XT Resources:(Skins)

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theres a tiny bit of .jpg noise but i didnt want to go too contrasty TBH ...

slainte :ud: rob
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slight amendment to the mute / solo icons for unpHussy (heehee ... they were a little TOO contrasty for the rest of the skin having worked with it a while) ...

... link and screenshot duly updated (page 81) ...

slainte :oops: rob
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I'm liking Darkstar's XP Graphite! I could go for a little more contrast in the piano roll.
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@MRT,
I can understand, but if I make the lanes for the white notes too light, then the notes themselves are less easy to see.

This might help though:
in the Main window:
- right-click, Options, select "Skin" in the drop-down list,
- select "Grid" in the Category drop-down list,
- select "gr-col-low" in the Items list,
- double-click on the Colour 81,84,96,
- click Files >> Save As, and enter a new file name to save your modified version

HTH
DarkStar, ... Interesting, if true
Inspired by ...
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pHz wrote:slight amendment to the mute / solo icons for unpHussy (heehee ... they were a little TOO contrasty for the rest of the skin having worked with it a while) ...

... link and screenshot duly updated (page 81) ...

slainte :oops: rob
I was going to point that out as well ;-)

This skin has some übercool ideas, but the lack of contrast in the grid makes it practically unusable - telling audio & MIDI cables as well as dark keys and midi notes apart is very hard. There's also some nastiness going on with envelope track headers, try activating an envelope track to see what I mean.

It's also very fuzzy, I wonder what software you use?

I like sPHere a lot more, but that's a true top skin in many regards.

P.S. I'm beginning to think I need to make a flat skin next time to get comments from you :hihi:
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pHz wrote:as a visual artist by profession what i find cool is that i think were now seeing 'mature' skin builders for eXT starting to develop 'house styles' as we all get more familliar with the skinning engine and our own philosophies of design ...
Do I count as mature :hyper:

This is a good thing, anyway, both for those who use skins and for us (that is if I'm one of this House of Philosophic Designers).

Recycling elements plays also big part, at least here :hihi:
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Minor update to "Elementor-a-tek_deep"...added transparency on the power button...
http://asseca.com/wiki/Skins/Elementor-a-tekDeep

I made another variant of elementor...nothing spectacular...simple lines...simple colors...

Elementor-dark-desert:
Image

Get it at:
http://asseca.com/wiki/Skins/Elementor-dark-desert
[-'/_-O-_\'-]
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.jon wrote:
pHz wrote:slight amendment to the mute / solo icons for unpHussy (heehee ... they were a little TOO contrasty for the rest of the skin having worked with it a while) ...
... link and screenshot duly updated (page 81) ...
slainte :oops: rob
I was going to point that out as well ;-)
heehee ... beat you to it for once ... that and the stuff below basically come from the fact that this one isnt really finished ... as i said it came out of throwing some ideas around and im not sure how much time ill have to work on it for a week or two so thought id pull the old release-it-and-let-users-test-it-rather-than-spend-ages-myself-working-the-bugs-out trick ...
.jon wrote:This skin has some übercool ideas, but the lack of contrast in the grid makes it practically unusable - telling audio & MIDI cables as well as dark keys and midi notes apart is very hard.
yeah ... those bits need some work ... as it stands the greys were thrown in there as a guide really ... but you already know i dont like too much contrast in those areas anyway ...
.jon wrote:There's also some nastiness going on with envelope track headers, try activating an envelope track to see what I mean.
OUFFF !!! ... missed that ... hmmmnnn ... thats going to be a pig to solve since adding the transparency back in there to tidy things up will balls up the text entry boxes in the MIDI part editor issue ... me and my bloody rounded buttons and values again ...
.jon wrote:It's also very fuzzy, I wonder what software you use?
photoshop for the most part ... im not currently a vector type of guy i guess (you use xara no ??? ) apart from the shape tools in photoshop ... but it might be something i need to look at when i get some time over the summer ... the fuzziness is partly really there (i wanted things kind of soft) and partly due to the tonal range ive used i think ... some psychovisual stuff going on maybe ???
.jon wrote:I like sPHere a lot more, but that's a true top skin in many regards.
yeah ... spHere took by far the longest ive ever spent on a skin but its still not QUITE there as far as im concerned ... i find bits of it still a little TOO 3D and a bit too cartoonish (if that makes any sense ??? ) ...
.jon wrote:P.S. I'm beginning to think I need to make a flat skin next time to get comments from you :hihi:
heehee ... TBH i have downloaded and tried the muted version of evolution but didnt comment since all the criticisms i have are purely subjective and aesthetic ... cant fault the technical qualities at all ... but if you want my observations ...

