KVR Audio

WOK · Post by **WOK** » Tue Mar 08, 2011 9:37 am

satYatunes wrote: Anyway, which white bulb are you talking about?

On the knobs.
Should be more like this:

satYatunes · Post by **satYatunes** » Tue Mar 08, 2011 10:27 am

hmm... that's a nice design but it would've been made it more shiny which I didn't want... I wanted to keep it subtle...

Is there any trick to keep the lines (meter) around the knob more cleaner?

brok landers · Post by **brok landers** » Tue Mar 08, 2011 1:00 pm

satYatunes wrote:
brok landers wrote: now why do i know these knobs... ?
but the white bulb on the coloured surface (which makes it shine) is wrong - it has to be bigger and has to reach to the upper border of the coloured plate...
I'm sure you must have seen similar knobs, they're on almost half the plugins. Most notably Sonar mixer/plugin. I tried a few different designs but settled for this one as it looks pretty good on the background. Anyway, which white bulb are you talking about? On the silver skin? I think you're talking about metal lighting option in skinman. Am I right? Yes I did use that but kept it at very minimum, as it changes the perspective and shadowing was also getting all screwed up.

nono... they strongly look like some slightly editied versions of knobs i did and put up on a knobman thread for download here on kvr...

don't worry, that's what they were there for - for public uses. i apologize if you _really_ did them from scratch, but they are _extremly_ similar. i can upload them if you want, so you can see... you'd judge the same, i'm sure. but again, they were there for absoluteley free download and use, i'm actually happy that some devs do...

now about the shiny thing:
it's not the metal option in knobman. it's a seperate masked circle layer, deformed and transparented with a fade to the lower area... you have to make it bigger, so that the upper edge of this shape hits the edge of the underlaying layer, the border of thatone. otherwise the while knob looks like not evenly "bowed"... understand?
i'm back in town at the weekend, i can upload the "original" versions of these knobs then, so you can see what i mean... your knobs could maybe benefit from that small edit...

satYatunes · Post by **satYatunes** » Wed Mar 09, 2011 8:32 pm

Hey Brok, I'm sorry if it turned out to be similar to your knob. It was not my intention at all.

I can definitely take some help from you on some other knobs/skins that I'm working on right now. Firstly, could you please answer my question regarding the lines around the knob. It doesn't look very clear to me. Look at the lines on the speed/fine tune knobs on the pitcher plugin on the previous page. It looks very clear.

Hlis93 · Post by **Hlis93** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 3:54 pm

Keep in mind it just a bunch of circles and variation in color. At some point we end up even repeating ourselves and others as well, there is only so much that can be done at a certain point if you think about it.

justin3am · Post by **justin3am** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 6:35 pm

Wow! Jonathan, it's good to see you posting around here again! I just sent you a PM.

Kriminal · Post by **Kriminal** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 7:06 pm

hi JS, i emailed you a few times but no reply, glad you're still around tho

satYatunes · Post by **satYatunes** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 8:32 pm

Hlis93 wrote:Keep in mind it just a bunch of circles and variation in color. At some point we end up even repeating ourselves and others as well, there is only so much that can be done at a certain point if you think about it.

I agree with you totally... I'm working on a skin for Poise at the moment and must have created 4 different types of knobs so far... still don't like it... there are so many different knobs on so many plugins it's hard to create something totally different yet beautiful and acceptable...

Hlis93 · Post by **Hlis93** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 8:38 pm

Kriminal wrote:hi JS, i emailed you a few times but no reply, glad you're still around tho

I'm around but not active at the moment.

derkollo · Post by **derkollo** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 6:00 pm

Hi there,

specially Leslie Sanford! Your MidiToolkit was my entrance into the world of sound programming. Or to be excact: the world of midi programming!
So thanks again, for your affords on this!

I spent the last to years with programming and hope to present you a nice piece of midisequencer in the next months...

But that's not why i post here.

Since the logic of my programm becomes better every day, it is time to take a look at UIs!

And thank god, i found this topic here!

Knobman and Skinman are really great!

I just finished the skin of one of my devices used in my program:

So, what do you say? Remember, its my first real skin...
I can't say weather it is good or not. In one moment i'm damn proud of it, and in the other moment it seems to look kind of...too cheap.

Is it compact enough? Is it too compact?
Are Shadows and Effects used well...?

