Confirmed working in Bitwig 4.4 on win7 now!
The option of proposing different UI layouts is an excellent idea Sjoerd!
Couldn't that maybe be done with some external config file?

 

regarding the gui:
my impression is that it already benefits from a simple uni-color dark background.
of course that doesn't change anything how the gui is set up, but it "feels" less busy and a bit more sorted. example where i filled all the defaults with black (i guess there must be some shading/blending going on in the plugin, because it doesn't really look like black #000000 in the end)



i'm attaching the black files, in case someone's interested

 

@DrumcodeX thanks, that'll allow anyone interested to try it out without being bothered too much by the images (which I still think are cute, btw). And you're right, there's a whole bunch of alpha blending going on.

@sowhat confirmed working - good to know! Controlling the actual layout by a config file is way beyond what VSTGUI can do (and rightly so, if you ask me), but you do raise an interesting point. In fact, in the current version it's already possible change the entire color scheme by editing a json file. It's the big-ass controller.uidesc file that sits right next to the images. Near the top of it there's a section that looks like this:

"colors": {
"color_FFFFFF00": "#FFFFFF00",
"color_363C3FFF": "#363C3FFF",
"color_8D959AFF": "#8D959AFF",
bla bla etc etc

If I were to make that look more like this:

"colors": {
"tab_header_font": "#FFFFFF00",
"tab_header_back": "#363C3FFF",
"check_box_font": "#8D959AFF",
"check_box_back": "#1B1E1FFF",
"graph_line": "#FFFFFFFF",
"graph_area": "#000000FF",
bla bla etc etc

And if I furthermore was to rename the background images from envy.png/lust.png/etc etc to "oscillator_bg", "envelope_bg", "lfo_bg" etc, that'd mean the whole thing could be easily skinned/themed by a tech-savvy user such as drumcode. As in, controlling every single color and image of the plugin, but not the actual layout. In fact I like the idea so much I'm just gonna go ahead and do it. @DrumcodeX if you re-do InfernalChix in a matching pink-ish scheme I promise you I WILL bundle it with vnext

 

Here's the themeable version: https://sjoerdvankreel.github.io/infernal-synth/.
There's over 600 tweakable colors in there but unless someone's looking to style each part (env/osc/lfo/...) individually
that cuts down to about 40 and a bit of copy-paste work. Curious to see if anyone will pick up on this.

 

@sowhat and/or anyone that might still be interested, I put up a couple of global layout ideas over here: https://sjoerdvankreel.github.io/infernal-proto/. Absolutely nothing to do with color schemes or images or whatever, it's all about "where to put which button". I came up with a couple of ideas but of course at this stage anything goes, mix/match of any prototypes or something else entirely. Any feedback greatly appreciated.

- cheers, sjoerd

 

Hi @sjoerdvankreel

I'm following this with interest (unfortunately only with one eye, I have to admit) and would actually like to fiddle around with Infernal. But I simply don't have time for this at the moment.

I'm currently working on a skin for the Novation Bass-Station VST. And thought about doing one for the V-Station afterwards, too.
Some time ago I also started with a skin for the latest version u-he ZebraCM. For some reason it ended up that I was doing a skin for Hive2 instead lol. And that Hive skin took me quite a long time to do. Means the ZebraCM is still sitting unfinished on the desktop.
So there's already quite something on the schedule when it comes to skinning. Occasionaly I want to make some music as well
And I'm far away from being an expert with all the GUI stuff. I'm not a graphics designer and have close to zero knowledge about programming. Means quite often I have to teach myself how to do certain things first. And this requires, again, time.
Not to mention there are other things in life.

Like I said, I will follow this (with at least one eye) and might show up from time to time.
Wish you all the best for your Infernal project! I think this really has potential. Especially with a such dedicated guy behind it like you are

BTW, for those who missed it:
there was a very interesting review on Infernal at BedroomProducersBlog
>> https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2023/03/08/infernalsynth/

cheers

 

@DrumcodeX Absolutely, there's more important things to life besides the digital stuff. And when "in the digital stuff", it's better to be focused on 1 or a handful of projects rather than a whole bunch of them. It's been ages since I finished a piece of music myself, but that's ok, I now have this thing going on. 1 at a time What's the whole skinning/theming stuff to you? Hobby or professional? Seems like you're pretty passionate about it.

