KVR Audio

pekbro · Post by **pekbro** » Fri May 29, 2026 7:12 pm

Damn! Look at all this experience around here, we should be working on a community video or something. Sheesh.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Fri May 29, 2026 11:08 pm

Why? I have plenty of work to do on things that actually matter to me. We couldn't even find time to make a video clip for our last single and I want to make damned sure we get one done for the next one (once we decide which one it will be.)

pekbro · Post by **pekbro** » Fri May 29, 2026 11:54 pm

I was just kidding tbh.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Sat May 30, 2026 12:51 am

Tiles wrote: Fri May 29, 2026 6:25 amSigh. That for the "I've won, so I'll stop answering" attitude. Didn't last too long.

You are being far too German. Rules are made to be broken, they are there to help newbies and amateurs. When you know what you're doing they can, and often should, be thrown out the window.

Look at 3ds Max: it is notorious for its bad usability because it grew over decades without a proper UI overhaul.

Notorious where? Pretty much every business where we were able to displace Maya with Max, mostly gaming houses, one of the big things the artists liked about Max was the UX. For me, personally, 3DS Max sets the bar, it is the best thought-out software application I have ever encountered and not just by a little bit, either. Things like the Quad Menus make it so fast and intuitive, nothing else comes close. It's also had at least two massive GUI overhauls in the last 20 years, as well as several code re-writes from the ground up. You don't manage to stay so firmly on top for 30 years without doing the basics right. Even Techradar agrees with me - "Maya is a hugely advanced tool. As a result, its interface is far less user-friendly than 3ds Max."

You are repeatedly falling victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect, confusing grey with low contrast and inefficiency with expertise.

Umm, no I'm not. You can look at any and all of my customised colour schemes and you'll notice that if the background is dark, then the foreground colours are all mid-range to keep the contrast low. Even when the background is a good mid-grey, I'll never use pure white for text or anything else. It's just not necessary in a low-light room for maintaining readability. Again, stop being so German.

As for your Blender screen, it looks like a toy and would be no less useful/readable in greyscale. To be fair, though, I'm not the biggest fan of Blender's UX. I need to find some time to sit down and work out a better way of setting it up so I can see more stuff without having to constantly switch modes. Too much is hidden by default, a bit like Cinema 4D (which I absolutely f**king hate using). OTOH, Max allows you to have a huge amount of settings/features visible all the time in nice, tidy panels with a hugely consistent look/layout. And because it is Windows only, it leverages the OS like no other application I have ever used, which adds to its slickness.

TechHaus · Post by **TechHaus** » Sat May 30, 2026 1:25 am

Gosh, I always forget how much I love Blender now. I used to be like WTF is this a couple of years ago. I should be making music but y'all have me messing around in here.

I'm not a heavy modeling guy, though. More mograph.

Tiles · Post by **Tiles** » Sat May 30, 2026 5:35 am

Well, I simply knew you wouldn't stop. You've completely boxed yourself in here. So much for the “I'll stop here” moment.

And once again, you are demonstrating a remarkable confidence in concepts you clearly do not fully understand. "Rules are made to be broken" is probably the funniest thing you've written in this entire discussion. You can’t claim to be “breaking rules” if you don’t actually understand them.

We're not talking about arbitrary rules invented for beginners. We're talking about human perception and cognition.

Fitts' Law does not stop working because someone becomes a professional. It describes the relationship between distance, target size and movement time in interaction design. It is about measurable interaction cost, not experience level.

Visual hierarchy and contrast are not optional for experts. They directly affect readability and search efficiency at all skill levels. And contrast is not the same as brightness.

Recognition over recall does not stop working because someone learned a few hotkeys.

And so on.

These are not controversial opinions, as you seem to believe. They are standard UX principles.

If your argument is that professionals compensate for poor discoverability, weak hierarchy and unnecessary interaction costs through muscle memory, then you are no longer arguing for good UX, but for users adapting to bad UX. That is exactly the pattern throughout this discussion: you shift between “this is good UX” and “UX doesn’t matter because professionals learn it anyway” depending on the example.

You can't have it both ways.

At this point I’m not going to keep re-explaining the same distinctions. The relevant principles are well covered in UX literature and established research.

eLawnMust · Post by **eLawnMust** » Sat May 30, 2026 5:51 am

3DS Max quite popular back in the day, I still got 4.2 on a machine with the very first finalRender Stage-0 which was one of the fastest/best render engines for Max (And later C4D)... The good side for Max was all the plugs & scripts with so many game oriented, also Max was pretty good as far as 'viewport chugging' or framerate especially on the old grim machines (XSI was the best for framerate) so many an artist made some pretty good stuff with it even way back...

Yes, there were quad menus & other doo-dads that came along that really made modeling sail like Orionflame & the Polytools thing many of these bought & integrated within Max later on...

