Create an immersive soundscape

Audio Essentials: More things to try

Mission 3 Quiz

Unity Essentials: Audio Essentials Quiz

Add immersive sound to a kitchen scene with a variety of different types of audio.

In this Audio Mission, you will learn the fundamentals of implementing different types of audio into Unity scenes. You’ll learn how to set the tone with background music, how to add realism with sound effects, and even how to implement spatial audio in a 3D scene.

Audio Essentials

Unity Essentials Pathway

Master the basics of Unity with the Unity Essentials Pathway. Perfect for beginners, this free learning journey introduces game development, 3D content creation, and Unity's core tools. Start building today!

Unity Essentials Pathway - Learn Game Development for Beginners | Unity Learn

Unity Essentials is the perfect place to start for beginners to Unity. No previous experience is necessary.

New to Unity? This guided learning Pathway includes everything you need to get started.

Designed for anyone new to Unity, this guided learning journey is your first step toward creating confidently in the Unity Editor and bringing your visions to life. In this learning Pathway, you’ll design different rooms of a house, learning the essentials of one key skillset as you complete each room.

Unity Essentials

Unity Essentials: Install Unity

Open the Unity Essentials project

Explore the Editor Interface

Master 3D scene navigation

Pass the Scene view flying test

Design a mural in the Scene view

Editor Essentials: More things to try

Unity Essentials: Editor Essentials Quiz

Explore a playground scene and design a mural to get comfortable with the Unity interface.

This tutorial series introduces you to the essential skills of navigating the Unity Editor.


You'll learn to navigate 3D space in a playground scene, using Flythrough mode and tools like Move and Rotate to design a mural.


Once you master these skills, you’ll have the foundation required for confidently creating in Unity.

Editor Essentials

Add furniture to the kid’s room

Make a bouncy ball

Make a tower of prefab blocks

Adjust the lights, background, and camera angle

3D Essentials: More things to try

Unity Essentials: 3D Essentials Quiz

Design a kid's bedroom with a bouncing ball and a tower of collapsing building blocks.

In this tutorial series, you'll explore Unity's capabilities by designing a kid's bedroom scene with dynamic elements like a bouncing ball and a tower of blocks. You'll learn new skills in 3D navigation, object customization, and using Unity's physics system. 

You’ll also create prefabs, adjust lighting, and capture your scene with a camera. 

This foundational knowledge is vital to creating any type of Unity project.

3D Essentials

Add a movement script

Create a rotating collectible

Collect the collectible

Programming Essentials: More things to try

Unity Essentials: Programming Essentials Quiz

Add code so that a player character can explore a living room and gather collectibles. 

In this Mission, you’ll program a simple interactive experience where you control a character in a living room scene and move around to collect objects. 

You'll be able to choose from a variety of characters and collectible objects. In our example, we'll use a robot vacuum that maneuvers to pick up dirt around the room.

Programming Essentials

Set up a 2D room

Complete your 2D Puzzle Game

Add an animated pet

2D Essentials: More things to try

Unity Essentials: 2D Essentials Quiz

Create a top-down minigame similar to the 3D living room experience, but in 2D.

In this 2D Mission, you'll create a top-down 2D version of the interactive living room scene you created earlier. 

Just like in the 3D scene, you'll control a character, and try to collect all the objects in a room. By completing this scene, you'll learn how working in 2D is similar to working in 3D, but also how it’s different.

2D Essentials

Build your portfolio project

Publish to WebGL

Challenge: Add a bonus scene

Capture a video of your project

Share your project

Combine all of your scenes together into one cohesive portfolio project that you can share with others. 

It's time to collect all your good work together into a singular portfolio piece that you and others can play!

A portfolio, especially in the realm of real-time 3D (RT3D) and game development, is not just a collection of work, but a practical way of demonstrating your familiarity with essential tools and concepts. 

In this Mission, you will package all of your work from this Pathway into a single playable experience that you can easily share with others.


