Duckbar owners fear not.


Just installed Dark Side 2015 theme and it replaced the default Mercury. So now I can change seamlessly between Tungsten and my favorite Panu Dark Side 2015 !!


Happy !!

promidi

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
Our theme editor automatically handles this so there is no reason to use external tools.

This is pretty much the same conclusion I came to when I started to use resource hacker to view the images in the TungstenTheme.fth file.   There are hundreds of them...  I just don't have that kind of time to go through and modify each one.....
 
I am just going to wait for the theme editor. 

Well the theme editor will make it convenient but won't do the work for you. Creating a theme is a lot of work even for an experienced graphics designer.

By the way, importing my previously (and tediously!) performed Duckbar mods works great in the Tungsten theme. Simply use the "Replace Resource" function in Resource Hacker to load your existing custom png's into TungstenTheme.fth.

It's tedious because you have to do each modified resource one at a time. I wonder if there's a batch method in Resource Hacker? I didn't investigate that.

Anyway, it works great until the Cakewalk theme editor comes out.

jshep0102
I'd be pretty happy to have the fx bin plugs match the track color automatically when you choose a track color.
 
Were you able to adjust the fix bin plugs, ramscapri?
 
 
?
 

Jshep0102, what I did was quite a rough cut which was just by changing PNGs within the resource .dll file using resource hacker application. And I didn't get to the fx bin plugs, just haven't figured out yet where they exactly are in the resource file. This was a very tedious approach.
 
As you can see, it simply applied the changed PNGs to the various section blocks in the console view. This simply works as a one time option to the default theme which affects all tracks in the view in the same way. Now, the live point-in-time changes to the various elements like track strips, clips, console view blocks, fx plug colors, etc., matching the chosen track color will have to be based on internal coding which tells Sonar to change the colors in that manner. I do understand what the logic needs to be but as I am not a software programmer, I haven't been able to figure out where this coding is done or how it could be changed. But that's what the coders in CW have achieved and I believe they intend to enhance it further to a point where they could provide us users easy to use front-end tools to do the job.
 
So I guess we got to wait till we get those tools and I eagerly look forward to that from the bakers... "Tungsten" is an amazing start to the world of UI customization... 

thomasabarnes
ramscapri:
 
That image you posted didn't post right. It's just a blank. I would like to see what you came up with, so you can maybe share it with the community.
 
Can you repost to get the image to come out right?

 
Thomas, the image does appear visible to me. Could be some error ? Anyways, re-posting here again :
 
 

 
 
Here's one where I just modified the color of the meters in console view of Tungsten theme to a sort of dark maroon shade. Again, it just applies to all the tracks similarly and I don't yet know how to change them on a track-to-track basis :
 
 

PeteL
By the way, importing my previously (and tediously!) performed Duckbar mods works great in the Tungsten theme. Simply use the "Replace Resource" function in Resource Hacker to load your existing custom png's into TungstenTheme.fth.

It's tedious because you have to do each modified resource one at a time. I wonder if there's a batch method in Resource Hacker? I didn't investigate that.

Anyway, it works great until the Cakewalk theme editor comes out.

 
You bet its tedious. Fully agree. Moreover, it seemed to me that not all resources are in TungstenTheme.fth.
Somehow, I had a feeling that a lot of them were set from an existing default which are absent in this .fth. Maybe they are only in some default .dll.
Or well, I might have just overlooked them when scrolling through the seemingly endless lists... 

ramscapri - thanks for getting back to me. I am looking to change the 'shell' the plugs are housed in. 4 plugs on a track - 4 shells. It would be great if these would follow the color assigned to a track. The power button maintaining it's color would be good imo, as it would show up nicely for quick fx/off/on. My pic shows how track colors are implemented, but looking up to the fx area, there's no separation - a blob of orange. This is the only place that bothers me having all one color. Pic gives an idea. Scrolling the Console up, there are 2-3 more plugs per track. Kind of a 'sea of orange' after a while... 
.

ramscapri
You bet its tedious. Fully agree. Moreover, it seemed to me that not all resources are in TungstenTheme.fth.
Somehow, I had a feeling that a lot of them were set from an existing default which are absent in this .fth. Maybe they are only in some default .dll.
Or well, I might have just overlooked them when scrolling through the seemingly endless lists... 

I think it seems true not all the resources are in TungstenTheme.fth because some of my Duckbar resources that I modified did not exist in the Tungsten file. The default resource file (or use to be) is the TTSRES.dll file that still appears in the installation, so maybe some of those are still used? Or maybe those resources were dropped in the Tungsten version?

There is also TTSImage.dll installed now. I haven't looked into what it contains, but ralf up top thought it was the Mercury theme resources. I disagree at least partly, because Duckbar installs my themes into Mercury just fine, and Duckbar only uses TTSRES.dll to my knowledge.

As far as getting FX bin containers to match track colors, that will be a tough one if not impossible. Previously these were static resources in TTSRES.dll that were easily changed to get rid of the non-descript greys. But since they're static, I don't think the Sonar executable would have a way to dynamicall modify them. That is, there may be no exe colors associated with them. But what do I know!

Edited because I hit "Post" instead of "Preview" by mistake.

jshep0102
ramscapri - thanks for getting back to me. I am looking to change the 'shell' the plugs are housed in. 4 plugs on a track - 4 shells. It would be great if these would follow the color assigned to a track. The power button maintaining it's color would be good imo, as it would show up nicely for quick fx/off/on. My pic shows how track colors are implemented, but looking up to the fx area, there's no separation - a blob of orange. This is the only place that bothers me having all one color. Pic gives an idea. Scrolling the Console up, there are 2-3 more plugs per track. Kind of a 'sea of orange' after a while... 
.

I see what you mean and agree that if the fx plugs in the fx bin of both the track view and console view adopt the user color choice for the track (just like the clips in track view adopting it), that would make it visually so consistent. But that's where I think it involves giving instructions to Sonar at the coding level to make that happen in real time. Its like how the clips change color instantly in the track view when scrolling over the track color pallete even before you have made your choice.
 
At the moment, its clear that in the Tungsten theme, the fx plugs in all the track fx bins have been set to take the common orange color. The modification in the code that would be required is to instruct Sonar to apply user track color choices to fx plugs too in a similar way as it applies it to the clips. Now this at the moment can be done only by the coders in CW. I am hoping that such level of customization will be available to the users when we get the complete tools for UI themes.
 
Till then, I guess we have a great start with Tungsten, and can see this developing further really well... cheers to the bakers