Ok, I know I can't be the only Star Trek fan around here. Wouldn't a Star Trek based skin that makes XBMC look like you're using a computer terminal on a Federation star ship just be cool! I know I'd use it!

P.S. If I am the only Star Trek fan... well... this message may be discarded.

you're not the only one , the thing that most of the skin devs are busy with other skins but some one might make your dream come true

LCARS, yes

I hope so man! Man, that would be sure to impress the ladies! Well, maybe not... But I would think it would be cool!

i think if you meen"cool",your talking about star wars not star trek

lol. Nope, I'm not one of those people who think Star Trek and Star Wars are the same show.

I understand that the Skin Devs are busy, this is mainly the reason I was hesitant to post a suggestion. They've done such an amazing job already. I just thought that I would throw it out there and perhaps someone looking for a project to work on could be inspired.... Kinda like winning the lottery!

I've also thought that I maybe I'd give it a try. I, like the Skin Devs, are also busy with other projects. I just built my own homemade telescope (http://gstrike[dot]blogspot[dot]com). There are far better people for the job than myself. I have the technical aspect down but the I can struggle artistically sometimes. But I've also surprised myself in that area before.

So who knows, we'll see what happens.

Creating an entire skin based on Star Trek would be quiet a project, I dont see anyone doing it anytime soon...

BUT

Theres always themes Itd be a lot easier grabbing one of the great skins out there, and redoing the images with Star Trek stuff

That should atleast keep ya somewhat satisfied until a whole new skin is out for it

Well you wouldn't really need Star Trek images if you went with the cool LCARS theme, like nuka suggested. And to make that even easier, one could go to the very cool LCARS website, http://www.lcarscom.net/ and download all the sounds and see it in action although it would have to look a little cooler than the site (shouldn't be a problem in the right creative hands). I have no skinning skill, otherwise would attempt it myself.
Personally i'm more of a Star Wars fan, but stylistically Star Trek wins the battle with the cool 60s 70s space designs and yes, LCARS computer interface. Perfect for an XBMC skin.

Anyway check out the site, it is pretty cool.

Yeah, I've actually been out there and a couple other sites for a couple days now. I found a site that is setting an LCARS standard based on what has appeared on show (http://www.lcarsdeveloper.com/). This would probably be a good place to refer to if we were to go for authenticity. Which I believe would be important.

I think using Star Trek graphics would be pretty cheesy, honestly. The hope of the idea is to emulate, as closely as time permits, an LCARS interface. Rather than putting Star Fleet logos in front of every button or an icon of the Enterprise for folders icons. That would just be DUMB! Sorry if I wasn't clear before that the idea was for an LCARS interface skin.

I messed around a little bit last night changing some of the sounds in the Project Mayhem III skin. If you closed your eyes it sounded pretty darn close! I wonder if there is a way to randomize some of the sounds so that you can use a list of sounds for a specific event. Listening to the same LCARS beep every time you move the cursor is a little repetitive. I believe in the show the tone changes as they push other buttons but I'll listen a little more closely tonight as I watch some Voyager episiodes to get it as close as possible.

yn0t

Ahhh I see what your saying now, thought it was more 'Star Trek' themed, not the 'LCARS' interface! I quickly read over this thread and thought Id offer some idea's/help but guess I didn't read it good enough so ignore everything ive said so far! my bad: D

I started working on some graphics now for the LCARS interface. So far so good, when I get a little more done I'll post some screenshots if anyone is interested. I'm pretty happy with it so far.

Also, I was thinking of turning this into an official project in hopes to draw on skills and creativity beyond what I may be able to provide. If it's just me working on it, it'll probably turn out ok but if I could recruit some people that would be interested in helping I think it could turn out really freakin' cool!

I'd really love to hear from you if you're interested!

cool. Looking forward to it, yn0t.

