Skinning the Free Airwindows Plugins!

[Russell Grand]

Is there anyone out there who'd be interested in skinning Airwindows' fine collection of VSTs? There are a ton of them, but if someone didn't want to individualize each and every plugin, I'm assuming a general template of a simple but attractive GUI could be made and then each plug could just be tweaked as far as the different knobs and text? I honestly have no idea as I'm not a software/GUI designer - and perhaps it's too big a task, what with Chris releasing frequent updates - but I'd be very interested in hearing from those of you who are.

Everyone, please post thoughts on this. I'm hoping, if enough interest is shown, a talented individual or two will come forward to accept the challenge. What better time than while we're all stuck at home? (I'd totally do this myself if I had any talent and developer know-how!)

Thanks for reading!

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

The plugins aren't free. They cost $20, each, which is a large reduction on the previous price of $50

[Oberheim 8000]

If I know, they don't have GUI. What you see is generated by VST I think, but it is not skinable, as far as I know.

[GaryG]

Are they open source? If so then maybe someone could add guis (as dead duck did with the MDA ones).

Else you need something that can impose a gui on the plug. Some hosts do this (FL and traction I , reaper with scripts etc) or an app like mgui (if it's still around)

[Russell Grand]

The plugins aren't free. They cost $20, each, which is a large reduction on the previous price of $50

Thanks for the comment, el-bo. To be fair, I was talking about these: https://www.airwindows.com/category/free/
However, I'm guessing you're talking about Chris' Patreon? If so, then you're right! I guess the "free" heading in the page I linked to threw me off.

[Russell Grand]

If I know, they don't have GUI. What you see is generated by VST I think, but it is not skinable, as far as I know.

If true, that sucks.
Thanks for the reply, Ober.

[Russell Grand]

Are they open source? If so then maybe someone could add guis (as dead duck did with the MDA ones).

Else you need something that can impose a gui on the plug. Some hosts do this (FL and traction I , reaper with scripts etc) or an app like mgui (if it's still around)

Ah yes, like the alternate GUI for the old free Voyager synth. I believe I read somewhere that Chris' plugs are open source, but I'm not 100% on that. I'll hunt around and see if I can find out.

So at least for now...there's hope!

Cool, hopefully more people will drop by (including the dev himself) to shed a bit more light on this. Thanks, Gary!

[fese]

https://github.com/airwindows/airwindow ... er/plugins
Source code for the open source plugins. MIT license, so it means you can pretty much do whatever you want with it, even use commercially.
I’d welcome a proper GUI, I might even use some of the AW plugins then and support the case, but as it is, they are pretty much unusable to me (mostly because Cubase’s generic VST interface sucks). I only use “monitoring”, which is a good example why a proper UI is better than a generic one: instead of having a slider to switch between the different models in the search for the one you actually want, you could have a few clearly labeled switches. Much faster to setup, better UX.
But as far as I know, proper UI programming for plugins can be a tedious task.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

The plugins aren't free. They cost $20, each, which is a large reduction on the previous price of $50

Thanks for the comment, el-bo. To be fair, I was talking about these: https://www.airwindows.com/category/free/
However, I'm guessing you're talking about Chris' Patreon? If so, then you're right! I guess the "free" heading in the page I linked to threw me off.

The whole situation certainly can be confusing, which is unfortunate. Unless he has specifically decided to offer these eleven plugins for free, then I think it's business-as-usual i.e He would like us to pay for them @ $20 via Patreon, in monthly increments. And for those who aren't prepared to buy, or can't afford to buy, they can be used for free...with his blessing.

I might be wrong

[evilantal]

Chris releases the code to the plugins released as VST as open source

https://github.com/airwindows/airwindows

directtly from the associated license file:

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2018 Chris Johnson

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

[kinwie]

Will be great to see the gui version of DeHiss

[Scrubbing Monkeys]

I have created some using Mutools Mux. Even created a few strip combinations. Also stripper in Reaper could do it. I realize we are talking Cross platform but they are cool toys that deserve some gui love. I really enjoy and use the ones I did. But I really don't mind the simple slider GUI myself.

[vitocorleone123]

Tracktion has many airwindows plugins skinned. They come with it when you buy.

[wikter]

Waveform or Tracktion?

[metalifuxx]

Something like Gig Performer will let you map controls to whatever GUI you want to create within Gig Performer, with different size knobs/slider type templates for your own choosing and customization.