Unity and FMOD Studio integration

Edit 12 June 2014: This post was based on the very first FMOD Unity integration from fall 2013. There's been changes and the project file should probably be updated. Please (also) check some more recent tutorials.

There's finally an official FMOD Studio integration for Unity, available from http://www.fmod.org/download/. It has just been released and contains no Unity examples, so I prepared a bare bones Unity project and an example FMOD Studio project that you can download from here https://www.dropbox.com/s/vyk29kyhmvm22dc/part6_sound.zip

The main reason to use this is that it enables your sound designers to edit, mix and master your game audio using the FMOD Studio interface while the game is running. Using FMOD studio, you can also create, e.g., a footstep sound event that will randomize the pitch and selected sound sample without the game having to know anything else than the name of the event. Using FMOD is free for non-commercial purposes and the license prices are also pretty reasonable for commercial work.

Most commercial games with decent sound design use such live mixing and centralized sound management approach, either using FMOD, WWise or some custom tools. Unity does use fmod for its own sound, but it does not provide any mixing tools and a sound designer will go insane if he/she has to manage hundreds of sound objects in the Unity editor. The main limitation of the FMOD Studio integration is that it only supports iOS, Android, Windows, Mac but no web player. If you want your sounds to work in the web player, I suggest you check out the Clockstone Audio Toolkit that provides mixing and management on top of Unity's internal sound system.

Here are the steps you need to add FMOD Studio support to your Unity project. These instructions can also be found in the readme.txt of the .zip above.

1. Import the fmodstudio10203.unitypackage from this folder. You can also check for a later version from fmod.org. To import in Unity editor, select Assets/Import Package/Custom package.
2. build your FMOD banks (File/Build)
3. In Unity, select FMOD/Refresh Event List and select the GUIDs.txt from your FMOD project's Build folder. Note: you need to do this whenever you rebuild the FMOD project. This will create FMODAssets and StreamingAssets folders in the Unity project and copy the FMOD banks to the StreamingAssets folder.
4. When your scene starts, load a bank (see the Start() method in main.cs)
5. Use the FMOD_StudioSystem helpers such as PlayOneShot() to play sound. See the OnGUI() method of main.cs. You might also have to use the lower level API (fmod.cs, fmodstudio.cs), as the unity integration package has been released very recently. The integration package doesn't contain any examples, and for example code, you should consult the c++ examples in the FMOD Studio API install, which you  can download from fmod.org.
6. To enable live mixing using FMOD Studio, uncomment the first line of FMOD_StudioSystem.cs, found in the plugins/FMOD folder. Also check the "Run in background" checkbox in Unity Editor. You'll find that by selecting Edit/project settings/player and then selecting the Resolution and Presentation panel in the Inspector. Now press play in unity, select File/Connect to game in FMOD Studio and click ok. You can now adjust audio event properties on the fly while the game is running.