what tools for GUI design (artwork)?

[ZooTooK]

I use MS Paint, Open Office Draw, GIMP and xRes.
All free... OO Draw for vector graphics, GIMP for effects and Paint for fast pixel edits. GIMP is really nice but lacks good vector graphics.

(xRes is a dead product from MacroMedia I'v got from a cover CD Art Magazine 6 years ago)

I tried Blender a bit but the learning curve is steep!

[multree]

my Photoshop CS upgrade arrived yesterday...

[multree]

btw before I forget it... I opened a forum for GUI designers

sorry for plugging so shamelessly

[VariKusBrainZ]

Im just getting into this lark but Im using Dogwaffle and and Winimages FX. Will also be using Truespace and Zbrush as soon as Ive figured them out.

[Spe3D]

btw before I forget it... I opened a forum for GUI designers

sorry for plugging so shamelessly

I got a whole site - or will have soon

http://audioshots.net

And that is my last post about it at k-v-r

Best Regards

Spe3d

:O)

[stevescallion]

Well, here's my two cents. I use Illustrator and Photoshop for everything I do (okay, 99%). I have used both since the first versions were written, and have a lot of practice, so I don't use grids very much. But on these plugs, grid programs can help a lot in the layout. A time saver for sure. A lot of effects I do may look like Photoshop, but are actually illustrator, taking advantage of the smoothing effect created by jpegs. Many precise details may be achieved, and if the color scheme is right, it blends just enough to look like part of the design, and not an afterthought. The neat thing is with vector art, you can slide it freely anywhere without it occupying an obtrusive, memory-hogging layer like paint programs create. Not to mention, you get lots of undos with vector programs. And it all is going to become a jpeg anyway, so it doesn't matter how you get there. Just my personal way of working. I hope this helps in some way...

Check out the art examples here:
http://www2.arkansas.net/~scallion/

Steve scallion
Syndicated illustrator

[texture]

I personally wouldn't use JPEG's for VSTs. Simply because you lose edge definition with JPEGs, and it screws the colours. This becomes very apparrent if you slice the image prior to use - the slices become visible due to the colour inaccuracy.
JPEGs are much better suited to photographs and other complex graphics destined for the web that actually really need to be compressed, in the same way that I would never use mp3 for anything other than the web, or for a memory limited device.

[nBeat]

Actually i'd love to hear fron the Northernbeat guys... what do you use for these ultracool skins ?

'Tick

Hehe, well BT, NorthernBeat is just one guy. Me !
...and I use Photoshop Pro 6.

[stevescallion]

So, texture, what kind of file do you use if not jpeg? Gif? Please explain...

steve

[Spe3D]

.bmp is the other option.

I still say Vector programs as in XaraX friggin great and finish in Photoshop too (nice option to export and slice - at the end - and all those layers - yey :O)

Best regards,

Spe3d

:O)

[amoebe]

For quality's sake most bitmaps are .bpm. At least the vst's I dissected were. If you want to cut down the filesize you can use 8 bit bmp's but usually it's 24. I guess filesize isn't much of an issue to musicians. They're used to the huge wav and mp3 filesize.

[stevescallion]

Bitmap, huh? Okay, no prob. I'll want to stick with 24 tho, as it seems the gradients would suffer at 8 bits. What do you think?

steve

[amoebe]

Everybody does gradients. Try to do one without!
Actually I was amazed when I found 8 bit bmp's in a GUI. It was SFZ+ from rgc:audio. It had me force to do 8 bit as well when I skinned that one.

[tk421]

For 3-D I like Animation Master. (www.hash.com) It is mostly for character animation, but has plenty of good tools that could be used for GUI design. It is pretty inexpensive, $300. It is kind of the FL Studio of the world of animation software.