Quickly create local folders matching the content of a Wwise Switch Group

Provided that a certain knowledge of Wwise is required, these didactic videos by Bjørn Jacobsen are brilliant and I highly recommend them. The entire brief course is built around the idea of “making a game in a fictional Wwise environment to eventually have a project that will fully work without a game”. The chapter I’m focusing on is called Part 5: Complex footstep switching with simple RTPCs.

The Wwise project

In a quest to teach how to think ahead, he creates a project that will allow the player to have proper footsteps sounds based on different surface materials, in different wetness conditions.

The Switch Group called GroundMaterialSwitch, under Game Syncs, contains 23 switches. They’re interconnected with another switch related to the wetness of the ground itself, GroundWetnessSwitch, and driven by an RTPC called RTPC_GroundWetness, under Game Parameters.

The Switch Container in Project Explorer, called PLYR_Footsteps_MaterialSwitch, reflects the same structure, so it contains 23 Switch Containers following the naming convention {material}_WetnessSwitch. Therefore, for the material switch Dirt inside my Switch Group, I’ll have a Switch Container named Dirt_WetnessSwitch, and so on.

My Wwise project, showing the switch container (left), and the switch group (right)

Adding sounds

Bjørn gives an insight on how to manage audio assets in the filesystem: it’s a good idea to have a root folder called Originals containing subfolders based on a structure consistent with the Wwise project:

📂 Originals
└─ 📂 SFX
   ├─ 📂 Locomotion
   ├──── 📂 Dirt
   ├──── 📂 Forest
   ├──── 📂 [etc]
   └─ 📂 TestFiles

I suppose this shouldn’t be new to anyone who has worked with Audiokinetic’s middleware tool, especially if they’ve integrated REAPER with Wwise.

The issue

What I want to improve is the process of creating local folders that mirror the same structure of the Wwise project. In my current example with 23 Switch Containers, each one needs a local folder where to put sound assets that will be imported in Wwise. Instead of manually copy the switch names and use them to create 23 new folders in my filesystem, I devised a more efficient method.

Note — The following solution is based on macOS (10.14), using GNU bash version 5.2.15. I’m not sure whether it’s possible to replicate the same steps on Windows, maybe using WLS.

• In the filesystem, go to the folder Switches under the Wwise project directory.
• With a code editor, open the Work Unit where the Switch Group is, in my case: Default Work Unit.wwu.
• Find the Switch Group, in my case: <SwitchGroup Name="GroundMaterialSwitch" ID="{CE340E43-285B-4633-92EB-BA5E6B004F9D}">.
• The content of the <ChildrenList> item is copy-pasted in a new empty file called switches saved on the Desktop.
• After pruning tabs and spaces at the beginning of each line, this is the resulting content:

  <Switch Name="Dirt" ID="{3840C5F2-2A61-446D-A0B3-DD17F244B85D}"/>
  <Switch Name="Gravel" ID="{53E3F231-E68C-4289-A68D-1A67EB3051F8}"/>
  <Switch Name="Sand" ID="{1338FA64-99D1-4A81-9AE8-3C07D6F99F02}"/>
  <Switch Name="Forest" ID="{BF071261-27D6-4AE4-9746-3EA172654089}"/>
  <Switch Name="Grass" ID="{C22E57E2-99C6-407A-871A-0785DF5D63B0}"/>
  <Switch Name="Flowers" ID="{BB16ECA2-6508-4E8D-BB19-9D38C6F59226}"/>
  <Switch Name="ForestPine" ID="{57E00A82-4C39-411E-9407-E2EDFAA593CC}"/>
  <Switch Name="Ice" ID="{F54DD30B-78BB-4CCD-8847-62743F907974}"/>
  <Switch Name="Leaves" ID="{E6E0F142-22A6-4E1F-8C66-7DF5E06B455C}"/>
  <Switch Name="Marsh" ID="{C81CD7A9-9818-4A69-A1F0-7C5865907963}"/>
  <Switch Name="PuddleDirt" ID="{C0304BF8-4E9E-45D7-B23A-249CE4A7429E}"/>
  <Switch Name="PuddleGrass" ID="{018C0AB2-9433-461F-86E5-5AD41E403CDE}"/>
  <Switch Name="Rock" ID="{9780F7CA-E4C3-48E4-A756-3D790CDD039A}"/>
  <Switch Name="Snow" ID="{BA8C2AEC-2FAA-4610-A661-ADCCEC20A42E}"/>
  <Switch Name="Stone" ID="{A85AE1E2-FA8E-46C9-97DF-D4BA3C74A8D1}"/>
  <Switch Name="StoneFloor" ID="{3B3ABCDF-C621-4F43-A709-9E24C0C8DE78}"/>
  <Switch Name="Swamp" ID="{36EA176C-9DCC-4CF3-B03B-FAE077C6006C}"/>
  <Switch Name="Tiles" ID="{CED50554-A79C-4EEB-9F81-1AAE0B93EA08}"/>
  <Switch Name="Water" ID="{4CEB20B8-827F-4A69-A4B2-C552BEA825C5}"/>
  <Switch Name="WaterPuddle" ID="{928F79CB-5030-4A3B-97B1-BF78FFB536F4}"/>
  <Switch Name="Wood" ID="{4C74D828-835C-421B-9D54-794B6A38196B}"/>
  <Switch Name="WoodFloor" ID="{302E8991-2E81-4960-B744-9D5269BE0081}"/>
  

• Proceed to extract the single switch names using the command awk in a Terminal session:

  $ awk -F '"' '{print $2}' ~/Desktop/switches > ~/Desktop/switches_names.txt
  

The resulting switches_names.txt content:

Text file containing my switch names

At this point, creating the folders based on the above list is easy: the following command will create a directory for each switch name:

$ xargs -tI % mkdir % < ~/Desktop/switches_names.txt

Before and after

The window that will contain the switches folders

The same window after it’s been populated by the xargs script

Conclusions

The above process might look laborious, depending on the level of familiarity with a shell window, however:

• there won’t be mistakes in the folder names, since it’s all being directly copied from Wwise’s XML source;
• if the folders to be created are numerous, the manual process would be way slower and quite tedious;
• it’s easy enough to create bash aliases so that the input is reduced to the bare minimum.

The same procedure can be adopted for similar tasks, including for the aforementioned REAPER integration. Of course, if the switch names come from an assets spreadsheet, there’s no need to dwell in Wwise’s XML projects — the only command needed is xargs.

Related topics

GAME AUDIO

SOUND DESIGN

VIDEO GAMES