This is just an idea I have had. And I would like to know community thoughts. I am not 100% sold on it myself- but I think it may be very useful for some live situations.
The idea is to have some basic nodes that also have input editors “inside” the node itself always showing.
So if you had a slider node- the slider would always be shown, inside the node body, you would then connect the output to whatever you wanted like normal. On a slider node you may also want a min/max value port, and a value input port as well (for redundancy).
This would allow us to drive performances simply and quickly without having to click into any nodes input editors. There could be a few simple style UI nodes like this, I can think that keyframe timelines could also work well with this style of node. Would be great also if they were resizeable, so we could easily make a video switcher right in the editor, and the main slider could be nice and big!
I’m not suggesting this for every node, just for this special class of node, to allow greater speed of using Vuo in a live-coding environment.
Detachable input editors is a FR of mine- but I think this could function together with that in tandem. Detaching the input editor would mean that you wouldn’t see clearly where the data was going, this way you can easily see where it is connected to, and may be good for new users!
What do you think?
Do you mean like in Max/MSP?
Kind of, but not for everything. Mainly just an easy to use slider/ XY pad. Maybe there could be a way to push event editors dynamically into the center space of a node? Maybe even input & output editors? Just an easy way to see what is going on quickly and visually.
So basically, you want some way to keep multiple input editors open as a persistent control panel for the composition? Reminds me of the proposed UI for editing published input port values and ability to pin/dock input editors — except that you’re proposing that the input editors be embedded within the composition or even within the nodes.
What do you mean by “output editors”?
Yes, but I also think that there are times when the inside of the node could be utilised for UI. Here is an example, very very very rough, but it gives you an idea. When I said ‘output editors’, I meant to say ‘output ports’. So maybe I may want to see an image output for example, and then ‘pin’ that inside the node. Currently MAX doesn’t do that, you get what the node is, so this is more of a dynamic UI that you can push and pull UI elements into the inside of a node depending on what you need at the time, or in the composition.
As I stated in the start, this is only an idea, and I’m not even sure on it myself, just wanted to know if this could be an interesting way to use the inside of the node space, as currently some large nodes are just large grey boxes, and this space could be useful?
Here is a clearer example, the user would have pushed angle slider inside the node.
Thanks for the explanation + example. I’m interested to hear what others think of this idea.
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Me too! I’m seriously not pushing this idea too hard, but it was something that was at the back of my brain, and I thought it would be good to share with the community. Also, it may be something other users are interested in, especially for live patching. Personally I would be more interested in just creating a HUD window from within Vuo (render layers to window style)
Here is an example in Apple Motion:
That sort of window should be super simple to create with the new UI nodes in 1.3!
Just to reiterate: I really don’t want Vuo to be a MAX clone. I really love the fact that all nodes mandate interactive variables. Just sometimes I want both! ;-)