What is this and how do I use it?

Use this tool to speed up the process of making performance views for Kontakt. It's been designed with version 6 in mind, but should work from Kontakt 5.6 and above. The Performance View Helper will create the necessary KSP script and resources for the pictures folder, ready to be dropped in. The tool is pretty simple at the moment, but more features will be added!

A short video tutorial



Adding background and controls

Click the Choose a file... button to upload a background image. This will be the "wallpaper" of your performance view. Ideally, your image should be 633px wide, and up to 450px high. The image will be automatically constrained to fit a width of 633px. You can set the height by changing the number in the height field.

To add a dial or knob to the performance view, double-click one from the pallette of UI Elements to the left of the performance view. This will place it in the top left corner of the view. You can use your mouse to drag it into the required position. By default, the elements will snap to a 5px grid. You can change the size of the grid with the snap option to the top right of the performance view. Under the Options column on the right, each control that you add will have a field in which you can give it a meaningful name, such as "Reverb" or "Volume". This will become the variable that represents the control in the KSP code, so do not use spaces or dashes, only numbers, letters and underscores! You can see how the KSP script will appear as you interact with the tool. It is shown beneath the performance view.

Labelling controls

Click the Add label... button. The label will be called New label by default, and appear in the top-left of the performance view. Click and drag to position. You can set the default font, color and size under the Options column. This will set the initial appearance of all labels that you add. You can change the text, color and size of each individual label in its corresponding options panel.

Shaded blocks

Click the Add block... button to place a semi-transparent rectangle over the background image on the performance view. This can be useful to make the controls more comfortable to see for the user if the background is bright or busy. You can use your mouse to drag the edges of the block to change its size, and the amount of transparency can be changed with the Opacity drop-down in the block's options panel.

Removing controls

Under the Options column on the right, locate the panel that corresponds to the control, and click the trash icon in the right corner of the panel. Finding your control can be tricky if you have quite a few of them! To make this easier, when you hover your mouse pointer over the control in the performance view, its corresponding panel will change to a light blue color. If you double-click the control in the performance view, its panel will be highlighted with a red border.

Exporting the result

When you have laid out your performance view, click the Render button. After a short moment, a box will pop up, with a link to a file called Instrument Resources.zip. Click this link to download the file to your workstation. Unzip/extract the file. Inside you should find png images for you background and controls, and the corresponding .txt files that Kontakt requires. Copy all of the files into the Resources/Pictures folder of your Kontakt instrument. Open your instrument in Kontakt and copy the KSP script into the script tab. If your instrument is brand new and has no existing script, you can safely just paste the entire script and click Apply. If you have existing script, carefully copy the generated script that appears in the "on init" block, and add it to your existing "on init" block.