I'm new to the skinning thing and was wondering, whats the best app or there a tutorial for making overlays. I see skins that have like the preview vid behind a circle which looks cool and wanted to learn how to do that.. any help please

QUOTE (geo1972 @ Dec 22 2003, 04:13 PM)

I'm new to the skinning thing and was wondering, whats the best app or there a tutorial for making overlays. I see skins that have like the preview vid behind a circle which looks cool and wanted to learn how to do that.. any help please

photoshop

^^^ yup. Best graphic app, imo.

When I get to it, I'll post Koldfuzion's Photoshop DDS plugin tutorial. You can use full alpha shading with DDS images (DXT compressed bitmaps)

You can also use PNGs for full alpha shading.

In photoshop:
When creating a file, make sure you select "Background: Transparent"
Then you can draw in stuff, cut out stuff, and leave some areas transparent (represented by a checkerboard pattern)
Save for web, and use PNG-24

Then use that like a normal image element:

To make the overlay show over the preview vid, define the preview before the layout

CODE

<LayoutElement Type="Image" Source="preview"> ... </LayoutElement> <LayoutElement Type="Image" Source="overlay"> ... </LayoutElement>

Wow! lots of good info. I need to do some testing. Also looking forward to that "Koldfuzion's Photoshop DDS plugin tutorial"

thanks