OK, I've just finished my first skin, and I've just realized how much time and energy these things take.

I've looked at a lot of skins in preparation for this, but it'd be cool if everyone could give me some feedback on it.

There aren't any graphics from Tivo in the skin, they're all original, all animations and renderings were done by me.

You can see the preview video here (download the video to your hard drive before playing it - I got an error when I tried to open it directly from the link...)

Looks great, all very professional.

Wow! Excellent work man! Excellent indeed....

Maybe some different color schemes for the different tastes?

one of the best i've seen yet

WOW!
I would have to say that is the best skin I’ve have ever seen .You are a god among all skinners all hale Boomboom. Keep up the hard and damn good work man.

THAT is a nice skin

its exactly the kind of thing I tried to work on a while ago but got stuck becuase my fonts looked horrible on the TV, I guess you have proved it can work!

Thanks for the inspiration..

The only bad thing, and yes this is th only bad thing since that skin is veryawsome, is that that skin will get cut off around the edges a bit and you won't be able to see the whole thing on some tv's... Try to force yourself to setup a margin around the edges for skins until we get the screen resizer ability (sometime down the road)... Otherwise, dude sweet work man..

That's cool man. Good work.

EDIT-----------
I just tried it out. Absolutely amazing, but the edges do get cut off on my tv as YuYu said might happen. But still, probably my favorite skin

Wow that is awesome. Guess I need to install MXM and try that puppy out.....

Wow. I was impressed before the preview video.... but after seeing the video, I must say, awesome skin.



Yuyu: It looks as though he does have margins, judging by the video.

Thanks for all the nice comments! The animated xbox character was so fun, I think I might come out with preview videos using the character for things like "Games" and "Applications"...

Actually I cropped the screenshot that I posted to make it look like what will be seen on the TV. The actual layout does have a margin (learned through trial and error on that one). Below is the actual layout:



Let me know if elements are still cropped off on anyone's televisions (I've tried it on two different size TV's here and it fits)...

OK just tried it out on 3 seperate TV's 2 it gets cutoff on, on my Big Screen NP shows up completely...

boomboom we could definitely use a talented individual as yourself around here more often, keep it up. Your originality and obvious skills combined are awsome, hope you get payed at least a few $$$ an hour for your skills at your day job...

Thanks Ben Jeremy! Besides a 3D animator, I'm also a developer, and I love the way you have made MXM extensible. While I was working on the skin, I had your source code open and I was checking the source code to see if there were ways I could get around some limitations (like spacing between menu items). I ended up using a blank font for that one.

I do request one update though! When you select a menu item, the skin puts the title of the menu up top next to the animated character (at the root menu, it displays your xbox's nickname).

Anyways, if the title is really long (i.e. "Video Game Emulators") it gets cut off by the preview video. So I used your WordWrap feature. The only problem is, WordWrap ignores <justify y="center" />. If you could make it respect the justify while it's word wrapping, then the title would wrap to two lines. I deliberately left enough space up top so it could accomodate two lines of text.

Other than that, it's been a pleasure working with your software. After looking through your source code, I honestly don't know where you get the time, you've put an enormous amount of work into MXM.

I've donated $30 to your tip jar and hope everyone who likes MXM does the same!

Yuyu, which elements are cropped and by how much? I'll try to relay it out.

all I can say is..... B--U--T---FULL!

Nice job man.....a color pack would be awesome.

lol I thought it was B-E-A-U-TIFUL

damn nice skin!
Simple but beautifull!

Just let everyone know please download the video the screen shoot isn’t nothing compared to the sample video…Man and I thought the screen shoot was good. Keep us updated on the preview videos (make Apps, Games, Dashboards, Emulaters and so on), Can wait to get home and install this baby!

That's a nice clean skin man. Good work on it. Have you released it yet? I'll download it when you do.

Yes you can download it HERE

Nice 3d artwork

Wow... I was thinking of doing a similar Tivo skin before but this one beats the pants off anything anyone could have done. So I think u just made a new MXM Icon. The XBOX-MXM guy! LOL I love how you even did the whole groupings theme. Now only if my Tivo peanut remote could learn RCA DVD player codes I would be set tricking people I have my Tivo hacked yet again to play xbox games. hahahahaha

I just hope this thing doesn't get cut off on my HDTV when I get home... wish me luck...

Damn, this is nice.

However on my tv the bottom is cut off about halfway up the Ip and drive statuses

^^Same as above for me too. The top gets shaved a little too, just the very tip of the preview vids screen isnt there.

damn nice! yea, you definitely need to stick around.. dont get lost and never produce another skin.

This skin is awesome! It barely fits my screen. The left edge is kissing the left arrow and the bottom has a few pixels to spare for the ip/tray info. The top prev video is also kissing the top border.

No screen saver?

Also I forgot to add that my TV's overscan is set to about 5% on the sides and 4.5% on the top/bottom.

boomboom, yes please stick around and deliver us the eye candy we love...

love to see what you could do with the new skinning tools that are going to be available with the next release.

You should also consider maybe submitting a Logo for our unofficial logo contest...
(Which may go official here soon if we can get together some prizes... )

Thanks FourDoor - I debated actually putting the letters "MXM" on the chest of the xbox character incase he migrates to any other launchers, then they'd know his origin! I settled on the "MXM" letters that float by every now and then and having the xbox character jump for joy when he sees them.

That would be sooo cool to have the Tivo remote control the menu... I take it the Xbox DVD Kit uses RCA DVD player codes? Do you have Series 2? Maybe Series 2 supports them...

As for the screen getting cut off, I moved everything closer to the middle of the screen, plus I relocated the Tray status and added a CPU Temp indicator... hopefully the bottom isn't still cut off or I'll have to rerender and shrink the black rounded rectangle.