> nice colour combination with the grey / blue / orange (but a bit too much tonal contrast for my liking)

> the 'white' of the menus is a bit too strong i think (expecially if you have a sampler comp open)

> i find the bevels too deep ... especially when they pile up (like on a window group header with buttons on the 'top' of that) ... how about having the default button state 'flush' with its background (rather than raised above it) and 'pushing' it depresses it into the background as currently happens so youre only dealing with one level of bevel overall ???

> use the orange rather than the blue for highlighted data ???

> why a round play button when the others are square (nothing wrong with this TBH and i know why i might do it but just curious) ???

... as ever ... none of this meant negatively ...

slainte :) rob
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one of you B.A. (badass) design pimps needs to go help aciddose on the gui for xhipsynth.

branis, .jon, EkleipSiS, pHz...

you guys should go pro, you could design stuff for a living.
FREE MUSIC NO MONEY DOWN
http://joeyhoney.blogspot.com/
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bengeorge wrote:one of you B.A. (badass) design pimps needs to go help aciddose on the gui for xhipsynth.

branis, .jon, EkleipSiS, pHz...

you guys should go pro, you could design stuff for a living.
humm...i dont consider mylself pro enough to earn cash with this...the only skins i made was for XT...but i agree its a lot of work...and all for free...
[-'/_-O-_\'-]
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heehee ... me neither ... i only really do it ...

a - for a laugh

b - to keep my eye in with photoshop in case any of my students ask me about it

c - im one of those people who just likes 'making' stuff

... having said that i do occasionally think about offering some GUI help to plugin devs as the chance to do something 'ground-up' rather than skinning an existing structure as we do with eXT / tracktion ... did some of my own back in my distant SE dev days but they were VERY crude in some respects ...

slainte ;) rob
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EkleipSiS wrote: I made another variant of elementor...nothing spectacular...simple lines...simple colors...
I think that is quite spectacular, I love the colours :o very clear and clean. The main mixer is one of the most usable so far! Style is well in control thru the skin. Your grid is reversed, however, and the white texts are maybe a bit too bright, but overall this has to be one of my favourites.
pHz wrote:release-it-and-let-users-test-it-rather-than-spend-ages-myself-working -the-bugs-out trick ...
:lol: well here I am as volunteered beta tester
yeah ... those bits need some work ... as it stands the greys were thrown in there as a guide really ... but you already know i dont like too much contrast in those areas anyway ...
Don't you think that would be where all the action is? Of course this depends on the workflow, but I tend to work with half the time on 4-bar (or longer) chord progressions, where contrast really help things as I'm zoomed out quite far, or then zoomed in on 64ths for IDM drum micro-editing... and same thing, it's important to have lots of contrast to see notes at once.
OUFFF !!! ... missed that ... hmmmnnn ... thats going to be a pig to solve since adding the transparency back in there to tidy things up will balls up the text entry boxes in the MIDI part editor issue ... me and my bloody rounded buttons and values again ...
I appreciate your efforts in that area, I sort of gave up on transparency tricks until Cyborg Emperor Aase releases the Powers of Alphapng on us. Thanks to your tips, I managed to clean up some elements, but anything more resulted is jaggedness supreme :(
photoshop for the most part ... im not currently a vector type of guy i guess (you use xara no ??? ) apart from the shape tools in photoshop ... but it might be something i need to look at when i get some time over the summer ... the fuzziness is partly really there (i wanted things kind of soft) and partly due to the tonal range ive used i think ... some psychovisual stuff going on maybe ???
The softness looks great on those main area icons. The aliasing in this skin might come from the transparency, and use of angled lines actually. Restricting shapes to full pixel dimensions sometimes helps too. There is probably not that much difference in bmp export quality between PS and Xara, but pngs preserve the sharpness better, and workflow... let's just say that PS is a photo editor and Xara designed ground up to working with editable shapes.

