Hello everyone!

In this tutorial, I will teach you how to add and edit sound fx or music to animations.

Using sound we can add life to our work and make it more believable and immersive.

As a fun bonus, I composed a jingle for the Clip studio tips community to show you how we can animate lyrics for our favorite songs. Hope you like it :)

You can watch the video version of this tutorial here▼

These are the examples I made for the video tutorial:

First, a mixed technique animation using keyframes of a spaceship toy taking flight.▼

And here is the Clip studio tips community jingle! :D ▼

1. Working with sound files

Before we start make sure the [Timeline] palette is visible. You can activate it by going into [Window] menu > [Timeline (x)]

Also, check that "play in real-time" is turned on inside of [Animation] menu > [Playback settings] > [Play in real time].

Let's learn the basics of working with sound.

I prepared an animation as an example so I can focus on the sound functions.

If you want to learn more about animation here is an introduction ▼

Now let's add life to the animation by adding sound fx:

▼ [1] To import audio files we go to [File] menu > [Import] > [Audio].

■[1.1] Then we select our sound.

■[1.2] This will create a new audio layer or track on the [Timeline] palette with an audio clip inside.

■Note: The audio clip will be created on the selected frame so you can pre-position the start of the sound by selecting a specific frame.

The supported audio formats are 8bit & 16 bit Uncompressed Wav, Mp3 & Ogg. If some files don't work as you expected try another format.

▼ [2] Now we can work with the audio clip the same way we do to normal clips.

If we want to move the clip we can hover our mouse on the top of the clip until we see a hand icon, then we click & drag to position the clip in the timeline

▼ [2.1] If we want to trim the start or the end of the clip we can hover near the side of the clip and then click & drag.

■Note: Another way to trim the start of the audio clip is by selecting the layer with the Operation tool and then in the [Tool Property] palette we have a Start time slider.

▼ [3] We can add multiple audio files in the same audio layer as separate clips, this can be convenient for timeline organization but if we want to play them at the same time we need to create an audio layer for each file.

[3.1]To create an audio layer go to [Animation] menu > [New animation layer] > [Audio].

▼ [4] If we have multiple short sounds in the same audio file and we want to use them at different frames, we can split the audio clip.

First, we select the frame when we want the split then we right-click and select [Split clip (v)].

This will split the audio clip in the same track so we can change the timing to suit our animation.

In my example, i use it to add the SFX to the laser beam shots :)

▼ [5] We can change the volume of our audio clip in the [Tool Property] palette with the Volume slider.

By default when we change the volume it will create a keyframe but we can delete them if we want a general edit.

[5.1] To create a Fade (In or Out) or a smooth volume change just add keyframes to animate the transition between two points.

[5.2]Use the graph editor to change the way your volume changes between the points, with a linear interpolation it will change at a constant rate, and with a smooth one, we can make it ramp up or down to a certain level and then smooth out for example. Experiment to achieve different results.

2. TIP | Using the item bank

▼ [1] When we import an audio file into the timeline it will automatically register into the [Item Bank] palette.

To view the item bank first go to [Window] menu > [Item Bank]

[1.1] Inside the item bank we can see all the imported files and register files to the item bank.

If we are going to stack multiple audio files to create our ambience, a good way is to register all possible sounds we preselected by clicking the register button.

[1.2] If we select an item and then click the wrench icon we are can change the name of the file inside the item bank to help us filter the type of sound, and we can also hear the file at a specific volume before we import it.

Then we can simply drag from the item bank into the canvas to add the file.

■Note: if we have selected an audio layer it will add the file from the item bank as a new clip after the last one in the layer. We can select a normal layer or create a new audio layer if we want to stack sounds on individual layers.

3. Export with sound

After editing we need to export. To export the audio we need to create a movie file.

Go to [File] menu > [Export Animation] > [Movie] and select our format.

I choose mp4. Then set the audio quality and framerate and we are Done!

We can use these techniques to create ambient for our animations or to create a lip-sync video

4. Animating lyrics | Clip studio tips jingle

A cool way to use sound is animating our favourite songs lyrics.

For this tutorial, I created a Jingle for the clip studio community :D

Just animate each word using whatever technique you want.

If you want tips on creating editable text effects read my tutorial▼

To help me time the animation i created timeline labels in the frame each word should be, then i created the text layers and place them in the specific frame.

 

A good tip is animating a single word in another file so we can make complex animations, and then import it as a file object in the main animation▼

■Note: Make sure you disable object file draw paper from rendering options in the [Tool Property] palette to get a transparent background

Closing thoughts

Well, this is the end of the tutorial. I hope it wasn't too complex.

Try to create your animations using sound

I hope you can apply some of my tips to your own work.

The most important thing is to be creative. Please don't be afraid to try new things.

See you next time. Thank you for watching.