Other skinning tutorials?

[Fraxav]

Hello everyone,
I searched this forum and it seems the only tutorials are the ones in the wiki.
I'm definitely trying to learn some skinning and, I must confess, these tutorials are (though certainly useful) somehow confusing to me. Rowingcowboy's one misses punctuation a lot (but I somehow reached the end of it), while Morten's tut. keeps refering to an image I cannot find and it looks like is missing some parts (e.g. the whole theme.mskn part).
So, is there any updated version? Or do you know any other tutorial that helped you and could help me too?
I'd like to say that I REALLY thank you people for the effort of writing a tutorial on such an hard subject, but I'm not that newby and still I cannot understand it all.
Of course, you could say I'm a bit stupid .
Thank for your welcome tips...

[nohitter151]

While a skinning tutorial seems like a nice idea, I'm really not sure how helpful it would really be. I think that the easiest way is to just start playing with the Theme engine and see what changes when you make changes. Its better to learn by doing, in my opinion.

[rovingcowboy]

no man your not stupid,

i get too layed back and lax in my typing, its just the way i talk and i don't say coma and period at the end of my talking,

i thought i did a new copy of it with the correction for typos in it? maybe its around here and forgotten to upload it?
but in short all my fast newbies one is saying to do.

is use the way of what nohitter151 suggested to do.
and mess with a skin to over lay images with ones you want,
making a skin the same size as the one you started with,
but that looks totaly different since you made new images.

the lesson only tells you how to change the theme. if you want some more info on changing player mskns.
i put some of that in the one for converting a mm 2 skin to a mm 3 skin.

hey i see your in italy thats where macmaster is at check his site for his skins he might be able to help in your own language, so the punctuations will be better for you. thats presuming italian is your main language.



i just went to post the corrected one on the wiki. but when i was doing it nothing was changing, so it is already the corrected one up there, which means if there is any grammer errors in the lesson then open office grammer checker did not see them. the spelling was not changed either. so that makes me at a loss to know why your viewing of it was bad ? unless its caused by an online language translator

[Fraxav]

Sure, the empirical method is good. Actually I use to spend time messing with functions, but since I'm really new to skinning (while not to image editing) I think I need something more. A good step by step guide is the best written thing I could imagine.
You hit it, I'm mother-toungue, so it' s harder to me to guess out what's not in the clearest english (or at least what I think it's not) (mind, it's not a matter of mis-spelling, just stops in the middle of sentences mess it all up...but I finished it anyway).
However, thanks again for your tutorials because I'm learning how to modify objects here and there. Still, I'd like to create a skin from scratch someday and a complete tutorial on this subjects is missing (morten's one lacks the theme part, maybe the most important?).
I'll check macmaster, thanks.
Meanwhile, other liks are welcome, if any.

[nohitter151]

There's nothing else available than what's at the wiki. I have contributed some sections to Morten's guide but after working on it, I really don't think it would be all that helpful. There are so many different ways to do it that the best way to learn is really just to play with it and use this: http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.p ... and_higher to figure out what some things stand for.

[rovingcowboy]

You hit it, I'm mother-toungue, so it' s harder to me to guess out what's not in the clearest english (or at least what I think it's not) (mind, it's not a matter of mis-spelling, just stops in the middle of sentences mess it all up...but I finished it anyway).I'll check macmaster, thanks.
Meanwhile, other liks are welcome, if any.

thought it might have been the mother toungue, messing you up. yes macmaster will be of great help to you.

oh not mis - spelling, just my lax slang style of grammer, and pausing to think about the next line as i type. sorry.

[DreadM]

Greetings

Intresting Discusion,I thougt also to make a skining help ,but i disided to let it because of my bad english.But i think a good way to do something like this is to work with images
(a image says more then 1000words)
Maybe it can Look like this:

You see this menu in a skin needs 3 objects and more,i think this is a good way to show this.

[nynaevelan]

Greetings

Intresting Discusion,I thougt also to make a skining help ,but i disided to let it because of my bad english.But i think a good way to do something like this is to work with images
(a image says more then 1000words)
Maybe it can Look like this:

You see this menu in a skin needs 3 objects and more,i think this is a good way to show this.

This method would certainly encourage me to want to try skinning, or at least modify a skin or two.

Nyn

[Fraxav]

Yup, images are missing, too. Let's just mention the "image" in Morten's tutorial, to wich the reader is often sent to and that isn't in the tutorial at all .
Too bad.
I still agree with you nohitter, but I think there's something too much specific to learn just with trials and errors. Again, images would help a bit.

[Fraxav]

Short off-topic: How can I rename the forms in themeeditor (Morten says to, but not how )? And, is the new name a standard or I can choose every name I like?

[spacefish]

This method would certainly encourage me to want to try skinning, or at least modify a skin or two.

Same here!

[rovingcowboy]

Short off-topic: How can I rename the forms in theme editor (Morten says to, but not how )? And, is the new name a standard or I can choose every name I like?

the form he is talking about is the object, in order to rename the form you must select it in the left side of the editor.
then on the right side of the editor you will see the name of the form, if it is just called form then that will be what it is on the right side of the editor, click that word and type the new name you need.
as in his example type playerbackground. then click on the word object on the left side of the editor again
you will then see the name of the form has changed.

thats a lot of work making all the different forms, i found it easier to just use an already working skin's mskn file.
you will see all the form's with the names that way, and all you have to do is then change all the information the forum is using such as what images it needs to use and what size to show them.

and that leaves you only tons of artwork to change out. which means you need to import all the image maps you over layered with your images.,

also in using the already working skin's mskn file you can use the editor to export all the images in the mskn file
so you can then see what is needed to be change image wise for that mskn file then you just re add your changed images to the mskn file and it will show your skin when you use it.

in my lesson i thought about an image for doing teaching with, but when i did the one for creation of another project it took more space on line then was able to put on one site. so i decided to use the thousand words instead of the images. but i did put a few up for you.

[Fraxav]

in order to rename the form you must select it in the left side of the editor.
then on the right side of the editor you will see the name of the form, if it is just called form then that will be what it is on the right side of the editor, click that word and type the new name you need.

Already tried, but not working. I cannot rename the form... Tips?

P.S. I see that making a new skin from scratch is hard, but I wanted to know if I can rename the form as 'Sfondo' insted of 'playerbackgroud' without having problems. Don't know, maybe the program needs to see that name and not others...

[rovingcowboy]

in order to rename the form you must select it in the left side of the editor.
then on the right side of the editor you will see the name of the form, if it is just called form then that will be what it is on the right side of the editor, click that word and type the new name you need.

Already tried, but not working. I cannot rename the form... Tips?

P.S. I see that making a new skin from scratch is hard, but I wanted to know if I can rename the form as 'Sfondo' insted of 'playerbackgroud' without having problems. Don't know, maybe the program needs to see that name and not others...

as far as i know you need to keep the english names you see in the list.

that is strange you can't rename that? you should be able to click in there select the name that is in there now, delete it and then type in your new name for it.

the tree on the left should have the objects on top. then you should have the list of objects under it.
you select that item from the sub list of objects then go to the right side and click on the name of it and change the name. that is how it is done, if you can not do that you might have got a bad download of the theme edtior.
try to get it again and install it a second time. maybe that will fix what ever did not get set up the first time?

[Fraxav]

OK, got it working