Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Motivation
• State Of The Art
• Projects
• Forum Threads
• Wiki Pages
• The Method Collection
• Prelude: Definition of GUI
• Parameter Input
• Parameter Display
• The Display as Input Device
• Wishlist

Introduction

VVVV users experience a reoccuring demand for a graphical user interface, that is: a means of easily controlling the parameters of a patch. Native elements of this nature within VVVV (like the iobox (value) advanced|IOBox)? have one drawback: modifying them constitutes a change in the program graph itself - which can not be calculated when missing values - and causes freezing or stutter in the render windows.
Several users have already found a solution in building their own GUIs, outsourcing the display and modification of parameters to separate render windows, avoiding any intervention with the render process. As useful as their solutions are, they are sometimes complex, hard to understand, or intensive on resources. As such, their use is often limited to the specific tasks they were designed for and hard to accomodate to other patches.

Motivation

This method collection aims to cover some of the topics and problems most often faced when building a custom GUI. It is supposed to deliver small, separate solutions to specific issues that are easy to understand and adapt. It should empower even unexperienced users to build appropriate interfaces without having to rely on prefabricated solutions that may be unfit for their needs.

State Of The Art

Following is a collection of things that have already been done in the field of GUI-development on this wiki: some of the projects, a set of forum discussions and other pages concerned with the topic. This should reflect the current discourse.

Projects

Forum Threads

Wiki Pages

DX 9 GUI Modules

The Method Collection

Prelude: Definition of GUI

(As tonfilm suggests:) GUI being short for 'Graphical User Interface', a GUI is usually expected to encompass two aspects: First, a structured visual representation of variables of a system. Second, the ability to change these variables through either human (user) interaction or the system itself. For the scope of this page, we will ignore the vast implications of the term 'interface' and focus on the three common devices involved: mouse, keyboard and monitor.

Parameter Input

Getting values inside VVVV is, in the most basic form, as easy as creating a Mouse (System Global) or Keyboard (System Global) node. Both of them deliver values that can then be further modified to fit specific data types. Related issues are bank selection (where a small number of keys is used to control a larger number of parameters by redirecting their inputs according to 'banks'), the storage of values, and relative instead of absolute value input - all of which are adressed in this (first) version of the Value Input demo patch (8.04 Kb Zip).

Parameter Display

(soon)

The Display as Input Device

(soon)

Wishlist

A list of methods other users (you?) would like to see covered here.