《鬼妇》开发者日志No.2 - 学习音频设计的诀窍

精华2018/11/28745 浏览综合

文章翻译：Vickie

Hello and welcome!

As this is my first official DevLog, I think it’s appropriate that I give a small introduction of who am I and what I do. My name is Kevin and I’m currently working as an audio engineer intern in Storytale Studios, a small start-up company determined to make an impact on the Indonesian gaming industry.

各位好!

因为这是我的第一个正式的《开发者日志》，所以我认为我应该先简单介绍一下我自己以及我的职责。我叫凯文，目前在Storytale Studios担任音频工程师实习生，该工作室是一家小型初创公司，目标是对印尼游戏业产生一定影响。

An interesting fact is that my main asset to fulfill that role is simply my passion for music and gaming – I had no formal education in sound engineering, computer engineering, design, or anything at all suited for a career path in the gaming industry! I was very fortunate to have this opportunity when my friend (the technical director for the current project) offered a chance for internship and was willing to work with me despite myself having zero experience in using software to create music. Naturally this was an interesting and enjoyable experience for me as in the few weeks that I have been working here, I’ve learned so many new skills involving audio engineering, such as recording techniques, sound editing softwares, the art of foley, and other skills needed in order to make a game come alive through audio.

一个有趣的事实是，我完成这个角色的主要凭的是我对音乐及游戏的热爱——因为我没有接受过任何正规的关于音乐工程、计算机工程、设计或任何适合游戏行业职业道路的教育! 非常幸运的是，我的朋友(该项目的技术总监)给了我一个实习的机会，尽管我没有使用软件创作音乐的经验，但他还是愿意和我一起工作。从加入这个团队到现在，对我而言这真是既有趣又愉快的一段经历, 我学会了很多涉及音频工程的新技能, 如技术记录、音频编辑软件, Foley拟音的艺术,以及其他可以通过音效提升游戏体验的技能。

My first task was to help design audio for a project to create an Indonesian folklore horror game. This was already a big challenge for me as I naturally dislike the horror genre, although this feeling lessened as I worked on the project. Before coming to the office for my first day I prepared myself by Googling and watching Youtube videos on the basics of audio editing as well as playing around with the software that I will be using (Adobe Audition, Fruity Loops, Audacity, to name a few). When I joined the project the main soundtrack theme for the game was already there, so my first task was to find sound effects for interacting with certain household objects in the game. There were many ways that I utilized for creating those sounds – for most of them I looked up existing commercial-free soundtracks on the Internet, some of them were created digitally using computer programs, some I created with real household objects that I find around the office. Some sounds that I recorded for a certain object actually came from a completely different object! I looked up the art of Foley on the internet and learned to push the limits of my creativity in creating sounds from various sources. For example, the sound of bones cracking does not have to come from recording audio while cracking real bones, but by snapping vegetables such as celery and syncing it with the graphics can create the illusion that it was really the sound of bones cracking.

我接到的第一个任务是帮助设计一个印尼民间传说恐怖游戏项目的音频。这对我来说已经是一个很大的挑战，因为我并不喜欢恐怖这个类型，尽管这种感觉在我工作的过程中减轻了不少。第一天来办公室报到之前，我先通过谷歌搜索、观看Youtube视频，了解了一下音频编辑的基本知识，并试用我将使用的软件(Adobe Audition、Fruity Loops、Audacity，举几个例子)来为自己的工作做准备。当我加入这个项目的时候，游戏的主要配乐主题已经有了，所以我的首要任务就是制作玩家在游戏中和某些家居物件互动的音效。我尝试了很多方法来创造这些声音—其中大部分音效是我在互联网上的不涉及商业侵犯的音效，还有一些是用电脑程序数码制作的，甚至有一些是用我用其它物品产生的音效代替的。我在网上还了解了一些关于Foley拟音方面的知识，突破了使用各种来源的声音进行音效创作的极限。例如，如果要创作骨头开裂的声音不一定非得把骨头折断了，可以把芹菜之类的蔬菜折断，并与画面进行同步，这样就会产生骨头断裂的错觉。

