Hello @iss,
I would be glad to continue the “adventure”. I can be a little slow but I can try
But this time I / we have to learn from my / our mistakes.
The plan could be:
list of requirements
mockup the GUI
approved by devs in BF?
patches needed
integrate simple
From my selfish point of view, I would need one person in BF devs that could be involved from the beginning, in order to communicate, ask, say “no” when it is needed, suggest changes,… Could be @iss ?
That’s nice to hear, I agree that things would have to change to make this work
I agree with this. IMO you and @fsiddi should have a chat to exchange what both of you envise and what should be worked on. Then formalize this in a design task. That’s pretty much standard process. Francesco is fairly busy, so sometimes he responds quickly sometimes not. I was thinking about regular meetings, even once a month, but not sure if that would be helpful for me. Perhaps for you it would work better.
Will have to leave coordination up to you two. I am happy to participate in conversations and reviews of course.
Hi @pistolario feel free to write up a document describing (as visually as possible) the reasoning behind the feature and the expected UI/UX. Should fit in one A4 page or less!
Following suggestions by users, I’ve “simplified” the proposal.
In this case, it would be only one graph with horizontal scollbar and X axis logarithmic
Hi @pistolario
I’ve been following this thread for some time because I use EQs with Blender externally– synced with Ardour via Jack. It is so wonderful to see the VSE slowly entering the DAW world
A few remarks on what’s currently available in Blender 4.1, trying it for the first time and probably biased by my previous experience with digital and analog parametric EQs.
Graphic EQs don’t control bandwidth by definition afaik (only gain and frequency). This module allows bandwidth control, so I would call it Parametric EQ But the way it does so tends to create asymmetric curves, while the most common use for filtering frequencies is to start with a curve that is centered and this is quite difficult to do with the current design. The center frequency is also very important as a reference point, more than the start/end frequencies. It determines how audio filters are measured in general.
Also, I miss a lot the ability to see and control the bandwidth (or Q) of a curve numerically. Filter shape buttons are rather confusing to me honestly.
A direction I can imagine could be that the module allows only one curve and the panel is limited to three dots (start, center, end). This shouldn’t be a limitation for creating complex filters since modules can be stacked already. The panel would then begin showing three-dots at 0dB, representing a ‘muted’ predefined curve. The middle dot always sticking to the center unless de-centered moving the dots from the sides. In the values section I would add: center frequency, bandwidth and gain.
This is roughly how I can imagine it, but I don’t want step over all the efforts already done. Just hoping that it helps somehow, a bit of a standard view. I’d be happy to collaborate on the usability side if opinions are still needed, I can offer my passion and experience using and designing (analog) PEQs. Also if chat or live sessions are happening.
–Other ideal improvements could be increasing responsiveness, because audio is muted for quite a while on filter changes or enable/disable actions. Or showing the realtime waveform on the panel’s background, but that’s luxury I guess and too visual for an audio filter some could argue.
PD. It’s true that the linear x-axis makes it extremely difficult to use also (see picture) but that has been noted already.
This is the next version of the proposal, which I’ve just sent to BF developers.
It’s the same, with some tweaks and some implementation details / doubts.
Hi, thanks for sharing this design. From my experience with EQs, it’s important to:
be able to observe the entire range without scrolling
have a clear unit reference (ruler) on the side)
have live metering (to observe the effect of the EQ)
Your proposal seems to follow other principles, and I’m not sure this fits with Blender’s design. Further, the implementation details suggest the creation of a new widget, which I think won’t be possible currently.
Some of the points raised by @domingo are good, focus on simplicity.
I would keep the interface intentionally simple, and look at sound processing from a broader perspective before investing further time in designing an EQ.
I don’t use the VSE, so feel free to completely ignore. In any case, I have used sound software elsewhere.
The ‘standard’ blender curve “popup” isn’t the best for lots of points, and manipulating with precision. For sound, this is crucial. So, I would suggest that it’s more important that the artist have the tool they need, rather than one that they do not that DOES “follow the blender way”.
Presets would also be quite important. Saving them, reusing, etc. No one wants to have to copy/paste a curve’s settings from here to there.
Thanks for sharing. I consider this proposal a concept, that should fit in the broader topic of “sound design in Blender”. Currently this topic is not in the short-term roadmap for the module, so it might take some time before the conversation continues.
Whatever the full and final audio implementation will be, the current implementation of the EQ, needs some attention right now. The range is so big that makes it very difficult to work in. Ex. the range music is in is just around 1/7 of the visual range, so ex. removing the bass-line is very difficult.
In order to limit the range, there is a clipping option, but it doesn’t work. It doesn’t have any effect, and it jumps from 20000 to 100. This should be fixed(gif):
These clipping values should have units inserted, and then they can be removed from the eq. panel:
If users can manually limit the working range, that’ll allow them to ex limit the range around ex. the music, and be able to work on it in finer detail. And even add several EQ modifiers to process on more ranges in fine detail.
I stared looking into the (seemingly simple) task of updating the clipping units for @tintwotin. @pistolario highlights the issue that the EQ modifier uses the shared template_curve_mapping component, which gives us relatively little control. I.e, no custom X/Y axis labels, max values, etc. The reason Max X jumps from 20000.0 to 100 is because the rna property defaults to 20000.0 but the UI template’s max X value is 100.0, which causes the undesired jump.
IMO, creating a new UI template would be beneficial to the long term vision of “sound design in Blender”, with the short term benefit of consistency (Min/Max labels, Max values other than 100.0, etc).
Were there concerns around a specific EQ UI template, or just general UI/UX questions about blender sound design?
It would make sense to have a dedicated template for drawing a sound equalizer, sharing parts of the implementation where possible.
I think the way it works now is that it assumes any existing data is clipped, and that this is enforced while editing.
When you re-enable clipping after it was disabled, it will clip the data again because it might have been edited in the meantime without enforcing clipping. If just toggling the setting changes the result, it would mean that the existing data was in an invalid unclipped state.
These hardcoded limits could probably just be changed to -FLT_MAX, FLT_MAX. Looking at the Git history, I don’t see a good motivation to have them.
