Skinning question

[Ploki]

When you do reskins of u-he products, can you also change meter mapping and response via scripts?

[drzhnn]

I can be totally wrong, but for what I know, you can only change meter 'response' by editing its graphic files. Since most animated elements in u-he plugins are represented by sequences of PNG files (each representing a single frame of animation), you can change the number of those files to affect smoothness of animation, or create your own graphics with non-linear animation. Say, you can have 10 PNG files for meter indicator going from 0 to 50% of its scale, and only 2 PNG files for the rest of the scale. The resulting animation of such meter will look... well, non-linear Hope it makes sense.

[Ploki]

it does, thanks

[Ploki]

jesus this is a lot of work... all the layering and posibilities, and the !EDITOR while powerful is also very confusing. I hope i can pull this one through lol.

[drzhnn]

Best of luck to you sir

[Ploki]

Whoa. This is overwhelming.
doing presswerk:
so, in editor I have a hard time aligning the new positioning of the elements.
issue1: some dimensions are linked together. I.e. i change Knob Ratio1, and the underlaying indicator changes size as well. This, doesn't work well for me. How do i unlink them?

issue2: link overlay
i'm working off original skin, because this is... Heavy. So doing it from scratch would mean i have no clue what i'm doing. as far as i can tell, "Link" just enabled a new LAYER? and this now layer has NO GRAPHICS but only invisible control overlays?

thanks

[drzhnn]

Sorry, can't help here. Never could figure out how to work with !EDITOR, other then just explore the available plugin parameters.

I found that starting off with a mockup makes things much faster. Personally, I use Affinity Designer to draw everything before I start working in the script file. And then I use that mockup as a map. I guess you can do something similar in the !EDITOR by assigning a mockup picture as a GRAPHIC for the ROOT pane and then start adding elements on top of it?

[Ploki]

Sorry, can't help here. Never could figure out how to work with !EDITOR, other then just explore the available plugin parameters.

I found that starting off with a mockup makes things much faster. Personally, I use Affinity Designer to draw everything before I start working in the script file. And then I use that mockup as a map. I guess you can do something similar in the !EDITOR by assigning a mockup picture as a GRAPHIC for the ROOT pane and then start adding elements on top of it?

Actually i have identical workflow, also in affinity designer.

However the problem in Presswerk is all those damn interaction and layers Link, and Edit and edit2 are separate layers...

[drzhnn]

Not sure what exactly you are asking about. The "Link" button in Presswerk's GUI allows to separate L and R channels and edit all the knobs independently for left and right channels. And you switch between channels using the "CH1" and "CH2" buttons. Now that means that for each button and knob that can be set differently for L and R channels there should be a unique parameter with unique name. And that's exactly what's happening. For example, for the "Ratio" knob on the GUI there are actually two internal Presswerk parameters: "Knob 1 Ratio" (for the left channel) and "Knob 2 Ratio" (for the right). Visually, both of these knobs are in the same place on the GUI, and it looks like it's just one knob, but in fact there are two of them, each assigned to its own Layer (via LayerMask control) and only one of them is visible at the same time (depending on which channel/Layer you are editing - CH1 or CH2). When the "Link" on the GUI is enabled, these two Ratio controls ("Knob 1 Ratio" and "Knob 2 Ratio") are linked via special control called ControlLink. Not sure how it's done in the !EDITOR though. All those things are much more obvious when you look at them in text editor.

[Ploki]

Knobs are done via Control Links (which are on another separate layer), and button links are done with Buttons with primary and mirror values.

I'm not yet sure how to assign a new layer to knob (i.e. i'd like one animation to appear only when soft-clip is enabled)

you do all your GUI scripting in text editor? it's like 500 lines lol :/

[drzhnn]

I'm not yet sure how to assign a new layer to knob (i.e. i'd like one animation to appear only when soft-clip is enabled)

You don't assign layer to a knob, you assign knob to a specific layer of a pane Pane can have multiple layers and you can assign elements to one or several layers of such pane. Then you can switch between those layers using buttons, tabs etc. And that's how you control visibility of elements. Again, don't know how it's done in !EDITOR, but for buttons there should be a way to select a client pane to control (to switch its layers).

you do all your GUI scripting in text editor? it's like 500 lines lol :/

Yes. I use Sublime Text with Python syntax highlighting. That way I can see different properties of elements more clearly. Also before everything, I go through the script and separate different blocks with empty lines, add comments, make it more readable. Fortunately, most of those things can be done in bulk, so it's rather fast. Than I comment out everything, except root pane and start adding elements one-by-one, according to the mockup. I would find an original element I want to work on, uncomment it and start making edits, constantly reloading plugin GUI to see changes. Eventually everything crashes, including host but in text editor I can undo my last edits and analyze what went wrong.

It is still a lot of work and pain but at least I can copy>paste>edit things that are similar

I didn't write all those lines, they are just copied from other parts of the script and then edited.

[Ploki]

Okay i need to look into this thanks