"Transparent" skin

[Solotune]

Hi folks;

I'm fairly new to the Winamp thing, but I discovered something
that I thought I'ld share with everyone. I imagine the Winamp veterans
already know about this, but here it is anyway.

To create a "transparent" Winamp skin:

1. Open your favorite wallpaper in your favorite graphics editor.

2. Cut out a 275 x 365 section, from the area where you want
Winamp to sit.

3. Open your favorite "skinner" and use this cut-out to make a
pic-amp.

4. Save it with a name that matches the wallpaper name.

5. Open WinAmp, select this skin, and place it strategicaly over
the wallpaper so that the edges line up.

6. Voila . . . transparent skin!

This whole process takes about five minutes, and is a good use of
a "skinner" program.

To see a screenshot of one of my desktops, check out:


Solotune's Home Page

Click on the link labeled: WinAmp example.

I've made half a dozen wallpaper/winamp skins combo's. It works great!

See ya all, Solotune.

[Mr Jones]

What happens when you want to move winamp, or have it positioned over the top of another window, or put it in winshade mode, or turn the EQ off???????/

Seems like a lot of work for minimal effect

[Solotune]

Simple: You don't move it, you don't position it over the top of another window, you don't put it in winshade mode, and turning off the EQ simply reveals the identical portion of the wallpaper underneath. No problem.

Like I said, the whole process takes about five minutes, so its the
least amount of work you can do to create a nice skin.

Its main use, at least to me, is just to have on the desktop when
all I'm doing is listening to some "tunes". Under those circumstances
its just "nice".

[Mr Jones]

Originally posted by Solotune
Simple: You don't move it, you don't position it over the top of another window, you don't put it in winshade mode, and turning off the EQ simply reveals the identical portion of the wallpaper underneath. No problem.

heh, I think pretty much everyone uses winamp at the same time as other applications, so that theory kind of dies, why at this very momment I have 9 windows running, including winamp, hardly ever see the desktop .

[Wildrose-Wally]

What's a desktop?

[Riksruin]

i've actually considered doing this before (allthough not using a skinner) because i had a really kool backing which i wanted to show whilst having winamp controls on the backing,

hehe the reason why i didnt do it tho!! i found mikroamp!! and because of the size of the mikro skin i didnt need to do it.

[Forevever]

Mr J is right though, when my winamp is running, 99% of the time also is running: PSP, Microangelo, at least one notepad, at least one explorer window, and AoL (Winamp Forums and a Chat room).

Thats an average mind you. Sometimes I have IE open as well as another version of AoL, and sometimes I only have PSP and AoL running, and sometimes I only have AoL and Microangelo running, and sometimes I only have... ok you get the idea

[skinme!]

You had my interest right up to the word "skinner".

[Riksruin]

Originally posted by skinme!
You had my interest right up to the word "skinner".

LoL!! well he did say favourite skinner so this could be photoshop or psp

[Solotune]

Actually, I did mean a Skinner program like SkinAmp, but in this particular application, it doesn't really make sense to spend a lot of time making a custom skin because the whole point is to simply have something that blends in with your wallpaper.

I realize this has limited appeal, its just something I use on those Saturday mornings when the wife has gone to work and the kids spent the night at grandma's and I have the house to myself. I can just sit in my bathrobe with a cup of coffee and listen to some music, and do nothing else.

Then its just nice to have one of my favorite wallpapers showing with WinAmp sort of "blended" in.

[EvilDick23]

its just something I use on those Saturday mornings when the wife has gone to work and the kids spent the night at grandma's and I have the house to myself. I can just sit in my bathrobe with a cup of coffee and listen to some music

Hmmm, wait till everyone is outta the house and then you can have your favorite un-obstructed view of your desktop with Winamp running. Sounds kinda fishy to me. This should be renamed Winamp desktop overlay because it has nothing to do with transparency. I actually looked at this to gain insight on the subject but was foiled once again. I'm not trying to flame you Solotune, and the above insinuation was a joke.

[Solotune]

Evil...no problem, I didn't take it that way.

After reading my own post the next day, it DOES sound
kinda fishy . . . I'll have to watch myself!

