how to make my own skin original xbox

[bobby1992]

hey does anyone know of any skin making programs so i can create my own skin for unleash x thankyou

[mrneo240]

I don't, but wow thanks for bringing back a flood of memories from the Xbox era.

Unleash-x, modded Halo 2 maps, the xecuter chip....

[oldxbox75]

Any picture editor will do. (mspaint gimp etc)
wordpad or equivalent to edit .xml
if you wish to include video WMV-XMV encoder

[bobby1992]

thankyou how do i go about getting the wmv-xmv encoder and how does that work thankyou

[kaos_engr]

The video backgrounds have to be encoded with WMV8 encoder for best results.

There's an UnleashX guide/tutorial in PDF format that shows the list of available system variables that can be displayed and how to format the various skin.xml sections (on the last few pages):

Startup (intro), main menu display, loading (outro), file manager and music player.

Best to look at a current skin you like and see how they did things in it. (skin.xml)

The old skinning apps need an older OS to function correctly -- Windows 10 is out --
Win 98 or XP SP? needed.

[EarthwormJames]

I don't, but wow thanks for bringing back a flood of memories from the Xbox era.

Unleash-x, modded Halo 2 maps, the xecuter chip....

I'm living those memories right now, as are many here. These OG Xboxes last a long time if give proper care.

[mrneo240]

recently (as in like 9 months ago) gave mine to a long time friend when he moved into his own place for the first time. he just wanted someting to watch dvds on and occasionally play games on. He just bought a ps4 though so thats been a little better lol

[TheTechDoc]

Yeesh it's been a while since I've made an unleashx skin...can't even remember how I used to do it!

[stillcool]

I've messed with the loading skin on the Slayers skin pack as It's pretty awful and it's easy enough, the main screen I haven't though, any art package will do it as long as they match the ones your replacing.

If someone could make a TIZ one I'd use it for sure (nudge nudge wink wink).

Whatever you create bobby1992, I for one would love to see it.

[HisDivineShadow]

hey does anyone know of any skin making programs so i can create my own skin for unleash x thankyou

IMHO the best way of making a new skin is to skip the purpose designed tools for doing it from scratch, they're VERY clunky. Simply take a skin you like from one of the skin packs here and use its skin.xml as a the skeleton for your own creation.

It saves a lot of time and work.

A very good way to to practice and learn the skin XML 'language' is to find a UX skin with faults and try to fix them. There are so many UX skins that are really only half finished. Typically text will be in an almost unreadable font and/or colour, often badly positioned. Useful info 'Source' options may not have been included so you can add those.

The UX music player can also be reskinned/edited but I'm less enthusiastic about that. The display is more than a bit flakey ie. it displays many correctly name formatted albums titles as "Custom Soundtrack" or simply "/" and refuses to fix any changes you try to make. It also has limited character length support.

Its fine for general music playing but if you want a slick GUI without such issues then XBMC is your daddy.

One thing that often needs fixing is that the skin was designed for 4:3 displays rather than WS 16:9. A lot of the time that doesn't matter too much but if you want correct geometry for things like circular features a WS main background image in the correct format is required.

Here are some screenshots of a UX skin edit I've been working on this week:-

InfraSkin Cyan Original.jpg

InfraSkin Edit.jpg

BTW the UX dash screen grab saves in 720x480 ie. a 1.50 ratio. WS is a 1.77 ratio. I've tried to correct the horizontal distortion (slight squashing) in the edited skin shot but it isn't perfect.

[JTagged]

Pretty much what HisDivineShadow said and the essential read that kaos_engr pointed you too but if you are still after tools then there are Unleashx_Video-Skin_Creator_v2 and UXArchitect_1.0d of the two I think the later is better and they should be available in the usual places but if you have difficulty let me know.