Melda 13 look

[rasmusklump]

Are we gonna be stuck with that knob shape on all plugins?

Looks horrible to me. Cheap....pixelated

+1

[MeldaProduction]

If you are talking about the outline of the knobs, that's actually intentional, it gives far better feeling of "movement", when you touch them. Don't judge a book by its cover without opening it

[DarkStar]

Are we gonna be stuck with that knob shape on all plugins?

Looks horrible to me. Cheap....pixelated

Neon has that knob appearance. Other styles have other knobs. What would you want to see? They are 3 image layers in each knob:
Image - the main knob shape,
ImageArc - the highlight arc
ImageBackground - the background for that arc.

Perhaps you can upload some suggested image layers. The knobs should be about 88x88 pixels and the Rotators 140x140.

[MeldaProduction]

Yes, folks, if you have some different knob ideas, send it over, no problem . But this is the best I was able to make and I tried many (from various other plugins), it just works the best. Anyways I resigned about trying to make a style that everyone would like long time ago . Now I often feel like I'm not really making a software for music, but more like a computer game

[mtvernon22]

Vojtech - Watching you and the Melda's team growth has been inspiring! Keep up the great work! The progress into the beta 13 is an overall improvement for the look and the sounds are still the same... "On point"!
I can only imagine the work in this to help deliver each time the best product possible and by helping to meet our ideas and requests. Thank you!
Spreading the Melda word to my different team members and friends for continued growth!
Shout out to the KVRaudio team and members as this site provides a lot of awesome information and discussion.

[_al_]

Are we gonna be stuck with that knob shape on all plugins?

Looks horrible to me. Cheap....pixelated

Neon has that knob appearance. Other styles have other knobs. What would you want to see? They are 3 image layers in each knob:
Image - the main knob shape,
ImageArc - the highlight arc
ImageBackground - the background for that arc.

Perhaps you can upload some suggested image layers. The knobs should be about 88x88 pixels and the Rotators 140x140.

Honestly, i think that type of knob is only suitable for photo-realistic GUIs.
Seeing them on that is far too much of a contrast to the rest of the plugin, which is blatantly computer generated.

Not sure if i'm explaining myself well, but the rest of the GUI just makes that one element look out of place, and a bit silly. Almost like a half-assed attempt at realism.

That said, the wood effect on the woody skin DOES look ok, because the wood is only on the borders, so the brain can easily grasp the idea that the realistic case is housing a generated display

[MeldaProduction]

Vojtech - Watching you and the Melda's team growth has been inspiring! Keep up the great work! The progress into the beta 13 is an overall improvement for the look and the sounds are still the same... "On point"!
I can only imagine the work in this to help deliver each time the best product possible and by helping to meet our ideas and requests. Thank you!
Spreading the Melda word to my different team members and friends for continued growth!
Shout out to the KVRaudio team and members as this site provides a lot of awesome information and discussion.

Thank you!

__al__ : We'll probably have to agree on disagree. It's actually a fully flat design, so for photorealistic stuff it is unusable. Anyways everyone has it's own taste, that's inevitable, so I'm probably not going to make you personally happy, but hopefully most others will be ok with that . You'll get used to it, or there's plenty of other styles. Enough of this topic, time to do more important things

[_al_]

You'll get used to it, or there's plenty of other styles.

Of course I will!
The only reason i mentioned the topic is that i remember reading somewhere that there will only be this one style? Maybe i read it wrong?

Anyway, it's not the end of the world for me. I still use Valhalla reverbs in every project, and they are literally the most disgusting plugins in my collection

[Soarer]

The GUI size is way too small and I have to manually change size in every plugin I use. Size should be set to 90% or 100%.
The new GUI looks and feels good.

Please change the default size to 100% since it is really much too small for both a laptop and a normal size monitor. The text is almost unreadable.

[Nicolaibob]

I like the NEON look But thinking it would be a nice feature if the color indicating the knob-value was a gradient, showing i.e. dark colours in the lower region values, and more light colours in the higher region values, where the values goes from 0-127 or 0-100%.

It would also be a nice feature, if the knobs (i.e. "input"/"Output") could show different colours depending on wether its value is positive or negative. I.e. show green gradient on values above 0, and a gradient orange on values below 0.

It could also be pretty cool, if one could hide all the text-values, for showing xxx.xx dB, %, Hz (Just like the "Display Locks" in MTurboComp, but instead of locking it would hide), forcing one to use ones ears instead on focusing on whether the value is an ugly ciffer "6,37 dB" or a nice "round" number For the trained user, it would also "Tighten up" on the informationoverflow on the plugins layout Just a thought.

