Starship Krupa

If you have ambitions to do Control Bar Modules, and wish to go "full bleed" with a border or whatever, there are pixels that will get cut off if you use the entire image size. Specifically, there are 2 pixels along the top, 3 at the right, and 3 at the bottom. Here's an example of modules I had to adjust to account for this. Note that my borders could be no wider than 2 pixels due to interference from the buttons, although if you don't mind shaving a pixel or 2 from your buttons, going wider is possible: Here's the background for the Custom Module, blown up a bit, with pink in the dead zone: I hope that this will save time and heartache.

Sure, you are a light theme guy. I see what you mean with Maximize waveform height, the clip names are not visible, duh. Well do I ever appreciate your telling me. It's one of those things, y'haveta go 'round and try it in modes other than what yer usedta. The difference between a good personal theme and one fit for release into the wild. (I don't drink, so I didn't notice the Speights issue) Okaaaay, let's see. All right, then. See how ye like this: Updated For Greater Track Name Legibility (color set also updated for greater visibility of measure lines)

I'm also a "Lock Module Order and" man, and I think it only works when you're using one of those two modes. When not locked, or just locked and not centered or justified, it uses the default dark chocolate background.

@Colin Nicholls: one thing I'm curious to get your opinion on is what I did with my default clip backgrounds and headers. There's a section in YLIP about clip backgrounds; it's more oriented toward light clip backgrounds, but (in service to the dark .sth) what I'm trying to do is make it so that the clip(s) I'm working on stand out as darker, hence more contrast with and focus on the waveform. I've also made the selected clip header a brighter shade of green. The one thing holding me back is that the fade curve line on selected clips is always none more black, so I can't go as dark as I would like. I like the way the unfocused clips look in Mercury. Tungsten shares that, and makes the selected clip a "duller" version of the unselected state. This has always caused me confusion when working in Tungsten (and Tungstenesque themes). It's not intuitive, in a light theme like Mercury, going to a bright white background from a very dark one is exactly what should happen, it makes it easy to distinguish them. Tungsten just has various shades of blah to distinguish muted, selected, etc. The state that's most eye-catching is unmuted/unselected. My goal was (is) to make a dark theme that would have similar distinctions. So aside from your taste in light vs. dark, whaddaya think?

See also the "random folder stats gradient" oddity that you and I have tried to hammer out. This one sounds more predictable, at least as far as what triggers it. It's funny, these issues seem to fix themselves over time. Maybe Cakewalk needs to get triggered to load a particular theme element before it completely settles down.

Trippy. I guess I've never started a theme from Mercury; I like darker themes so I usually start with Tungsten and go from there. So the bug is that no matter what changes you make, after the first save, Console Background #2 turns white? There are a few changes I would love to see in themeing in general, mostly elimination of fixed colors (as in can't be changed via Theme Editor or custom colors). The worst one I've run into is that no matter how you set it, the Clip Fade Line appears in black in selected clips. That makes it so you can't make your selected clip backgrounds completely black, as I would like to be able to do.

The flattery is most sincere. Brace yourself for more: Your themes are the most "outside the box," and inspired me to head in that direction, beyond just changing colours. Steam Punk was the one that really hipped me to the idea that there could be some whimsy and inherent fun in creating themes. What you did with the buttons in FLIGHT DECK is inspiring (the "LED indicators"). Also, of course, YLIP, without which I would never have gotten to the point where I would have created something I thought was fit for others to see. Mucho respeto.

The Theme Editor and its relationship to Cakewalk are sometimes confounding. While working on my most recent theme updates, I was trying to change a text color, followed YLIP, and the color didn't change. Restarting, changing themes, nothing would get it to take in my updated theme. So I made a note to ask Colin about it and went on working on other things. After several saves and loads to check my work, I happened to notice that somewhere in there, my text change had been accepted. If I have this right, you all are saying that if you make a change to the Punch In button art, it hoses Console Background #2? This is one of the oddest, up there with the thing where your background for the medium size Custom module gets turned into a strange tiled background for the whole Control Bar.

