KVR Audio

Vectorman · Post by **Vectorman** » Fri Jul 03, 2015 9:56 pm

Only on KVR could I enter a thread gathering my thoughts about the influence of GUI appearance and end up knocked off on a tangent with disturbing yet exotic images of getting nekkid with a green-skinned alien popping into my head.

MarlaPodolski · Post by **MarlaPodolski** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 5:56 pm

chk071 wrote:Actually I like how Windows 10 looks. I wasn't sure when I first saw it, but it has something. Looks simple and elegant, sort of like the new Android versions.

Since you brought it up, Windows 7 has the beautiful and stylish Aero look that is truly classy.

Windows 8 and 10 went to the ugly flat pastel look. So ugly in fact that if I can't get rid of it on Windows 10 I'll make the huge switch to APPLE and NEVER come back. Either that or I stick with Win 7 until no longer able ... or ... Windows finally gets its graphic design act back together .

Windows 8 and 10 ugly and NO CLASS. I'm truly disgusted!

arkmabat · Post by **arkmabat** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 6:21 pm

Less is more. Look at Facebook's new logo. Or even the Valhalla reverbs.

arkmabat · Post by **arkmabat** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 6:22 pm

Vectorman wrote:Only on KVR could I enter a thread gathering my thoughts about the influence of GUI appearance and end up knocked off on a tangent with disturbing yet exotic images of getting nekkid with a green-skinned alien popping into my head.

Eh, sorry about that. I need to be respectful and not post late at night.

HoRNet · Post by **HoRNet** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 7:30 pm

Robmobius wrote: Hornet - New filter and Chorus.

Well i have to thank you for tgis because every UI of our plug in is designer by me

i guess sometime i'm more inspired than other times

Saverio
Hornetplugins.com

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 8:59 pm

arkmabat wrote:Less is more. ... Or even the Valhalla reverbs.

I'm thinking the reverb is actually just a delay.

Big Tick · Post by **Big Tick** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 9:28 pm

Kriminal wrote:Devs should make all products totally skinable.
There are really good free progs for making skins/knobs/images
Everyones a winner.

Not really. Rhino for example is fully skinable. You can move everything around, change the sizes, replace faders with knobs, ...

Did any users come up with a new skin to deal with high resolution monitors ?
No. However this is the most frequent complaint I hear.

Kriminal · Post by **Kriminal** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 10:11 pm

Big Tick wrote:
Kriminal wrote:Devs should make all products totally skinable.
There are really good free progs for making skins/knobs/images
Everyones a winner.
Not really. Rhino for example is fully skinable. You can move everything around, change the sizes, replace faders with knobs, ...

Did any users come up with a new skin to deal with high resolution monitors ?
No. However this is the most frequent complaint I hear.

Again, i was being sarcastic.

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 10:32 pm

For Xhip I've just implemented a system by which you can scale all the coordinates applied by the "skinning" system (as it is now, internal only) with the only remaining issue being code in the GUI I'm currently using that manually created widgets rather than using the "widget factory" (a function you call with parameters which acts on your behalf) and bitmap scaling.

Scaling bitmaps of course will remain the single most important aspect of all this. I'm considering moving back to generating the bitmaps as best I can (fonts, backgrounds) and living with whatever the nearest size of widget (knob/switch/etc) is.

Almost fully resizable "skin". (Click for full res.)

I'm feeling now that I've part-way implemented this, that this is absolutely the ideal way to implement skinning. If someone says "I like that skin ____, but it isn't big enough", no problem!

(edited url because imgur deleted the original.)

Kriminal · Post by **Kriminal** » Sun Jul 05, 2015 5:41 am

Apart from the awful colours, its a very usable skin. Well laid out and good size knobs/text...on my phone anyway.

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Sun Jul 05, 2015 6:27 am

The colors are just a background setting, you can fill that with anything you like. The RGBK (red, green, blue, black) setting just demonstrates the contrast of the other elements best. I use it when testing.

The cool thing though is the fact that given enough software-drawn elements on the GUI, it is possible to be fully scalable. Meanwhile it is still possible to use bitmaps in appropriate sizes by picking the nearest size smaller or equal to the exact size.

For example in this setting (150% the usual) the knobs which are usually 33 pixels need to be 150%, or 49.5 pixels. So the code looks for the nearest sized knob less than or equal, which I've generated a special 49 pixel version (with 99 frames as opposed to 65) to satisfy. Otherwise it would continue using the existing 33px 65fs knob.

Some trouble I've run into is when the background bitmaps need to be resized... sizing up always looks bad. There are remaining issues of course no matter what you do. If all the graphics were drawn directly the quality would be lower... although not in this case because they are so simple, I could recreate them perfectly with my own code.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_scaling

One option might be to only size downward with a good quality filter.

In any case, a nearest or lanczos upsampling applied to bitmaps couldn't really hurt if there are none near the desired size. In which case better quality would simply require a proper size bitmap be provided as part of the extended skin resources.

This isn't really very complex, and I think this would be the best way to handle sizing issues with skins.

Robmobius · Post by **Robmobius** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 12:13 am

HoRNet wrote:
Robmobius wrote: Hornet - New filter and Chorus.
Well i have to thank you for tgis because every UI of our plug in is designer by me i guess sometime i'm more inspired than other times

Saverio
Hornetplugins.com

Nice one mate... I think they look cool. Nice subtle use of gradients merged with a sleek design design.

trimph1 · Post by **trimph1** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 5:12 am

Vectorman wrote:Only on KVR could I enter a thread gathering my thoughts about the influence of GUI appearance and end up knocked off on a tangent with disturbing yet exotic images of getting nekkid with a green-skinned alien popping into my head.

That is one aspect of KvR that I love. We can go off on a weird tangent in no time....

Synth appearance