Oatmeal (mediocre free VSTi) - 37-4 (fixed Renoise problem)

[Fuzzpilz]

Oatmeal can't really do FM, no. You can make FM-like waveforms in the editor, and using the sine shaper will also sound FM-ish, but it doesn't actually do FM.

I have'nt got that message on my screen, but after i have pushed randomize a few times my pc hangs & a hard reboot is the only way to make my computer usable again.
I don't know why this happens, but my guess is that i have secured my comnputer from netsend commands & other stuff.

That's really strange - since you haven't seen the silly pop-ups (which appear only when randomizing, with a fairly low probability, to break it up a little), perhaps this is somehow connected to them? If you don't mind, I could send you a version of Oatmeal that does some debug logging later; that way we could see where it hangs.

[D-Fusion]

Oatmeal can't really do FM, no. You can make FM-like waveforms in the editor, and using the sine shaper will also sound FM-ish, but it doesn't actually do FM.

I have'nt got that message on my screen, but after i have pushed randomize a few times my pc hangs & a hard reboot is the only way to make my computer usable again.
I don't know why this happens, but my guess is that i have secured my comnputer from netsend commands & other stuff.

That's really strange - since you haven't seen the silly pop-ups (which appear only when randomizing, with a fairly low probability, to break it up a little), perhaps this is somehow connected to them? If you don't mind, I could send you a version of Oatmeal that does some debug logging later; that way we could see where it hangs.

Yes that would be nice Fuzz
PM Sent:

[untitled211]

is there any way to reduce the size of this last skin to the default size?, can we do something on an image editor ? .. its looks very good at it is on my normal screen ,.. but on an older screen (low resolution) i prefer the default size of this plugin .. thanks.

[ezeeboogie]

is there any way to reduce the size of this last skin to the default size?, can we do something on an image editor ? .. its looks very good at it is on my normal screen ,.. but on an older screen (low resolution) i prefer the default size of this plugin .. thanks.

Yes it's possible, but it's far too much work for me to even contemplate! The "easy" part would be to rescale all the graphics, all 49 of them. The hard part would be rewriting the oms file and plotting the new coordinates for every control (something I spent many, many hours doing for the current "Nord" skin). Also you will find the text will become unreadable in places, some of it is 8/9pt text which is pretty much as small as you can use and still be able to read it.

If you still want to take the task on, be my guest! You have my permission to use the graphics in any way you wish.

[Majken]

ezee: Isn't it kind of funny how one never wants to touch another oms file after having just made one skin where knobs and buttons were changed and moved?

And still, skinning the new effectplugin really does seem attractive somehow

/Majken

[ezeeboogie]

Yea more than being visually pleasing, Ezeeboogie's skin makes Oatmeal finally *usable*. It has become my "reference skin" (Thanks for improving colors & layout btw).

I think it brilliantly demonstrates the whole idea that a GUI is tremendously important, not only to bring useless eye-candy stuff but to make a tool much more easily *accessible*, more appealing to spend hours with.

Glad you liked it!

[ezeeboogie]

ezee: Isn't it kind of funny how one never wants to touch another oms file after having just made one skin where knobs and buttons were changed and moved?

And still, skinning the new effectplugin really does seem attractive somehow

/Majken

Too true, too true!

By the way if anyone wants to create skins using the ezee nord skin as a template, feel free! You all have my permission to do whatever you want with my skinning files and oms file. If anyone needs any help with working out which graphics relate to which controls just PM me and I'll try to help as much as I can.

I think a Majken GUI based on my layout would be pretty damn cool! Hint, hint...

[D-Fusion]

Oatmeal can't really do FM, no. You can make FM-like waveforms in the editor, and using the sine shaper will also sound FM-ish, but it doesn't actually do FM.

I have'nt got that message on my screen, but after i have pushed randomize a few times my pc hangs & a hard reboot is the only way to make my computer usable again.
I don't know why this happens, but my guess is that i have secured my comnputer from netsend commands & other stuff.

That's really strange - since you haven't seen the silly pop-ups (which appear only when randomizing, with a fairly low probability, to break it up a little), perhaps this is somehow connected to them? If you don't mind, I could send you a version of Oatmeal that does some debug logging later; that way we could see where it hangs.

Thanks for your quick reply Fuzz
The problem is solved (Check your E-Mail for more info).

[grymmjack]

is there any way to reduce the size of this last skin to the default size?, can we do something on an image editor ? .. its looks very good at it is on my normal screen ,.. but on an older screen (low resolution) i prefer the default size of this plugin .. thanks.

Yes it's possible, but it's far too much work for me to even contemplate! The "easy" part would be to rescale all the graphics, all 49 of them. The hard part would be rewriting the oms file and plotting the new coordinates for every control (something I spent many, many hours doing for the current "Nord" skin). Also you will find the text will become unreadable in places, some of it is 8/9pt text which is pretty much as small as you can use and still be able to read it.

If you still want to take the task on, be my guest! You have my permission to use the graphics in any way you wish.