And... would it be offtopic if i asked about the best way to realize the actual logic of an UI here? In the Moment i have a control, with the Image as Background. Overlayed by a transparent picturebox in which are the relevent images and strings are drawn. It seems to be to much loss of time since not all regions have to be redrawn at the same time. So i think about splitting the regions into more smaller pictureboxes....
Nah...nevermind, it seems not really ontopic

My profiler will have to tell me...

So back to the skin:

The one and only important question:
Is it a skin, u could imagine to sit in front of for hours of soundprogramming?

Greetz

WOK · Post by **WOK** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 7:11 pm

derkollo wrote:So, what do you say?

I would say quite a good start. Some suggestions: Try to match the anti-aliasing/blur of the buttons to the LEDs. Decide: should it look like hardware? No "wood-knobs" then, no fancy-fonts in the color of wood (they are also not matching the digital displays). Try to make function groups on the surface with thin lines around them. Match the "cutouts" of all sliders - adapted to the displays. Watch the shadows to be all the same direction, darkness and blur (the latter also depending on their "length".

derkollo · Post by **derkollo** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:18 pm

WOK wrote: I would say quite a good start. Some suggestions: Try to match the anti-aliasing/blur of the buttons to the LEDs. Decide: should it look like hardware? No "wood-knobs" then, no fancy-fonts in the color of wood (they are also not matching the digital displays). Try to make function groups on the surface with thin lines around them. Match the "cutouts" of all sliders - adapted to the displays. Watch the shadows to be all the same direction, darkness and blur (the latter also depending on their "length".

Hi Wok and thanks for your fast reply!
But even my english is quite good, i think its not good enough rigth now...

What do you mean by blur/AA...?
Do you mean the combination of diffusity and "hard-outlines"?
I tried to support the look of "roundness" with it...

The wood-knobs are quite experimental...
It was an idea, that came with the wood sides and the woodlabel.

With fancy font you do refer to "Devices, Patch, etc..."?
I definitly agree on that, but the wood sides and the mainlabel made out of wood, are ok. Don't you think?
May be they could be a bit optimized...

Outlining groups... yeah. That is missing! At first i thought you mean thin 1px outlines around the "objects", but you do mean a "visual seperation", right?

Shadows should all fit, but the density is not constant i think. I guess, that is what you say next. About darkness and blur...
I have to get an feeling about the corelation of shadow and the effect of it.

Ah...the outcuts for the fader. To be honest, the whole section was the last part in the middle of the night, the birds started singing allready.... ah you know what i mean.

Big thanks again for your fast replay!

I'll try to make the best out of it!

Greetz,

Kollo

Btw. it is really hard to concentrate, when u have this nice piece of UI shown in the add besides... From UA.

... it's a looong way, babe!

WOK · Post by **WOK** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 10:16 pm

derkollo wrote:What do you mean by blur/AA...?

The LEDs are "soft", the buttons have "hard" edges (increase the "Antialiasing" parameter)

With fancy font you do refer to "Devices, Patch, etc..."?

Yes.
For the wood sides: search for "seamless wood texture" in google, safe and convert to b/w bmp file and place in the "texture" folder. Also "brushed metal" pics are a good idea for the background.

... it's a looong way, babe!

Oh yeah. Sometimes I try around for hours and don't get what I want, and looking at some fine art of plugins make me think "how the heck did they do this?"
Things like this took me one week or more....

derkollo · Post by **derkollo** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 11:32 pm

WOK wrote:Things like this took me one week or more....

Wow. It was worth every minute! Really nice!
I also really do like the idea of your clockwork plugin. The visible elektric parts, and the glowing that shows up thru the name. Really great idea...
Yeah, also used in Dronos... And nice surface texture there. Hammered Metal...or whatever it is called...

Yes, you do a great job!

derkollo · Post by **derkollo** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 3:46 pm

Hehe, i was so inspired from your work, that i forgot to wrote something to the other quotes...

The LEDs are "soft", the buttons have "hard" edges (increase the "Antialiasing" parameter)

Jep, i tried to "support" the impression of 3D with a small diffusity on the LEDs... but a thin outline should be there. You are right.

Yes.
For the wood sides: search for "seamless wood texture" in google, safe and convert to b/w bmp file and place in the "texture" folder. Also "brushed metal" pics are a good idea for the background.

Ok, i'll have a look. In this case i only imported the picture into the .skin.
As texture it will have more options, i guess.
In the background i allready used the sand-texture to get a bit "roughness" to the surface...

KnobMan/SkinMan Examples