Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1538144
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 25 run into these obstacles before, so I know how to overcome them. Locomotion is another: Are you working with an animation-blending system or a motion-matching system? Something else? Ensuring those systems send the calls correctly so your human character sounds like a human and not a horse is something you have to solve. Unless you're making a centaur first- person shooter. What tools or workflows have had the most meaningful impact on your team's efficiency or creativity in recent projects? MK: I'm a big fan of anything that allows me to work faster and think less about my tools, more about creativity. On the creation side, Soundminer with Radium and the NVK Toolset for REAPER have been a huge workflow boost in the last five years. I use them every single day and it's hard to imagine going back to life before I had them. On the engine side, I'm a big fan of Wwise. I don't think it's perfect certainly, and I can use other tools as well, but it's the fastest interface I've ever worked with for getting sounds into a game engine. I haven't added anything in the last year or so that's really been a game changer, but I did just watch a video the other night about a new Unreal Marketplace tool called Volumator that looks very compelling. Top Five Tools in Mark Kilborn's Workflow 1. Soundminer with Radium – Core for creation and asset prep 2. NVK Tool Set for REAPER – Workflow powerhouse 3. Wwise – Fastest engine integration tool in his experience 4. Kilohearts Ultimate – Swiss army knife of audio processing tools 5. OBS – For capturing game footage to design against Staying Aligned with Narrative and Gameplay How do you ensure that audio stays fully integrated and aligned with gameplay and narrative as a project evolves? MK: This is the great juggle of game sound. To stay on top of this, you need to do a lot. You must be playing the game regularly, reviewing not only your current work but listening to stuff you've done previously to ensure it's still working. You need to be in frequent communication with the rest of the development team: designers, artists, animation, producers, etc., so you know what they're doing and how it will impact the work you've done, you're doing, and will be doing in the future. Audio teams are often understaffed relative to the amount of work on their plates, and I see this getting worse in the near future, so building these allies is critical. It's easy to lose all of your creative time sitting in meetings, waiting for that five-minute window of an hour-long meeting that's relevant to what you're doing. You need to have these allies who will speak up and let you know that they heard something you should know, or that they're in a conversation you're not that you should be in. Some disciplines, VFX, and lighting in particular in my experience, often struggle to stay informed as well, so doing your best to pass along relevant information to them will help strengthen those relationships. I'm a big believer in always trying to keep the game sounding good. Great if you can, but at least good. This doesn't mean you should be a perfectionist who only checks things in when they're perfect, or that you shouldn't cut corners when you have to. But every time you put a sound in, you should mix it and try to keep a good rough mix going at all times. You should do your best to implement things in an organized way and try not to cut corners in your implementation. It's game development, things get messy, so you'll never hit this 100%. But try to be diligent. And, back to the previous answer, it's important to build relationships with the other disciplines and collaborate with them. When designers and engineers are building new gameplay mechanics, be a part of the discussion so that the system is built in a way that allows audio to best support the feature and then deliver with good content once the system is working. Collaboration with Audio Programmers What's your process for collaborating with audio programmers, particularly when developing custom tools or runtime systems? MK: First of all, it's nice when you have Soundminer, Radium and REAPER, Mark's primary sound design tools.