HIVE2 - How can I make a screen readable

[aklisiewicz]

Any way to change font colors. I simpy cannot use this product since I purchased it. I want fotns white or at least some contrast color. Tried adjust IDE but no fix.

[aaron aardvark]

Page 6 in the instruction manual shows how to make the GUI larger. Might that help? Page 55 shows how to get a different 'Skin'; that might help?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

How OCD and willing to tinker are you? As an alternative, you can make a copy of the default skin and edit the script and/or images to modify it to your liking. Here are some quick instructions as to how you might start out going about that to change the color of the labels in the oscillator section to a pure white:

1. Go to Hive.data\Support\Themes
2. Create a new folder here, call it "Hive Mod" or something
3. Go to Hive.data\Data\copy the "Images" and "Scripts" folders
4. Go back to your "Hive Mod" folder, open it up, and paste in the Images and Scripts folders

Now you've created a brand new copy of the default Hive2 skin. This will be available as a new skin option the next time you open Hive2, and will look exactly the same as the default Hive2 skin of course. Right now anyway. To change that...

...many of the fonts labels are drawn in the script. And it's relatively easy to make global color changes to the script. So...

5. Go to your Hive.data\Support\Themes\Hive Mod\Scripts folder
6. Open Hive.txt (do not ever rename this file - keep the name the same)
7. See that Colours section? That's where most of the colors are declared for the entire script. It may take some trial and error, or some snooping around in the script, but you can change most font colors here. Example, if you want to make the font color on the oscillator section pure white, you should look for this line:

COLOUR name='H2 Label Bright' rgba='96a4adff'

and you could replace it with

COLOUR name='H2 Label Bright' rgba='ffffffff'

8. Save the script
9. Completely remove any open instances and reload Hive2 in your DAW (make sure you have the Hive Mod skin selected)

Result: now you should see a pure white label in the Osc section

If you need to find what other colors a particular label uses, you can do a Find, and search for the text you're looking for. You should eventually find a line that describes the 'label property' and there's a color associated with it as shown below:

PROPERTY control='Label Filt2 Cutoff' name='colours' id='1' value='H2 Label Bright'
PROPERTY control='Label Filt2 Cutoff' name='graphics' id='0' value='none'
PROPERTY control='Label Filt2 Cutoff' name='labeltext' id='0' value='Cutoff'

That's saying for the Filter2 Cutoff parameter, use the color declared as H2 Label Bright (from above), and the text label shown on the GUI should appear as "Cutoff." Some colors are standard, so if you see 'greyA0' as the color name, that may not be declared in the script because it's baked in. In those cases, you could replace greyA0 with the name of another color like 'H2 Label Bright' if you wanted that text to be bright white.

With enough trial and error, you could change many of the colors using a similar approach. Other text may be embedded into the images themselves, at which point, you'd have to open the .png files in the "Images" subfolder in a photo editor and begin making changes there.

[aklisiewicz]

Thank you guys. The manual is horrible.
For example it says:

Default Skin
Sets the selected skin as the global default.
Try “Izmo” by Plugmon (included), which has
a very different layout


but then they do not say how to change it ?
If I have - say - 5 skins - how can I switch between them ? Do I have to restart HIVE every time ? t

I do not see any option in the SETTINGS. Do I have to do it by manipulating files ? or edit files ? it is all guess work, and instead of working with music I have to deal with this crap. I would rather see a list of skins and select.

Ireally appreciate the steps for editing the skins it seems simple. All I want is just the skin with some contrast so I can read fonts. Main problem is the PATCH LIST.

Tweaking the SIZE etc... does not help at all. I believe they use bitmap fonts and therefore it makes is even harder to read. I've had that problem with ABLETON products in the past but then they upgraded to vector fonts and now it all looks god.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

That plugmon skin is yet to be added. I think the manual is a little further ahead of the actual release version. There's a Hive update coming that's related to an upcoming motion picture release that will probably include said skin. Hopefully anyway.

[krans]

The manual is horrible.

I beg to differ.
I've gained sooo much knowledge from this and the other u-he manuals. I rather find them brilliant, not just for understanding the vst in question, but to learn about history of music gear, synthesis, sound and a lot more.

In fact there have been periods where I didn't read any books, as I was too busy reading u-he manuals. So that's actually a bit horrible. Still, I wouldn't blame u-he, though. Rather thank them for these great pdfs of wisdom.

[PieBerger]

Right-click on the interface to resize (p6 of the manual) and or select a skin (not in the manual, but it's not a big step to imagine UI appearance to be in the same menu as UI size), you don't need to restart/reload the plugin every time. If however you want a particular skin to be loaded with every new instance, you can set the Default skin in the settings menu, as described on p55 of the manual.

With respect, the problem is with you, not the synth or it's documentation. You did a silly by not demoing the product and or asking in advance about UI customisation and you bought something that is "unusable", take responsibility for your own mistakes, instead of trying to pass blame onto the product/devs.

