Lydiah Moon
Community Manager
Hayo Zookeepers!
It's almost time for the Planet Zoo: Arid Animal Pack! Today, we're going to be hearing all about the interesting techniques the Audio Design Services Team has been utilising to bring the Arid Animal Pack to life.
Let's get started!
Hayo! Can you introduce yourself and your role on the team?
Hi! I’m Linus and I’m a Audio Designer in our Audio Design Services team. For this DLC I worked on the Somali Wild Ass. My role includes designing and implementing audio assets for our games, as well as doing the required research that is needed to create the best sounding, fitting, and informative audio across our many games.
Hey there! I'm Ben, also a Audio Designer, responsible for the meows, mews, purrs and woofs that went into the Sand Cat for this DLC.
Hi I'm Matt and I'm a Audio Designer in the Audio Design Services team at Frontier. I worked on the audio for the Dromedary Camel and Dama Gazelle for the Arid Animal Pack.
Hi, I’m James, one of the Sound Designers on the Audio Design Services team. Sound Design slightly differs from an Audio Designer's role which can include elements of work with music, voice overs and implementation, whereas a Sound Designer typically focuses mainly on the research of sounds, its design and implementation of the audio from sounds.
Hey, I am Jack I work as a Sound Designer on the Audio Design Services team.
There are 8 new animals included in the Planet Zoo: Arid Animal Pack, what sort of research do you do on these animals when you start working on them?
Linus: Initial research is usually finding out what the animal sounds like in various situations by finding video evidence of the animal performing these sounds. There can also be some very valuable information to find in scientific research based on vocalisations of said animals. We spend a lot of time breaking down videos of the animal performing their sounds to understand how and why they make the sound they do, and how we can make that work in Planet Zoo.
James: For this pack I’ve been working on the African Crested Porcupine. The first thing I look for when creating the sound of an animal is what makes it unique, and for the porcupine it must be the myriad of quills on its back and tail. By researching online for videos of wild and captive porcupines you can get a sense of the sounds they make when vocalising, moving and how they interact with other porcupines.
You recently took a trip to Edinburgh Zoo to record Porcupines and use the audio in the Arid Animal Pack! How do you go about recording the animals in this way?
Linus: Thanks to Edinburgh Zoo we got to go inside the Porcupine’s habitat to get up close and personal, which in this case is needed to be able to capture their sounds as they tend to be very quiet. We were however not allowed into the actual enclosed section of the habitat, as that could make the animals feel a bit stressed, but we could reach over a small wall with our microphones to capture sounds very closely. We timed our recording session for when the zookeepers normally give them food and things to play with so that they would stay active during the recording session, resulting in more sounds to capture.
James: Yes, so firstly a big thank you to Edinburgh Zoo and Amy in their communication team for helping me set it all up. The first question was when’s the best time to visit them – or, when are they most active? Porcupines are nocturnal, so the keepers said the best time would be in the afternoon as they’re fed once at 10am and once at 2pm. But they didn’t recommend the 10am slot as the porcupines are usually quite groggy and keep sleeping as the food is put out for them. So, after agreeing that 2pm would be the best time to record the animals I hired a shotgun microphone (microphone that is designed for picking up audio far away) and my colleague Linus brought a handheld recorder. Due to Rick (the male porcupine) being a “wee bit feisty” according to the keepers, we could only record from a slight distance to stop any potential injuries or attacks, as their quills are quite sharp.
Initially entering the habitat, unsurprisingly, they were quite defensive and weren’t sure about a new person being in their habitat as they’re territorial animals, but we kept quiet and they soon calmed down. Once the porcupines had been acclimatised to us being there, the keeper went in to give them some food. This was great for recording all the chomping sounds they make and quill movement sounds.
James: However, as with all zoos there are people there to enjoy the animals, so there was a lot of background noise and the audio wasn’t as clean as we wanted it to be. So the recordings we made were used as reference to recreate the audio rather than as the audio itself. Edinburgh also gave me a load of porcupine quills which layered together are what I used to recreate the movement sounds of the porcupine. Even though the audio we captured of the porcupines wasn’t used in game, it gave me a much deeper understanding of how they sounded in person, so I could replicate this for our porcupines in Planet Zoo.