However the right-side MCP very slender & scroll up down certainly a throw-over from the 90's... With Maya when advancing thru one can eliminate practically the whole GUI & just use the HotBox & Marking Menus to do most everything.... Scripts for Maya were more powerful that those for Max... A script in Maya often was like a plugin for Max, also Maya had Artisan Tools & Paint Effects which was so cool... Painting program in a 3D space which later like in Maya 7 you could turn the strokes into 3D meshes... So Maya had it's own paint system for models just like C4D had BodyPaint for it's own paint & also Nichimen Mirai had it's own 2D-3D paint... Nendo as well but very simple-rudimentary but still better than that 'thing' in trueSpace for painting...

starflakeprj · Post by **starflakeprj** » Sat May 30, 2026 8:38 am

Krita, Affinity, Inkscape and GIMP have been mentioned in this thread, but I can't see a mention about PixiEditor. I found out about it just a few months ago, but it seems to have been around a little longer than that.

It features pixel art tools, raster and vector editing, layers, animation, custom brushes, palettes, and a node-based workflow for procedural graphics.

https://pixieditor.net/

Seems quite cool, but I haven't actually tested it out yet.

eLawnMust · Post by **eLawnMust** » Sat May 30, 2026 10:33 am

That thing looks like old 'Nodewerks' just updated... Been alot of those thru the years with many freewares... Strange it's being called a 'nodal graphic editor' but really is a 'nodal texture generator'...

Here's old WoodWorkshop, a freebie from now gone Spiral Graphics-

https://web.archive.org/web/20160325114 ... _Setup.exe

Perhaps good to use for an album with a 'wooden' performance...

Or how about the worst 3D painter ever made? For spectacle of course, it actually may be better than the 3D painter 'feature' in trueSpace-

https://web.archive.org/web/20040410045 ... der.co.uk/

Shabdahbriah · Post by **Shabdahbriah** » Sat May 30, 2026 12:28 pm

starflakeprj wrote: Sat May 30, 2026 8:38 am Krita, Affinity, Inkscape and GIMP have been mentioned in this thread, but I can't see a mention about PixiEditor. I found out about it just a few months ago, but it seems to have been around a little longer than that.[...]

Been using this (as well as their photo stuff) for ages... maybe close to 20 years, even. All of their stuff has really well done, flexible and intuitive menu's (IMO).

Not free, but currently $16.00

https://nevercenter.com/pixelmash/

TechHaus · Post by **TechHaus** » Sat May 30, 2026 1:11 pm

Since I don't think it was mentioned yet, I use Photopea from time to time - PS clone in a browser (ad supported).

eLawnMust · Post by **eLawnMust** » Sat May 30, 2026 5:07 pm

Doesn't matter what one uses but clever thought into what you make does... Many are going retro these days or seeing retro bloom out, so some Bryce2 renders might be the thing... Here's Peshay with 4 million views & 148,000 likes & all it contains are Bryce2 renders-

While not music oriented Phil McNally's 'Pump Action' is quite good & clever... Done in C4D XL6 in 2000-

pekbro · Post by **pekbro** » Sat May 30, 2026 5:12 pm

lol how do you have all that stuff? I have a copy of nendo, but I lost the key for it years ago.
I've got the entire adobe suite on an old macbook pro that still works, that's it.

I have early versions of lightwave, but it's dongle hasn't worked in years. Sentinal doesn't
even exist anymore.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Sat May 30, 2026 5:43 pm

I frankly don't see how anything could beat the free Affinity v3 apps, in terms of value for... no money.

eLawnMust · Post by **eLawnMust** » Sat May 30, 2026 11:31 pm

pekbro wrote: Sat May 30, 2026 5:12 pm lol how do you have all that stuff? I have a copy of nendo, but I lost the key for it years ago.
I've got the entire adobe suite on an old macbook pro that still works, that's it.

I have early versions of lightwave, but it's dongle hasn't worked in years. Sentinal doesn't
even exist anymore.

Izware has been gone since 2019... Even then they never sold any Mirai since first acquiring but did update Nendo & sell that till like 2006 or so...

Some machines I bought on Ebay had some soft on it, also Ebay a great source for soft itself since it's old it's considered 'obsolete', it's a trip to get CD versions with all the fanfare on the cheep... There's also always stuff planted on archive.organism as well... I am an XP user so old works quite well on my 12-13 machines... Noticed recently many Reason 2.5-3.0 on Ebay... These are still 800x600 rez compatible so good for the old netbooks 1000x600... Starting with Reason 4 no go because they added the stupid 'device wings'...

BUTT!!... Back to art crap... I still recommend ChaSys Draw IES which now has a name change... It is bloatless but very capable-

https://www.jpchacha.com/chasysphoto/

Making music artwork. Alternatives to Adobe?