skinning tricks
Posted: 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
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