Linus: We also managed to capture some Przewalski’s horses crunching away on hay, mostly as some reference to what the Somali Wild Ass would sound like, as both animals are part of the equid family that feed off similar foliage. They were thankfully standing quite close to their habitat fence grazing so we could get quite close to them too.
That's so interesting! So, once you've completed your research and gathered some recordings, what do next steps look like for the team?
Linus: For me, I took the recordings that we captured of the Przewalski’s horse and studied them to better understand what Equidae family animals sound like, this was useful references for the Somali Wild Ass, but I did not end up using the actual recordings we got from that day in the final assets. I think it was a similar situation with the Porcupine, due to the acoustics of their habitat the recordings were not as pristine as we would have liked. We do go through several processes to edit and clean up these recordings to make them as polished as possible, but in this case we had other recordings that were captured in a less noisy environment that were perfect fits for these animals.
The visit helped a lot in gathering references, we took note of what they sound like, how the animals behave and act when making their sounds which was very useful when looking for any similar sources that we could use. After having created the sounds, we then test these against video captures of the animations to see how they fit with our animals in the game. When we’re happy with where the sounds sit against the animations, we hook it up to work in game where we then usually have to do further testing and tweaking to make it sit just right.
James: The next step is to look at the animations that have come in and how we can implement our work to compliment the great designs and animations. The main sound I wanted to get right for the porcupines was the quill movement and animation has done a great job of making the rows of quills move around so expressively, it was great fun to work on. In Wwise (an Audiokinetic's software) I created looping samples of the quills rustling that I could manipulate to fit with the movements happening in game. This is how we've been able to create the audio to translate into the game, either with single samples like a snort being triggered or having a loop running which we then raise and lower the volume to perfectly match the animations.
Which of the animal sounds were most difficult to recreate in-game?
Ben: The Sand Cat bark was quite difficult, as the animal is quite rare both in the wild and captivity, so references for what its dog-like barking sounds like are very tricky to come by. It was also quite difficult to make it sound realistic, since a cat that sounds like a dog is going to raise a few eyebrows. I ended up having to improvise a bit by altering the sound of a few different dogs, mostly terriers. Terriers are similar in size and their bark has a similar tone with certain shared frequencies to that of the Sand Cat, so we were able to get a sound that matched from them!
The Audio Team sometimes has to create sounds from surprising sources - what's the most unusual combination of items you used for the Planet Zoo: Arid Animal Pack?
James: As I said earlier the Porcupine quills are a combination of real Porcupine quills held together with a rubber band to create a type of drum brush. At the zoo the porcupines were fed a mixture of hard vegetables as this is what they eat in the wild, along with tree bark. Therefore, I found that me crunching carrots into the microphone recreated the sound of them eating that I had recorded. Recording myself doing these actions resulted in higher quality audio frequencies due to the closer microphone proximity. Not pretty to watch but sounds just like a Porcupine.
Ben: For Sand Cat the surprising aspect was that we had to use sounds from much bigger cats, especially when fighting.
Matt: For the sounds of the Dromedary Camel spitting I used sounds of actual human spit, a water hose and some jelly & slime sounds. The Dama Gazelle's unique honk is mainly emitted from their nose, therefore I used similar nasal sounds such as snoring, sneezing and snarl sounds from other animals to recreate it.
Jack: The Addax from what we could find only makes one sound which is incredibly limiting, but I managed to use a electric mechanism to replicate the low frequency of the Addax’s hum.
Last but certainly not least, which animal are you most excited about from the Arid Animal Pack?
Linus: I think my favourite this time is the African Crested Porcupine, maybe because I saw them in person. There’s just something very adorable about them.
James: Obviously, I’m excited about the African Crested Porcupine! It was great working with real life porcupines and they were such fun animals to work with. I'm also really excited to see the reactions to Sand Cat, as it is a cat that barks. That will really confuse some people when they first hear it and has always provided us with a laugh in audio reviews.
Ben: The Sand Cat of course! It's not every day you get to hear sounds from your own pet in a game. But I'm also particularly excited for the Porcupine as I love the balance of cute and threatening the team has created.
Matt: I'm most looking forward to the Dromedary Camel in the Arid Pack, it's just so goofy and playful!
Jack: I am excited about the African Crested Porcupine. It's super unique in that it has quills.
And that's it for another Developer Journal! Everyone give a huge thanks below to all of our talented Audio Team who gave us their time for this, and for providing a glimpse into the wonderful world of animal sounds in Planet Zoo!
