I very much like the orange dots that are used to show the current position of something being automated via LFO. Very helpful to connect what I hear and see.
I notice that if I do this:
I do not see an “orange dot” appear to display the current value, also mentioned in https://fmod.com/docs/2.01/studio/parameters.html
This is what I mean by “orange dot”. Could this be added to Scatterer for consistency?
It isn’t just scatterer instruments that lack the orange dot indicating their properties’ modulated values, it’s all instruments, and the dot’s absence is intentional.
Instruments can be instanced within an event instance. This is why it is possible to trigger an asynchronous instrument repeatedly by using a loop region, and hear multiple instances of that instrument playing simultaneously. Each instance of an event is modulated separately, which is why if an instrument has a random modulator, the instrument’s property will be a different value every time it is triggered. This last fact is why we’re not able to display the modulation dot for instruments: If we did display the modulation dot for instrument properties, there would be no way for FMOD Studio to indicate which instrument instance’s property values the modulation dot represents, and displaying a separate modulation dot for each and every instrument instance would be visually cluttered and impossible to usefully read.
@joseph Thanks for elaborating so specifically — I’m getting a weird feeling of deja vu!
I don’t have a precise visual reference at the moment, but this makes me think of how some granular synths show dots that are of an adjacent color (e.g., different shades of orange) and older instances fade out or decrease in size.
So not unreadable, but actually more useful by displaying a quick read “spread cloud” of sorts — a metaphor that’s really applicable to the chaotic/non-deterministic inclinations of the Scatterer.
See this for a rough idea, although the dots are spread across a waveform which has more space: https://youtu.be/oJoWvbrsO7A?t=295 But maybe it gives you some ideas!
That’s an interesting idea… I’ll add this suggestion to our feature/improvement tracker for further internal discussion.