: "damn why isn't there a Linux version of this nice program" ;)