Create own GUI ?

saschaaa's icon

Is it possible to design an own GUI for a MAXMSP project ?

thanks,
sascha

Thinksamuel's icon

Sure! most objets can be customized in one way or another. You can change the colours of most objects using the inspector (select the object and ask to open inspector). Fpic and Pictctrl can be used for buttons where you drop in your own image. Check out the helpfiles on those two objects to see how you should make your image.

Charles Baker's icon

You can also use javascript to assemble max ui objects into a unified reactive whole....a 'new ui'...
Also I imagine with enough knowledge of the max window and JUCE , you could even write your own ui object...
the SDK download and it's docs contain your clues there...

YMMV
good luck!
charlie

fen's icon

You can use fpic in combination with translucent pngs to good effect. Provided that you set fpic's “ignore click” attribute to true, you can place them over existing objects. These examples aren't great, but they serve to illustrate the technique:

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fen's icon

If you're creating a standalone, you can hide the max menu and patcher background using “thispatcher”. Here's an example from the forums:

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

fen's icon

There's no limit to how far you can go with it:

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do.while's icon

@FEN , your examples are pretty

I took JSUI approach , including animation fancyness , because i love to code such things (not everyone does and i understand it totally). It require a bit of work , but this way you are able to code any sort of functionality backed with required logic to do the tasks . very nice opportunity to make own UI's

fen's icon

Thanks DO...WHILE – could you post an example of your work?

I freelance as a web developer, so I can appreciate the potential of the JSUI object. I've managed to overlook it until now – many thanks.

do.while's icon

ah yes .sure . will try to attach video maybe ... uno momento

do.while's icon

here is one video in two version as i dont know if u are using mac or windows (SC-normal is Windows Video File (better resolution) / SC-less is mp4).
What u will see is aimed to give fluid experience (hard to see in that framerate) of device GUI (like JQuery animation - see browser part). Visual aesthetics are especially chosen to stay more consistent with Ableton new Color Code look (so nothing artistically astonishing). Actually i did go crazy and re-coded all the elements in JSUI (u can see sliders , buttons , icons , panels , everything - they are not native) . i wanted to be able to control as many aspects of my device through the code so i had to choose the best way to suit this (i just wanted to waste time on this).

fen's icon

That's very cool – I love the sliding panels, thanks for sharing.

Coincidentally, this user is looking to create an accordion menu within Max – I've directed him to your video:

do.while's icon

Thanks FEN . yeah all sort of this stuff is a bit tricky to achieve as u need to maintain a lot of things in order to work properly (especially for browser list , mouse events , coordinates and actual animation). you need to make your own quasi DOM . Tricky but doable and gives a lot of fun .

Yes i saw that poster question ,but he wants panels filled with ui elements i believe (as u do with bpatchers) . in order to make your own he would be forced to code UI from ground up as i did :/