[Riksruin]

whats wrong with being a little bit fishy

omg did i just say that out loud,
--Rikki-- runs and hopes no-one heard him

[Colldawg21]

Originally posted by Solotune
Evil...no problem, I didn't take it that way.

After reading my own post the next day, it DOES sound
kinda fishy . . . I'll have to watch myself!

I don't know if you mean fishy, sketchy or crappy. I personally favor the last one. What is the point of having a skin which looks like it has transparancies, but you can't move it? We hope you were intoxicated when you wrote this. Or at least I do.

[BullGawD]

Oh well, let's be real nice to everyone colldawg. Way to get named member of the month.

chillout man - he thinks it's a good idea, and he wanted to share it with anyone else who might read it and like it, but not yet thought of it.

I'm on his side anyway, 'cause that's what I used to do with ICQ+ on 99. I had this really sweet pic of, um well, anyway let's just say that the GF rolled her eyes at me everytime she came over.

[Mr. Bojanglez]

ahahahahahhahahahah.........

:P......

you could easily do the same thing using the region.txt. just in case u ever wanted to move winamp, or u could just use mikroamp in the control panel or something...

[Colldawg21]

Originally posted by BullGawD
Oh well, let's be real nice to everyone colldawg. Way to get named member of the month.

I don't think I'll ever get nominated for that. Besides, I meant it as a joke.... maybe.

[Mr. Bojanglez]

u'd get nominated before i would....

[Solotune]

Mr. Bojanglez, thanks for the tip on the "regions.txt" thing. I'll
have to read up on the help file some more to figure out how to
manipulate this.

Always good to learn new stuff.

[Mr. Bojanglez]

region txt id the medium for trasnaprncy, the only problem with this is that unfourtanently it only works for the main and eq windows maybe some winshade, its made by using coordinates to define the trasnparent regions, you can make as little or as much of the window shown, so with the right set of coordinates you could very well achieve the same affect. It would be better of than what your doing anyhow for the following reasons:


1. ppl who don't have ur wallpaper are left in the dark when it coems to using ur skin, esp. when thye like their current wall paper... or when they use multiple windows or if they just leave the skin in mikro or winshade all day.

2. damnit what was two, i just got flooded with illegal opertaions and luckily found a way to escape without rebooting, o yeah, the mb and pl tile, and the avs stretches, this has to fuck up the wallpaper, it almost has to....(making it have seams of ocurse)

3. Ican show u my antigusta region file:
:-/ can do transparency :-) ¿Bojanglez?
[Normal]
NumPoints=0
PointList=0,0,275,0,275,116,0,116

[Equalizer]
NumPoints=8
PointList=0,0,38,0,38,5,229,5,229,0,275,0,275,116,0,116

i don't no if the normal section is needed as i did not have transparency in that window, but basicallu u just adjust the parameters and change the numbers, also u can have more than one set of numpoints if you desire.


4. click on the developer tab at the top or find a nother tutorial, learning shit from my dumb ass isn't the smartest idea in the world...

[skinme!]

In this post, drop the ' sign when writing region.txt

Basically, you can define transparency for: Main, Main Windowshade, EQ, EQ Windowshade.

You start of by creating the relevant section by writing:

'[Main]' or '[MainWS]' or '[EQ]' or '[EQWS]'

Then on the line below you write 'NumPoints=' and leave ti blank after the equals sign for now.

Next you write 'PointList='.

Now you need to define polygons. What you are defining is what is visible, not what is invisible. Thus anythijng inside a polygon is visible. You need to write co-ordinates for each corner of the polygon. For a rectangle you might write:

0,0, 275,0, 275,116, 0,116

Notice the syntax. Each part of the co-ordinate is followed by a comma. The number of spaces does not affect the effect but it is easier to edit when there are spaces.

In this polygon we have 4 corners or points. So on the line above you write 'NumPoints=4'

Each polygon can have as many corners/points as you require and you can have multiple polygons.

To have have two or more polygons, write out the co-ordinates on the PointList line as if they are all part of one polygon (add extra spacing between polygons but make sure you have a comma seperated list). Now count the number of corners/points and write the two or more polygons' numpoints on the 'Numpoints=' line seperated by commas. eg.

[Main]
Numpoints=4,4
PointList= 0,0, 10,0, 10,10, 0,10, 50,0, 70,0, 70,70, 50,50

[MainWS]
Numpoints=4,4
PointList= 5,0, 3,3, 8,3, 5,0, 144,7, 150,4, 144,10, 144,7

[skinme!]

Oh and co-ordinates are (horizontal, vertical) and must be in clockwise order.

So a rectangle goes from top left, to top right, to bottom right, to bottom left.

code:


1----2

|    |

4----3

[THEMike]

Well the original suggestion does have me thinking.

It would be neat to do like a whole winamp skin for the desktop. With winamp designed to fit in one space.

You know when you get something packaged, end the plastic tray has slots molded to fit all the components in a certain way? It could be nice and pleasing visually, but in the end fairly pointless.

Then the idea of having winamp not hiding my wall paper is pretty neat, but then I think of various better solutions here we go:

1) Windows 2000? Try LucidAMP, make your AMP's transparency vary

2) Any version of windows? Try one of the many out of the way but to hand plugins:

Originally posted by --Rikki--
hehe the reason why i didnt do it tho!! i found mikroamp!! and because of the size of the mikro skin i didnt need to do it.

My key recommendation is MikroAMP, leet and I coded it.

But there is also TrayAMP by justin, and a bunch of other tray controllers. Then there is WS docking, to dock the WS mode to the current windows title (MikroAMP does this better in small mode IMO)

Then there is Squaresoft's Slider plugin, slides winamp away like the auto hide task bar.

Then there is the Active Desktop method. You can create icons in your Quick Launch bar to tiny control exe's. I forget where I found them but neat.

Then there is the Word/Excel etc control bar...

But I do like the inventiveness of your idea

[Riksruin]

you can also get little winamp controls for apps like windowblinds

windowblinds is a program that skins all of your standard windows windows, you can add winamp controls into each window titlebar/leftbar etc...

and as i recently found out you can put winamp controls on the desktop using litestep.

[skinme!]

OK, maybe I was little harsh with my comment earlier.

Originally posted by skinme!
You had my interest right up to the word "skinner".

It was meant as joke. I have to admit that my first experiment with skinning was taking my wallpaper and putting it through a skinner.exe There said it, now are my sins forgiven

This is a good thread for those seeking information on transparency but I feel your best bet for your use would be the skinner.exe approach.

[Riksruin]

personaly i think the best way to get this effect is by making the skin either with a *gasp*skinner*gasp* or by totally remaking a skin,

and Mr J there is also the thing that just because you have part of ur desktop as the skin doesnt really make it a bad skin so it might look good just as a stand alone skin

[Mr Jones]

Originally posted by --Rikki--


and Mr J there is also the thing that just because you have part of ur desktop as the skin doesnt really make it a bad skin so it might look good just as a stand alone skin

I wish I even understood that statement

[Riksruin]

Originally posted by Mr Jones


I wish I even understood that statement

sorry for my bad grammer

it was in reply to these 2 posts

Originally posted by Mr Jones
What happens when you want to move winamp, or have it positioned over the top of another window, or put it in winshade mode, or turn the EQ off???????/

Seems like a lot of work for minimal effect

Originally posted by Mr Jones
heh, I think pretty much everyone uses winamp at the same time as other applications, so that theory kind of dies, why at this very momment I have 9 windows running, including winamp, hardly ever see the desktop .

i know that its a skinner.exe skin so it isnt all that good a skin, but if the skin was made properly using photoshop/paintshop pro, then if the skin was a part of the wallpaper wouldnt make it any less of a skin, providing the placement on the wallpaper was correct. if anything it would make it better because it could be used as both a normal skin and a desktopblend,

[SirXile]

Pretty damn cool

[Solotune]

Well . . . I sure do appreciate all the comments and advice I've gotten from you good folks. I'm still trying to get the finishing touches on my first "real" skin. (btw, all my "skinner" skins reside ONLY on my computer )

I just hope it even comes close to the quality of some of the stuff I've seen published.

Every time I think I might be finished, I have to back and fiddle with something, the skin I mean.