Fast Newbie's Skinning Walkthrough for MM 3

Roving Cowboy's Fast Newbies Checklist Style Walkthrough to start skinning in mm3

The theme editor is an program made to edit skin files and make new ones.

the version to use now is the found at a link in this post by steegy.

http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=70332#70332

click that link it goes to the post then just click on the link steegy gave.

This is of course bare minimun in details if you need more read Mortens how to skin article.

Now to learning how to make a skin with this step by step.

1. make a copy of the default skin royal blue.msz

2. place that copy of the skin in a new folder with the them engine.

3. change the name of the copy of the skin file from .msz to .zip

4. unzip the file in to that same folder it is in.

5. then just look for the mskn files if you see one that says default in the folder after you unzipped the royal blue skin you can delete that default one but only from that new folder you just made. you need to look for the .mskn files those are the ones that are opened and worked on by the theme engine.

6. find all the mskn files you then should make a folder for each mskn file in the skin just to keep the images separated. then copy or move the mskn file for the name of the folder you made for it. in to that folder.

7. you will have to copy the micro player mskn and ini files then rename them both the copy's and the original one. they should be named micorplayerH.mskn and microplayerH.ini and micorplayerV.ini and micorplayerV.mskn. they are both the same player just one is vertical and the other is horizontal.

8. you need to once you get all the mskn files copied and or moved in to their own folder, it is time to get the theme engine in to use. start the theme engine up and use its open button to browse to the folder for the first one you want to change images on. then open that folder's mskn file.

9. now look at the engines menu bar. click on the word file or edit. you need to find the words export bmp's click on that export bmps. on that panel make sure it will export them in to the folder that mskn file is in. then click on export. then close out and exit the theme engine for now.

10. now go in to that folder and look around at the images. you will see a couple big images with lots of pink on. that is the skin or part of it. you need to open that image with your image editing program like picture it. but first check the format of the images. for some reason when i export the images from the skin's mskn file the engine adds an extra set of format letters? remove the last set so it looks like themeskinimage.png and not like .png.bmp once you open the image in your photo editor go to work scanning the images on the makin / working image there are some places you can cover the pink but not all places. just for the first time cover the exact same images you see on the main image map.

11. do that with all the images and reopen the mskn file with the theme engine editor this time click on the plus sign by the word images. it will show you a list of images in the mskn file. and 3 buttons. click on the name of an image and then on the replace image button then browse to the same image name that you changed and put that in the mskn file it will be used now. so do that to all the images that were in that mskn file that you changed.

12. now do the same for the other mskn files. the one called theme has the most images to change so it will be the toughest one.

13. when all images are changed and replaced in their respective mskn files. you then if the mskn files are in separate folders. copy all the mskn files and paste them back in the main folder that they were originally unzipped in .

14. now you see the icon folder. that is only usable for the no album art image. you can open that image up and change it if you want too.

15. now every image that was unzipped in to the folder like the sel.png and the sdb list background images? change them to what you want. only the long thin ones cant be changed in size and no image will work on them with out some trickery so just change their colors for the first attempt at skinning.

16. okay now all is changed and all the mskn files are back in the folder with each other. now just select all the images and ini and mskn files and the icon folder. use your zipping program and zip them in to one zip file. change the name of the zip file to what ever name you want to call your new skin and make it an .msz file.

17. now copy that msz skin file you just made. take it to the program folder you made for the mm3 alpha test version. then in that folder you will see a skins folder go in to that skins folder and paste that new skin you made in there.

Now when you go and open mm3 you can go to the menu bar click on tools go to the options link click the link when the panel shows up you just scroll the tree down to see the directory for skins. click on skins and you will see the choices of skins you have on the right select the name of the skin you just made and monkey will change to use it then click okay.

Now check out all the stuff and see if anything needs fixed in your new skin.

The media monkey 2.5.5 skins are made the same way only there is no image map and they are a combination of winamp classic skins and a theme .mskn skin. you unzip that wsz file by changing it to zip just like the mm3 skins only when you unzip it you will see all the winamp images that you need to change in your image editor. and an mskn file you use the theme engine on that file tool only there is tons of images in it since there is no image map.

mm 2.5.5 skins take me about 15 to 20 hours to make i can get the mm3 skins done in about 4 to 6 hours depending on how much i change.

Enjoy and good luck on making new skins. any questions ask away lots here can answer. Hope to see new skins shortly glad your willing to make some

User:Rovingcowboy keith hall