Great yn0t I'll be waiting 4 some sreens as well.
thnx

lol this is too cool. hahaha. How well do you think the interface can be duplicated? Could ongoing animations be duplicated like they have on the site, with the various lists scrolling and the things popping up like the sickbay monitor thingamajig? Or would it have to be more or less static, aside from when you go into different menus and stuff of course? I've done a fair share of coding, but not a ton with animations as of yet. I could help with the coding part probably, though I can't guarantee a lot of time invested. Do you suppose they'd let you use their audio for the woman's voice if you asked them nicely? haha



about the navigation sounds, I don't think thats possible. The audio functions are super limited, somebody really needs to update xbmc for a bit more functionality and customization in that area. If only I knew how *sigh* Then again, there's always the feature request forum on www.xboxmediacenter.com

I feel pretty good that the feel of LCARS could be duplicated. Again, I think it'll take more than myself to do it as my artistic skills are limited. There may be certain limitations in XBMC that may affect us. For instance, How versatile is XBMC's menu system, is it possible to have animations play on a menu? Some animated effects of the LCARS interface could be pretty cool.

As for adding the woman's voice, I'm not sure that it is necassary. I'm trying to remember the last time I saw someone use a panel and the woman's voice came on. I think it only comes on when people are using the computer verbally. But let's hear other people's thoughts on this.

Also, I'm looking into how to share the skin code and allow other people to work on it. I imagine SVN is the best method for this. How are other skinning projects going about this?

I think it would be cool to have the woman's voice as an option that you could enable and disable, i found a couple of links where you can download lots of voice clips on one of those websites posted...And yeah, SVN is definitely the way to go. Google has a decent svn system. Oh, and what do you mean "have animations play on a menu?"

Thanks for the Google SVN hint. I didn't realize they provided that as a service.

As for animations, I'm hoping that when on a menu there are ways to make things move. Let me explain a little. What I mean is if you look at some of the artwork done by some other LCARS artists they have animations of sensor scans and others with numbers that change colors.

Go to www.lcarsdeveloper.com and click on "LCARS Standards" on the far left. Then click "Components" and then "Continue". If you go through some of the components, you'll notice that some of them have things that move around. Also, at the top of the screen you'll see an array of orange numbers that change white and back to orange. These are the kinds of effects I'd like to add to the skin.

Though XBMC doesn't have a need for sensor scans, the idea could be applied to some other XBMC useful features. I'd like everything to mean something and not just have glitz and glamor. The orange numbers referred to in the last paragraph look cool, but they have no meaning. It would be nice if the numbers had an actual use when put in the context of XBMC.

So are these kinds of animations possible with XBMC? I'm assuming so, I know I've seen small animations like in the Project Mayhem III skin. The green selector fades in and out. But this could just be a simple animated GIF. An Animated GIF is probably not the best way to animate dynamically changing content.

yn0t

Some of those animations like the orange text could be done with a multiimage control. If they were just for effect.

I'm no skinner, so here is a plea for skinners to help with tips or code or anything they can for this skin.

I think it would be a really cool skin. I know I would like it.

So Jezz_X, Ch3if, jyra, blackbolt, ninetynine any others please help in anyway you can.

The 7tft skin by djtoll has this feel kinda, maybe he could offer some tips.


Good luck

At the risk of showing off my lack of artistic ability I'm posting a conceptual image I've been working on for the last week. It's not much yet as I have little time... *cough* married... I told everyone last week that I'd share it.

Not sure on the color scheme yet, but this is what I've settled on for now. Again, this is where I'd love to have people with more artistic ability chime in.

Also, I've created a project on Google Code under the name xbmc-lcars. There's no code out there yet, but if there are people out there willing to contribute time to the project, that's where it'll be.

That looks sweet. I hope skinners are able to help.

There is a LCARS color specification chart on that download page.

http://www.lcarsdeveloper.com/downloads.php

I would be willing to work on some graphics if need be. I know my way around photoshop and imageready pretty well and can work with illustrator if the need is there. This skin seems like it should be pretty easy graphic wise as everything is pretty much solid colors and their are so many refrence picture to go by.

Let me know if I can help out.

As soon as you have your gfx available I would like to try and make a skin for Apple Movie Trailers.

I'd love it if you could help. Perhaps someone can put together a project plan for us so we have some direction on how to put this thing together. I've never worked on a skin before and it would be nice to have someone with some experience to let us know the best path of development.