[midi_transmission]

^^^^
The background in both areas is a "Display" and the colour is fixed in the Style. But ....

A lot better than the original neon! I enjoy the dark background at the curves/meter and the overall very balanced contrasts. Nothing sticks out too much or isn't good readable.

Most of my pain points are addressed. You can always argue about style and taste, but it's not about your most preferred style, it's about a look that does not to hinder you using it. So I would be fine with using this theme.


Just four very minor ideas:

- The bright purple overlay for the frequency range looks very nice, but it's a bit too bright/not translucent enough. It's hiding the curves a bit too much. I think a little tweak in this direction (more translucent overlay/better visible curves below it) could be beneficial.

- I would try to make the brighter red (e.g. the color used for circle around the knobs) a tiny bit darker. And also try to reduce the many used different red shades for a more consistent look (I see 3 different reds, meters, knob circle, button).

- The enabled state look for buttons could be tweaked. You have the blue one at the meters and the colored ones (link, Edit, Enable,...). I think it's not a problem for using the plugin, but from a aesthetic point this would be a thing that I tweak. I have no good idea here. Maybe a try could be just to use a not colored enable/disable look for the button.

- Have you tried to use similar matted 'neon' color shades (turquoise, purple, reddish color...) used at the graph for the red/green? I think these matted/darker neon colors you're using are very easy on the eye and look nice.

I really think this theme a bit tweaked could be a good look. Maybe Melda should build upon this for the neon theme (when Darkstar allows it).

[midi_transmission]

The theme is called neon.

With this in mind I just had the idea is to use the purple from the band-width selection in the curve as a standard color for all things that are global. And darker/matted neon colors (be easy on the eye) for all individual things, like bands, different processors (EQ, Distortion and so on).

I did a very quick and rough modification to show the direction I mean. All the color tones are not perfectly tweaked so far, but I did it quickly beside work so I had almost not time to do it. Any opinions. Please be open with your thoughts, be it negative or positive.

[DarkStar]

Has anybody observed the following behavior in MSF post new-look changes?

Say you have a modular module that contains another modular unit (like in the template). You can collapse any of the levels and reduce the object at that level to a vertical bar, which when clicked upon restores the full width of whatever is at that level.

What I've been seeing, but can't find a pattern to, is that when the device first gets loaded, the outermost modular is hidden but not represented by a vertical bar on the left. Click the Hide bar on the leftmost visible module and then (maybe, don't recall) click the vertical bar to unhide, and all the vertical bars you expect are now visible.

I've seen that (panel is collapsed, but the Collapsed button is not shown) in various plug-ins but could not work out a good way to reproduce it.

[DarkStar]

As for Neon, or my experiments with it):
(a) Knob arcs with a gradient colour? Not possible at the moment. You may have seen that the arc does not always start in the bottom-left end (have a look at any Pan or most(?) Widening knobs). The "Origin" can be set anywhere in the range; and that is a new feature in the Multiparameter Editor too. It uses a single ImageArc image in the Style. If that was a gradient colour then it would look correct in those knobs

(b) Input/Output knobs are a special case of the above - with the Origin set at 0 dB and use the same ImageArc as used for the other knobs. So again, not currently possible.

(c) Bright purple overlay (in the Band Editor)? This is hard-coded. But the colours /fill density of the curves can be changed: right-click in the Editor, in the Analyzer panel, click [Settings], select the Graphs tab and configure the desired graphs there. Save that as an Analyzer preset too.

(d) The red arcs can be made darker by changing the Highlight colour in the Style palette. That will make the Equalizer greens darker too.

(e) Button colours (blue, red, green)? The Meters button is a fixed blue in the Style; it could be changed to pick up the Highlight colour (red in this example); the other two buttons are "CaptionButtons" 9i.e. Title bar buttons) and use the style's Highlights colour (over-ridden if the "Colourization" Setting is enabled (EQs are green, Distortions are red etc). They could all be changed to 2 shades of grey, I think.

(f) Matted colours for the curves? Yep, see (c)

(g) Band-specific Knob colours? All the parameters in the Band Editor panel are only for that band (unless [link] is enabled). So they would all be the same colour. The tinted square to the left of the panel title is a reminder of which band is being edited.

But, remember, Neon is meant to be BRIGHT!

[DarkStar]

How about (v03):


And, for NIcolaiBob: