Hi can someone tell me how to make a skin?

[Paws]

Hi, i wanted to know if anyone could tell me how to make my own skin for the background and for the player. Media Monkey is the best out there free or paid version in my opinion and i just now found out you can make your own skins, if anyone can help that be great if not thats cool too.

[Lowlander]

http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2132

[rovingcowboy]

also don't forget this new sticky thread lowlander

http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11149

it is a step by step of how to make a new skin for monkey.

also keep in mind paws there is a new way of skinning in the near future of monkey. not too far away about version 2.6 or so.

but in short. for right now you can make an old winamp 2.9 classic skin

and that will work on the player in monkey as a player only.

then you need to use the theme skinning engine to make the rest of the skin for monkey.

as for the back grounds they are simple images. you make them now and use the over ride feature in monkey's options to see what your new backgrounds would look like.

enjoy.

[Paws]

Hi thanks. i'm having problems making my own though. http://users.ncable.net.au/~modemen/MMM ... 000004.htm
I dont know where to open these things at to edit them? Or what not the instructions to me seem to be at complete random.

[rovingcowboy]

download his starter lesson packs.

they are how to do a skin for monkey.

you can get the theme engine from either trixmoto's site

or from my site.

http://www.angelfire.com/tx3/rovingcowb ... loads.html

you need to theme engine to open the " theme.mskn " files.

[Paws]

Thanks, still lacking the know how to do this.. i know this isnt some free online course for this. I'm sorry if i come off as a a...hole. but i cant figure out how to make one... i've seen alot of you guys skins on here, have to say "skills" and very cool...

[rovingcowboy]

no your not looking or acting like that.
just remember though every one at this forum is different countrys,
and might take some more explaining of what you mean in order to understand it.

just that not many are making skins. and that step by step is
the newest thing to help make skins for monkey.

which is why i said t check it out.

a little background on what you do know how to do would help us understand what to tell you.

i took it you could already make skins for other programs since you asked
about it here, mostly only other skinners would jump in the fire to make a new skin.

so
1.
can you make skins for winamp, either the old classica skins or the modern skins.
2.
can you make a skin for any other program. are you on a computer with lots of artwork programs to use like a drawing program and a photo editor,
in other words what are your art skills on level of 1 to 10 ten being best
3.
have you ever opened a wsz file with a zipping program.

knowing those will help us help you.



thanks for the flowers you gave me and the other skinners.

[rian81]

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[list][list=][img][/img][url][color=darkred][/color] :roll: so can anybody tell me how thiis ite works?and can m/m be used as a web browser?[/url][/list][/list]

[Paws]

Hi, i have never made a sking at all.. I should have mentioned that i apologize i thought it was a 1.2.3. simple kinda thing, (dead wrong) I have paint shop pro... My art skills on normal paper 10, on computer weakly 4-5? From that being that i'm unable to make the things i see in my mind.Yes i think i opend a .wsz i downloaded (black monkey) skin for media monkey....

I'm running windows xp home edition. i hope this is enough information and thank you for the links and the advice and being polite the whole 9 yards.

[rovingcowboy]

hey your skills are same as mine on 10 paper 4 or 5 on computer.

i only have a mouse and keyboard i use for art program contorls.

you should be able to do this no problem.

its just understanding what is needed.

1.

get the theme engine.

2.

get a skin file you already got the black monkey.wsz that is good

the wsz is just winamp skin zipped file. that is what it means.

so on that file change the wsz to zip and open it you will find
all the images used in the winamp skin that was put in that zip file.

and you will find the theme.msk file the theme msk file is just a zipped up file of the images used and where to place them in a theme skin.
only you can not open it with anything other then the theme skin engine.

3.

now you can just use your art talent and change the images on the winamp skin images you have in that zip file.

they will make the skin for the player. you need to make the new images
the same size as the ones your replacing so looking at them images you see there are different sections for the images of the buttons and slilde bars. you need to make your images match them in size.

so you end up with the same named winamp image but all the designs on it are your new ones.

4.
now you need to open the theme mskn file and use the export feature of the theme skin engine and export all the images in there in to the same folder you have the ones you just changed for the winamp images.

now change all the theme images to what you want them to look like.
then open the same theme.mskn file again and this time you need to use the add image feature of the theme skin engine to add the images back in to the theme.mskn file and replace the orginal ones.

then save the theme.mskn file

now you look around the theme skin engine you will see areas for you to rename the file from black monkey to what ever name you want and to change the authors name to yours.

5.
the background images in the list areas are just simple and they are stored with the winamp images you will see them with long names there are only 3 of them. and are named sdb list... image.

make sure you use soft to very soft pastel colors on those images for your first skin when you get other skins and find out how to change the color and size of the fonts you can get in to a little more detail with the background images.