Please do keep working with spHere, I agree with you on the weaknesses, but in general it's so just harmonic :love:
heehee ... TBH i have downloaded and tried the muted version of evolution but didnt comment since all the criticisms i have are purely subjective and aesthetic ... cant fault the technical qualities at all ... but if you want my observations ...
Thank you. I'm actually very satisfied with the technical side, so purely subjective and esthetic views mean more to me at this stage :)
> nice colour combination with the grey / blue / orange (but a bit too much tonal contrast for my liking)


Very standard colours IMO... almost clicheed, but I wanted this one cheerful and sort of neutral. Of course there's too much contrast for you :hihi: I had no doubts about that.
> the 'white' of the menus is a bit too strong i think (expecially if you have a sampler comp open)
Good point, thanks, will adjust. I should look at the sampler more often, I can't use it myself because it always crashes eXT for some odd reason.
> i find the bevels too deep ... especially when they pile up (like on a window group header with buttons on the 'top' of that) ... how about having the default button state 'flush' with its background (rather than raised above it) and 'pushing' it depresses it into the background as currently happens so youre only dealing with one level of bevel overall ???
The bevels are almost as flat as they can be (on buttons, the transport controls are deeper), but that is an interesting idea, I'll try it!
> use the orange rather than the blue for highlighted data ???
Yeah, just couldn't make up my mind, IMO doesn't make too much difference as they are quite even in saturation.
> why a round play button when the others are square (nothing wrong with this TBH and i know why i might do it but just curious) ???
I have no idea why :hihi: t'was just an experiment tbh.

Thanks again. Next skin will be flat, I need to focus on colours for a while instead of fake 3d.

.jon
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time for me to do a fake 3D skin then ?!?

slainte ;) rob
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bengeorge wrote:one of you B.A. (badass) design pimps needs to go help aciddose on the gui for xhipsynth.

branis, .jon, EkleipSiS, pHz...

you guys should go pro, you could design stuff for a living.
Thanks for the support, bengeorge. I am sort of serious with learning GUI design, but I only just started and still like a year of self-learning away from offering my "services" to any devs. Not in it for the money, I just enjoy learning new things that involve creativity and technical know-how, to keep my brains in fit.

There's a tough bunch with mad skills, guys like grymmjack, amoebe and northernbeat, that have raised the bar quite high... and some devs like krakli and arcDev push things forward while coding! But yes, I am fascinated with the creative possibilities and challenges involved in designing graphic interfaces, and I'm currently even learning SE (slowly :lol: ) in order to learn more. And a skin for Fuzzpils's Charsiesis will be ready this month, as a proof of concept for a full Oatmeal skin.

xhip is not that bad really? Simple with nice colours, and the synth itself is still in development. Ok there are some things that could work a lot better, but they go down to control types, not just the graphics.

.jon
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time for a long-held opinion to surface (although some KVR members will know my almost obsession with this already) ... but there really ought to be somewhere at KVR (maybe a sticky thread in the DSP / dev area rather than a whole forum) that some of us can discuss the theory and practice of GUI design since theres WAY more to it than nice shapes and colours and a site like KVR ought to be at the cutting edge of ideas on this subject ...

... no ???

slainte :?: rob
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