[aklisiewicz]

It is what it is. I would expect some customization options directly from the GUI. Digging in the profiles seems to be a big waste of time. I would not say that if this is a free plugin. That would be the price to pay to freeware, but I have tons of other software (not only VST plugins) which have appropriate amount of customization. I do not complain about the look and feel but readability. An example here could be ARTURIA-Pigments which I bought recently, and I am super happy with the readability on the GUI and customization as well. Hive is far from that. I purchase software to create a music and not to fix design issues (even if I could).
People who are younger most likely might not have that problem as well as those who still use only HD screens. Designers simply forgot the word "contrast".

Now, I want to thank you all who contributed to the instructions. They seem to be clear enough.
I was expecting some simple setting i.e. LABEL_COLOR, FIELD_COLOR etc, so I can change one setting for text and have all the text in the fields changed to something bright, and the background changed to something dark.
I do not need anything else, just CONTRAST so I can read the screen.

[pdxindy]

I do not need anything else, just CONTRAST so I can read the screen.

Did you try to Izmo skin? It has more contrast but it does rearrange everything. You can switch in GUI preferences.

Most people prefer the lower contrast... as do I. But if you want the original skin but more contrast, follow FET's instructions. Maybe 2 hours time (as a beginner), you can make a version with more contrast for the text. (Make a backup of the original file and also of your edited one) Once done, you are good to go.

[Viktor [TUC]]

I do not need anything else, just CONTRAST so I can read the screen.

Have you tried the new GUI script I sent you last week?
The email contained instructions on where to copy it to.

Viktor
u-he team

[trance_lucent]

I partly agree with topicstarter. Many modern GUIs have a too low contrast, and I never understood why. This just isn't physiological: our eyesight works that way so higher contrast requires less efforts to recognize objects. My eyesight is good, and am ok with Hive 2 contrast, but I just looked at that Pigments - and its GUI is much easier to read, very comfortable for my eyes.

[THE INTRANCER]

For me, the supplied skins for Hive created more problems for me than just contrast, but as a GUI graphics artist that wasn't a problem, but more of an opportunity. So if you want contrast, this might suit you better by looking at this thread here. It adds new functionality not present in the default or third-party skins.

[Ploki]

I partly agree with topicstarter. Many modern GUIs have a too low contrast, and I never understood why. This just isn't physiological: our eyesight works that way so higher contrast requires less efforts to recognize objects. My eyesight is good, and am ok with Hive 2 contrast, but I just looked at that Pigments - and its GUI is much easier to read, very comfortable for my eyes.

Not sure but i generally prefer low-contrast GUIs.
I generally learn the layout of stuff i use a lot by heart so i don't really look much at the labels, and too much of a contrast makes my eyes hurt esp in low studio lightning.

I think the low-contrast thing has become a thing with HiDPI/Retina screens, it's simply more readable in lower contrast as opposed to low DPI.
my eyesight isn't amazing either, it's pretty shit.

[aklisiewicz]

Low contrast most likely came from APPLE and for that part I really stay away from Apple sites, Apps and products. There are other reasons as well. This is simply a trend and has nothing to do with the functionality. APPLE wants to be original and dictate new trends (whether they are useful or not). People on the other hand get brainwashed and follow the crowd. Luckily no all of them.

90% of developers is lacking basics of GUI design and functionality. They always do what they think is good, not what the majority of users likes. Then, later users simply accommodate to the new standard. Some complain, some see complaining hopeless, some just refuse to use products.

The sad part is that for me it feels like I am buying the car styled bt the constructor engineer (not a designer).

ARTURIA - Pigments is probably the best designed interface that exists and if I would vote for the worst certainly KOMPLETE KONTROL and KONTAKT would be the worst. While these products were possibly not designed by professional idiots, they were build 30 years ago and they fall apart in every aspect. In this case it is not matter of design but using suuuuper ancient technology.

In case of HIVE2 - it is very new product and while layout is not so bad, the readability is worse than terrible.
Also - if you comment - you need to ask yourself few questions:
- how old are you ?
- do you use glasses ?
- what is your screen RES ?
- what is the size of your screen ?

You you work ie.e on a laptop only then this post is not for you at all....
I used to work for many years with software development (nothing to do with music) and I can only say - I would fire 70% od GUI designers because they do not know how to do their job.
Market research is another thing. Most companies do what they think is good, without spending a penny or even doing a simple survey what the users want from GUI/IDE ? and I am not talking here about functionality and features at all. Just a look and feel.

Ableton in recent years made an extra step to make their product look really good on all kind of devices and could be good example in that aspect, that things can be done the right way. On the other hand Ableton is a perfect example of the worst customer support ever (NI has a second place).

The hardest part to swallow is the fact that many vendors do not offer any kind of DEMO. YouTubers show reviews and ZOOM to the product window to the point that one might think it looks OK. Then when it is installed, it is super tiny, does not resize, and one needs a magnifying glass to read (ie. old-fasioned raster fonts).