Foley & Sound Effects Prompt Builder Video Layers

"Door sound" is why your sound effect came out wrong. AI audio tools do not know what a door is. They know wood, weight, force and the room it happens in. Describe those and you get a sound. Name the object and you get mush.

This builder writes the description for you. It is a Google Sheets template — open it, click Make a copy, and it is yours forever. No subscription, no sound design background needed.

The five word formula

Size · Material · Action · Force · Space

Miss one and the sound goes vague. A heavy wooden door closing firmly in a small room is a sound. A door sound is a wish. That single rule is worth the price on its own, and it works in whichever tool you use.

Works with every AI audio tool

ElevenLabs Sound Effects, Stable Audio, Adobe audio AI, Suno — or whatever launches next. The tool is one dropdown, not the whole product.

How it works

1. Open your copy of the builder
2. Fill Column D using the dropdown menus — 32 fields across 6 sections
3. Describe the sound and note where it lands in your edit
4. Five complete prompts appear instantly on the right
5. Paste into your AI audio tool of choice

The 5 prompts you get every time

• Main Sound Prompt — full structured prompt using all 32 fields
• Material and Action Brief — the five word formula applied to your specific sound
• Space and Perspective Brief — room, reverb, distance, and why you generate dry first
• Layering and Edit Brief — sub, body and transient stacked, and where to land the attack
• Library and Rights Plan — variation counts, findable naming, formats and licence checks

Space is part of the sound, not an effect

The same impact in a small room and a cathedral are two different sounds, not one sound with reverb added. The builder treats the recording space, distance, stereo image and perspective as part of the description — and tells you to generate dry where you can, because you can always add reverb later and never remove it.

Big sounds are built, not found

A cinematic impact is a sub for weight, a body for character and a transient for clarity — generated separately and stacked in your editor. The first few milliseconds decide how the whole thing reads. The Layering Brief walks through it.

The detail that separates cheap audio from good

Identical repeated footsteps are the fastest tell that a video was made carelessly. Three to five variants, rotated so no two consecutive steps match. Same for UI clicks and notifications. The builder generates variation sets by default and explains why.

30 categories covered

Impacts · whooshes · footsteps · doors · vehicles · weather · water · fire · animals · crowds · machines · UI and notifications · kitchen · office · nature and urban ambience · magic · sci fi · horror stings · comedy beats · risers · sub drops · glitches · paper · glass · metal and more — across 25 materials and 25 actions.

Also included

• Sound Presets tab — 10 ready-made setups: Reel Whoosh, Cinematic Impact, UI Click, Coffee Pour, Gravel Footsteps and more
• Sound Library tab — the one rule that fixes SFX prompts, building big sounds, making it sound real, organising a library, rights
• SFX Log tab — index every sound by category, material, variants and project so you can find it in two years
• Formula Lock — only the input column is editable, so the tool cannot break by accident

Straight about the rights

Commercial use depends on your plan tier — verify it before publishing. And note that using generated sounds in your own work and reselling a generated sound pack are two different questions with different answers. Check the terms before you build a product out of it. Keep records of your prompts and generations.

The rest of the audio set

• AI Suno Music Prompt Builder — the music bed these effects sit on top of
• AI Voiceover and Narration Prompt Builder — the narration they punctuate

Browse the AI Music and Audio Prompt Builders collection.

What you receive

Instant download. A one-page PDF with your access link — click it and your own copy saves to Google Drive. Licensed for personal and commercial use of the builder itself.

Requires a free Google account. An AI audio subscription is not included. Digital product — no physical item is shipped.