Studies: Dynamic Occlusion

Playing around with an isometric idea. This turned into exploring how to make the foreground transparent for better character visibility and control.
Which turned into this cool occlusion masking material. Which has now turned into dynamic audio occlusion. Still playing around with this idea to see where it goes.

If we walk up to the wall, we hear the obstructed beat through the wall which is heavily filtered and attenuated. When we engage the occlusion “ability” we can see through the wall and the audio occlusion is lifted as well. If the ability is left on and we walk away the occlusion visual effect will be reduced and the sound will return to occlusion/distance attenuation. If we remain close and disable the ability, the sound will return to it’s natural occlusion state.

Most of the time this seems to be done in game with supporting some kind of “listening” mechanic (ex. TLOU), which seems to be modifying the existing mix.
That’s essentially what’s happening in this first example. I didn’t have time yet to dig into modifying the occlusion system, so I’ve instead implemented this through a separate RTPC which is driving the occlusion LPF, and then a separate one for distance.

It’s functional, but really a robust implementation yet. I still want to find a better motivation for this mechanic to dig into it more, but wanted to capture this little proof of concept first.