 

@sowhat @DrumcodeX since you expressed interest in the UI redesign (everyone else welcome obviously) I thought I'd drop a *very* barebones preview of what it might look like. As you can see there's tons of stuff to be done but I'm hoping to catch feedback early. Also opened a github issue for anyone that wants to join in https://github.com/sjoerdvankreel/infernal-synth/issues/4. Kinda presumptuous I know, but this time around I'd rather be safe than sorry when it comes to the user interface.

 

Just gonna drop some screenshots every now and then. Don't say I didn't ask for user input

 

Hey Sjoerd, nice work!
From what i understand on your github, you'll also make flat versions?
- Make 3 theme presets (thinking dark-flat-seven-sins/light-flat-seven-virtues/current-3d-seven-sins)
The last screencap you posted here is supposed to be the 3d?
Cheers.

 

Thanks! And jup, that's the "3d". Bit of an overstatement obviously but it does have some fake depth and shadows. Since flat seems to be all the hype these days I'll probably do one of those, too. And of course, another version that keeps true to the original, albeit opt-in ;)

 

So, here we go again. Hoping to push this to kvr by the end of the year. If anyone sees anything you don't like please let me know. But although the ui isn't set in stone yet by now I'd be hard-pressed to make major layout changes.

 

@sowhat Here's the final default layout as well as one of the flat versions. See https://sjoerdvankreel.github.io/infernal-synth/ for every included skin. Thanks for the support.

screenshot_3d_default_voice.png
screenshot_flat_gray.png

 

Hey Sjoerd! Nice work so far!

I gave those latest versions (v1.2) a test drive inside Bitwig but the UI has become very laggy now, giving it an unpleasant feeling of unresponsiveness.
Strange thing is that I can't notice any spikes on the GPU/CPU usage. The previous versions were very smooth.

Are you using a different engine for the UI rendering now?

Cheers!

 

Last edited: Jul 17, 2023

@sowhat thanks.

>> Are you using a different engine for the UI rendering now
Jup, switched from vstgui to juce. It's still a vst3 plugin, not a juce plugin though, i just use juce's ui classes.

>> but the UI has become very laggy now
Noticed that too as i did the 2nd demo tune. I narrowed it down to a problem in the graph (re)painting. Probably just painting too often. If i disable the graphs the ui reacts smoothly like v1.1. Also there's something funny going on related to flushing internal buffers (delay lines) when swicthing presets. So, there's some fixing to do. Luckily i released the thing as preview

>> Strange thing is that I can't notice any spikes on the GPU/CPU usage
Most (all?) hosts only measure time from the audio loop, not the ui loop.

To be continued.

-cheers, Sjoerd

 

Repainting issues fixed in 1.2-preview4. I was repainting on each parameter change *including output parameters like cpu usage*. Yeah that'll kill performance. Still had to simplify a couple graphs (mostly the spectrum plot) because juce repaints on each parameter change whereas vstgui used some sort of delayed repainting which i'm not wanting to re-implement by hand. In bitwig graphs even repaint on automation changes, giving some sort of animation, which is nice. Not all hosts do this, though. @sowhat if you have the time could you give it another go? Just hoping to see if this fixes unresponsiveness for you, too.

 

The flat layout looks a lot cleaner/clearer than previous releases. Still, that's a lot of stuff on one page. I know some other VIs have the same problem, such as Surge XT.

The Audio routing and mod matrix could be moved to a second page to remove clutter.

edit -also, there needs to be an option to disable the "are you sure you want to load preset" popup

 

Last edited: Jul 23, 2023

Hey Sjoerd!
Working flawlessly now in Bitwig. Very smooth animated graphs and unresponsiveness has completely gone!
Perfect!

 

@sowhat great! Thanks for taking the time to test again.

@Psychoacoustic infernal is already a 2-page plugin (edit voice/edit global). The current setup is easy for me ui-wise because i can just drop the "edit voice" page entirely for fx mode. Are you suggesting a 3-or 4 page ui setup? Of course it'd look better, but that'd be a whole lot of clicking back and forth when designing a sound from scratch. I don't think that's great for usability.

About the "are you sure" thing, how about I keep it in place for init patch/clear patch and just drop it altogether for load preset? After all that's not something a user is likely to click by accident.