Plugin Building Environment

[junioreq]

EDIT: This is my old name, I'm RobRokkenaudio, logged in wrong account:)

Well, I like to make plugs, and lots of them :) BTW look for some new ones soon ;)

As far as a mass development setup, I need some guidance as there are a few issues I am currently having with Iplug.

GUI is the major concern here:

Is there an application I can use to get the x,y coordinates of graphics?
And with that, How can I tell the X,Y corner coordinate of something that isn't square? Like a round knob, its almost a guessing game. This takes a lot of messing around with, f5ing and viewing in reaper to test.

Right now a typical session is like this:

Compile code, open reaper, F5 to scan for new plugins, load plugin, Woops button is way off, Go back to VS Change(guess) the corner position(cause its round) compile. Woops, compile error, File cannot be written to. Crap, go back to reaper, delete plugin, go back to VS compile again. Go to reaper f5 to scan for new plugins, add plugin. Woops, A little off, delete plugin, go to visual studio LOL.. you get the idea.

What can I do to remedy this? Is there another tool I can use to test the plugin in besides reaper? A good gui tool with a grid that will tell me, or is specifically made for getting the X,Y (right now i'm using mspaint).

lol, This is just frustrating when I have 15 gui elements that need to be synched up.

BTW: By environment I meant, a group of applications to build vsts, Obviously VS, Iplug, Some paint app, Some gui position app etc.

~Rob.

[Tale]

Is there an application I can use to get the x,y coordinates of graphics?
I use the free, open source GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) to draw images. The GIMP will show you the x,y coordinates by default.

And with that, How can I tell the X,Y corner coordinate of something that isn't square? Like a round knob, its almost a guessing game.
You should draw an imagenary rectangle around everything you draw. The left top corner of this rectangle is your x,y coordinate.

Compile code, open reaper, F5 to scan for new plugins, load plugin, Woops button is way off, Go back to VS Change(guess) the corner position(cause its round) compile. Woops, compile error, File cannot be written to. Crap, go back to reaper, delete plugin, go back to VS compile again. Go to reaper f5 to scan for new plugins, add plugin. Woops, A little off, delete plugin, go to visual studio LOL.. you get the idea.
I do the same, except I don't scan for new plugins. As long as you don't change your plugin's file name, you can reload the plugin over and over again in REAPER.

BTW: By environment I meant, a group of applications to build vsts, Obviously VS, Iplug, Some paint app, Some gui position app etc.
My current environment: Windows SDK v7.0 (no VS, but I guess most coders would probably prefer VS), Editeur/Noteopad (text editors), IPlug, GIMP, REAPER.

[bvesco]

Even if you are not using KnobMan knobs, using SkinMan is a great tool for lining up graphics. Throw a single knob frame on the graphic and it will line up using the "square corner" coords.

[bvesco]

I use the free, open source GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) to draw images. The GIMP will show you the x,y coordinates by default.

I also make use of GIMP but the problem I have with its coord system is that I can never quite tell whether it is counting the right pixel or not. This is because it shows starts 0,0 at the very top left of the image rather than counting 0,0 as the top left pixel. So sometimes when you are on the first pixel of your image the ruler still shows 1,1. Due to their numbering system I invariably end up with some "off by one" graphics errors that I have to recompile and fix. KnobMan never leaves any question since you can click on any graphics element and it will show the definition box of that element with the EXACT, correct pixel position of that element.


I do the same, except I don't scan for new plugins. As long as you don't change your plugin's file name, you can reload the plugin over and over again in REAPER.


Ditto. Having the error of rewriting is just something you'll have to learn to live with. Luckily you probably don't have to stub your toe too many times to learn where the coffee table is when walking around at night.

One small workflow improvement that is great for me is not compiling to the REAPER plugin dir. I have REAPER read the plugin from a dir that is NOT where I compile to. This way my compile never fails due to the file being locked. I defined a post build step in VS (though you could certainly do the same in make or whatever build tool you are running) that copies the compiled plugin to REAPER. If this step fails then I need only rerun that step (I have a script to run just that step which is what the post build step actually calls). The advantage of this approach is also that you can switch between compiling debug and release versions of your plugin and have the script rename the dll to a common name for the plugin. Then you don't have to worry about F5'ing or showing multiple versions of the same plugin and remembering which is which.

[RRokkenAudio]

Right now I'm using:

Visual Studio express,
Photoshop to do gui stuff,
Skinman to line up all the gui(imported pngs from adobe)
Knobman for knobs

:)

~Rob.

[Astralp]

For testing dev VST plugs, Synthedit is great, but then again I love synthedit, it has a module develop mode which allows the plugs to be overwritten when enabled, and just reload the project from recent files.