VSTi Knob Automation

[cubician]

I'm working on a VSTi in FlowStone, but there is one small bug that is holding production back. My host program (LMMS) has a separate window for knobs whose values can be automated, but my it has no knobs for my VSTi. However, the example synth for FlowStone does have these knobs and I can't see the difference that allows these values to be recognized.

Does anybody know how I would allow my host to see these knobs as automatable values?

I posted some pictures to aid my terrible description of the problem, to give an idea of exactly what I'm talking about.

Thanks for your time and effort.

[Nubeat7]

hello cubician and welcome to the forum

to make an parameter automatable you need to insert a presetparameter primitive, name the parameter and set auto to true (if you want the parameter to be saved in presets too also set preset to true)

just go inside the stock knob and see the preset module, you will see that auto and preset is set to true..

[trogluddite]

Welcome to the forum, cubician.

You may also need a 'preset manager' module. This is the central controller for presets and automation - you only need one of these in your synth, and it will do the business for as many controls as you like.
Just drop it into your schematic anywhere that's convenient - so long as you have used the standard knobs and switches from the toolbox, everything else you need is already inside the controls. By default, the manager will also appear on the front panel of your synth - but if you prefer to use the host for loading/saving presets you can select the module and click the little eye icon at the bottom to hide it.
You then need to make sure that all your controls are given names - and the names must be unique, as the host will get confused if you have two the same. To do this, just click the little 'P' at the bottom right of the knob modules - they will then show you the 'properties' panel where you can set the name, and turn automation on and off for each control.
If you do want the manager on your plugin's front panel for preset loading, the properties panel of the preset manager will let you decide how many presets you want to store. If you make some presets while you're inside Flowstone, they will become the default presets when you first load the plugin.
Once you get the hang of it, there are other modules for adding presets and automation to your own custom controls - as Nubeat says, just take a peek inside one of the toolbox controls to get an idea how it is done.

Happy Flowstoning,
Trog.

[cubician]

Thank you, trogluddite. That was what I was looking for. Nubeat7, I did try what you explained but without the Preset Manager the Auto checkbox does nothing.
However, I do have one problem. I have a VSTi that uses a tab GUI downloaded somewhere off this site (I don't remember where) and each different tab page is a module that plugs in to a host tab interface module. The preset manager is in one of the tabs, and all of the automatable values in that tab show up, but none of the other values are affected by the Preset Manager. Does the Preset Manager only work with values below it in the Module Hierarchy?

[RJHollins]

Does the Preset Manager only work with values below it in the Module Hierarchy?

I believe that is correct ... or mostly

I too use the 'multi-tabbed' module. In fact, I'm using 12 separate ones in a current project, and then all thoses are in the 'main' multi-tabbed window
.
I place the PreSet Manager module inside the main window ... or in the location where all my main sub-modules are.

This is hard to describe since the schematics can vary by design so much. But basically, I put the PM at the highest level to look down on all the children modules that need Preset/automation control.

Hope that helps

[cubician]

Thanks. That is exactly what I needed to know.
However, I do have one question. I want the Preset Manager to be in the "Master" Tab, but I still want it to work. How would I achieve this?

(It's probably fairly simple but I just started using FS about a week ago.)

[trogluddite]

Hi there,
This can be done, but its a little bit tricky...

1) Go inside the preset manager module
2) At the top left you'll see the MGUI primtive that handles the screen drawing.
3) It has a yellow wireless receiver going to its top input - this is what transmits the graphics to the next module up the chain of parent/child modules. Delete this.
4) Create a new input to the module and connect that to the MGUI top input instead.
5) Now you need to manually route that input to the switch or multiplexer that chooses which tab you see - you might need quite a lot of "spaghetti" wiring to get it there, and a few more inputs and outputs is it needs to travel via several layers of modules.

You can use this technique any time you need to defeat the automatic parent-child drawing - just kill the wireless link and take the 'view' links to wherever it needs to go, but eventually those links must end up at the output of another MGUI that will do the drawing (in this case the wiring from the switcher should take care of that bit!).

[cubician]

I tried something similar to this, actually, with a different project. I wanted to have each of my synth's oscillators to be able to choose from the Multi Osc, Additive Osc or Wave Draw osc. However, even though it drew the GUI it didn't receive interaction. Might the same thing happen with the PM? Is there a way to route the interaction too?

[trogluddite]

Depends how the active mouse areas are calculated. Tricky to say without seeing it - the tabbed switcher will complicate things a little. Can you post the schematic so that we can take a look?