Thread: Brushed Metal for CF

I've posted some car logos for you guys to test, for now only 848x480 (all colors schemes).

Just download the file from here. Then replace the main_empty.jpg file in the skins folder with the one from this .zip file corresponding to the car logo you want.

So far I have included Audi, Chevy, Corvette, Ford, Infiniti and Mazda.

Originally Posted by Meta

Thanks for the suggestion and additions. Looks nice.

Regarding the mute button, however, all of the icons and graphics credit goes to an MP3Car member named Febsperanza. This skin is the result of a lot of work he did for MediaCar and FrodoPlayer. As I simply ported it to Centrafuse, I plan to keep as much of it as possible to the original spirit of his now-famous skin. So, the short answer, as far as I'm concerned I have the right button set and wouldn't feel right changing even something so small as the look of the mute button.

O.K. How do I say this politely......

Brushed Metal is where I stole the copied buttons. Guess whose skin this is.........

Originally Posted by GizmoQ

O.K. How do I say this politely......

Brushed Metal is where I stole the copied buttons. Guess whose skin this is.........

Cool. I didn't see that specific mute button in the .PSD's I downloaded from Feb's site, but I'll check around and see if I can find it.

With the addition of this excellent skin, I need to checkout this CF thing. Unfortunately, it looks like www.MetaphysX.com is down right now. If I can get xm then CF is a real possibility for me. Are there blue-down skins for 800x600 stretch (Xenarc) yet?

Also, I'm a LITTLE experienced with Photoshop, it'd be great if some of these skinner guys could put out a quickie tutorial on how we can do a little editing on their creations, like changing glow colors, drawing buttons, window edge effects, etc. I know there are a bunch of PS tutorials out there but something specific to these skins would be cool.

Any idea why this is happening?

Originally Posted by asci01

Any idea why this is happening?

Yea, and this is the part thats no fun. Your button locations in the skin.ini dont match the jpg picture. One of them is going to have to be changed. Let me know which you're more comfortable changing and maybe I can help.


OBTW, Meta!

I noticed this yesterday. Your skin only has five radio buttons, whereas, the original Centrafuse skin has 6.

Originally Posted by asci01

Any idea why this is happening?

Try these:

CF Brushed Radio Files

Put the nav_down... and nav_off... files in the global directory and the rest in the screens directory.


If Those work, I have the rest I can send later.

Originally Posted by asci01

Any idea why this is happening?

Gizmoo is right, I was never able to test the "radio" pages and hence never finished them. I've uploaded a new skin.xml file for 'Stretched 800x600' that should do the trick.

Download Page

He's also right that I never noticed there were 6 "radio preset" buttons. Ugh. Well, instead of redoing all the graphics, I'm opting to just have 5 preset buttons on this skin.

PS. I have no way to test this out, so if you can let me know how it works, I'd appreciate it.

Originally Posted by wysocki

With the addition of this excellent skin, I need to checkout this CF thing. Unfortunately, it looks like www.MetaphysX.com is down right now. If I can get xm then CF is a real possibility for me. Are there blue-down skins for 800x600 stretch (Xenarc) yet?

Also, I'm a LITTLE experienced with Photoshop, it'd be great if some of these skinner guys could put out a quickie tutorial on how we can do a little editing on their creations, like changing glow colors, drawing buttons, window edge effects, etc. I know there are a bunch of PS tutorials out there but something specific to these skins would be cool.

First, the "Red Glow" and "Blue Glow" files are now available stretched 800x600. I also recommend using the new skin.xml I posted, as the original cuts off some of the glow effects.

As for modifying the skin, I recommend NOT trying to modify the raw .JPG's. Instead, download the .PSD's. The older ones are there now, and I'll upload my latest 'work files' today. All of the files are heavily layered (ie, not 'flat' images), which makes it much easier to apply styles to various components, hide and replace elements, etc.

The way I do it is start with the "down" version of a screen. Build it as you want, then Save As, for example, "main_down_music.jpg". Then go back to the same PSD and modify the styles for the "off" version and save that one as "main_off_music.jpg". Finally, again back to the same PSD, hide most of the elements to make the "empty" file, and Save As "main_empty.jpg". This keeps all the elements in place for the down/off/empty versions and saves you from starting from scratch for each one. And, if you started with the "main" screen, use this as your template for all the rest of your pages, so your player controls, main buttons etc, all stay in the same location. Add the specific elements for the screen your working on and apply/reapply styles, etc just like above. Once you get moving, it gets to be pretty easy. By the way, I'm far from a PhotoShop expert. I've never really used it until about two weeks ago.

The tough part is building the skin.xml file. But yesterday I found CoordPad. It never made it out of "alpha", not everything works perfectly, and the output is restricted to sectioned .ini format (I tried, but can't get it to write XML tags so I could copy/paste.) I started building sections in the coordpad.ini specifically for CF. Basically, you load up your image and draw boxes around your buttons. The output I get looks like this...

[GLOBALNAV/BUTTONS]
VOLDOWN=11,510,63,86
VOLUP=73,510,62,86
MUTE=134,510,62,86
MAIN4=0,411,123,82
MAIN5=0,333,123,79
...etc

It's still tedious, because you still have to manually type all the generated values into the skin.xml file the first time around, but it's the easiest way I've found.

If anyone has a better solution for getting the button coordinates, please share.

-Meta