Xion Audio Player

skinning tricks

Tips, Tricks and Techniques for creating amazing Xion skins

Postby SLoB » October 6th, 2006, 11:46 am

First Sticky, won't go overboard with em tho :)

Primary use for this thread is to be a goldmine of cool info, tips, tricks mainly for Xion, however if the tips are for Photoshop or Design ideas/principles/thought processes involved in creating skins for Xion and they help increase/ease workflow then please participate

FONT LAYER TRICKS

its possible to add a slight drop shadow or slight embossed effects with minimal cpu cost to the timer & the songticker

for example
create a layer
create a rectangle the size of where your font is going, fill it with a solid colour
this is the selection layer to make it easier to select the box
clone the layer and ctrl select it, now delete the contents and select black as foreground colour and select gradient foreground to transparent and bosh a line from bottom to top so black bottom to top transparent
thats the sort of shadow layer there

clone or ctrl+shift+n to create a new layer, ctrl+the original layer, the new layer should be above the black gradient layer, now select foreground colour, for my example i used 190, 255, 255 but you could use any colour within reason
this time your going from top to bottom on the gradient to transparent so light cyan top to transparent bottom

offset the black layer the desired amount of pixels down or up depending on effect wanted, could even do left/right but might not look so good

now rename the layers both the same such as time fa(center) fs(25) fn(bankgothic md bt) for example, obviously your font size also helps determine the box
load yer skin up and voila

will take a bit more mucking about with values for gradients etc,
EDIT: solid colours no longer use cpu but gradients can still be used, the text objects have been optimised from .82 onwards

anyways after a little while should be able to produce some nifty effects without too much cpu overhead

small example, lots more could be done with mucking around i reckon, altho subtle probably works best, dont want to make it too unreadable now do we :)
gone for a slight embossed look, you can move the layers down, up to create drop shadow or embossed type effect, i also tried with different colours and got some freaky effects which would look cool in the right skin

Image
Last edited by SLoB on September 24th, 2007, 6:20 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Postby SLoB » October 9th, 2006, 12:19 am

TOGGLE BUTTON
its possible to add a toggle button to turn off VU meters for example, however, the same principles apply for toggling other layers such as using aclahide/show to toggle layer visibility

assumes you've already created your vu layersets

create a new layer set with name "animation animtype(0) id(togvu)" w/o quotes
add 4 layers, leave them invisible and the layerset invisible too

animation animtype(0) id(togvu)
name the layers:-
modify(vu1) action_anim_play passthrough
modify(togvu) action_anim_stop passthrough
modify(vu1) action_anim_stop passthrough
modify(togvu) action_anim_stop passthrough

add a button, you can also still use the 3 states too such as below:-
button_over modify(togvu) action_anim_play tooltip(Toggle Vis)
button_normal modify(togvu) action_anim_play tooltip(Toggle Vis)
button_down modify(togvu) action_anim_play tooltip(Toggle Vis)

both your VU layersets will have the same name "vu1", you could always put in 2 layers above to stop left/right but naming them the same will do the trick just aswell
change layer ids/names as you choose but make sure they all correspond with each other as above

works a treat :)


edit: basic ps action to create basic toggle button, rename your ids to suit your skin but remember to keep the relationships as in the example
Last edited by SLoB on July 11th, 2007, 4:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby I.R. Brainiac » July 10th, 2007, 1:54 pm

I used the text trick and for a single shadow its fine...thanks.

Not sure I totally understood the second one but I already had a button for stopping animations...problem was I had to do 2 buttons...couldnt figure out hoe to get the 1 button to do both off and on. :lol:
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Postby SLoB » July 10th, 2007, 5:55 pm

when i get round to it ill do a ps action for a toggle button, theyr not hard to create once you've seen one or done one, checkout most of my skin psds, they normally have a toggle button in there ;)
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Postby I.R. Brainiac » July 11th, 2007, 4:24 am

yep,a toggle button to handle 2 task would be better than my 2 button setup... 8)
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Postby SLoB » July 11th, 2007, 4:37 am

have posted that example ps action above in the toggle thread
this is just an example for show/hide and could easily be modified to play other animation sets etc...
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Postby I.R. Brainiac » July 11th, 2007, 6:09 am

me go look :D
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Postby SLoB » July 11th, 2007, 7:35 am

edit - made sticky, added small header info in 1st post

This thread will get pruned from time to time so that relevant posts for tips, tricks etc are present so skinners can use it as a reference, if anyone wants to discuss an idea(s) further then we should try and create a separate thread(s)
So get those tips & tricks coming in ;)
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Postby AphexMonkey » September 28th, 2008, 5:51 am

Hi SLoB, and all in this forum, i'm new on this and i want to create a skin to Xion.

1st_How to tell Xion player to orientate the layers made in Photoshop?



Greetings. APXMonkey³.
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Postby AphexMonkey » September 28th, 2008, 4:14 pm

AphexMonkey Wrote:Hi SLoB, and all in this forum, i'm new on this and i want to create a skin to Xion.

1st_How to tell Xion player to orientate the layers made in Photoshop?


Greetings. APXMonkey³.



Ok i got it now from this tutorial http://xion.r2.com.au/index.php?page=tut1

Don't know if was only me, but i try in RGB and nothing happend, then testing i get that RGB needs to be setup in 8 bit.
Maybe you can add this to the tutorial.
Well i got the basic ideas on how to create a skin, but i'll try to do some animations/transitions.
Maybe i'll need some help, let's see.

Greetings. APXMonkey³.
Last edited by AphexMonkey on October 1st, 2008, 1:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby SLoB » September 28th, 2008, 7:14 pm

Hi AphexMonkey :)
heheh replying to your own post ;) I get that sometimes too cos I'm eager to find stuff out, glad you took a step forward though :)

yep read the tut and look at the reference page, its really simple, just rename your layers to suit the component, Xion skinning is the easiest way

also checkout some of the other skins too, just open one up, theyr only zip files, checkout the psds, remember you can use F5 to refresh the skin inside Xion, so you can directly check the changes you've made from photoshop

have fun :) and if you have any further questions open a new thread about your skin, as those questions are more than likely to be about your skin, others might be able to learn a thing or 2 from the thread along the way.

Cheers :)

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Postby AphexMonkey » October 1st, 2008, 1:45 pm

Thanks SLoB!!

I'm just doing some cool stuff, then i will upload a video un UTB so you can see what i'm doing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU-98vIDfAo

Greetings. APXmOnKey³. :wink:
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Postby SLoB » October 5th, 2008, 12:44 am

Cliff's Tip of the Week: In XP+ If you CTRL+C in a message box it will copy the text and allow you to paste elsewhere :wink:

Particularly useful atm if you cannot see all the string formatting stuff in the message box in Xion ;) heheh but a useful tip nonetheless ;)
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Postby AphexMonkey » October 9th, 2008, 4:17 pm

Hi SLoB and all people around there.
I just give a polish to the skin, some changes too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAXOx2-h6R0&fmt=18

SLob, did you think that my skin could be shared in the official public Xion list?


Hope you like it. Greetings. APXMonkey³.
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Postby SLoB » October 9th, 2008, 6:47 pm

yea looks cool :) nice big buttons tho for easy access :)

going to move these to its own skin thread, cos this is a sticky for tips and tricks

all you need to do is goto the skins page and manage/upload skin and add it :)
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