Want to attempt to make my own skin...

[lonegeek]

I know the basics of making a skin...but i have some questions

Are there any transparency settings?

How do i integrate apperance manager? Or does appearance manager just change pictures in a folder?

How do i set more than one background much like in Contour HC, theres 3 background images...

Zach

[Fatman_do]

I know the basics of making a skin...but i have some questions

Are there any transparency settings?

How do i integrate apperance manager? Or does appearance manager just change pictures in a folder?

How do i set more than one background much like in Contour HC, theres 3 background images...

Zach

I have a tutorial on basic AM skinning, on wiki and in documentaiton forum.
I also have a tutorial on making themes that work with BaseSkin and Chameleon, also on the wiki and documentation forum.

Lastly, I have a users guide on AM on the wiki as well. There is very little needed to make a skin compatible with Apperance Manager. Change a few lines in a .xml file, add directory structure, and done.

3 different backgrounds are not handled, but if you look at it, you can get away with 2 of them.

If you find those instructions, read through them. If you need any help, Old Dog or myself will be glad to help.

You can download Blue-AM from the wiki as a "starter" to compare files.

If you are interested in a way to make ContourHC change backgrounds only, search the forums for Contour-CF or something like that. I posted a zip file that contains all that is needed.

Good luck.

[Old Dog]

I suggest that you download Plain Jane Standard from the Wiki.

Read the wiki carefully, Plain Jane requires Appearance Manager and AM requires CommonGBPVRUtilities.

Using AM inside of Plain Jane, play around with skin effects. As you are trying out different effects, checkout the se.png files in the plugin directories.

To create your own skin, all you need to do is to create a png file for each plugin.
Plain Jane and AM take care of the rest.

Check back when you have questions. Feel free to PM me.

BTW, Plain Jane's implementation of Contour comes with 15 backgrounds, each a different color.

Regards,
OldDog

[daphatty]

LOL! All the local pro's pimping their wares. Good stuff!

[Fatman_do]

LOL! All the local pro's pimping their wares. Good stuff!

Come on now, I don't think that is fair. I "pimped" several sources of information on what he is looking for (If I didn't write those tutorials, I still would have listed them). I suggested he look at Blue-AM. That is not my skin, Old Dog's, he is the creator of Blue-AM, it is only right I "pimp" his skin.

Then, if he was looking at ContourHC in specific, I provided a sample for Torque (the author of ContourHC) on how to do this, that worked for only changing backgrounds. No buttons will be changed.

If you wanted to create a skin using AM, should I have not pointed out those things to help you?

(edit: The BaseSkin/ThemePacks tutorial tries to break down basic skinning techniques as well. I should have said that in my first post.)

[MixMan]

Welcome to the skinning world.

There is a special element that can be used for transparency in the skins.
Otherwise you can set the alpha channel in the popup PNG for transparency.

<SpecialElement name="ForegroundTransparency" percent="100"/>

Fatman_do has written the best documention on Appearance Mangager functionality.

I made a post with a ZIP in the ContourHC tread how to change backgound with ThemeManager
The Countour themepacks have the AM background changing feature.

I suggest that download all skins and try the out first and see how the work GBPVR.
Many of the skins are very incomplete in their XML skinnings for supporting the GBPVRs features and not to talk about what plugins they support.
But I guess you already are aware of that.
After that I suggest that you use the original Blue as a starting point for you skin.
This is how I did it....when making the BaseSkin.

[Old Dog]

LoneGeek,

I woke-up this morning realizing I may have led you astray. If you are interested in Appearance Manager and Contour, you should download the Full version of Plain Jane. Contour is not included in the Standard package.

Sorry about that.

-Old Dog