Architecture

The implementation of the sound system in Panda3d allows for a division of audio into two categories - Sound Effects and Music. This division is only a convenience for programmers as Panda3d allows these two audio groups to be treated individually. These differences are explained on the next page.

Basics

Loading a Sound

Loading sound is done through the AudioManager class by supplying the path to the sound file as a parameter for get_sound(). Here's an example:

PT(AudioManager) AM = AudioManager::create_AudioManager();
PT(AudioSound) mySound = AM->get_sound("path/to/sound_file.ogg") ;

These will return an object of the type AudioSound. It is necessary to put the extension in the sound filename.

Playing/Stopping a Sound

To play sounds you can do the following:

mySound->play();

To stop a sound:

mySound->stop();

Querying Sound Status

To check the status of a sound, call status():

mySound->status();

status() returns a constant depending on the status of the sound:

Example usage of this would be to stop a sound from playing only if it's currently playing.

Setting Volume

The volume can be set between 0 and 1 and will linearly scale between these.

mySound->set_volume(0.5);

Panning a Sound

You can change the balance of a sound. The range is between -1.0 to 1.0. Hard left is -1.0 and hard right is 1.0.

mySound->set_balance(-0.5);

In interactive mode, Panda3D's frame update is suspended and does not run automatically.