A little skin editor

[baxissimo]

Here's another TODO:

Simple saved preferences.
It should rememeber and restore the following between invocations:
- Last used imageset (should load it automatically)
- Last used directory for the file chooser
- Last used window position size and position
- Last position of the splitter between the left and right panes
- Last Zoom level

There's some simple prefs package in python for doing that kind of think IIRC.
[edit: actually, upon searching I didn't find anything really for prefs in python itself, aside from just using pickle directly, but GTK has prefs functionality that could be used.]

[centipede]

(Hehe, I'm not answering today! Making pixels )

[baxissimo]

centipede wrote:
(Hehe, I'm not answering today! Making pixels )

Go go gadget centipede!

[centipede]

All right then. Here are the first feeble stabs at skins for TaharezLook.

They are far from finished but I'd like a few comments even now. As you can see, my experience grew with each of them (Future1, Future3, Horror1).

Skin editors (bax's version is 0.1.1):

http://artcamilla.dk/vaultage/projects/cegui/

Skins:

http://artcamilla.dk/vaultage/projects/cegui/skins/

They look like this (just to show nice gfx in the thread )





How to test: copy all *.png and *.imageset into the OgreSDK folder: <OgreSDK>/demos/media/gui and rename one of the *.imageset files to TaharezLook.imageset. Then run the demo in: <OgreSDK>/demos/Demo_Gui.exe

[CrazyEddie]

These look great! I'll give them a try out later on.

I think with you doing work like this, and the upcoming 'Falagard' skinning extensions, we should start to really see what CEGUI can do.

Excellent stuff

[centipede]

Thanks! The fun part about making skins for a game-engine is that no matter what crazy concept one can think of, there is bound to be some maniac at some point who is going to need just that. There's artistic freedom for ya.

@CrazyEddie:
Artists could use a little guidance from the developers about a great deal of technical details to clear the mist, e.g.:

1) What is the future plan for the looks. Is both the WindowsLook and the TaharezLook being replaced by some new "configurable" look?

2) We need comments on the layout mechanisms. For instance why are buttons and scrollbars scaled when I resize the window that contain them? Who decides the "default" size of the scrollbar-knob when it is placed upon the scrollbar-track

You see, these are the hidden rules that one can only find out be examining a running program. .. And the OgreDemos (and I believe also the demos from this site) don't even demonstrate all the components, e.g. radiobuttons.


@baxissimo:
I had the same python-revelation not long ago. Even this time, I had forgotten all my python/pygtk but still it only took me a workday from first notion of making a skineditor to a working script including reading up on my pygtk etc. Ideal for jobs such as this. If the ogre-bindings are good enough and included cegui, who knows what could be made of small tools

Keep the todo's coming. Once I get time, it usually doesn't take long to implement many small things.

Well, I'm off to the beach...

[CrazyEddie]

centipede wrote:
@CrazyEddie:
Artists could use a little guidance from the developers about a great deal of technical details to clear the mist, e.g.:

1) What is the future plan for the looks. Is both the WindowsLook and the TaharezLook being replaced by some new "configurable" look?

2) We need comments on the layout mechanisms. For instance why are buttons and scrollbars scaled when I resize the window that contain them? Who decides the "default" size of the scrollbar-knob when it is placed upon the scrollbar-track

Hi,

I'll try and clear the mists a bit for you

1) There is a new "configurable" look currently under development, this is what we normally refer to as "Falagard" (named after Falagard who first suggested it some time last year). What effect this new look will have on the two current looks has not been discussed at any length. Once the "Falagard" system becomes established, there will be very few instances where using the current TaharezLook or WindowsLook modules is beneficial, although it's likely that these modules will be kept around for compatability purposes. We will provide XML defintions that recreate both the old looks under the "Falagard" system, so any imagesets made for those looks will largely still be usable under the new system if desired, and if a person does not want to create a full Falagard skin definition XML.

