KnobMan, the VSTGUI AnimationKnob bitmap generator

[g200kg]

g200kg- I LOVE Skinman. I love Knobman even more. I've even made (read tweaked other peoples) knobs myself. I haven't nearly dug into Skinman the way I need to. I d/l'd the update. Do I need to uninstall the old version first. I seem to remember this not being able to install, it ran independantly. I ended up with 2 version of Knobman and the new one always wanted to load files from the old copy. If I'm correct, I can just delete the old copy and put the new copies in, yes?
Happy new year
-O-

hi, thank you for using knobman/skinman
recent knobman release by .msi is supposed to directly overwrite the old version.
i always carefully update knobman/skinman as compatible to old data.
usually you dont need to take care of the old versions.

The only exception is:
obviously wrong parameter processing is found or something.
in this case, i may make a change that cause a different result by same data.

[centurion999]

@g200kg

little little gui bug 1.32

test

open knob
add new layer
select visibilesolo in new layer
delete new layer
the main window preview, render or test are not up-to-date

[ddsl]

At first, the Inkscape document size should be adjust to 256 x 256 pix. Then the document rectangle will match to the KnobMan Shape rectangle. (Leaving aside that the position edit function may be needed anyway.)

Yes, it works.

But still small bug in svg import : two points created in start (or end) of shape.

thanks.

[Hlis93]

I was cleaning out folders this evening and I realized that I had saved all the versions of knobman since V07 if I read it correctly. I would have to say I have well over a thousand panel elements made with this program. g200kg you are the man!

Now to sort through everything and see if I can upload it all some where .

[Shabdahbriah]

Finally d/l-ing/donating to this...

Thank you very much!!!

[Art60]

Hi all !
I'd first wish to thank g200kg again for his wonderful software, it really makes nice knobs, I couldn't have done without !

Then I would submit a trick for VB6 programmers like me who may only use BMP pictures, so no alpha, backcolor is defined at knob design time.
I didn't want to write complex and may be lengthy procs to draw PNG knobs in my app, so here is the idea:

1) Create knobs and export them as tiled images in a PNG.
2) Imbed them in your RES file (it takes much less space than BMP, too ) as CUSTOM, not BITMAP.

Now, when your app runs, for every knob you need :

3) If <ImageFileName>.BMP exists in your Img subdir, go to step 6
4) Extract data from RES with LoadResData and save as a Img\TMP.PNG
5) Launch IrfanView in command line mode to convert to BMP (i_view32 Img\TMP.PNG /convert=Img\<ImageFileName>.BMP)
6) Do a LoadPicture from your Img\ImageFileName.BMP to a CreateCompatibleDC handle

When user wishes to change background color, just do this:

7) save 24bit RGB value to i_view32.ini file, section [others], item Background=xxxxx
8 ) delete every concerned image from your Img subdir (you may want to regenerate only some of the knobs you use)
9) call step 3 to 6
10) refresh concerned knobs

Of course, you need to ship IrfanView with your app, but I read it can be used without any installation.

No you've called me a fool, please tell me how to do this without IrfanView, and better, how to do this, not for a single background color, but with a background picture

SeeYa !
Arthur.

[mystran]

Actually, there's a better way to handle that even if you don't want to support PNG natively. All you need to do is load the PNG into your favourite graphics application and save it as a BMP with black background. Then store the alpha channel separately into another grayscale BMP (matte).

Now load these two like you'd normally load them into offscreen bitmaps, and create another offscreen bitmap with RGBA format, copy (say BitBLT) the picture into that new bitmap and then copy the black&white matte into the alpha channel (I'm afraid you have to do that manually as I can't find a nice Win32 function that would do it for you, and we need the alpha channel in the same bitmap because I can't find a nice Win32 function that would deal with a separate matte either.. but since you can do this for the whole strip once, and then keep the bitmap as long as the program is running it doesn't really matter). Since the original image was stored on black background, the combined result is already "premultiplied" and you can then use AlphaBlend to copy it on top of whatever other stuff you might possibly have drawn already.

