2011-01-25, 23:40
OK, so I have really got this rolling and would like to see what you guys think. In order to do this right nearly every single image must be changed. That all takes a ton of time and effort, especially since I am not a PS expert.
So far I have the Home List Icons done as well as the Weather Icons and Settings items. All were created in Photoshop and mostly use shapes to scale well in any size I need to reproduce .png files
There are a few problems with redoing all the .png files. One of the first is that you simply don't know how they are scaled and scaling up in xbmc causes too many artifacts. That means every image is very large. All even though they have an enormous amount of transparent space I still do not have any of the default.png's done and the texture file is already over 11 mb! A second issue is that you create a graphic then have to pack them in an .xbt file then run xbmc to see how it looks. It takes time and I found out that small changes seem to make for horrible presentation on screen. The process then has to start all over again. I have only just started to play with the colors, right now most of them are black, although I want to change them all to various shades of slate. I have decided to wait until all the graphics have been converted.
I would love to enlist the help of people, who are much better artists than me. I would love to change the actual home icons to something that fits better with the rest of the theme, but I do not have the ability or time to create any. If there are any out there with suggestions or can help please PM me. If anyone is interested after I get further along I will make the .psd files I used available to anyone that wants to use them.
Here are a couple of screen shots to tease you all:
Current Alpha versions of textures and color file:
Caelatum.xml
Caelatum.xbt
PSD files used in development:
background.psd
Default_icons.psd
Home.psd
moviegenres.psd
Sq_buttons.psd
switch.psd
toggle.psd
You should really check out @Dropbox. It's hot. http://db.tt/pU38Va0
So far I have the Home List Icons done as well as the Weather Icons and Settings items. All were created in Photoshop and mostly use shapes to scale well in any size I need to reproduce .png files
There are a few problems with redoing all the .png files. One of the first is that you simply don't know how they are scaled and scaling up in xbmc causes too many artifacts. That means every image is very large. All even though they have an enormous amount of transparent space I still do not have any of the default.png's done and the texture file is already over 11 mb! A second issue is that you create a graphic then have to pack them in an .xbt file then run xbmc to see how it looks. It takes time and I found out that small changes seem to make for horrible presentation on screen. The process then has to start all over again. I have only just started to play with the colors, right now most of them are black, although I want to change them all to various shades of slate. I have decided to wait until all the graphics have been converted.
I would love to enlist the help of people, who are much better artists than me. I would love to change the actual home icons to something that fits better with the rest of the theme, but I do not have the ability or time to create any. If there are any out there with suggestions or can help please PM me. If anyone is interested after I get further along I will make the .psd files I used available to anyone that wants to use them.
Here are a couple of screen shots to tease you all:
Current Alpha versions of textures and color file:
Caelatum.xml
Caelatum.xbt
PSD files used in development:
background.psd
Default_icons.psd
Home.psd
moviegenres.psd
Sq_buttons.psd
switch.psd
toggle.psd
You should really check out @Dropbox. It's hot. http://db.tt/pU38Va0