2) I'll cover each of these points seperately:
* Under the current system, whether or not a button (or any element) is sized along with it's container depends upon the metrics mode in use for a given element. Using relative mode things will auto-resize, using absolute mode they will not. However, under the "Falagard" system, this distinction becomes blurred as it becomes possible to specify both relative and absolute components at the same time (which means, in effect, there's no need to manually switch modes when using the new 'unified' co-ordinate system). Although this is a large change, we have also made sure that this new system remains largely compatible with the old interface.

* The default sizes for those 'component parts' of widgets are set by the look module in use. Under the "Falagard" system it becomes possible to specify these kinds of things yourself within an XML skin definition.

Basically, as you will probably gather, there are a fair few restrictions when using the current two looks, although the "Falagard" module I keep mentioning will be a huge leap forwards for the system, and will largely free up artists to do whatever they please.

I feel this may have created more questions than it answered. But in short, nothing will become 'obsolete' and dropped from the system any time soon.

CE

[jacmoe]

@centipede:
Great skins! Looks good!

I noticed some problems, though.
The main window is not drawn - and when I loaded the imagesets into the eddietor, I noticed that the layout information in some places are incorrect.
Is it my CEGUI 1.0.3 Taharezlook, or did you test the imagesets before releasing them?

I also noticed that they does not work in fullscreen OpenGL.

Other than that: Good looking.


[edit]

If you need some illustrative screenshots, I can post them here.

[/edit]

[centipede]

Well, they aren't quite finished yet. But the window itself should work on them all. Could you give a screenshot of the problem / say which skin works bad. The mousecursor in some of them is unfinished.

I don't know which CEgui I'm using. The one that was bundled with a not-too-new Ogre (a handful of months old I think)

[jacmoe]

I use CEGUI 0.3.0 - here's how it looks like in D3D9 windowed:



Notice how the main window is invisible.


Here's another:


This is the problem in OpenGL fullscreen:



I had to convert the png to tga - using png OpenGL is even weirder in fullscreen..


No problems using 'vanilla' Taharezlook.
The errors are the same across skins, so no need to post what future1 and future3 looks like.

But, as I've said before: I really like the new skins, especially the future3.

[jacmoe]

Just realised that it is the tabwindow which is invisible.
Haven't tried it with other layouts.

[baxissimo]

jacmoe wrote:
Great skins! Looks good!

I noticed some problems, though.
[...]

Just taking a look at these myself. Very nice looking. I'm definitely partial to the clean subdued look of Futuristic3.

About the rendering problems... I dunno much about it, but could it be related to the size of the textures? The SkinFuturistic3.png is 800x600, whereas the original Taharez is 256x256. I'm thinking there could be some power-of-two-only mojo working here, like you have with OpenGL textures. Or maybe if not that, then maybe CEGUI is assuming width=height in some calculations?

[centipede]

Wow, wha..? It's wednesday?! How did that happen? I sat down with some milk and biscuit and woke up with newspapers piled over me.

New version of futuristic3 and horror1 uploaded. (Notice the slight name change of future->futuristic. I should think up some better names, but for now the names will be matching the movie-genres that seems to fit in a quick glance).

Tab buttons and panes are added as you can see in the .PNG files, but... I can't quite figure out what TaharezLook is doing. Feel free to work on the imageset and say if it is me who are nuts.

If nothing else - with Falagard being so close - I'll stick to making graphics and postpone imageset-making until falagard is here.

[Mr_Bloodworth]

little Tip i just figured out =)

You can rename the image that the .IMAGESET calls on with note pad =)

I shall be making some GUI skins soon =)

[CrazyEddie]

I think textures get stretched to powers of two within Ogre, so if the source files are 800x600 or something, this will end up causing strange results like we have seen

For Info: 99% of the falagard stuff is now in CVS-HEAD. There are two minor things still to be done, but the actual skinning stuff is functional. There is a file in Samples/datafiles/looknfeel/TaharezLook.looknfeel which shows pretty much all of the Taharez widgets recreated using this system (although the file will be updated at the weekend to a 'final' version - the current version was main used for testing). Since this new component is so huge, I have been writing a mini-book to document it; this should be finished tomorrow.