Can Max devices running on Push display custom graphics?

[dcjams]

I've been exploring third-party Max for Live devices on Push 3 standalone, mostly stuff from Fors.fm. Everything I'm seeing just uses a generic encoder graphic. Does Push support custom graphics for Max devices? Obviously some layouts for desktop would be unsuitable for the dimensions of the Push screen but I was curious as to whether there's any actual technical limitation.

[S4racen]

No.

Cheers
D

[dcjams]

No.

Cheers
D

That's a shame

[tsurba]

Yep this is stupid. I've been waiting for a solution to this from Ableton for years.

And no, p2d or such that claim to make it work are not a real solution, they just kill the push display process and then steal it, which crashes Live 30% of the time. Just no.

[TheMuldrew]

That's a shame

Yes, it is a real shame, and I really hope that the full use of the Push screen will be opened up to M4L developers soon. I mean, it's great that Push standalone supports M4L devices, but many (most?) are not completely useable with limitation of only being able to use knobs in Push.

That being said, there's a few more basic omissions from Push which should probably be addressed first: the ability to map modulators, the ability to map MIDI, there's also some native devices which have still not been updated for proper use on Push (the looper, anyone?). These have all been issues since Push 2 was released almost a decade ago. There finally seems to be some movement on this now that Push is also standalone, at least the ability to map macros on push will be added with 12.1, so maybe that's a sign of things to come.

[writetomichael]

That's a shame

Yes, it is a real shame, and I really hope that the full use of the Push screen will be opened up to M4L developers soon. I mean, it's great that Push standalone supports M4L devices, but many (most?) are not completely useable with limitation of only being able to use knobs in Push.

That being said, there's a few more basic omissions from Push which should probably be addressed first: the ability to map modulators, the ability to map MIDI, there's also some native devices which have still not been updated for proper use on Push (the looper, anyone?). These have all been issues since Push 2 was released almost a decade ago. There finally seems to be some movement on this now that Push is also standalone, at least the ability to map macros on push will be added with 12.1, so maybe that's a sign of things to come.

Fully agree. It’s especially frustrating for Granulator III - it’s unusable (for me) without a graphical representation of the sample/grains on screen.

[sigabort]

Yep this is stupid. I've been waiting for a solution to this from Ableton for years.

And no, p2d or such that claim to make it work are not a real solution, they just kill the push display process and then steal it, which crashes Live 30% of the time. Just no.

Actually, that's not quite true - p2d comes with a custom version of the usb library which allows it to share the screen with live at the same time. with this installed you can choose what to display, as demonstrated with some of the demo patches.

[sigabort]

That's a shame

Yes, it is a real shame, and I really hope that the full use of the Push screen will be opened up to M4L developers soon.

I can't see this ever happening, firstly because it's alot of work for the Abes to do, and secondly because the current M4L infrastructure doesn't support such a large transfer of essentially realtime data. They would have to create a new mechanism for handling this and I can't see it happening.

[tsurba]

Yep this is stupid. I've been waiting for a solution to this from Ableton for years.

And no, p2d or such that claim to make it work are not a real solution, they just kill the push display process and then steal it, which crashes Live 30% of the time. Just no.

Actually, that's not quite true - p2d comes with a custom version of the usb library which allows it to share the screen with live at the same time. with this installed you can choose what to display, as demonstrated with some of the demo patches.

Oh! Sorry for spreading false information then, I must try this right away. I've somehow completely missed this approach existing already in P2D. I was thinking of writing something like it myself but never found the time.

[koljabeckmann]

There is one reverse engineered solution at least for Push 2, maybe it*ll work for Push3 as well.
I used the Isotonik endproduct with Live 11 and it worked.

https://sigabort.co/p2d

(obsolete since Ableton Live 12:
https://isotonikstudios.com/product/p2d ... o-display/
)

[chapelier fou]

There is one reverse engineered solution at least for Push 2, maybe it*ll work for Push3 as well.
I used the Isotonik endproduct with Live 11 and it worked.

https://sigabort.co/p2d

(obsolete since Ableton Live 12:
https://isotonikstudios.com/product/p2d ... o-display/
)

Check the user name two posts above…

[S4racen]

There is one reverse engineered solution at least for Push 2, maybe it*ll work for Push3 as well.
I used the Isotonik endproduct with Live 11 and it worked.

https://sigabort.co/p2d

(obsolete since Ableton Live 12:
https://isotonikstudios.com/product/p2d ... o-display/
)

Check the user name two posts above…

Cheers
D

[TheMuldrew]

Yes, it is a real shame, and I really hope that the full use of the Push screen will be opened up to M4L developers soon.

I can't see this ever happening, firstly because it's alot of work for the Abes to do, and secondly because the current M4L infrastructure doesn't support such a large transfer of essentially realtime data. They would have to create a new mechanism for handling this and I can't see it happening.

Hey Sigabort! Thanks for the info, you're clearly the expert here. Isn't there a mechanism in Max which allows to share visuals to an iPad app (I forget what it's called). I was thinking it would be as easy as developing a similar system, just with some restrictions to fit the size and aesthetics of the Push display... but I don't know anything about how all of this works so I'm sure that's just wishful thinking.

[sigabort]

Hi. Mira.
Not really the same thing I don't think - the Mira app (from what I understand) renders the primitives itself on the iPad - thought I haven't checked this for some years. I don't think it's possible for it to render arbitrary bitmaps for instance, but I may be wrong as I said as I haven't used it for years. So for Push to work in the same way it wold have to have the same ability, which again, is a lot of work. Ideally, you'd want Max to be able to talk directly to the USB port of Push to send the data. This would require a custom libusb implementation to support this or another USB endpoint on Push in order to receive a 2nd data stream and then have some logic to handle the merging.