Zebra 3.0 - out now

[Christian61KVR]

a separate thread for themes would be a good idea...

I got the theme editor in Zebra 3 vst (on Ableton Mac) 'working', colors for example can be changed, but how do I save them ?

any hints ?

[pdxindy]

Ok, I explained it badly and incorrectly.

I can right-click on an element and it will show a pop up menu. If I right-click on the OSC Grid, or FX Grid, I don't get a pop up menu and I can no longer select/right-click any other elements until I close and reopen the UI.

If I right-click on the FX Grid or Osc Grid, I get a popup menu. It takes maybe a second to appear. There is no issue then selecting or right clicking other elements.

I remember Urs saying something about the editor mainly working for Mac. Are you on a Windows machine? If so, maybe there's some issue there?

Besides that, what do you want to edit in the FX Grid?

[pdxindy]

a separate thread for themes would be a good idea...

I got the theme editor in Zebra 3 vst (on Ableton Mac) 'working', colors for example can be changed, but how do I save them ?

any hints ?

Right click in the white space and select "save optimized"

[DoktorTenma]

So, yes there is an editor, and it's built into the plug-in. To enable it, do the following:

• in the folder section of the preset browser, right-click "Local" and "Open in Finder/Explorer"... this should open the top preset folder
• in it, duplicate a preset or create a new file and name it "default.h2p". Make sure .h2p is the actual ending, not .txt or something
• open that file erase all its content (if you duplicated a file), then write just "!EDITOR=YES" at the top (without quotation marks)
• now unload/reload the plug-in - the editor should be enabled

However, the editor is widely undocumented. Bits and bobs about it were posted in this forum over the years.

Now, BEFORE YOU DO THIS ^^, the "correct approach" would be:

• in the themes folder (on Mac: MacHD/Library/Application Support/u-he/Themes/on Win: Plugin.data/Support/Themes or so) create a new folder "My Theme", and in it a new folder "Scripts" and a new folder "Images"
• duplicate Scripts/plugin_orig.txt and move it into My Theme/Scripts/, rename it to plug-in-name.txt (where plug-in name is, say Zebralette3 or Diva or so...)
• open the plug-in editor
• in the preferences under the cogwheel, select your new theme!

Now, when you enable the editor, right-clicking into the grey background has options to

• "save changes" -> this saves your changes to your new script file (make sure it's that, and not the _orig file)
• "check out" -> this gets you the normal plug-in editor, like use knobs and stuff
• "back to edit" -> and that gets you back into edit mode

There, you'll also find the Colour Lab and the Shape Lab which let you change, well colours and (in most cases) colours assigned to .svg files (Zebralette only, so far).

If a png graphic needs to be modified, just save a modified version with same name into the same folder structure under My Theme/Images. If you're on Mac and you just want to change Exposure/Gamma/Offset/Hue/Saturation/Luminance, after clicking anywhere, press P for the picture editor, but that may only be available in few plug-ins.

There are a gazillion of other options, and starting a Theme from scratch needs way too much explanation.

Good luck.

I would definitely recommend creating a separate theme for yourself and make sure that you have that theme selected as the default theme before making any changes to the theme.

Also, the first thing I would do after having created a duplicate of the original theme in my own theme folder and opened the editor, is to save it using the "save optimised" option. Then before doing any other changes to the theme, copy the zebra3.txt file in your theme folder to a separate file in the same folder, for example Z3Original.txt so that you have a baseline from the original theme before you have made any changes. (The original release theme is currently formatted differently from saving it this way, making it more difficult to see exactly what you have changed when comparing your themed version to the original version.) This may come in handy in the future when changes are made to Z3 which require changes to the default Z3 theme by u-he and so you have to re-apply all your changes to the new version of the theme. Having the original theme you made your changes from will then help you remember exactly what you changed say 3 months from now.

[Christian61KVR]

a separate thread for themes would be a good idea...

I got the theme editor in Zebra 3 vst (on Ableton Mac) 'working', colors for example can be changed, but how do I save them ?

any hints ?

Right click in the white space and select "save optimized"

I got it - thx a lot

[aMUSEd]

I know we may not see official NKS support as long as the future of NI is somewhat uncertain and I'm fine with that, but I value being able to control my plugins with hardware knobs as much as possible - and also being able to browse from the keyboard with previews - so I have made a NKS template and conversion of factory patches which may tide us over for now.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/7vbuc30q ... 23n9u&dl=0

The template mapping is an attempt to balance making the controls I find most useful when playing accessible while not getting into too much menu diving. If I covered every param it would be a nightmare to use. So this just has 16 user pages and even then that might be too much - a selection of modules - ctrl's etc at the top. A proper NKS export such as we get from Zebra 2 would of course only have the modules in the patch mapped, but I can't do that. I will try and improve it over time.

