When uploading a patch, Heavy provides platform-specific audio libraries and a C# scripting interface for Unity which provides useful methods for passing audio buffers and setting parameters.
Pure data creator Patch#
Now, we can upload the patch to Heavy and compile it to code that Unity likes. More information on exposing parameters and audio input/output can be found in the online documentation. The two audio-rate CV inputs each use an audio channel from adc~. It plays back a table called waveform using tabosc4~ and has controls for coarse tuning, fine tuning, LFO mode, amplitude and two CV inputs (which is short for Control Voltage, referencing the lingo of modular synth design) for audio-rate frequency and amplitude modulation.Įxposing parameters to Heavy, so we can control them via script later, is done by formatting a receive ( r) object with the name of a parameter and the attribute followed by minimum, maximum and default values. This patch and scripts relating to this article can be accessed via GitHub. We begin by creating a synth module in PD.įor this article, I have created a simple wavetable oscillator and prepared it for interfacing with Heavy. If you're new to modular synthesizers, Modular Landing provides good video introduction. In this article, I will assume familiarity with PD and a fundamental understanding of synthesis on the part of the reader, so we can focus on the elements of implementation. With the time saved in implementation, it allows me to spend more time designing interesting audio modules and interactions. Needless to say, I was a very happy man when I discovered that Heavy allowed me to convert PD patches to optimized native code with relative ease. While it's possible to generate C code with Gen, the recently introduced low level patcher in Max/MSP, most other functionality is not so easily integrated in other projects. However, when one wants to implement such ideas in shippable products, a longer, more cumbersome process awaits of integrating each component in native code.
As you can see, lots of fun can be had, even with only one type of synth module:įor years, I have been an avid user of Max/MSP and its open source equivalent Pure Data (PD) - They are excellent environments to intuitively prototype ideas for audio and multimedia applications. A modular wavetable oscillator, here performed with seven concurrent oscillators in VR. Here is an example of what we will be making. We will use the multimedia-oriented visual programming environment Pure Data to design synth modules and the online Heavy compiler to transform those modules into native code with C# interfaces that we can implement in Unity.
Procedural sound generation in computer games is on the rise, and making spicy music with synthesizers should be no exception! In this article, I present an approach for implementing a native synthesizer in the Unity game engine with modular signal flow and audio-rate modulation for the true synthesizer madness that modular synth builders know and love.
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