The new Planet Zoo: Arid Animal Pack will be launching 20 June, and you can wishlist it now on Steam. Remember to also join us at 5pm BST for a special launch livestream where there will be giveaways, building challenges and more! You can tune in at Twitch or Youtube. See you there!
It's almost time for the Planet Zoo: Arid Animal Pack! Today, we're going to be hearing all about the interesting techniques the Audio Design Services Team has been utilising to bring the Arid Animal Pack to life.
Let's get started!
Hayo! Can you introduce yourself and your role on the team?
Hi! I’m Linus and I’m a Audio Designer in our Audio Design Services team. For this DLC I worked on the Somali Wild Ass. My role includes designing and implementing audio assets for our games, as well as doing the required research that is needed to create the best sounding, fitting, and informative audio across our many games.
Hey there! I'm Ben, also a Audio Designer, responsible for the meows, mews, purrs and woofs that went into the Sand Cat for this DLC.
Hi I'm Matt and I'm a Audio Designer in the Audio Design Services team at Frontier. I worked on the audio for the Dromedary Camel and Dama Gazelle for the Arid Animal Pack.
Hi, I’m James, one of the Sound Designers on the Audio Design Services team. Sound Design slightly differs from an Audio Designer's role which can include elements of work with music, voice overs and implementation, whereas a Sound Designer typically focuses mainly on the research of sounds, its design and implementation of the audio from sounds.
Hey, I am Jack I work as a Sound Designer on the Audio Design Services team.
There are 8 new animals included in the Planet Zoo: Arid Animal Pack, what sort of research do you do on these animals when you start working on them?
Linus: Initial research is usually finding out what the animal sounds like in various situations by finding video evidence of the animal performing these sounds. There can also be some very valuable information to find in scientific research based on vocalisations of said animals. We spend a lot of time breaking down videos of the animal performing their sounds to understand how and why they make the sound they do, and how we can make that work in Planet Zoo.
James: For this pack I’ve been working on the African Crested Porcupine. The first thing I look for when creating the sound of an animal is what makes it unique, and for the porcupine it must be the myriad of quills on its back and tail. By researching online for videos of wild and captive porcupines you can get a sense of the sounds they make when vocalising, moving and how they interact with other porcupines.
You recently took a trip to Edinburgh Zoo to record Porcupines and use the audio in the Arid Animal Pack! How do you go about recording the animals in this way?
Linus: Thanks to Edinburgh Zoo we got to go inside the Porcupine’s habitat to get up close and personal, which in this case is needed to be able to capture their sounds as they tend to be very quiet. We were however not allowed into the actual enclosed section of the habitat, as that could make the animals feel a bit stressed, but we could reach over a small wall with our microphones to capture sounds very closely. We timed our recording session for when the zookeepers normally give them food and things to play with so that they would stay active during the recording session, resulting in more sounds to capture.
James: Yes, so firstly a big thank you to Edinburgh Zoo and Amy in their communication team for helping me set it all up. The first question was when’s the best time to visit them – or, when are they most active? Porcupines are nocturnal, so the keepers said the best time would be in the afternoon as they’re fed once at 10am and once at 2pm. But they didn’t recommend the 10am slot as the porcupines are usually quite groggy and keep sleeping as the food is put out for them. So, after agreeing that 2pm would be the best time to record the animals I hired a shotgun microphone (microphone that is designed for picking up audio far away) and my colleague Linus brought a handheld recorder. Due to Rick (the male porcupine) being a “wee bit feisty” according to the keepers, we could only record from a slight distance to stop any potential injuries or attacks, as their quills are quite sharp.
Initially entering the habitat, unsurprisingly, they were quite defensive and weren’t sure about a new person being in their habitat as they’re territorial animals, but we kept quiet and they soon calmed down. Once the porcupines had been acclimatised to us being there, the keeper went in to give them some food. This was great for recording all the chomping sounds they make and quill movement sounds.
James: However, as with all zoos there are people there to enjoy the animals, so there was a lot of background noise and the audio wasn’t as clean as we wanted it to be. So the recordings we made were used as reference to recreate the audio rather than as the audio itself. Edinburgh also gave me a load of porcupine quills which layered together are what I used to recreate the movement sounds of the porcupine. Even though the audio we captured of the porcupines wasn’t used in game, it gave me a much deeper understanding of how they sounded in person, so I could replicate this for our porcupines in Planet Zoo.
