Unreal

Export To Unreal

This tool exports Renoise song data as a .json file to be imported into Unreal Engine 4 as a Data Table. Importing into UE4 requires a customised set of Structs to interpret the file contents into the Data Table format. Unreal doesn't allow the importing of .xml files, so songs can't be loaded into it directly from a Renoise song (.xrns). This tool extracts only the data that will be useful, though exactly what that is will change over time as the tool is developed.

Exported data includes all tracks, patterns, automation, song sequencing and tempo. There's also support for Pattern Matrix track muting, sequencer text, track/column names and track colours.

Controlling Visuals

With its new audio engine, Unreal has allowed me to experiment with using waveforms to control different aspects of a 3D scene, either through overall amplitude or just for certain frequency bands. I then started building the Export To Unreal tool to use exported Renoise song data to control the engine, experimenting with the full range of possibilities opened up when more of the creative aspects were made available.

The video to the left is a more serious, longer form experiment. The next step is to integrate these techniques with the menu options, user control and virtual reality features I built for the previous Unreal project.

Open Sound Control

I'm also coding another tool to allow direct real-time communication between Renoise and Unreal using the Open Sound Control protocol. While OSC has been available within Renoise for a long time, it's just recently begun to be implemented into Unreal Engine (version 4.23) and the current version only supports basic messages but not bundles, so I'm hoping this will be finalised in the next UE4 update.

The tools I'm creating are built upon the Renoise Scripting API, a feature introduced back in version 2.6 that allows users to code their own extensions and features with Lua, a free light-weight programming language.