Publishing Essentials

4b997791-62a0-4921-921b-8671dc486c90:cebde46f2235

Mission overview

Open the kitchen scene and enter Play mode

Add a pot to the stove

Add a boiling sound

Make it a 3D Audio Source

Add background music

Add random bird sounds outside

Review and proceed to next tutorial

Understand the essential elements for configuring audio in Unity, such as Audio Sources and Audio Listeners 

Veronica Brown

3.1.5 - Make it a 3D audio source - VIDEO.mp4

3.1.3 - Add a Pot to the Stove - VIDEO.mp4

3.1.2 - Open the kitchen scene and enter Play mode - VIDEO.mp4

Essentials_Pathway_M3_Audio.mp4

3.1.4 - Add a Boiling Sound - VIDEO_U6.mp4

3.1.6 - Add Background Music - VIDEO_U6.mp4

3.1.7 - Add Random Bird Sounds Outside - VIDEO_U6.mp4

Bring a kitchen scene to life with audio, including some background music, a boiling pot of water, and even some birds chirping outside. 

Audio overview

Audio Source

Games

Film

Automotive

Implement and modify basic 2D audio and 3D audio in a scene. 

Implement continuous 2D background music in a Scene using an Audio Source Component

Implement and customize 3D spatialized audio in a Scene

Understand the difference between 2D and 3D spatialized audio, including when each would be appropriate in a project

Develop 3D audio for a scene

Mission 3 - Audio Essentials

In this Audio Mission, you will learn the fundamentals of implementing different types of audio into Unity scenes. You’ll learn how to set the tone with background music, how to add realism with sound effects, and even how to implement spatial audio in a 3D scene. 

When you watch the video demos throughout this tutorial, make sure to turn on your computer’s sound! 

In this step, you'll just explore the silent kitchen scene. 

This scene is already set up with a script, attached to the Main Camera, that will work in Play mode. This script allows the user (you, for now) to easily explore the environment with the WASD keys and listen to the sounds in the scene from a first-person perspective. 

By default, the Main Camera will have an Audio Listener component on it, which acts like the player’s ears. When the Audio Listener component is far away from a sound, it should be quieter. When the Audio Listener  component is closer to a sound, it should be louder. With this component, the camera acts both as the player’s eyes and ears in the scene. 

In fact, Unity does not even allow you to have more than one active Audio Listener component in a scene. With multiple sets of “ears” in different locations, at what volume would you play a sound?


1.  In the Project window, in the _Unity Essentials > Scenes folder, locate and open the 3_Kitchen_Audio_Scene. 

2.  In the Scene view, use Flythrough mode (right-click + WASD) or the Frame, Orbit, Zoom technique to give yourself a good view of the interior of the kitchen. 

3.  Enter Play mode to preview the silent kitchen scene, then use the WASD keys to move forward, backward, and to turn left and right. To look up and down, use your mouse.

If you are you using your mouse to look up and down and the cursor moves off to the edge of your screen during Play mode, don’t worry – that’s expected. 

4.  Once you feel comfortable navigating with this pre-built player controller script and have explored the silent kitchen scene, exit Play mode.

5.  In the Hierarchy window, select the Main Camera GameObject, then locate its Audio Listener component.

Now you’ll add a pot to the stove in the kitchen. The pot comes equipped with a particle system for the steam and for the bubbling, boiling water.


1.  In the Project window, navigate to _Unity Essentials > Prefabs > Kitchen. 

2.  Click and drag the Boiling_Pot prefab onto the stove in the Scene view. 

Notice the distinctive icons that cover the pot. These represent the particle systems for the steam and bubbles.

3.  Frame and orbit around the pot in the Scene view to get a close look at it and to center it carefully over one of the burners. 

If you want, enter Play mode and approach the pot to see the boiling water and steam in action. 

Now it’s time to add an Audio Source component, which will simulate the sound of boiling water. In Unity, an Audio Source component acts as the origin of sound in your virtual environment. 


1.  In the Hierarchy window, select the Boiling_Pot GameObject. 

2.  In the Inspector window, select Add Component and enter “Audio Source” to add it to the selected object.

3.  In the new Audio Source component, locate the Audio Resource property. 

This is where you specify the actual sound file you want to play. Unity allows only one clip per Audio Source.

4.  Use the Object picker (⊙) for the Audio Resource property to browse all available audio clips in your project, then select the Bubbling_Water audio clip from the list provided.

5.  To make the clip play on repeat, enable the Loop property in the Audio Source component.

6.  Enter Play mode to test the new audio. 

The sound should play, but it will maintain the same volume regardless of the camera's position relative to the source, which sounds unnatural — you’ll fix that next.  

In real life, sounds change in volume in each ear based on your distance and direction relative to the sound source. 

By default, audio in a Unity scene is 2D Audio, which means that it stays the same regardless of the listener's position or orientation in the game world. 

