U-He ACE silver skin

[Cyforce]

a litte preview of an upcoming skin for the ACE...



Feedback welcome, cheers Cyforce

[Yoozer]

Style over substance, sorry. I'll pass.

No existing hardware synth I know of actually has a brushed metal front panel. The Source doesn't count. The reason is obvious; it gets filled with smudges.

The nice thing about the original is that the indicators show far better than a glowing low-contrast dot what the knob's position is. Even better would be a Zebra/Circle style knob; dark background, colored rotary, and different colors for the LFO/VCO/VCF/VCA, though I wouldn't be surprised that each knob only calls up a single set of images to flip through, so you can't use different colors for that.

The brushed metal pattern distracts and its low contrast compared to the rotaries, so the edges of the knobs aren't as obvious. The separating borders of each "module" serve no purpose - they simply make it appear cluttered. The edges of the jack inputs have low contrast compared to the background - the original had dark backgrounds and light-colored jacks for exactly that purpose - to show where to drag your mouse.

Imitating real-world controls on a screen is not always the best route to take.

[Cyforce]

Sometimes a skin isn`t build for imitating something hardware-based or something....

In this case, it`s only there for a fresh new design, which isn`t oriented one something.

[Mans]

Functional: In the original GUI contrast and color provide a clear layout. This one not so much.

Style: I'm not a fan of the brushed metal (or 'real world' surfaces in general) in GUI's. Light blue against various shades of grey doesn't really excite me much either.

[kilon]

Everything is too pale, I think you need to bring more contrast, as it is it is too tiring for the eye.

[msl]

Yep too pale, lacks contrast which is tiring for the eyes after a while. The original is quite well balanced color wise, this is not a runner imo.



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[ohmicide]

i like the original much better, reminds me of halloween

[crufty]

i never understood why every knob has to be the same color in vst interfaces

i also don't understand why there are knobs but that is a different question!

[axm311]

Originally Posted by Yoozer

Imitating real-world controls on a screen is not always the best route to take.

*cough* Arturia *cough*

Originally Posted by crufty

i also don't understand why there are knobs but that is a different question!

i think vsts should always use sliders where applicable. more ergonomic for a mouse imo

[moox]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[kilon]

Originally Posted by kilon

Everything is too pale, I think you need to bring more contrast, as it is it is too tiring for the eye.

By the way , I forgot to add , that I find your GUI very sleek, I totally dig the "Frost" design, love it, it is just too uniform in coloration.

I dont want to come accross as a "it sucks" comment, far from it. Its a lovely GUI.

[Yoozer]

Originally Posted by crufty

i never understood why every knob has to be the same color in vst interfaces

The image file for one knob is most likely one big file with all positions next to eachother; it costs quite a bit of time to create such a sequence.

i also don't understand why there are knobs but that is a different question!

The reason is good (they take less space while the fact that they're on a screen means that they can convey just as much information - a circular gauge is longer but has the same area as a rectangular one) but they've been "haptically aliased" - they behave entirely like sliders.

Turns out making a rotating gesture with a mouse (or even a rotating sweep) wasn't liked by a lot of folks. Who'd thunk it?

[Robert Randolph]

Originally Posted by Yoozer

The image file for one knob is most likely one big file with all positions next to eachother; it costs quite a bit of time to create such a sequence.

No it doesn't. You can mockup a knob and knob sequence it and having a working DLL in about 10 minutes flat. Once you've designed the knob, creating the rotations is the most trivial part of the entire design process.

I've worked on many plugins and I've yet to see it ever mentioned that creating generic UI animations were an issue.

[Yoozer]

Yes - if you do not have to care about shadows, glow effects or rotations other than a simple line to indicate the position. The image sequence is however really cheap and a good option for skinning since you don't have to use masks and anyone with MS Paint can do it; no code required.

Eyecandy is the issue, not rotating.

[Robert Randolph]

Originally Posted by Yoozer

Yes - if you do not have to care about shadows, glow effects or rotations other than a simple line to indicate the position. The image sequence is however really cheap and a good option for skinning since you don't have to use masks and anyone with MS Paint can do it; no code required.

Eyecandy is the issue, not rotating.

Glow fx, shadows, etc... no problem. I'm not sure what you're doing your knobs in, but you should use something other than mspaint

[crufty]

Originally Posted by Yoozer

The image file for one knob is most likely one big file with all positions next to eachother; it costs quite a bit of time to create such a sequence.

true

Canvas Cycle: True 8-bit Color Cycling with HTML5

[rushton]

If you made the knobs and the writing darker it would be alot easier on the eyes me thinks. Nice gui though

[Cyforce]

How said, it`s only a preview, atm are there 2 versions of it.

And yes you are right, the original gui has more contrast and a better overview. But this skin should be/was planed to be a contrast to the source gui. Some guys don`t like brushed metal backgrounds, some guys love it.

But i think we will overwork it a little bit, specially the points for more contrast for a better usablity.

Thanks for your opinions.

Cheers Cyforce