Looks pretty cool man. Did you come up with that?

I'm still figuring out what needs to be created. The "screenshot" that I posted eariler was not directly from XBMC, rather, just something I created in GIMP. I guess this is where a project plan comes into play. There are plenty of controls that need to be designed.

Not the gfx, I found those online and just cut out the extra stuff. They really aren't very good quality. They need to be made from scratch, instead of trying to clean them.

I moved the controls around to fit the design.

My thought is create gfx that can section off the window.

Here's another one. You can get the idea about sectioning.


If you make all the main gfx white. when you skin them you can add a <colordiffuse> tag and make them any color you want. You also can flip textures. If that makes it any easier. The list has two half circles. The right one is just flipped.

http://www.lcarscom.net/faq.htm <-that page has some color codes though if you want.

Excellent pointer, thank you. You probably just saved me quite a bit of work! lol

I'll see if I can get something running in XBMC soon. I downloaded all the skins from the XBMC Skinning Project on SourceForge through SVN. I think looking at how these skins are put together will give me plenty in order to get something going here. Hopefully after I got something running people will become interested and contribute some time as well!

I think this could be an awesome skin, and probably become pretty popular. It would also probably make a great skin for those people with Car PCs as well. ha ha, wouldn't touch screen support be awesome for this skin?

touch screen support would be amazingly cool for this particular skin lol, but i doubt it would happen, though perhaps it would be more feasible in linux? I'm not sure, but i know there have been people trying to get touch screen stuff going in the past with no success. It seriously would be almost worth buying one for that though, if touchscreen support was added. The coolness would be amazing haha. With the animations thing you were mentioning, I think you would pretty much have to do it with a multi image or a gif, but gif's eat up more ram. So, you'd have to create the animation in photoshop and then turn it into a series of images. You could probably get a lot of cool themes for this skin too, at least colorwise if nothing else, since not all people will want the retro looking pink and orange color theme. But yeah, like I said before, i'd be willing to do a fair share of coding, but I probably won't have enough free time to head up the whole coding deal.

Touchscreen support allready works in the linux version because basically touchscreens just emulate a mouse and XBMC supports Mice The real hard part is making it 100% mouse freindly

here is a bunch of nice sounds you might like to use
http://www.lcarscom.net/sounds.htm

Just an idea of how it may look animated...the orange block on the side would be used for selecting an item. I'm not sure if it is possible to make it work like this?

That's looks nice. CH3iF is good at animations. I bet he would know.

Here's a sample with just a few textures. Mostly using white textures and adding colordiffuse.


Here's the sample xml and gfx if you care to take a look.
http://xbmc-scripting.googlecode.com/svn/old/LCARS.zip

Definately possible

Wow guys! Thanks for the info! The conceptual screen shots are looking cool too. I like the Whirlpool Nebula (M51) in the background. Lol, nice touch! Astronomy is one of my other hobbies, I just built a telescope from solid oak http://gstrike[dot]blogspot[dot]com

I read through the Skinning page on XBMC's Wiki, I've got some of the other pages I want to go over to before I dive too much into it. Just want to make sure I do things the smart way. I've also put some conceptual images, including the graphic I made in GIMP, out on the SVN. I put them under the tools folder in the root (http://xbmc-lcars.googlecode.com/svn/)

I have that out there because I work on this stuff at multiple locations and it's nice to be able to syncronize all the work. Feel free to look at it. I'll get the directory structure setup under the trunk folder soon and then I'll be adding some of the sounds that I've collected from some of the sites listed earlier.

Please bear with me as I learn this stuff, I generally like to research before getting started so it's going to take a little bit of time to learn this stuff. Looks pretty easy so far.

You know I use to be able to make changes to skins and play around with them but that was when the orbs skin was popular. Now I look at all the different xml files and feel lost. I mean it's not like it's over my head I do some programming in vb but I am just not sure where you start when creating a new skin?Maybe I need to look at some of the other skins out there other then PMIII ?