3D Audio, on the other hand, is spatialized: the sound changes based on the listener's position and orientation relative to the Audio Source, mimicking how sound behaves in the real world.

Let's make the Boiling_Pot audio clip a 3D experience!


1.  In the Boiling Pot GameObject’s Audio Source component, locate the Spatial Blend property and drag the slider from 0 (fully 2D) to 1 (fully 3D). 

2.  Enter Play mode again to test your new 3D spatial audio effect. Move closer and farther away, and be sure to experience the stereo effect by rotating your view left and right relative to the boiling pot. 

3.  Exit Play mode. 

In this step you'll add background music, which will set the emotional tone of your scene. The track you select can completely alter the ambiance of the scene, whether it's a calm classical piece, something more upbeat, or even something a little spooky. 

The boiling pot is meant to mimic real-world 3D sound coming from the environment. Background music, on the other hand, isn’t produced by anything in the environment and is purely used to enhance the overall atmosphere of the scene.

Let's set a mood in this scene with some background music.


1.  In the Hierarchy window, right-click in the empty space and select Audio > Audio Source. 

This will create a new GameObject that only has a Transform component and an Audio Source component. 

2.  Rename the GameObject “Background Music” for clarity.

3.  In the Project window, browse the available music options in the _Unity Essentials > Audio > Music folder. 

You can preview the selected music in the Preview panel at the bottom of the Inspector window.

4.  In the Background Music GameObject’s Audio Source component, set the Audio Resource to your desired music, then enable Loop.

5.  Adjust the Audio Source’s Volume property to a more subtle level, like 0.1 - 0.5, to ensure the background music doesn't overpower other sound in the scene. 

6.  Keep the Spatial Blend of this Audio Source component as the default 2D so that the background music's presence is consistent throughout the scene without positional changes.

7.  Enter Play mode to test your background music and how it interacts with the sound of the boiling pot. 

You may want to change the volume of the boiling pot or the music to get the balance just right.

Note:  Remember to save your scene often with Ctrl+S (macOS: Cmd+S). 

To further enrich the soundscape of your kitchen scene, next you'll add the ambient sound of birds chirping outside. 

You'll achieve this effect by positioning Audio Sources outside the kitchen, such as near a window or in an adjacent outdoor area, and using a custom script to play bird chirping sounds at random intervals. 

This randomness mimics the natural behavior of birds, making the scene more immersive and lifelike.


1.  Create a new Audio Source in your scene and position it where you'd like the sound of a bird to originate, such as outside a window or near an imaginary tree.

2.  Rename this Audio Source something descriptive, like “Bird_1”.

3.  Assign the SFX_Bird_1 sound as the Audio Resource of the source, then make sure to set the Spatial Blend to 1.0 (full 3D).

4.  To avoid the bird sound playing immediately as the scene loads, disable the Play on Awake property.

5.  Select Add Component, then search for and add a component named “Play Sound at Random Intervals”. 

We've provided this simple script so that you can play an audio clip at random time intervals. If you want, adjust the properties to change the minimum and maximum seconds.

6.  Enter Play mode to hear the bird chirping at random intervals. 

7.  Duplicate this Audio Source for additional birds. Rename each Audio Source accordingly (for example, “Bird_2”, “Bird_3”, etc.), and position them at different points around the exterior of the kitchen.

8.  For each new bird sound source, choose a different bird chirping sound to vary the soundscape.

9.  Enter Play mode to appreciate the level of immersion that is added to the scene with this natural-sounding ambient audio.

10.  Save your scene.

Congratulations on enriching your kitchen scene with immersive audio. From the subtle boiling pot on the stove to the serene background music and the lively chirping of birds outside, each audio element you've added plays a crucial role in bringing your scene to life.

Here are some of the things you learned how to do along the way:

Explain the purpose of an Audio Listener.

Add a source of sound in the scene with an Audio Source component.

Explain the difference between 2D and 3D (spatialized) audio.

Change 2D audio into 3D sound for realistic spatial effects.

Layer different types of audio to create a rich soundscape.


Proceed to the next tutorial, which includes optional challenges to further develop your skills, explore new concepts, and improve your project. 

Create an immersive soundscape

1. Mission overview

2. Open the kitchen scene and enter Play mode

3. Add a pot to the stove

4. Add a boiling sound

5. Make it a 3D Audio Source

6. Add background music

7. Add random bird sounds outside

8. Review and proceed to next tutorial

Complete this tutorial