Being critical is good, how else would I know what elements work or don't work? The folder arrows were indeed your idea, and once I put them there, it felt "right." Unfortunately, the buttons for expanding track headers are on the right side, and when I tried that, it just made it seem backwards. Yeah, I hear ya. I spent some time mulling that, believe me. You prefer the little double triangles to one big one. In the original scheme of the UI, the doubles are what they used to denote "this opens a panel," and my themes have replaced that with single sharper ones. The drop arrows in Track Headers was the stickiest wicket in the bunch. The idea behind it is in the overall UI, the triangle/arrow says "click here to open something." I really like consistency, and the Cakewalk UI, with all of its Views and features added over the years, can be challenging in that department. In Track View and Staff View you can click on the track icon to open a synth UI, but not in Piano Roll View, that sort of thing. So going to single arrows (I tried to elongate them, make them pointier, maybe I can do more with that) seemed more consistent. Basically, from an aesthetic standpoint, I think the tiny arrows make the UI look kind of spindly or fragile. They tried to cram too much icon into too few pixels. I'll pay attention to it as I use Cakewalk and see if I can think of something. If I had more pixels to work with, I could definitely come up with something more pleasing. I set aside the idea of keeping things similar to what people were used to and went with "how would I have done this." Have you noticed how many menu buttons have the little arrow in the right hand corner vs. ones that have a larger triangle? I tried to figure out a logic for that, but it's inconsistent. I studied the UI's of other programs, particularly Ableton Live. They are very triangle-centric. It's interesting to study various programs' UI's. People get drooly over Ableton, but their buttons are inconsistent too. Turny triangles in the browser, stacked lines elsewhere, flippy triangles elsewhere. What did you think of my Markers module? Using the words on the buttons and labeling it with "Markers."

The way I do it is: download and archive the installer (if VST2 support is still available, the installer usually contains both). At first I install only the VST3. If the plug-in has problems, I install the VST2 and try that. So for me, the VST2 is just something to try if the VST3 fails. My VST3 folder is 7.5G. I don't wish to duplicate that. There are other downsides to just installing both. First, any time a host program scans for plug-ins, its scanner will take longer. If the plug-in manufacturer hasn't been diligent about giving both the VST2 and VST3 the same plug-in ID, you'll wind up with two of the same plug-in in the host's plug-in list. This can lead to a situation where you accidentally use the VST2 version, then open the project later if the VST2 gets removed from your system by a future update. Also, the VST3 will sometimes scan okay but the VST2 won't and the scanner will mark the plug-in "failed." This can happen the other way around, of course.

Smaller facelift for the racer, some color changes for visibility and updating to new EVA 01-style buttons and arrows. @Colin Nicholls, I'm especially interested to know what you think of my Explorer-style turny triangles on the folders and the changes to the Arpeggiator art. Cakewalk's arpeggiator is really powerful, but the button layout has always confused me a bit. Specifically the Latch button, by default it looks like a menu more than a button and it has the arp on/off right next to it, with a separator bar between both buttons and the label. I made a "real" button for the latch function and cut the separator bar between the text label and the arp on/off.

I'm a free cloud storage packrat. I use Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and MEGA for various things. They have different strengths; Dropbox is usually for public sharing, Google Drive is good for transferring music collaborations because their upload speeds aren't too throttled and most people have Google accounts, which makes the sharing easier. MEGA is great for backups because of the humongous amount of storage they give you. I, too would like to see a central repository for custom Cakewalk themes and color presets, but I also understand that there are issues that might come up for anyone hosting it. It is possible to put offensive content in a theme, in the wallpaper for instance.

Over the last few weeks, I've done a major overhaul of EVA 01, including panel hide and show buttons, a more coherent, flat look, and addition of another color (which I had missed from the anime that inspired the theme). Warning: due to the extensive art changes, some of the buttons and controls diverge from what you'll see in the Cakewalk documentation. Anyone savvy enough to try out custom themes shouldn't have trouble with this. This update includes a lighter, less eyeball-assaulting purple: One big thing from a usability standpoint is that I've changed the Selected Clip backgrounds to go darker for greater waveform visibility. When you click on a clip in this one, it gets sharp and contrast-y. This is a big difference from Tungsten, which has unselected clips with darker backgrounds and "greys" them when selected. This has been a source of confusion for me since I started using Cakewalk. Use of the custom color .CLR file in the Dropbox folder is recommended. That's what makes for the more visible grid lines and header names in Track View, so if you like to work to a grid, be sure to try it. Comments, critiques most welcome. If you like it, let me know, if you don't, tell me why. ?

So, if you think it's suitable, please post it! Even if I don't care for a given custom theme, they can help inspire my own efforts. I copped it from TYLIP. Sometimes I have 3 instances of Theme Editor open copying and pasting. More than 3 it starts running the risk of error. With all of the shared elements your many themes, this will be a time saver for sure. The advantage that export/import has is that the images end up being archived somewhere other than within the .STH files.

Yes, when I first unleashed Racing Green on my fellow Cakewalk users. You pointed out that the difference in colors between the area below the track headers and the area below the clips pane was "jarring." That got me to start thinking about where in the UI our eyes should want to rest, and what things should stand out so that we can spot them easily when we want them. It's like a car's dashboard for driving at night, you want things to be bright and legible when you glance down to check speed and indicators, but you don't want it to pull the eye away from the road. As you might imagine, with my next theme, which uses the colors from a giant anime robot, that theory got a real workout. My palette for EVA 01 is purple, orange, green, black and violet. My only variation from the color palette information that I found online was that I came up with a slightly brighter green to use to stand out from certain backgrounds. I'm doing a deep rework of both EVA 01 and Racing Green right now. A lot of buttons and tabs have been altered. Selected clip backgrounds have gotten as dark as I could practically get them without losing visibility of that damn coal black clip fade line. When working on projects, I've always had trouble with distinguishing between the various clip states (selected, unselected, muted, unmuted, and combinations thereof). I'm trying to make that easier.

