What template do you use for film sound and game sound?

Question

I would like to create a template that will make doing sound for film and games more organized. What type of template setups do you use? I am using pro tools but I don't think the DAW you use matters.

Answer 1

I can tell you how I organized sounds for a game made in UDK - "Premonition" from VFS Game Design - its been how ive done game sessions ever since.

The session contains one type of asset. Say feet. A marker placed at the beginning - marks the type of surface - gravel. The layers are cascaded down with some work tracks etc. Then an aux for bouncing and processing layers to the single mono track called Feet_Gravel. The file name will ultimately be changed to whatever the programmer needs it to be for implementation. Once its all done, I make a marker after that set of regions. Ill name it say, Grass. This follows the same process and so on until you have a session of cascading groups of surfaces divided by markers. Track Group them, set views, hide and inactivate track groups by surface type to free up more tracks, and voila! Session-o-feet. This works for all other types of alike sounds that are grouped together, for example: Spaceship_Engines, Monkey_Vocalizations, Swords_SFX, etc.

Linear cutscenes I do the exact same thing just with a movie track. You never deactivate the movie track as you will only ever need to use 1. A video for each marker section.

If you want to grab a more in-depth explanation/pictures of session layout, implementation practices, variation processing etc - go to www.c3sound.com and check the Game Audio tab in the portfolio section.

UPDATE:

THIS IS NOT A TEMPLATE FOR FILM - JUST GAME SFX AND MULTIPLE SHORT IN-GAME CINEMATICS!

Answer 2

My templates are pretty similar but do vary based on the type of project I'm working on, ie. my film template is different from my game template, etc. Film will be wider, with more predubs available for when I need to split out, while the game template will be more concise. Both, however, have VCA-controlled predub groups with discrete busses that route to submix auxes and on to a Printmaster aux, which will output to a monitoring track (which can be toggled over to a record track if I need to make mixdowns). The submix and Printmaster auxes have in-line plugins, such as EQs and limiters. Also, each template will have reverb and/or delay auxes with pre-assigned inputs.

UPDATE:

Thought this may shed more light on the issue: http://designingsound.org/2010/11/jamey-scott-special-stem-workflow-video-tutorial/.