I couldn't figure out how to update the file that I uploaded to allxboxskins.com, so I updated the one on http://www.xbox-skins.net-- does anyone know how to update the allxboxskins one?

Try to see if everything fits on this new 1.4 version, I've been stingy with the amount I moved the elements inwards because I don't want to have to rerender the backgrounds.

I'm going to add a screensaver of the Xbox MXM character doing something (maybe riding a bike around the screen or just walking / somersalting)... anyone have any ideas?

Also, anyone have ideas on what the xbox character can be doing in the "Games" preview video, the "Applications" preview video, the "Emulators" preview video, and the "MS Dashboard" preview video?

After we get all the elements situated to where it fits everyone's screens, I'll come out with Green, Blue, and Purple color theme versions.

Yuyu/Ben - is there a way I could get ahold of the new skinning tools and make a WIP version of TIVO?


Does anyone know:

- If MXM supports transparent/alpha channel movies?
- If MXM supports "skin events"? (I want to make the xbox character change depending on the current menu item - like start playing a game with a controller in his hand when you move over "Games", etc)
- If MXM supports custom icons for menu items that are folders and nonfolders (I wish to place a Green circle next to items, and a folder icon next to folders without having to have to add the icons to everyone's menu.xml files)?

Hmmm... I have no skinning tools for the new ZPoints. I will be adding a few new basic types when I get a chance.



As for the rest:

- If MXM supports transparent/alpha channel movies?

I think it's more a matter of the WMV format handling transparency. AFAIK, there isn't such a beast, unfortunately.

- If MXM supports "skin events"? (I want to make the xbox character change depending on the current menu item - like start playing a game with a controller in his hand when you move over "Games", etc)

Well, check out the test skin in the WIP for some new conditionals.

- If MXM supports custom icons for menu items that are folders and nonfolders (I wish to place a Green circle next to items, and a folder icon next to folders without having to have to add the icons to everyone's menu.xml files)?

Hmmm... have to think about that one.

Once the System UI is done, and the File Manager effort is underway (I hope to have the actionscripters working on this one) I will probably have some time to add a few goodies to the skin side of things. The plug-and-play standard will also be shaping up, and I've always planned on adding some skin integration, too.

Dang... perhaps you could add MNG support?

Or even simpler/better, a single PNG that is just a filmstrip of horizontal/vertical images that you could cycle through - sort of a "lightweight WMV" file (and since PNG supports transparency and lossless compression, so would the animation)?

The changing xbox character would only use maybe 30ish frames of animation in each "png filmstrip".

Sweet. The new elements are spaced just far enough for my set to make it all look even. For all others who are having overscan problems and have RPT sets, make sure you've adjusted your overscan to aprox 5%. Thats what most home theatre buffs recommend. My HDTV set initially had like 9% overscan on the sides before I tweaked it and gave me major problems with lots of MXM skins.

And yes, the MSX DVD dongle uses RCA universal DVD codes. So if you have a universal remote and program it with an RCA DVD code, it can control MXM and XBMP! Only thing that gives away that I turned on the xbox as opposed to the tivo is the matrix boot sequence now... LOL

I have 3 DirecTivo combo units. 1 series one and 2 series twos. As far as I know the Tivo peanut isnt programmable for DVD codes. I think the S1 DTivo Sony remote suppors pj1 but I'll have to check the tivo forums for that.

As you can tell you made this tivo fanatic very very happy!!! Again, awesome work on the skin! I'm getting a kick watching the XBOX MXM guy bounce up and down on my screen.

great skin and really been looking for something like this - one question though - when you do the other color schemes will you use a higher bitrate for the background videos? it's a little pixelated

thanks and keep up the great work

Or what about that alpha shader code that you were talking about a while ago?

As for the new 'tools' (I think you mean new skinning features), there's the new menus, with customizable smooth scrolling, randomly placable menu items, thumbnails. A little 3d support too, as well as the ability to warp textures.

A video as an alpha mask for a video. Now we're talking

benjeremy,
I actually just read your post where you say you may be able to use a video as the "alpha channel" for another video. if that's true, then that would solve my problem since i could just render a video of the xbox guy as an alpha channel then render the same one as a normal video... I wonder if there'd be "sync" issues though?

chromakey is perfect!

Chromakey? The thing where 1 color becomes transparent?

Is that batman or a vampire in your avatar?

Yeah flex's. Whats it's name?

a vampire? lol .. yeah its the decepticon transformer, Soundwave...

FOURDOOR - cool! i was hoping there were some tivo fans that would want this skin when i was creating it. thanks for the feedback.

KOLDFUSION - i agree with what you said about trying to fit it on everyone's screens. i worked hard not to clutter the skin and i want to keep it that way if possible. i think after FOURDOOR's post that the new location of the elements will work fine.

if i update the skin in the future, what should i do to update it on allxboxskins? should i just FTP it and you'll grab it from there or is there an automated way, etc?


PDT - I just increased the bitrate of the background video and reencoded it in Wnidows Media Encoder 7. For some reason, I can't seem to get rid of the pixelation... maybe it's the codec. Does anyone know of any other codecs that I can use in a WMV file on the xbox? Does anyone know how to get rid of the pixelation?

oh yeah that would be nice... i got no skills for that.. I rendered a model of soundwave in 3dsmax 2 yrs ago, but it was too damn hard to get him to transform... I made him walk like a stiff stick figure though ..

flex - yep, i rendered the xbox character in 3dsmax5. the hardest part is without a doubt the animation... i just rendered a big version of the xbox guy for the screensaver... upping it in a few minutes.