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Few questions about Nodes object -


jbaileypro
January 31, 2012 | 1:02 pm

I am trying to create a virtual mixer style of program. My inspiration was from the "Art of mixing" book which used a 3D visual mixer. (Link of image: http://www.virtualmixer.com/images/orchestra.gif).

I have discovered the "Nodes" object which seems to do mostly what I want however I cannot find out two things. (I am also quite new to MaxMSP).
1) Is there a way to change the shortcut used to change the size of each node. By default it is holding down option (or alt on the mac keyboard) however I would like to either be able to drag the sides of each node to change their size or be able to use right click etc. How can this be done?

2) My second question is if you are able to add text to each Node. Each one will represent a group of tracks (eg, Guitar, Bass etc) and it would be nice to have each labelled but have the label travelling with the Node as they are moved.

Thanks,
Jonathan


seejayjames
February 2, 2012 | 5:38 am

For #1, probably not easily, it’s built into the nodes object itself. You do have control over the size programmatically (check the Inspector for the command, "nsize" floating-point number array). So each could be controlled by some other means, lots of possibilities there, though not sure how to do the right-click part.

For #2, you can move any object with the patching_rect (and/or presentation_rect) message. This object could be a textbutton with a transparent background, to use as your label. If you use [scale] on the nodes coordinates and map the values to the correct screen coordinates, for each of the node labels, your labels will follow the circles around. ("ignoreclick 1" to the textbuttons so you can click through them to interact with the nodes.) You could use comments too, but maybe the ability to center-justify the textbuttons will make things easier to line up.

It will take some fiddling but can readily work. Try [textarea] or [dialog] to set the labels, or if they’re fixed from the beginning, just hard-code them in.

I like the image you posted:

http://www.virtualmixer.com/images/orchestra.gif

a neat way to visualize things!


seejayjames
February 2, 2012 | 6:22 am

Something like this:

– Pasted Max Patch, click to expand. –

Incidentally, if you drag one of the nodes off to the sides where the window is close to the edge of the overall [nodes] area, the patch window gets scrollbars, which it probably shouldn’t (?) If you make the window bigger to accommodate the dragging, this goes away…though it seems like it acts differently on the four sides. Is that a bug?

Regardless, nodes rocks!!


seejayjames
February 2, 2012 | 7:53 am

Never mind about the "bug"…I realize now that it’s the [textbuttons} that are causing the scrollbars to appear. I didn’t catch it at first because the backgrounds were transparent. Doh!


Luke Hall
February 2, 2012 | 11:08 am

Here’s a fix for the scrollbars using [clip]. It also lets you move and resize the [nodes] object freely. Hope it helps!

– Pasted Max Patch, click to expand. –

pid
February 2, 2012 | 5:53 pm

that is some classic awesome good seejayjames / lukehall conjuring there…


jbaileypro
March 10, 2012 | 4:31 pm

I have got much further on this project now and nearly finished it! The one last problem that I have come across is using this in "presentation" mode. When this is enabled the labels stop following the nodes.

Is there a way to fix this?

Many thanks again!

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