Nothing on built VST3 plugins' GUI

Hello everyone,

Today I have tried several times to build those example plugins included in the SDK, but their GUI are not shown, just a blank square.

How to fix it?

The problem is just as the picture shows:

You need to copy the whole .vst3 “bundle” folder and not just the “naked” .vst3 file from inside the x86_64-win folder. The bundle folder contains the extra artwork that is needed to render the GUI.

BTW: you are using Reaper - if you do click on “Open UI Description Editor” it will crash; this is a known issue with Reaper/“Open UI Description Editor” that has been going on for several years now.

  • Will Pirkle

Everything now goes well! Thanks a lot!

BTW, how to pack those resources into the built .vst3 file so that I needn’t copy the folder?

“BTW, how to pack those resources into the built .vst3 file so that I needn’t copy the folder?“

You can pack the resources (PNG files) into the XML file by altering the uidesc file via the WYSIWYG editor to embed the PNG data inside the XML file, then edit the project’s CMakeLists.txt file to remove the resource dependencies of those PNG files.

But (IMO) there isn’t a good reason to circumvent the Steinberg engineers’ bundle-folder approach. While the resulting plugin will be somewhat more “self contained” it won’t be any smaller in size since it absorbs the PNG data. Plus, all the VST3 hosts should find the .vst3 plugin in the bundle without problems. In addition, this is how the MacOS version of VSTs (and AU and AAX) plugins work, as well as WinOS AAX too.

And, I am guessing that they changed the paradigm to use the bundle-folder for good reasons, including stuff that hasn’t been specified or announced yet. So, I would recommend just going with the flow and use the whole bundle folder. Just my opinion.

  • Will

Thanks a lot for guiding me on VST programming!

bumping this up to today - i’ve been going through building AGain and the xcode builds, the plugin loads in the test host and i am trying to add the graphics to build the plugin’s GUI. I have noticed that my xcode output is having a hard time finding the resources. i’ve gone through the tutorial on the VST GUI and watched the little video where they showed the Grungelizer being constructed via the UIDescriptionEditor. i have dragged over the resources i could find to the bitmap in my editor and saved the editor file, but it appears I am still missing some .png files when i re-build the plugin. i haven’t even really begun to use construct the fader, etc, just want to get all the resources where they need to be. in addition - is there any additional documentation on the UIDescriptionEditor? just wondering how to use the different layers, views, etc. in the program.


You have two options to embed graphics:
1.) Tick the option “Encode Bitmaps in XML” under “File”->“Save Options…”
2.)Add the graphics in your CMakelists.txt file as plugin resources. (See CMakelists.txt for again)

A little bit of documentation about the editor can be found here: VSTGUI: Inline UI Editor for VST3 (WYSIWYG)