AmpGUI DP Themes (now at AMPGUIMODS.NET)

[sayatnova]

Also wanted to nudge this, just in case something might have changed.

This might be crazy, but what could be done to get MOTU to license Andy's themes? The majority of their themes are so amateurish and not really suited to actually working long hours at a screen. When you look at Andy's work, there is a calm and clarity that dominates everything and it feeds over into how I feel and interact with DP on a very deep basis. I am now updated to 9.13 and 9.51, and the shock I still feel when looking at their theme selections is huge. There is no comparison to the perfection of Mellow and Mellow Gold...

Andy, I hope you are well.

~Shea

[James Steele]

I guess the question is whether MOTU wants to do the work of adding all the hi res retina resources to the themes. Apparently the job isn't trivial. Also, just speculating but given the complaints regarding font size and the size of the continuous controller info, etc. it's not inconceivable that MOTU might be planning to move away from bitmapped graphic resources to something more easily scalable.

[sayatnova]

Exactly, James! And, why not have the guy who has made the best themes for your flagship product be in charge of that, or at least directly connected to that...

Just saying.

~Shea

[labman]

Exactly, James! And, why not have the guy who has made the best themes for your flagship product be in charge of that, or at least directly connected to that...

Just saying.

~Shea

I suggested this very thing several times over the years to MOTU. Will still hope. But certainly not holding my breath.

[toddbooster]

Call me crazy, and I might be, but I dimly suspect the look and feel of the AVB web GUI and mixer might be creeping its way into the next (or future) version of DP.

[labman]

Hey Andy et al. I have a question. Installed DP10 today. I am an elite ampgui user. Edited the AMPGUI themes to work in DP 10.0. The windows all seem to scale fine with Warmer but the mixer. As soon as I scale up, the mixer window moves away from the glorious "Warmer" profile you built, to a MOTU default grey. But the other windows are correct and stick with warmer Ideas? Help!!!

[Shooshie]

For anyone who wants to use your AmpGUI themes in DP 10, here's how you do it:

Go to the Themes panel of DP Preferences. At the bottom of the panel there's a button that says "go to Themes Folder" or something like that. I'd post a picture, but I still don't have an Internet host since Dropbox quit doing that a few years ago, so you'll just have to follow my text and do it as you go.

Once you're in the Themes folder, locate your AmpGUI themes, and begin this process for any that you want to use:
1) Select the Themes icon.
2) Hold down the CONTROL key and click for the contextual menu, then select "Show Package Contents."
3) Open "Contents" folder
4) Open Info.plist in TextEdit.
5) Look for this text at the bottom of the list:

Code: Select all

<key>ThemeMaxVersion</key>
	<string>9.9</string>

6) Change it to:

Code: Select all

<key>ThemeMaxVersion</key>
	<string>10.9</string>

7) Save, close, repeat on next theme until you've done the ones you want.
8 ) Reboot DP

Note that when you scale the GUI in DP 10, your theme will come apart at all its boundaries. Rather than stretch, you get gray space inserted. Controls become default themes, text gets obscured by lack of color contrast on the gray spaces. You may have to choose between AmpGUI and scalable GUI, unless Andy comes back and fixes these per MOTU specs.

The Ghost of Shooshie

[Shooshie]

One more thing about AmpGUI and DP10:

The Shortcuts Window has a button for the new Clips Window. AmpGUI does not. It leaves a blank space. I thought maybe you could click in that space and open the Clips window without a button. Instead, DP crashed and disappeared faster than you could drop an anvil on your toe. Didn't hurt quite as bad, though, because I hadn't made any changes. The solution? Don't click there. You can go to DP Preferences/General/Shortcuts and de-select that button so that it doesn't show in the Shortcuts Window. I guess the next step would be to go to the Commands Window and see if it has a keyboard shortcut. If not, you can remedy that, so that you can open that window easily.

Shooshie (Virtually transparent, kinda wispy)

[Shooshie]

Investigating the difficulty of modifying the AmpGUI themes to make them compliant with DP 10, I found that it's a matter of adding some scaled files. Mostly it involves doubling the size of a lot of the graphics so that there are small and large sizes at appropriate resolutions. The amount of work varies from theme to theme. The DP 10 Plasma theme is the record holder with 263 files to be concerned with. AmpGUI's Oxidized Theme has about 90, by comparison.

There's some extra discussion in the thread where I posted this.

Shooshie (hauntingly memorable)

[Guitar Gaz]

I have offered a few times now but I fear my moment for this has now passed - I am not upgrading at the moment to DP10 (I spent the money on a Faderport V2 and am sticking with Studio One) - I do have Mellow done and he can have that if he wants it but I won't be spending more time on Themes for the forseeable future.

[Shooshie]

Gary, I'd like to have a copy of that, if you are willing. I did purchase that one. I think I purchased all of them, actually.

Shooshie

[labman]

We too purchased all from Andy. If permission can be had from him, we also would love to have your hi-res version of mellow Gary.

[Guitar Gaz]

Sorry guys - it's Andy's scheme and should be redistributed by him if he wants. And he should check it over before releasing it in his name as I may have missed something.

[labman]

Sorry guys - it's Andy's scheme and should be redistributed by him if he wants. And he should check it over before releasing it in his name as I may have missed something.

superb point! ANDY???

[Killahurts]

I guess the question is whether MOTU wants to do the work of adding all the hi res retina resources to the themes. Apparently the job isn't trivial. Also, just speculating but given the complaints regarding font size and the size of the continuous controller info, etc. it's not inconceivable that MOTU might be planning to move away from bitmapped graphic resources to something more easily scalable.

I agree.. that may be why we didn't see a "Ten" theme with the release of DP10.

My dream would be to have the ability to easily modify the themes to some extent, especially colors.