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
Last edited by SLoB on September 24th, 2007, 6:20 am, edited 3 times in total.
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.
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.
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
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...
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
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.
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.