New adventures in skinning...
Wednesday, March 8, 2023 by Derell Licht | Discussion: Skinning
This thread started out with me discovering a 20-year-old skin that I really love!! However, I had to make a few changes in colors for certain items, to make various menus and other items readable under Windows 10 Pro, with WB10...
I'm wishing to prepare a revised version of this skin, with my changes (in a SubSkin), and re-introduce this 2003 skin to the world... however, I have encountered two issues...
1. I don't know where SkinStudio 10 stored my changes?!?! The original skin that I dounloaded, does not appear to have been modified with any of my changes; apparently SS10 stores revised skins elsewhere?? But *where* ??
2. The second issue is, I need to find out if I can even legally do this (modify and re-release a skin) ...
The skin is "sandstone", by an artist named 'geyster', who last visited here in 2010 ...
So, please provide advice on both of these questions??
======================================
Actually, even if I *cannot* distribute a copy of this modified skin, I still need to know where SkinStudio is storing all of my modified skins, because I have modified several over the years, and I don't have backups of any of them!!
Reply #2 Wednesday, March 8, 2023 8:02 PM
No, not without written permission from the original author.
It modifies the extracted skin folder, C:\Users\Public\Public Documents\Stardock\WindowBlinds\[Skin Name]. If you apply the skin in WBConfig, it should be changed. A couple of things:
You change one substyle of a skin at a time. Are you sure you're editing and applying the right substyle?
You do have to tell SkinStudio to save the changes you've made. There are a couple of ways to do that. If you just Exit SkinStudio (Command Line/ File/ Exit) without ever having saved the changes though, they will not be saved.
Reply #3 Wednesday, March 8, 2023 8:05 PM
So how are the final files being managed?
It sounds like you're wanting to make a .wba package out of the changed skin. In the menu in my first screenshot above, there is the command "Make wba package". I think that would do it, I've never messed with it, I just zip them up.
Reply #4 Wednesday, March 8, 2023 8:29 PM
Okay... I think I have this (partially) figured out...
1. working skins:
when a .wba file is installed in WB, it is extracted into
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Stardock\WindowBlinds\<skin name>
2. saving the project
Use "File: Save As" to save the modified project under a new name
3. generate a WBA file
Use "File: Make WBA Package" to generate the WBA file for the new skin...
However, even though SS specifically asked me which SubStyle I wanted to save in the WBA file,
it is *not* incorporating the changes that I made via WindowBlinds: Modify style...
So when I Apply 'sandstone (derelict)', which was created in WB via 'Modify style',
I get the changes that I requested...
but if I Apply 'sandstone derelict 2023', which I installed via the WBA file created from SkinStudio, specifically from the 'sandstone (derelict)' substyle, I still get an earlier layout without my most-recent changes...
So I'm still missing something about how to generate a new project from a SubStyle which was created via 'Modify style' in WB ...
What am I missing here??
Reply #5 Wednesday, March 8, 2023 8:35 PM
It sounds like you're wanting to make a .wba package out of the changed skin. In the menu in my first screenshot above, there is the command "Make wba package". I think that would do it, I've never messed with it, I just zip them up.
Part of the problem that I have here, is that I'm trying to generate a wba package from edits that I made in WB via 'Modify style' ... SkinStudio doesn't seem to be recognizing the most recent changes that I made to my SubStyle, even though it asked me which SubStyle I wanted to use...
Well, let me try zipping up the project directory, and see what I end up with... can I rename the project just by renaming the .wba file, or do I need to rename all the project files as well??
Reply #6 Wednesday, March 8, 2023 8:47 PM
SkinStudio works with the skin itself, the WBConfig adjustments (overall color shifting, transparency, textures) are made in addition to that and SkinStudio doesn't package them.
Reply #7 Wednesday, March 8, 2023 9:10 PM
I think I was wrong regarding the Saved Presets - looks like SkinStudio does include those when you package a skin as long as you've actually saved the preset ("manage presets" / "save current..."). I haven't played with this a whole lot, see what you think about it.
Reply #8 Wednesday, March 8, 2023 9:14 PM
SkinStudio works with the skin itself, the WBConfig adjustments (Color, Transparency, Textures, Saved Presets) are made in addition to that and SkinStudio doesn't package them. Backing up the skin directory would collect those as well.
Ahhh... okay, thanks...
Basically, the situations that I've been dealing with, in most cases, are that the only thing I need to change with most skins is just a couple of colors, which Modify Style handles just fine for me... and frankly in most case, if I *did* lose those changes (from disk crash or whatever), redoing the mods is pretty easy. The most common change that I make, is getting rid of a bright-white background in Explorer and in Thunderbird... in the case of the sandstone style, it was a little more tricky because there were a couple of menus where fgnd and bgnd colors were the same, and it took some poking to figure out what to change, but now that I know the fields (Color 3 and Color 10), it's no big deal to recover in the future!!
Reply #9 Wednesday, March 8, 2023 9:51 PM
If you're talking about the "Change system colors" button on the colors page, changing those colors does indeed change the skin just as if you changed them within SkinStudio. You can actually change those colors in WBConfig and then open the skin up in SkinStudio and see that they've changed. A skin packaged at that point would include those color changes.
Reply #10 Wednesday, March 8, 2023 11:24 PM
And now I see that the transparency adjustments aren't saved in the skin directory, they're saved separately in C;\Users\Public\Public Documents\Stardock\WindowbBlinds\WBO\[SkinName].WBO. I don't know what else might be kept in that file.
I'm going to have to go back and edit Reply 6, I don't want to leave it like that.
Reply #11 Thursday, March 9, 2023 8:44 AM
And now I see that the transparency adjustments aren't saved in the skin directory, they're saved separately in C;\Users\Public\Public Documents\Stardock\WindowbBlinds\WBO\[SkinName].WBO. I don't know what else might be kept in that file.
I'm going to have to go back and edit Reply 6, I don't want to leave it like that.
Ahhh... yes, I saw the separate WBO file, and didn't know what that really represented. Thank ye for the clarification.
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Reply #1 Wednesday, March 8, 2023 8:00 PM
Later notes:
Okay, I found the SkinStudio working directory:
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Stardock\WindowBlinds
All of the skins that I've modified, are represented here... however, though there are all the working files for those projects, the final .wba files is *not* there... for example, I was working on the sandstone skin alot today; the latest timestamp in
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Stardock\WindowBlinds\sandstone
is 03/08/23 14:57, but the timestamp on sandstone.wba is 03/08/23 0902, which is roughly when I installed it this morning... and all the timestamps on the contents are from 2003...
So how are the final files being managed? I really hope this data isn't being stored in the registry... or if it is, I hope there's a way to extract it into a new wba file...