That's so interesting! So, once you've completed your research and gathered some recordings, what do next steps look like for the team?
Linus: For me, I took the recordings that we captured of the Przewalski’s horse and studied them to better understand what Equidae family animals sound like, this was useful references for the Somali Wild Ass, but I did not end up using the actual recordings we got from that day in the final assets. I think it was a similar situation with the Porcupine, due to the acoustics of their habitat the recordings were not as pristine as we would have liked. We do go through several processes to edit and clean up these recordings to make them as polished as possible, but in this case we had other recordings that were captured in a less noisy environment that were perfect fits for these animals.
The visit helped a lot in gathering references, we took note of what they sound like, how the animals behave and act when making their sounds which was very useful when looking for any similar sources that we could use. After having created the sounds, we then test these against video captures of the animations to see how they fit with our animals in the game. When we’re happy with where the sounds sit against the animations, we hook it up to work in game where we then usually have to do further testing and tweaking to make it sit just right.
James: The next step is to look at the animations that have come in and how we can implement our work to compliment the great designs and animations. The main sound I wanted to get right for the porcupines was the quill movement and animation has done a great job of making the rows of quills move around so expressively, it was great fun to work on. In Wwise (an Audiokinetic's software) I created looping samples of the quills rustling that I could manipulate to fit with the movements happening in game. This is how we've been able to create the audio to translate into the game, either with single samples like a snort being triggered or having a loop running which we then raise and lower the volume to perfectly match the animations.
Which of the animal sounds were most difficult to recreate in-game?
Ben: The Sand Cat bark was quite difficult, as the animal is quite rare both in the wild and captivity, so references for what its dog-like barking sounds like are very tricky to come by. It was also quite difficult to make it sound realistic, since a cat that sounds like a dog is going to raise a few eyebrows. I ended up having to improvise a bit by altering the sound of a few different dogs, mostly terriers. Terriers are similar in size and their bark has a similar tone with certain shared frequencies to that of the Sand Cat, so we were able to get a sound that matched from them!
The Audio Team sometimes has to create sounds from surprising sources - what's the most unusual combination of items you used for the Planet Zoo: Arid Animal Pack?
James: As I said earlier the Porcupine quills are a combination of real Porcupine quills held together with a rubber band to create a type of drum brush. At the zoo the porcupines were fed a mixture of hard vegetables as this is what they eat in the wild, along with tree bark. Therefore, I found that me crunching carrots into the microphone recreated the sound of them eating that I had recorded. Recording myself doing these actions resulted in higher quality audio frequencies due to the closer microphone proximity. Not pretty to watch but sounds just like a Porcupine.
Ben: For Sand Cat the surprising aspect was that we had to use sounds from much bigger cats, especially when fighting.
Jack: The Addax from what we could find only makes one sound which is incredibly limiting, but I managed to use a electric mechanism to replicate the low frequency of the Addax’s hum.
Last but certainly not least, which animal are you most excited about from the Arid Animal Pack?
Linus: I think my favourite this time is the African Crested Porcupine, maybe because I saw them in person. There’s just something very adorable about them.
James: Obviously, I’m excited about the African Crested Porcupine! It was great working with real life porcupines and they were such fun animals to work with. I'm also really excited to see the reactions to Sand Cat, as it is a cat that barks. That will really confuse some people when they first hear it and has always provided us with a laugh in audio reviews.
Ben: The Sand Cat of course! It's not every day you get to hear sounds from your own pet in a game. But I'm also particularly excited for the Porcupine as I love the balance of cute and threatening the team has created.
Matt: I'm most looking forward to the Dromedary Camel in the Arid Pack, it's just so goofy and playful!
Jack: I am excited about the African Crested Porcupine. It's super unique in that it has quills.
And that's it for another Developer Journal! Everyone give a huge thanks below to all of our talented Audio Team who gave us their time for this, and for providing a glimpse into the wonderful world of animal sounds in Planet Zoo!
The new Planet Zoo: Arid Animal Pack will be launching 20 June, and you can wishlist it now on Steam. Remember to also join us at 5pm BST for a special launch livestream where there will be giveaways, building challenges and more! You can tune in at Twitch or Youtube. See you there!
