I’m glad to see this topic didn’t die. Despite some of my previous communication, I’m wishing the MOD platform well and really hope it succeeds.
@James What you posted above looks very cool, some of the @Kim’s designs were pretty cool as well, but it seems to me (based not on my own preferences - since I’m not a MOD user anymore - but on some of the most recent comments) that the barrier to entry is simply too high for most users when it comes to creating graphics using 3d tools. I’d probably need dozens if not hundreds of hours of training to try to create something similar (even then, I doubt I could), but I could probably make a few of the “semi-skeuomorphic” stompboxes (the examples of which you posted above) in one evening with a cup of coffee. And I’m not a graphic designer.
Everyone has different preferences, and beautiful UI can certainly inspire creativity, but at the end of the day it’s about the sound coming out of the box, and the more time we spend with a piece of gear/software, the more important efficiency becomes. I’ve already posted examples of what modern multi-fx units usually look like, and shared my views on the importance of readable UI/market trends. Let me supplement that with an anecdote. I’ve recently tested Tone King and Benson plugins from NeuralDSP and Mixvave respectively. The first hour with both of them was great. They look just like “the real thing” and the fact that they sound great doesn’t hurt matters either. That being said, despite liking both pieces of software, I declined to purchase either of them, partially because the UI in my HX Edit is so much faster and easier to work with.
@James I don’t know if a system-wide UI overhaul is something that you’re planning to do and how important that even is to the platform as a whole. It’s not like the current MOD UI is terrible - it certainly isn’t. I’m sure it even attracted many of the current users. What I do believe though, is that MOD should likely aim to make it as easy as possible for the community devs to create quality software for the platform. LV2 is already niche, LV2 plugins ported to MOD will always be an even smaller subset of an already small plugin pool. I suspect that a realistic/skeuomorphic approach to UI is a barrier to entry, (which some of the above comments seem to echo) and I’d imagine that the fewer of those barriers are there, the better it will be for the platform.
Again, I’m not a MOD user anymore, and I’ve been a bit of a dick in the past at times (sorry about that) so this is just meant as an observation and not a ruling “on how things should be done”. I’m making it mostly because users voiced similar views above, but those voices were not quite as loud as some of the others, despite having a lot of merit to them.
EDIT:
One more thing. Ableton became extremely popular among musicians in recent years. It’s not my main DAW but I got the 16-track license for it anyway, just because of how fast you can create an idea inside of it when compared to other DAWs. My immediate thought when I saw this semi-skeuomorphic square stompbox with light bars, that’s right next to the Ableton compressor in the image posted above, was: “this feels right”. Just a thought.