I must admit that all this about overlays and whatnot is baffling. Themes have needed compatibility updates twice since I started publishing mine about 6 months ago. I do pretty much exactly as you say. It takes a matter of minutes to delete the non-compliant images and at that point I have a working theme, maybe with a couple of buttons that don't quite match. Maybe I can drop better placeholders in from Tungsten. It only takes me as long as updated whatever handful of images have changed to have it ready to publish. If I had a 3rd-party theme I was as attached to as much as the OP seems to be to the Logic-esque one, and couldn't work with an editing program to update the buttons, I'd probably just use it as-is with Mercury or Tungsten images. I make great use of the shortcut of opening two instances of Theme Editor and copying and pasting between them. This saves a LOT of time and effort as opposed to exporting images as .PNG or .BMP and then importing them. Works well with colors, too.

Careful, hang around in the Themes forum too long and next thing you'll find yourself spending hours with Paint.NET updating hundreds of buttons that you yourself never use in Cakewalk.

Can't see where this is used, not Media Tab (narrow no corner). Maybe used to be used when the Browser was undocked?

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That was my thinking as well. "+" means adding something, "-" means getting rid of it. As we've both remedied in our themes (I notice), having "x" be the button for deleting a take lane while it's a "-" for automation lanes....I really have to wonder about that. I have plans to experiment with Mac-style "turny triangles" as I once heard them referred to by a new Mac user. Where the convention is like Explorer, that pointing to the right ">" means "closed" and pointing down "v" means "open." Ableton use that in their browsers in Live! Cakewalk's convention says that arrows point in the direction of the resulting action. Up to fold things up, down to expand them downward, right to collapse or expand to the right, etc. It could get confusing. I've even been thinking of places where the "hamburger" or half-a-hexagram or whatever icon might be used. I just don't like those darn tiny double arrows. A downward arrow for docking options? Ugh.

This is pure speculation, but from my examination of the elements, and my experience in commercial software development, the art is often initially done by a consultant. Depending on the size of the company, they often don't have a need for a fulltime UI designer and pixel jockey. They'll call someone in to do it each time they need to update it or add features. Meldaproduction is doing this now, their next release is going to include skeuomorphic panels in some of the UI's. As for the tools, I have no theories.

I'm curious what that means to you. Some of Colin's are pretty darn pale, esp. FLIGHT DECK. There has to be some contrast. I've rejiggered my clip backgrounds for my next releases to this end. I'm very grid-y when I work, so I like to have my gridlines stand out.

Something tells me that I may have the wrong idea about what "TBD" stands for ("to be determined" or "to be documented" is how I used to use it professionally), and that you've explained it to me and I've forgotten. Apologies if I made it seem as if I thought you had missed the obvious. I plead American; as far as the English language goes, we're like The Ramones vs. your King Crimson. I made the purpleated graphic in case you wanted to use it. Yeah, not everyone's gonna be down with such a thing, I know. Maybe I should have versions where it has the double arrows. I'm just having so much fun here. There is that danger that it starts not to match the documentation, but my hope is that anyone who is far enough along to know and be able to install a custom theme doesn't need it to have an exact resemblance. Wait'll you get an eyeful of what I'm doing over in the Inspector/Arpeggiator. I'd appreciate it if you could give me anything specific on why my flippy triangles might not work, as your themes and book are my biggest inspirations. I know you won't consider it a compliment, but I never would have gone for something as weird as EVA 01 if you hadn't done Steam Punk. That's when the idea clicked that a theme could be a "theme" rather than just utilitarian. It could be humorous or whimsical or evoke a feeling. There is the issue that @Kevin Perry brought up in a different context, that things that catch the eye and aren't part of the clips pane itself may distract the eyes. There's also the issue, which I'm less concerned about, that the "I started using Cakewalk when you had to start it by flipping switches on the front panel of your computer" crew are resistant to change (especially for change's sake ?). I can go the other way, I get stimulated creatively when I can switch the look around.

I've told people to click "in the space to the left of the folder name" to open and close them because the default buttons are so hard to see.

Image ID this time. On p. 35, Track view / Folders / Open/Close Folder is listed as "TBD." I've been using this one since the last revisions of Racing Green and EVA 01. It's a side-by-side +and - sign to indicate that's where you click to open or close a folder. I made the ones for my themes big bright green triangle arrows for greater legibility. Here is a purpletrated shot in "folder open" state: For another reference, here's a shot of the same folder in the next revision of EVA 01. Notice also that my track header minimize button has been changed from the two tiny grey arrows to a single larger orange one: Wherever I get the chance I simplify and enlarge arrows for better visibility. I think it gives Cakewalk a more solid appearance.