[Stranger]

I see you use a blur in the background, that's not possible.
A thought about text on art, can be hard to read (think white art, very busy art, ect).
And make sure not to use 100% white, specially not on big surfaces. Can cause ghosting on some tv's.

Hope that's some useful tips

+1 on the white tip...

It's a shame blurred fanart isn't viable. Sure it wouldn't look perfect all the time, but the abstract results (especially with busy fanart) would look awesome. I think XBMC deserves some image filtering like blurring and grayscale, even ember media manager had grayscale.

[Baswazz]

Thanks for the tips guys. Tips and idea's are always welcome.

Are there any close to white color codes that does work?

That suck that there isn't a blur background option, i thought i had seen it before. May-bey i can fix this by adding some blurred background on top of the fanart. This way i hoped everything does fit well together with every color fanart/posters.

[MassIV]

@Stranger
In that video they blur by making a screenshot, blurring it with a separate script, and then loading the result.
It was a proof of concept / work around, but it is too slow for actual use. As i understood it...
If it was viable everyone would use it i think.

Haven't tested the white but maybe something like FDFDFC.
So for in XBMC xml's that's: FFFDFDFC

[D0nR0s4]

If you 'just' blur the fanart, could it be possible for a script to go over every fanart file and created blurred versions of it, then allow the skin to use those? Obviously that would use up some diskspace, but I guess it would be possible and due to the one time caching probably faster? Then again, the script would have to run after each library update.

Oh and my knowledge of Python is basically non-existant so this is just a wild guess.

[Baswazz]

Thanks guys for thinking with me on this.

I am a webdesigner only this skills does not come in handy on this.

I was just googling to find if there is a way to create some kind of top layer that has the blur effect. When i place fanart beneath this top layer it would be blurred. You see a lot of skins which has on-top a black semi-transparant layer to darken the background.
Only i did not find any workaround yet to create such thing.

Edit:
I asked if it would be possible to implement a blur feature. It has been asked before only really hard to let the GPU does this job on different OS's

[Hitcher]

No blurring, only diffusing.

[wolfodeiwolfy]

I really like this skin, i hope an alpha or beta will be released soon.

Just one suggestion (not only for you but for some skinners) : please justify your texts. As this skin is really nice with squares and angles, texts (plots in pictures above) justified are more good looking.


w2w

[Baswazz]

@wolfodeiwolfy thanks for your comment. I am not really sure what you mean by "please justify your texts".

[`Black]

He means this. It's easy to do in XBMC, you have to add <align>justify</align> to your textbox controls.

[Baswazz]

Ahh owk thx for pointing me on this. That indeed looks a lot better.

[zedika]

Thats what I was referring to as well sorry.. My bad I should have been more specific ^^

Really love what you've got baswazz and can't wait for the next batch of screenshots.

[Baswazz]

The last days i have been buzzy trying to understand how the skinning algorithm of xbmc is working. If there is anyone willing to help me out please send me a pm.

[ZexisStryfe]

Wow Baswazz, very nice looking!

Quite different than the other Metro inspired skins as well. It is funny, but I have been plotting out something very similar to that info screen for use in my skin. Very nicely done.

And as a fellow metro skin developer I just have to say to those complaining about all the Metro-styled skins- Why is it a problem if several people want to use the same design philosophies? I don't hear people complaining about too many Aeon-inspired skins and there are just as many (if not more) of those. Would you prefer we just not put our work out there for the public to use?

[pecinko]

The last days i have been buzzy trying to understand how the skinning algorithm of xbmc is working. If there is anyone willing to help me out please send me a pm.

I don't have time to help with coding actively but I'm happy to answer questions you might have in skin developement thread.

That said, if I were you, I would continue with PS mockups as you will probably need them for the rest of 150 windows. Just a suggestion.

[Baswazz]

@ZexisStryfe really nice to get some feedback from a fellow metro skin developer.

@pecinko Thx mate for your input as-well. This will definitely not be the last mockup sreen. But i thought it will be wise to investigate what is possible and what not. So i use a solid base and off-course improve my low skinning skills.
I added a question in Hitchers foundation topic i did not manage to understand, may-bey you can take a look.