[Art60]

Hi mystran,

Thank you for your advice.
Never heard yet about RGBA DCs, neither AlphaBlend.
I'm new to graphics programming, the only function I use is BitBlt with vbSrcCopy param.
So if this is possible with VB6, so I think it would be very interesting because I could use a background image, a SkinMan one, for example.
Thank you for your hints, I'll dig this way.
++
Regards,
Arthur.

[mystran]

Well, to be honest I have no idea about VB6 specifically, but I'm under the impression that you should be able to access most of GDI so there shouldn't be much of a problem.

I'd actually try writing a proof of concept for you (to make sure I'm not telling you to do something that isn't actually possible), but unfortunately I don't have access to VB6.

[g200kg]

ver 1.33 released
http://www.g200kg.com/en/software/knobman.html

* Support scripting by various language including Python
* Plugin 'Monochrome' added. (need python).
* BugFix: Screen is not updated on delete a VisibleSoloed layer.
* BugFix: Start/End point is doubled on .svg import

Now, scripting by Python is available.

[asseca]

Thanks for the new update

A question, it appears that knobman no longer embeds a PNG image inside a .KNOB file, but some other format. This seems to be the case for all v1.30 and higher .KNOB files.

Unfortunately I don't use the shell because it generates a thumb database files all over the place, but instead use IrfanView for viewing thumbnails, IrfanView does not support this new image format inside the .KNOB files.

Is there any method I can use IrfanView's thumbviewer again for the .KNOB files ?

Also is there any special reason the text inside the .KNOB file has been changed from ANSI to UniCode ?

[g200kg]

Thanks for the new update

A question, it appears that knobman no longer embeds a PNG image inside a .KNOB file, but some other format. This seems to be the case for all v1.30 and higher .KNOB files.

Unfortunately I don't use the shell because it generates a thumb database files all over the place, but instead use IrfanView for viewing thumbnails, IrfanView does not support this new image format inside the .KNOB files.

Is there any method I can use IrfanView's thumbviewer again for the .KNOB files ?

Also is there any special reason the text inside the .KNOB file has been changed from ANSI to UniCode ?

new knob format is almost same as png but a little different from png just for avoiding IE misrecognize. probably needed a development of special IrfanView plugin. (I would try to get a specification of IrfanView plugin)

about Unicode...
Yes I changed encoding to unicode. that allows mixlanguaged knob and worldwide knob data sharing

[asseca]

Thanks for the new update

A question, it appears that knobman no longer embeds a PNG image inside a .KNOB file, but some other format. This seems to be the case for all v1.30 and higher .KNOB files.

Unfortunately I don't use the shell because it generates a thumb database files all over the place, but instead use IrfanView for viewing thumbnails, IrfanView does not support this new image format inside the .KNOB files.

Is there any method I can use IrfanView's thumbviewer again for the .KNOB files ?

Also is there any special reason the text inside the .KNOB file has been changed from ANSI to UniCode ?

new knob format is almost same as png but a little different from png just for avoiding IE misrecognize. probably needed a development of special IrfanView plugin. (I would try to get a specification of IrfanView plugin)

about Unicode...
Yes I changed encoding to unicode. that allows mixlanguaged knob and worldwide knob data sharing

Thanks for the info

I would appreciate if it is in any way possible to creat an IrfanView plugin

Any idea which text editor allows editing of unicode ?? (otherwise maybe the option to revert back to ANSI, I shall probably never need unicode)

[Art60]

Any idea which text editor allows editing of unicode ?? (otherwise maybe the option to revert back to ANSI, I shall probably never need unicode)

AFAIK, Notepad (in my XP machine) does it well, simply ask it to Save as... and scroll down Encoding combo to either of ANSI / Unicode / Unicode big endian / UTF-8 .

HTH

[asseca]

Any idea which text editor allows editing of unicode ?? (otherwise maybe the option to revert back to ANSI, I shall probably never need unicode)

AFAIK, Notepad (in my XP machine) does it well, simply ask it to Save as... and scroll down Encoding combo to either of ANSI / Unicode / Unicode big endian / UTF-8.

Nope doesn't work: after saving with notepad, Knobman won't open the file any more.

In the pre-v1.30 versions I could edit the .KNOB file in Notepad++, and Knobman would still open it ... even though I have to re-save with Knobman to fix the PNG-thumb-image