How to Build Skins and Graphics for MultiPictures

Well, now that R5 is out (I still don't have it) a lot of us are going to be working on doing skins and graphics for multipictures. So, do you want to be sit there getting one hundred pictures of a dial to rotate by half a degree, or something more useful?

I've been investigating and have found that Adobe Illustrator is a pretty good platform for building skins--because it is scriptable.

I've been using its Visual Basic scripting interface and have found--once I got a sense of procedure and the Illustrator object library--that it is pretty easy to program something to generate knobs. For example, I have a program where you specify, via constants in code, the size of your cell, the margin around your knob, the number of cells, and various colours in your set of knobs...compile, press the button, and you've got as many pictures as you like in a series of knobs that both slowly rotates the dial and changes colour to set up a position-colour correlation.

It would be easy to program sliders, etc., or any other series of transformations, for example a volume knob in which a speaker grows smaller and larger--which of course gives you fewer discrete states in a given unit area. (Rotation as far as I can figure has the highest information density (discriminable states/per unit area) for a static indicator.)

I'd recommend this approach--using a scripting language in a graphics program--for doing skins.

The open source program Gimp looks like it has a scripting language, but I haven't tried it yet.

 

Yeah, I too am big fan of Illustrator for such tasks. I hadn't tried any scripting though. . .it's a good tip, thanks.

. . . do we know yet if setting up a custom knob with multipic in R5 is handled the same way it is in R4?

-wh

 

Can you zip an illustrator file with some of that code and upload it for us?
What version of illustrator are you on?

- C

 

I guess you're talking about using Illustrator's action scripts, yeah?

Agreed, it's a good Blitzkrieg tool; I did graphic pre-press when I took a break from tattooing & once I learned how to use the actions & wrote a few dirty tricks I was blowing 15 year pre-press veterans out of the water..3 raises in 9 months..



You can use scripting as early as v8, Chris, but transparency and .png formats don't appear till v9, I believe.

 

Also, you wouldn't need an illustrator file, you'd only need to upload the actual script file, as the Illustrator file wouldn't have a script embedded in it; they need to be manually loaded.

 

CList,

Here's my VB code--uploaded in hopes of helping us all get a lot of nice skins and programs for making them. In fact, that would be a nice practice--upload your skins and code skeletons for producing skins. (Those of you Reaktor gods on the R5 list, please suggest to the NI gods that they add Core and Skin categories to the forum.)

I am using Illustrator 11. If you were to do this on a Mac you'd need to turn it into java script, or if you don't have the VB development environment in Win you'd have to turn into VB Script which has slightly different syntax, of java script. I did it in VB because it's handiest for me. But Illustrator supports a number of scripting languages.

NB: The code is using the point as the basic size unit--all object are whole points in size. There are 72 points per inch, so when you export your Illustrator file to a graphic at 72dpi you get a graphic where each 1x1 point area in your graphic is a pixel. I.e., your points turn into pixels. (Illustrator is a vector-object based program, which means you can always move your circles and lines around, etc.; you have to render/export your design to a rasterized pixel based graphic to use it in Reaktor.)

This would give you an idea of what to do. It's pretty easy.
You'll want the scripting documentation from
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/illustrator/sdk/index_scripting.html

 

yes

ciao herw

 

oh well. . . I was hoping for something like a Macromedia style frame arranger-editor, but the current system works just fine. Thanks for the info.

-wh

 

Rameau,

Thanks for the code!

.. . .but I'm curious as to what you think the real usefullness of a "skins" category would be? I'm all for tutorials on how to prep your artwork for multipic use, how to wire the multipic to function as a knob/button, and photoshop/illustrator tips for making your own skins. . .I think that would be great. . . but who would actually want someone else's button/knob skins as separte files detached from the picture and multipicture modules for anything other than educational purposes? Even if that button or knob was doing something that a standard Reaktor button/knob couldn't do, and thereby warranted use in some else's .ens, you could just steal the module direct from the .ens in question they way you would anything else.

If you make a custom button/knob/meter etc, or a custom background image, it's specific to that instrument. I certainly wouldn't be upset if someone took a custom button from one my .ens, but I'ld wonder why they just didn't use the stardard Reaktor buttons. Am I missing something here?

thanks again for the coding tip, can't wait to try it out,

wh

 

You're right to say you could just grab a module you like rather than the skin graphics.

But a skin category in the library would allow for people uploading skin-code rather than skins...and that would be more helpful than skin graphics.

Also, I don't think there's a way to export a skin graphic from a module in Reaktor. If you have the graphic itself you can manipulate it, say change the colours.

Finally, to look at skins in modules, you have to open up a number of ensembles and scrounge through them. If you had a library, esp. with thumbnails, you could browse graphically for skins to reuse, or to get ideas as to how to solve problems.

NB Giving away the code, etc., is part of my growing commitment to the idea that half the worth of Reaktor is the library of copyable and modifiable work by other Reaktorites. Reaktor isn't just the mechanics, it's the ideas of others of what you can do with Reaktor. You can learn to solve problems that you have created by looking at the creations of others. The skin library extends that...and of course enables banal reuse and copying that is the flip side of any sharing of ideas. Graphics are problems, not just pretty things: problems of how to represent information in ways that are readable, usable, pleasing.

 

Rameau wrote:

>But a skin category in the library would allow for people uploading skin-code rather than skins...and that would be more helpful than skin graphics.


