I would still like to see a maximum frame number on animations...so skinners know exaclty how many frames they are allowed in animations before it stops working...(this would save hours of work.)

for example userpane animtion maximum animation frame limit is :.....and then the number and a small explanation of why more frames would not work ect.

Hey lightstar,

                 What happens when you try to go up with programing in version. Usually it goes that way right?... or is it the other way around? Do this and see if it helps a bit do your win7 first up, then the vista and xp substyles. I'm not sure but I bet it is more than what you really see it doing now for some reason than before.

I do not think Stardock or anyone at this problem is responsible for such. OK I agree it is very frustrating to have this happen. But it does and did and so forth. It never works at blaming someone else for a problem that can be corrected. Lets try and work together. Not against things...

Here is another thing to consider with your problem - dual or triple booting an OS on the same Hard drive? There is an issue I'm still working on with this where some regs are still written wrong for the other OS by WIN7. Not Vista but WIN7 only. Not sure completely why yet. But it does it and there may be why your problem is happening for sks.

I stopped using dual boot system with win7 because of this. Plus it is a release canidate not the final RTM. I know everyone is ready to start making win7 skins and so forth. But I still remember when we first started doing the samething with Vista s it came out. Everything was changing - there where all kinds of problems that the math did not fit well with. We worked with it and finally got things in place. Now win7 and we have more and/or diffrent problems. Yes it is frustating as hell to see work go out the window.

One word - stop deleting stuff and move it to a backup area for safe keeping!

Anyway try going down not up in windows version to skin. Save things correctly and even do one for each version and then import the substyles as such need be. If there is a will there is a way to do it. Believe me!

I triple boot to separate hard drives Shelby, and I program each sub-style from within the appropriate OS, and I have not even started doing the Windows 7 sub-style yet. I keep backups of all my images, but that is not the point, the point is having to redo everything in order to get them back into the Vista sub-style. It should not matter if I start with Xp and work up or vice-versa, changing something in XP should not affect changes done in Vista unless that area is used in both OS's.  If I cannot blame the developers of the software, who else is there to blame? 

figure fps and what graphics a base system will use! some will use 5 to 20 fps. So what would be good for that system?

same answer but for what system we ask again... vista maybe and depending on which system we say 20 to 50 fps. 60fps is perfect for most good graphics systems. But how does that figure with a system which graphics only allowing 20 fps total.

So there it figures to the system not the program. Here you make something in hi graphics speed and composite... then even if the program presents it; the system jerks along to run it.

So look at what would run on most any system and say this is what to use for the overall frame count. No more than 20 frames for most any animations. This is for xp and/or vista. Windows7 will be different and those can have a higher count.

There is ya like you say why did they not tell use this info question. But figure if you want something with a hi-end machine and can run 100fps. Thus you would make a skin for that machine and with that machine. Thus I would think sks would allow those frames to be populated into the skin as such.

no shell dosent work that way, vista has a pixel height limit for animations in sk, same for xp, so you can only do a certain amount of frames........before it starts acting wierd or not at all...hence my suggestion...i have a basic idea of how many frames, but would just like to see a number for it......

for example the MI6 user pane has 59 frames, orginally it had 61, but didnt work, so i dropped it down to 59...and bingo.she worked.

Ok Lightstar but what I'm saying is there is more going on here with what you are doing than what is suppose to be. It does not matter how or to what drive you use for what OS. It only use's one drive for the boot file and regs!

You will have to do a wb for each windows version and then merge them into one skin with 3 substyles to get what you are trying to do.

These things will be sorted as best they can with the new win7 wb7 and sks7 once it is ready. I never blame a dev for something they miss or did not think of. I always try to suggest things and sort problems to the correct manner. Not point the finger and say you did it and it is no good. Those guys work as hard as they can to figure every problem. If we are gona get the e=best of the best for these new programs to work we have to work with them to correct or show what we see and input what we think correctly. Making someone mad about their hard work never brings a good result.

so if I have a 18x256 then it only allows so many frames and such... there has to be a figure to sort that and I'll go over it from what I've seen in the past. But it still figures in the math.

I do agree it would be a good feature or even a great tutorial from someone. I think the tut would be the better. I would not want to think doing such a thing may limit things further than it already is.

But a good idea you have!

I am sorry you have lost your work, but I don't think the problem you had was a SkinStudio one.

Skinstudio isn't capable of removing all your work like that.  Even if it somehow forgot the substyle entry in the .SSD file, the newer graphics etc you did would still be in the folder (how would it know what to remove?)

The most logical explanation is the .WBA you used was in fact older and so you reverted to an older version of the skin.  In which case on your other OS the files should still be there unless the wrong WBA was used one OS switch before and you didn't notice it at the time.

The only limit is the size of the final bitmap.  The width or height of a bitmap must not exceed 32000 pixels.

If you want 255 frames in an animation then you can have it.

that sounds wikked niel...but, i have encounted with vista in the userpane area for animations, that if i go over a certain amount of frames, i get white pixelations on the outside of the animation....to fix that, i reduced the frame number and it vanished....

That probably means you didn't set the per pixel and transparency flags on the animation.

Now thats the math I was looking for in that question.  Thanks Neil and thanks for the other answer as to why this missing data was lost or misplaced.

Sorry Neil, but it was a SkinStudio issue.  Yes, all the images were still there in the folder, but all the settings and the use of those images in Vista disappeared, and I did not use an older version of my .wba.  I verifed all this.

Then the only thing I can think of is the .SSD and .SSS files were somehow locked by something when the .WBA was built and so were missing from the WBA.  If you still have the WBA file that was created I can take a look to see if there is any evidence of what happened contained within it.

Were the substyles still listed or were they totally missing?

This might or might not help you Tom...

The way I sync skins across multiple OS's is with shortcuts in each OS's windowblinds folder...the 2 shortcuts point to the windowblinds folders on the other 2.

After working on any specific style or OS I just drag the skins folder onto both shortcuts...this merges all 3 with the latest files.

I dont bother at all with .wba files til I need to send it somewhere(website or person)

As long as I drag and drop after each session,all 3 OS's always have the latest version.It even works if you forget and boot into another as long as you merge them before you start working.

One caveat...of course if you forget...like I did one day...I worked a whole day and then forgot and worked just a little in another OS...THEN merged them and lost a days work.

I havnt tried it yet but an even better way would have all OS's install skins to a single folder...then any work done on any OS would automatically be available to all 3.

The substyles were still listed Neil, but I have since worked on the .wba and it is not the same as it was when the problem occured.  Thanks for the offer though.

I.R.  -  Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.

Well, I don't know what happened, but I deleted and reloaded the WB skin in Vista again, and everything is back as it should be, no problems.  Duh.... now I'm confused!  If I offended anyone with my ranting here, I apologize.  Now back to skinning! 

Hi Neil, can you explain what that means? I'm not sure....thanks.

I am glad it sorted itself.

They are settings in SKS on the page where you set the image.  Also ensure you do not tick premultiplied alpha as that can produce some unusual results with transparency unless the image really has multiplied alpha.