# Is there a program that will help me make a VST plugin or Kontakt product ?



## ManicMiner (May 18, 2019)

Is there a program out there that could help me make a VST or even a Kontakt product even if I lack an "extensive" knowledge in this area ?

I am fairly techy with a background in programming (a while ago), but not much experience with VSTs or Kontakt. I mean, I know how to drag samples into the keyrange....

I'm aware of HISE but not sure about that... I also know about Blue Cat scripting language but there's no tutorials on it, and its pretty limited. The https://www.qubiqaudio.com/struqture (Qubiq)engine looks OK too.

Ideally I would like to make VST instruments (or MIDI manipulation plugins) that don't depend on Kontakt, but I'm not sure a program exists that makes it easy.
It would be a dream to have a program simply drag and drop a saturation module onto the interface for example...

Anyway, just wondering if you guys knew of anything ...


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## Reid Rosefelt (May 18, 2019)

HALion is set up to make instruments very easily and quickly. This shows the GUI designer.


It also has features to automate the sampling process, among other things.

If people have Cubase, they can play your instrument right away using Sonic. They can also play it in any DAW by downloading Steinberg's free Sonic SE player.

This is great if you want to make instruments to share with people, but if you are hoping to make a business out of this then you probably should make them for Kontakt or the UVI player.


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## ManicMiner (May 18, 2019)

TigerTheFrog said:


> This is great if you want to make instruments to share with people, but if you are hoping to make a business out of this then you probably should make them for Kontakt or the UVI player.



Thanks. I'll have to investigate if Halion6 can do a standalone VST. I saw an overview vid and it looks good.
I would have thought that a standalone VST would have been more lucrative than a Kontakt? Because not everyone has the full Kontakt and I sense that devs are moving away from it (e.g. Spitfire).
To get licensed for Kontakt, apparently the fee is expensive now. You'd have to do it for the full ver of Kontakt.

Still, you have probably more insight on this compared to me... I'lll have to check that out. I know there is a program I saw somewhere that does help make Kontakt instruments.


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## Reid Rosefelt (May 18, 2019)

Instruments you make in HALion won't work on their own. They can be loaded in HALion or Sonic (comes with Cubase) or through the free Sonic SE player. So if you were going to sell it, you'd have to include how to download the free player as part of your installation instructions.

You don't need to get licensed for Kontakt. Lots of companies don't. You only need to get licensed by Native Instruments if you want your instrument to work in the free Kontakt player. If you're not licensed, it means that people need to have a full version of Kontakt in order to use it.


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## ManicMiner (May 18, 2019)

TigerTheFrog said:


> If you're not licensed, it means that people need to have a full version of Kontakt in order to use it.


Yes, thats true.
I think there's even some third party software that will make the process of building a Kontakt instrument easier. I knew the name of it but its escaped me.
There is one that will help you build a GUI, Rigid Audio made one. Dont know if thats still active though.
I'll have to have a look for the third-party Kontakt instrument maker I saw and check that out.


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## Rob (May 18, 2019)

I'm not an expert on this, but maybe Synthedit deserves a look... seems easy to operate and makes vst instruments


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## d.healey (May 18, 2019)

HISE and Cabbage are the two options I've explored for creating standalone plugins. HISE for instruments, Cabbage for FX (although I've created FX with HISE too)


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## robgb (May 18, 2019)

There's a program called Samplit that makes creating a Kontakt instrument very easy to do.


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## Brian99 (May 18, 2019)

There is an NI application called Creator Tools that I believe is used to help in the creation of Kontakt instruments. It shows up in my Native Access account and I think it came with the full version of Kontakt.


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## ManicMiner (May 18, 2019)

robgb said:


> There's a program called Samplit that makes creating a Kontakt instrument very easy to do.


This is promising. Like the auto-loop feature. I guess though it exports a vanilla .nki instrument(?)
But I guess you can add a good-looking GUI and FX with something else...
Not many tutorials on Samplit though.


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## gsilbers (May 18, 2019)

*JUCE. *

*https://juce.com*


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## ManicMiner (May 18, 2019)

gsilbers said:


> *JUCE. *
> *https://juce.com*


This requires programming knowledge I believe. I actually am a little familiar with C (not ++) and last month I did a Python program. There are some tutorials which is nice to see, but JUCE might be a learning curve to far for me.
Unless the code is already there in pre-supplied modules and all I have to do is paste it in!


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## d.healey (May 18, 2019)

gsilbers said:


> *JUCE. *
> 
> *https://juce.com*


If you're going to use JUCE for a virtual instrument you might as well use HISE since it's built on JUCE and you can add your own JUCE modules to it.


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## ManicMiner (May 18, 2019)

robgb said:


> There's a program called Samplit that makes creating a Kontakt instrument very easy to do.


Rob - does Samplit simply trigger another plugin and record it, or can it accept me recording my guitar (for example) note by note into it?
I know it can trigger an external keyboard, but just wondering about mic'd up instruments.


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## ManicMiner (May 19, 2019)

d.healey said:


> If you're going to use JUCE for a virtual instrument you might as well use HISE since it's built on JUCE and you can add your own JUCE modules to it.


Watched a couple of your videos on Youtube. Looks like HISE can produce a VST, and is in some departments better than Kontakt. 
I might look into HISE further.


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## EvilDragon (May 19, 2019)

If you just need some MIDI processing, you could also probably go with ReaJS plugin and writing a JS script for it...


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