Well that's true. You could put it in "Misc." right now, but it might be tough to find. Maybe if the category were just called "Graphics" or "Interface" and you could put anything there having to to do with graphics for Reaktor: tutorials, scripts, demos, etc. To me, "skins" seems kind of limiting - it makes me think of they way skins are handled for other applications (like WinAmp, for example) where people just upload and download things that change the appearance of the app, but not the functionality. You can do a lot more in Reaktor with multipic than simply replacing the knobs with a series of interactive images that function like a knob.


>Also, I don't think there's a way to export a skin graphic from a module in Reaktor. If you have the graphic itself you can manipulate it, say change the colours.


Anybody skilled enough to manipulate said images with any sort of success, should be skilled enough to make their own images IMHO. Changing the color on someones image by any means other than just appying a tint effect to the whole thing is (as I'm sure you know) not as easy as it looks. . . . those little pixels of "in between" coloration that exist for anti-aliasing purposes (on anything that isn't designed to be perfectly angular) have to be re-colored in proportion with colors they border to keep the color-swap from looking like crap. . . and that's just one example. I'm kind of glad people can't export from mulitpic, anybody who can't make their own panel graphics without using someone else's file as a guide probably shouldn't be trying to manipulate said graphics in the first place. Just use 'em as is and be glad you got a cool custom knob for free


>Finally, to look at skins in modules, you have to open up a number of ensembles and scrounge through them. If you had a library, esp. with thumbnails, you could browse graphically for skins to reuse, or to get ideas as to how to solve problems.


Again, I'm all for that kind of stuff in terms of providing inspiration for others. I think it would be great to be able to browse for inspiriation in the manner you're proposing. I remember John Nowak had a custom slider .ens in the library years ago that really blew my mind (someone else had provided the graphics, John did the wiring). . . .and I suppose that just because I personally find it distasteful in most situations to use someone else's custom knob graphics for your own creation, doesn't mean I need to go pissing all over everyone else's multipic party.


>NB Giving away the code, etc., is part of my growing commitment to the idea that half the worth of Reaktor is the library of copyable and modifiable work by other Reaktorites.


At least half, probably more. I hope I didn't give the impression that I was against sharing ideas and building off of other's work in Reaktor. . . I'm as supportive of it as anybody else.


>Reaktor isn't just the mechanics, it's the ideas of others of what you can do with Reaktor. You can learn to solve problems that you have created by looking at the creations of others.


Agreed. I especially like the panel designs in EI2 and the new R5 library. . . excellent stuff that really raises the bar.


>The skin library extends that...and of course enables banal reuse and copying that is the flip side of any sharing of ideas. Graphics are problems, not just pretty things: problems of how to represent information in ways that are readable, usable, pleasing.


This is true, but giving someone some pics detached from their original panel layout doesn't necessarily help someone else in need of design assistance with figuring out how to solve thier own visual problem. That's why I'm more in favor of tutorials that show the steps needed to achieve specific visual results, rather than just handing out skins. If you take a macro from someone else's creation, you can retrace their steps and eventually figure out how they solved that problem. . .the same is not true for someone's custom knob macro beyond seeing how that knob's look and feel fit's into the original .ens's layout and viewing the individual frames in the multipic properties.

maybe we should start a "best use of multipic" thread after R5 arrives to get the ball rolling? . . something where people can show their respects to library uploads that use custom graphics to good effect. It might help to shed some light on exactly how much good stuff (in terms of custom panel design) is already out there.

-wh

 

Nice thoughtful comments in response...approaching a topic that often seems to come up which isn't about the mechanics of Reaktor creation but its spirit or mindset...sort of the conceptual counterpart of the lego or functional instrument debate a while back.

That is a good idea but makes me think the following...we need something cross between the forum and the library. That is, there are some threads in here that go over really fundamental stuff. But these threads disappear into the past. I wish there were some way of pinning them to a bulletin board or something so that they could easily be found or be more prominent. Like a permanent Reaktor techniques subforum...but it wouldn't work if open, 'cause we'd just fill it up with back and forth. Maybe the forum moderators could curate a forum with especially relevant and important technique type discussions.

 

Just an idea: there is a plenty of portals for people, who do graphics like we do music/instruments. They have contests - my friend is regurarly taking part in them, they specify a subject and people send a lot of good stuff. No fancy awards, people still take part, because they can put it in theri portfolios, even if the awart is just a sentence "you won". Many of these people are specialists in 25x25 pixel work.

Maybe we could start a little cooperation with people like this? I'm sure my friend would be glad to have his graphics included in Reaktor ensembles. If we could have a voting system (there is one on our forum, right?), this could work. These people would need a space to upload their multipictures, user lib would be best, everybody from us could use it and would use it, because many R users just visit the lib. These graphic designers would need an user lib login without right to download ensembles (that's for register R users), and... here we go!

Additional award could be a job for NI, since NI is looking for graphics designers as well, "pixel nerds", so maybe, over time, they could do a freelance job for NI...

 

sure arturnowak, sounds great. Bring it on! ;-)

-wh

 

definatly. custom controls for the standard knobs in R5 sounds really cool, plus the new multi-displays, but the thought of making my own in scary. all my attempts at using targa files for transparency has led to a jumbled looking mess (where they look fine in .bmp). i guess if stuff like this doesnt work out ill be "borrowing" a lot of the stock R5 ones.

 

Using targa files for transparency

Tell me about it / - a while ago I pulled my hair trying to get satisfying results building a custom knob, and especially the transparency part gave me problems galore. There's a thread [thread=17327]here[/thread] that goes into detail (including some sort of tutorial) about this particular aspect, see if it clears things up a bit.