Updated the template and patches - found a way to squeeze most of the Comb modules functionality into the smallest number of user pages - it was bugging me!

[Urs]

We had some threads about the editor and all that before. But the thing has been vastly extended in the past 3 years.

We never really had the time to document it. Maybe we can do it with AI. Or maybe I can sit down and do a video tutorial. Dunno.

[cb8rwh]

I'm on Mac also. I tried in Bitwig and Live.

I am trying to find out are the names of the individual 'swatches' - when an FX module has been selected, but it seems like that whole section is one thing.

Don't worry, I don't want to waste anymore of people's time. Thanks for you help

Ok, I explained it badly and incorrectly.

I can right-click on an element and it will show a pop up menu. If I right-click on the OSC Grid, or FX Grid, I don't get a pop up menu and I can no longer select/right-click any other elements until I close and reopen the UI.

If I right-click on the FX Grid or Osc Grid, I get a popup menu. It takes maybe a second to appear. There is no issue then selecting or right clicking other elements.

I remember Urs saying something about the editor mainly working for Mac. Are you on a Windows machine? If so, maybe there's some issue there?

Besides that, what do you want to edit in the FX Grid?

[pdxindy]

I'm on Mac also. I tried in Bitwig and Live.

I am trying to find out are the names of the individual 'swatches' - when an FX module has been selected, but it seems like that whole section is one thing.

Don't worry, I don't want to waste anymore of people's time. Thanks for you help

It's fun... I'm figuring it out too... ask as many questions as you want!

Yeah, it seems to be one thing. If you select Grid FX, you can see the various stuff within it in the Inspector (i). Then open the SVG you want in the Shape Editor (s) and you can edit the colors.

[Teksonik]

I took a screen grab of the default and just did a negative image. To the people who need a lighter theme to satisfy their eyesight, is this background too bright?

Looks pretty reasonable to me. It's a bit lighter overall than the light Zebralette 3. For my eyes, I think anything in that range would probably be good.

Ok I'll see what I can do. Right now I'm just stumbling around trying to figure out what goes where.

[Teksonik]

It's fun... I'm figuring it out too... ask as many questions as you want!

Yes indeed it is fun. Thanks for all your help. I won't try to quote all your suggestions but I implemented some of them so far.

I settled on 6e for the Mapper grid lines and I think that works well even for the MSEG. Even though I didn't set out to do so I managed to turn the Mappers from the raspberry color which I'm not a fan of to orange except for the little bits on the bottom right. I haven't stumbled across them yet.

I did lighten up the knobs a bit although I don't know if that will make a difference for those who wanted more contrast, but I still haven't found the pointer. As you can see they are a bit darker than the new fader line color. I think the knob pointers would stand out much more if they matched.

Anyway I'm just jumping in, finding an entry and then changing the color to bright red and then seeing where that pops up on the GUI. Then I can figure out what to change it to from there. I'm not trying to say what I'm doing is better than the default but I like tweaking things to my personal tastes as I did with Z2 and Hive 2.

I think my eyes are starting to cross now so I'd better give it a rest for today. But I'll be tinkering some more because as you say it is fun. Not as much fun as making patches for Z3 but fun none the less. Thanks again for all your help.....

Z3 042226-2.png

[Urs]

A ton of work went into a clean naming convention for all that stuff in the UI. Good to see that it makes those things somewhat accessible for you guys out there, so we can't have messed up to badly.

[animula42]

Hi, congrats! Great job on the synth.

Question, is there no way to make the MSEGs free looping?

I am playing chords with looping MSEG modulating stuff and I'm automating the looping speed ... But each time I play new chords the MSEG restarts and doesn't sound continous.

Thank you.

[EvilDragon]

Voices need to die sometime. If you wanted MSEG to run forever, voices would need to also run forever, consuming your CPU constantly.

[pdxindy]

A ton of work went into a clean naming convention for all that stuff in the UI. Good to see that it makes those things somewhat accessible for you guys out there, so we can't have messed up to badly.

It's well organized and named. I'm no coder, but have still found it relatively easy to figure out.

Would it be possible for a user to add a dedicated modulation option to LFO Symmetry?