Also from looking at nuka1195's apple trailer script you can use only a few images to build a whole screen but then you end up coding a bunch of overlays and positions. Isn't it easier to make a static background and then do a few overlays for the animated parts?

might be easier yes but its not as cool to do also that way you basically can't do all the sliding growing animations that LCARS does when you select different sections. Not to mention the end skin will be 20 times bigger if you use fullscreen backgrounds

jrl2222, that animation would be actually be very easy, definitely doable. And, that's rad that linux supports touchscreen. Seriously. And, now that i think about it, you know how a lot of hitech home theaters have little touchscreen lcd screens next to the main chair for controlling everything? Imagine putting this there instead, it could pull out in front of you just like the actual star trek stations hahaha man that would be way cool. The only thing with that is all the controls would show up on the big screen too....Maybe we could put in a feature request for the ability to basically have a dual output for xbmc linux where one of the outputs wouldn't show any of the menus, it would only display video and visualizations with music. That's probably more complicated to implement that i think it is though

Just make a web interface LCARS style.

wow, didn't even think of that. That's way simpler haha

I am a huge star trek fan...in fact watching over star trek episodes is one of the primary uses of my xbox. However when yn0t originally suggested and LCARS skin...I thought to myself...cool idea...might be a bit cheesy though. I just checked out nuka1195 skin for AMT and it looks exceptional...if this is any indication of what you guys are aiming at with the proper animations and sounds...this sking is going to fantastic. Great job nuka on AMT, nuka.

@rramoutar - Thanks for the encouragement. I understand your primary concerns about it being cheesy. If I thought it would end up being so, I would never had suggested it. I think that we can come up with something that will be very well done and professional. We'll rely on people's feedback who have an eye for quality along the way, so please follow the project and give us your feedback.

yeah, i definitely like the concept. the screens look great and it's nice to not see shatner.

and like chief said, that animation would be very simple to emulate.

Does anyone know if it is possible to add an ambient sound, seamlessly looped, in the background? An example would be the original Xbox dashboard. If I can find a high enough quality sound clip, I was thinking editing it and adding an engine hum to the background. This of course could be enabled/disabled per the user's preference. Thoughts on this? It could add an extra bit of reality to it, but also may annoy some others. Hence why you have the choice to enable it or not.

On a side note, I have the night to myself tonight (The wife is at school) so I'm hoping to get some work done the base of the skin. Hopefully have something to talk about for you all tonight or tomorrow.

Let me know if you need help with anything. Graphics or other.

well i know you could make it play audio automatically when it starts up, i'm just not sure whether you could make it repeat automatically, and do so seamlessly. I suggest asking over at the xboxmediacenter.com forums, and if the answer is no, i'd suggest putting in a request in the Feature Request section.

I made some progress last night and today but nothing screenshot worthy. I wouldn't want to freak everyone out. lol.

Cmon, show some screenies.

lol, no... I'm serious! It would freak people out right now. I said a LITTLE progress. But soon...

BTW, I've done a little searching and nothings come up. I thought someone mentioned this earlier, Is there an XML tag to rotate a texture or control?

do you mean as an animation or permanantely?

Permanently.

I'm hoping to use one PNG for other parts of the screen. Some of the PNG files are the same with the only difference being they have been flipped horizontally, vertically or rotated 90 degrees. At least in my situation a simple <rotate> XML tag would cut down on the amount of PNG files required.

The AMT skin I did uses <texture flipx="true" flipy="true"></texture>

To rotate other than 90, I think you need to have an <animation type="rotate"> with a time="0"

Thank you everyone for your help thusfar. I have "completed" the layout of the main screen for the LCARS skin. In my opinion, it still reminds me too much of the layout of PMIII so I may end up completely redoing it. Please look at it and BE NICE TO ME. I am aware I still have lots of work to do. I just wanted to show you guys some progress! Oh, and the only resolution I've really looked at right now is PAL16x9 so the others are probably goofball looking. So view it in that, I'll get the others looking better when I have something solid to work with.

The SVN for the project is http://xbmc-lcars.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/

Also, if there is anyone out there willing to contribute time to the skin, I'd be willing to give them SVN access so they can update.