One of my other tasks was also to record in-game dialogue for the game – a long and arduous task but which I took upon with great enthusiasm. I worked with several people who were the voice actors of the game and a simple recording equipment placed in a simple room (we’re still a small company so our facilities were very limited!). The software Adobe Audition was used for both recording and for editing the raw audio files. Since we did not record inside a completely soundproof studio, we had to make up for the lack of raw sound quality with audio cleaning, noise reduction, parametric equalizer, and other features in the program’s effects rack in order to produce game-worthy audio quality. I did a lot of tinkering and exploring of Adobe Audition’s features in order to find methods of increasing sound fidelity – for example, increasing the bass levels for the dialogues so that it doesn’t sound like some cheap recording. There were also automated features for manipulating vocals (such as adding a layer to make someone’s voice sounds like it came from the radio or from the telephone receiver) that I had so much fun exploring as well.

我的另一项任务是记录游戏中的对话——这是一项漫长而艰巨的任务，但我以极大的热情承担了这项任务。在一个简单的房间里，我和几个游戏的配音演员合作，外加一个简单的录音设备(我们仍然是一个小公司，所以我们的设备非常有限!) 我使用Adobe Audition软件用于录制和编辑原始音频文件。由于我们没有在一个完全隔音的工作室里录制，所以我们必须通过音频清理、降噪、参数均衡器等功能来弥补原始声音质量的不足，以产生有游戏价值的音频质量。我对Adobe Audition的功能做了很多改进和探索，目的是为了找到提高声音保真度的方法——例如，提高对话的低音级别，这样它听起来就不会很low。此外，还有一些用于操控人声的自动功能(比如添加一层声音，让人的声音听起来像是从收音机或电话听筒传来的)，这些功能也让我玩得很开心。

Recording & Editing Audio 记录&编辑音频

Cleaning Audio by Noise Reduction通过降噪净化音频

My earliest challenges came simply from the lack of experience and having to learn from scratch about audio engineering. At the beginning work was slow because I wasn’t accustomed to several audio editing softwares that I had to use. I had to do a lot of self-teaching from the Internet and asking various people for opinions on the sound that I created – dealing with criticism was tough but each of them helped me to learn something new. I also had to work with limited equipment – on multiple occasions I had to use simpler programs for audio editing because my personal computer wasn’t strong enough for the more advanced programs.

我最初的挑战主要是缺乏经验和从零开始学习音频工程。开始的时候我的工作进度很慢，因为我还不太习惯使用那些些音频编辑软件。我不得不在网上自学，并向不同人群咨询我创造的声音的意见——面对批评并不容易，但他们每个人都帮助我学习到了新东西。我还不得不使用有限的设备工作——在很多情况下，我不得不使用更简单的音频编辑程序，因为我的个人电脑不够强大，无法运行更高级的程序。

Overall the whole experience was very enjoyable for me, as I felt that the effort I exerted was paid off with the knowledge I gained. I also wanted to give a message to those of you out there who are maybe interested in audio engineering and are probably confused where to start: never give up on learning and doing new things, and don’t be afraid of making mistakes! There were many obstacles ranging from lack of knowledge to lack of equipment quality, but having a passion for music and a positive learning attitude really helped me to overcome those obstacles. That’s all for my first DevLog, hopefully it was a good read for those people who had just begun embarking on the world of audio design such as myself!

总的来说，这段经历对我来说是非常愉快的，因为我觉得我付出的努力和我获得的知识是有回报的。我还想给那些可能对音频工程感兴趣但不知从何处开始的人一个经验: 永远不要放弃学习和做新的事情，不要害怕犯错误! 由于缺乏知识或缺乏设备质量会导致前进路上有不少阻碍，但对音乐的热爱和积极的学习态度真的帮助我克服了这些障碍。以上就是我的第一篇《开发者日志》的全部内容，希望对于那些刚刚开始涉足音频设计领域的人(比如我自己)来说，这是一个很好的阅读材料!

只看作者