Dunno how you design your skins, ezee, but one trick I use in photoshop is to copy a flattened artwork layer of a control (say a pot with all that is in the full stacked animation) and then apply layer blending style of "color" to it make it contrast against the bg, and take it's opacity down to about 50%. Then here's the beauty part. You can overlay this "ghost" control over your background just where you want it. Hit CTRL-T, (transform), and set the origin point to the top left corner. When you do this, PS status gives you read out of exact X/Y distance from the top left corner of the underlying bitmap. So with this process, you simply open up notepad, and jot down the names and X|Y coords of your controls very quickly.. moving the tranformed/XY readout ghost control over each one by one until it is done. You get pixel perfect precision with no hours of frustration. This works in photoshop like a dream come true I use the trick extensively. This trick works also with alphablending if you have a shadow in your animated stack it will cover the shadow part too. Since the ghost control is see through and of a contrasting color, you can quickly align them perfectly with the nudge (arrows and shift-arrows) tools as well as your mouse.

Another trick is to create a layer comp of your full UI, then another with just the background showing (no controls), and then you can toggle between the full/bare bg versions with ease for export/slicing/whatever/however you work

If you don't use photoshop, this trick may still be doable. I know that it's possible in PSP. I think the GIMP also would let you fill in a flattened piece of art while maintaining it's transparency (in PS this is called locking transparency and once enabled you just use the regular old raster fill tool or backspace/alt-backspace to fill the layer boundary - anything that's not transparent gets affected), so I'm sure this advice can transcend PS if you don't use that to something else.

[Charlie]

I did a similar thing with the mondrian skin. Using Fireworks, all the knobs etc where placed onto the background and then I clicked on each control to get the coordinates for the OMS file. Quick but it was trickier because I had to mentally remember what each knob was supposed to do!! A lot of work for an experimental skin!

[Burnie]

Hello, i updated the pack again, with the new .png file from Ezeeboogie, in a separate folder named "ezeeskin2nord special", with a .txt file to explain what to do with it... You will find it in the skin folder, of course.
I made a .fxb and an .omb bank with 55 previous "random" patches, and removed "my" extra presets folder... So it is easily usable now.
I joined a readme file to explain how to change skin (oms or png).

I have a little question : why many patches that i made with the magic "random" button do not work anymore ? Has someone the same problem ?
Anyway, all the patches in "my" bank work fine...

As usual, the pack is here:
http://lesitedeburnie.free.fr/Oatmeal-35.5-05042006.rar

[ezeeboogie]

Dunno how you design your skins, ezee, but one trick I use in photoshop is to copy a flattened artwork layer of a control (say a pot with all that is in the full stacked animation) and then apply layer blending style of "color" to it make it contrast against the bg, and take it's opacity down to about 50%. Then here's the beauty part. You can overlay this "ghost" control over your background just where you want it. Hit CTRL-T, (transform), and set the origin point to the top left corner. When you do this, PS status gives you read out of exact X/Y distance from the top left corner of the underlying bitmap. So with this process, you simply open up notepad, and jot down the names and X|Y coords of your controls very quickly.. moving the tranformed/XY readout ghost control over each one by one until it is done. You get pixel perfect precision with no hours of frustration. This works in photoshop like a dream come true I use the trick extensively. This trick works also with alphablending if you have a shadow in your animated stack it will cover the shadow part too. Since the ghost control is see through and of a contrasting color, you can quickly align them perfectly with the nudge (arrows and shift-arrows) tools as well as your mouse.

Another trick is to create a layer comp of your full UI, then another with just the background showing (no controls), and then you can toggle between the full/bare bg versions with ease for export/slicing/whatever/however you work

Thanks for the advice but it seems more involving than my current method. I simply place my mouse curser on the upper left pixel of where I'd like my control and make note of it's xy coordinates from the info page.

I know it's not that hard to do really but I can't be bothered at the minute! I just spent every spare minute I had in the last few days creating the new skin, I want to do something else!

Anyway, where's your skin grymmjack? We all knows you gots da skillzz!

[rocketman5]

I have built an Excel macro that will automatically rescale the oms files to whatever percentage of the original you want. It works but it takes a bit of knowledge of Excel (as well as Excel itself ) in order to get it to run. I am almost done with a standalone version that will work as an .exe in Windows.

[Paul Eye]

Who has a spare bit of web space to host my new skin? It's complete now, it just requires a kind person to host it! If you can host it PM me your email and I'll send you the zip.

Hmm...I have a bug report:
It seems like you've accidentally swapped the labels for the XY Pad and Mod Envelope targets. Clicking the labels to scroll through the targets, in both targets Cut1 (C1) comes first, followed by Cut2 (C2) and Resonance (FR). Then when the XY Pad target is set to the next target (Filter Env Mod) the label shows A1 which is the next target (Amp 1) in line for the Mod Envelope. And vice versa the next Mod Envelope target shows FE which is the next target (Filter Env Mod) in line for the XY Pad.
Time for a fewrite of the .oms file?

[ezeeboogie]

I'm not at home at the minute so I can't check. I will check later tonight and correct the error.