KVR Audio

borges · Post by **borges** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 4:50 pm

very useful software. Ver 0.95 is awesome.

Thanks again g200kg

very angry mobster · Post by **very angry mobster** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 11:47 am

I just tried Knobman for the first time. It's a really useful tool! Thank you g200kg!

francesco mesa+ · Post by **francesco mesa+** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 11:51 am

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This tool really rocks, you can design your own knob very easily and quickly.
I like the interface as well and no pain for the performance: I use to "play" with few image_steps and increment them only when I'm going to render.

The only thing that I'd like to be improved is the rendering quality.

I noticed that it's quite "grainy"... especially if you use the preset layers (lines, circles and so on) or the masks.
Maybe you can find something useful at antigrain (http://www.antigrain.com/).

However... big BIG thanks for this wonderful utility.

de la Mancha · Post by **de la Mancha** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 1:04 pm

just had a 30 minute trial and I love this very useful tool, thanks! It speeds up knob creation no end and I love the masking animation, well done!

Here's a few suggestions for further improvements if it's possible

1. shadow and highlight colour selection (or reversal). the current default dark shadow and light highlight is great for knobs that rise up from the screen, but for creating elements of the knob that sink into the screen you need light shadow and dark highlight (-ve values don't do this, as they just move the light source by 180' )

2. shadow and highlight angle - the current light from top left is fine, but it wouold be nice to move the light source

3. as suggested before, a colour picker with RGB & CMYK options as well

thanks again for this great piece of work

g200kg · Post by **g200kg** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 1:09 pm

francesco mesa+ wrote:I noticed that it's quite "grainy"... especially if you use the preset layers (lines, circles and so on) or the masks.

thanks,

im not sure but do you use 128x128 as outputsize?
at first, knobman internally render primitives to 128x128 size. and next, sub sample to outputsize with anti-alias. if you set outputsize to 128x128, the primitives directly output pixel by pixel.

many people seems use 128x128 for oversampling, actual knob size is 64x64 or 32x32 or smaller i think. it will be anti-grainy if you finally output to actual knob size.

yes, this is just a excuse i know. it will be improved if internally render size is expanded (except for the performance issue). aren't there people need 256x256 outputs?

g200kg · Post by **g200kg** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 1:12 pm

de la Mancha wrote:1. shadow and highlight colour selection (or reversal).

about this, pls test the negative value for shadow density

anyway, color picker seems needed

de la Mancha · Post by **de la Mancha** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 1:47 pm

g200kg wrote:
de la Mancha wrote:1. shadow and highlight colour selection (or reversal).
about this, pls test the negative value for shadow density

anyway, color picker seems needed

yes, I did this as my first trial, but it doesn't give the results needed.

in KnobMan;
shadow - is always outside of the shape
highlight - is always inside the shape

-ve values for shadow remains outside the shape
to create a hollow instead of a knob, I would need a dark highlight top left and a light highlight bottom right (there is no shadow outside of the hollow as such)

a dark highlight would be inside the shape
a -ve shadow is still outside the shape, but 180' to the +ve shadow

with light source at top left;
example to create a knob
circle with dark shadow at 135' and light highlight at 45'

example to create a hollow
circle with dark highlight at 45' and light highlight at 135'

of course, the workaround is to use image files with the shadow and highlight already done in photoshop, but if the option could be in KnobMan, I think it would make it more flexible

thanks again

g200kg · Post by **g200kg** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 2:13 pm

de la Mancha wrote:in KnobMan;
shadow - is always outside of the shape
highlight - is always inside the shape

-ve values for shadow remains outside the shape

sorry i misreaded?

'highlight' with negative 'density' will be dark and stay top-left inside. unfortunately, the 'shadow' with negative 'density' is not so realistic (i think) but stay right-bottom and light.

isn't is you want?

de la Mancha · Post by **de la Mancha** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 2:38 pm

no, it was me misreading, sorry.

I was using -ve values of offset, not density

OK, so if I understand it now,

+/- density will change the shadow and highlight between dark and light, great, that's one of my requests taken care of

but still to get the hollow shape, you need 2 highlights (inside the circle), one dark and one light. On your example above, the -ve density shadow bottom right should really be a highlight inside the circle

Yeager · Post by **Yeager** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 6:00 pm

What a great tool !

I'm having lots of fun with this , created a lot of useable knobs in no time at all

Thanks

duncanparsons · Post by **duncanparsons** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 8:46 pm

I was having a play and tried doing a VU meter. you can find my source file here.

It designed to work with a 3:2 aspect ratio; I did it at 192x128. I tried it at 96x64, but the needle was wrong. 384x256 is fine. It's very much a software VU, and probably one I wouldn't use, but it was more an experiment in the state of the software.

From doing it [the ticks especially], I would ask if there was a way that either
i) the mask is offset by the same value as the main item,
or (better)
ii) the mask get's it's own offsets.

I realise that designing a VU isn't really the territory that this app was designed for, but the experiment showed that it could be possible without importing any third party images.

Like I said, I doubt I would use it, but if someone want's one there it is. Set it for how ever many frames you want and off you go.

g200kg, if you want to include it in the distro, do feel free [modified or not].

DSP

RPH · Post by **RPH** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 8:51 pm

I would like to suggest color animation options "from - to" to be expanded to: "from - to - end" (3 steps).
So i could set a initial setting, have the color change to some setting, then change back to the initial one.

Maybe also then have different animation curves.

de la Mancha · Post by **de la Mancha** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 8:52 pm

one more request that came to mind - could it be possible to export each layer seperately? either in photoshop format or export each layer as a png?

duncanparsons · Post by **duncanparsons** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 8:54 pm

..and can we have it export to VST?

we're a demanding bunch aren't we

I must say what an excellent tool this is, and really appreciate the hard work that is going into making it.

DSP

Leslie Sanford · Post by **Leslie Sanford** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 8:55 pm

duncanparsons wrote:I was having a play and tried doing a VU meter. you can find my source file here.

Cool.

I noticed there's a checkbox demo that comes with the app, also. I think it goes to show that this app could evolve to being more than just a knob generator. A general purpose synth widget designer would be great.

KnobMan, the VSTGUI AnimationKnob bitmap generator