6.
when all the images are changed and all the ones for the theme.mskn file are reloaded in there then you just zip up the folder with your winamp skin images and the theme.mskn file.

don't zip up any images or files used in making your images just the finshed images, so the zip file wont be huge with unused images.

now rename the zip file of your skin's folder to the name of your skin and change the .zip to .wsz now you place that wsz file in to the folder in media monkeys main program folder that is called skins.

when you restart monkey you can go to the tools options and then to the skins area and you will see your skin there to pick from.

test your skin out lots to make sure there's no little surprise's like a blue pink and yellow title bar because you mised a image file..

if you missed an image just do all the above again to get to the images and
repair your skin by putting that missed file back in to get rid of the blue pink and yellow bar.

and re zip it and re save it.

hope you can follow them but if not just ask where you get stuck at and some one will be able to help you.

[rian81]

[/i][img][/img][url][code][list][quote]makeing anything is easy but time consuming.skins are like making anyother stuff .do u have a code generator?any type of pblishing progs.?can u write code?are u wanting to add ur own art or somone elses?[/quote][/list][/code][/url]

[rovingcowboy]

makeing anything is easy but time consuming.skins are like making anyother stuff .do u have a code generator?any type of pblishing progs.?can u write code?are u wanting to add ur own art or somone elses?

oh hey thats a good point.

i forgot to say that if you make your skin work on both winamp and media monkey. your in for lots of computer time.

it took me 20 hours for each of my skins just to make the images that are used with winamp. then i had to add in about another 5 hours to adjust and make new images for media monkey to use.

now the winamp skins also needed EQ, playlists, Av av player and any plugin i wanted to make a skin to match my winamp skin.

that is why it took 20 hours for it.

if you make just the player skin part of winamp it should not take more then 5 hours the first one you do. and that is cause of the idea and creating images the way you want them you get faster each time.

on your second winamp player part only skin you should make it in less then 2 hours on a slow computer.

thats how simple the winamp classic skin is.

the monkey part will still take some time to learn but you should get it down to less then 3 hours making a total of 5 hours or less for the whole media monkey only skin.

it will still be about 10 hours for the whole winamp and media monkey combo skin. thats because all the nit picking images in the full winamp classic skin.

[Paws]

Thanks for all the post, just does not work at all. I get validation error or some bs and its driving me mad.... I cant make a skin or edit any with that theme program.... i open the theme up but nothing there no pictures... this sucks

[rovingcowboy]

you need to forget about that step by step. since it was to hard to do i told you how to do it with out the other step by step.


so in short get the theme engine.

get a wsz file of a full media monkey skin.
copy the wsz file so you don't mess up the orginal one.

now change the .wsz on the copy to .zip

unzip the zip file you just made with an unzipping program put the files in to a folder all their own so you can keep them seperate.

you should see images for the player and the sdb background images.

and a theme.mskn file.

you need to open that theme.mskn file with the theme engine.

now when you open the theme.mskn file in the theme engine look for
the file command you should find it or something simular.
click it and look for the export images command. it would be best to have
the theme engine in the same folder as the theme.mskn file you opened.
because it will export the images to where ever you have the theme engine. (atleast mine did)

once you got them exported you can then use your image editor to change them to what you want.

then find the add / replace image feature of the theme engine and replace only the images you exported from it.

that is where the images are and how to get them out and put them back.
which is all you do with making the skin.

you might understand if you seen a templete for the skin images.
there is a winamp templete for the classic winamp skins. it is at a site called 1001 winamp skins. look for the skin called templete

it shows you how to make the winamp skin.

if you learn that first then it will be easier for monkey.
all you need to learn is how to put what where and the templete for winamp is like a blueprint skin. it has white and blue stripes.

and instructions on what to change. making the main player skin section for that is the same as making the player skin for monkey.

you might be making it harder then what it is?

think of playing cards. you take a deck of cards you don't like the back of them. so you glue a new picture on the back of the deck bingo you just skinned a deck of cards.

same here just put a new image on the old one. but here it is not just 52 cards it can be 100 to 200 images with all the buttons you click. to play songs.

each button needs two images one for non clicked and one for when it is clicked, most make the clicked button a darker image of the non clicked one.

the hard part is finding all the images because each skinner does not use all the images the theme skin engine can use.

i did not.

but the blue monkey skin has all of them.

you picked the third hardest player to skin. the first is jet audio player it has over 10,000 images in its skin file. thats what i got when i got its templete to try and make one for it.

the second hardest one is winamp modern skins. i never did get one of those made.

then there is monkey then the easier one is winamp classic.

which is why i said you can learn its main player skin first then you will beable to make monkey skins in no time.

it took me along time to figure out monkeys skin. but when i was told just to unzip the skin and export the images and over right them with mine. that made it easier to understand.

maybe i said it enough ways that one of them clicked something for you.

if not ask again.

[PLANETABLOG]

This is the part that I don't understand:
"now rename the zip file of your skin's folder to the name of your skin and change the .zip to .wsz now you place that wsz file in to the folder in media monkeys main program folder that is called skins.

how do I change from .zip to .wsz?
I'm sorry if that's is a dumb question