New Theme for Blue Vision - Cloudy (1 Viewer)

[Lehmden]

Hi.
I like to introduce you my very first theme for Blue Vision skin, named "Cloudy". It is based on Windows 10 theme, but brings back some elements of the default theme. And it is very fanart oriented.

Cloudy is working with the most recent Weekly Build (MediaPortal 2 Weekly snapshot (2016-01-01) ) and up..

Since V 0.2 Cloudy can be downloaded from our Repository.
https://www.team-mediaportal.com/extensions/mp2-skins/cloudy-theme-for-blue-vision

First a few views from my "productive" setup with an individual created menu and in German language. Please apologise, but I only can provide metadata in German language...

The TV part ("Fernsehzentrum")

The Videohub ("Videozentrum"):

and a brand new group for external plugins ("Erweiterungszentrum")

Here is the series grid view:

and the episodes grid view:

This is how the series are looking with listview:

The Cover view is not ready jet. It is working but not perfect looking, so for this no screenshots.

Movies Grid view:

and movies listview:

A look at the "browse media" module of videos without any metadata or fanart online. All fanart is stored locally for this:

TV part is ready too:

Multi EPG:

Schedules management:

Series schedules:

Search Programs:

Home swcreen:

and last but not least the settings:

A few Screenshots with default menu in English:

In meantime I've done the work on Cover views and the Audio part.
Audio filter by artist in cover view

Fanart for artists are not supported today, but this will change in near future.


And album cover view

Cover View for Movies:

and for Series:

A bit tricky is the cover view for "Browse Media" as this is used for landscape, square and portrait oriented graphics... So it is looking different a bit.
Here is how it looks in Browse Media when portrait oriented posters are used:

and here, if average thumbs (landscape oriented) are used:

The most recent Version is V 0.2 and can be found in our repo:
https://www.team-mediaportal.com/extensions/mp2-skins/cloudy-theme-for-blue-vision

If you update to New Years Build you need to update to Cloudy 0.2 too.
If you don't update to New Years Build you must stay at V0.1.1, that's why I did not remove the attachments for now...

As told earlier, there is enough left to do. As soon as there is something new I will post it in this thread. And now, have fun.

 

[Timhoh1234]

Well, honestly I prefer the original Windows10 theme. But this is a matter of taste

Please don't integrate all the themes into the releases, they should be offered as optional download. Actually it's a theme of a theme and I dont want to loose the overview in the theme list.

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.

Background images for Menus depended on selected tile

Need this for my theme/skin too... How did you do this? And is it possible to define a background an a "knob" image separately?...

I just saw BV is referring to BackgroundManger Plugin... As far as I know this plugin is not working properly since a long time. At least it did not work properly the time I first tried to get myself a "fanart-skin"... It was working as expected until you play a video. Then it did not work any longer until you restart the Client.
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/new-community-theme-backvision2.127644/
The main reason why I never continued to work on this any further was the not proper working background manager plugin that was an essential part of this skin/theme....

Hope I will be more successful this time basing it on BV instead of Titanium as I desperately missing a fanart skin like PureVision, StreamedMP or my all time favourite Backdrop from MP1. The Win10 Theme was heading into this direction but still did not have even near to enough room for the fanart...

 

[ge2301]

I just saw BV is referring to BackgroundManger Plugin... As far as I know this plugin is not working properly since a long time. At least it did not work properly the time I first tried to get myself a "fanart-skin"... It was working as expected until you play a video. Then it did not work any longer until you restart the Client.
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/new-community-theme-backvision2.127644/
The main reason why I never continued to work on this any further was the not proper working background manager plugin that was an essential part of this skin/theme....

I'm using the BackgroundManager model and it's working. I modified a few things and made it also work, that TileImage and BackgroundImage can be different.

Hope I will be more successful this time basing it on BV instead of Titanium as I desperately missing a fanart skin like PureVision, StreamedMP or my all time favourite Backdrop from MP1. The Win10 Theme was heading into this direction but still did not have even near to enough room for the fanart...

Tastes are different here FanArts can completely destroy the clean appearance of a skin. Dependent on the FanArt the amount of colors and contrasts can disturb and make the user not see the most important controls. I prefer more decent usage of Fanart and focus on the controls.

 

[Lehmden]

I'm using the BackgroundManager model and it's working. I modified a few things and made it also work, that TileImage and BackgroundImage can be different.

Great, exactly what I had in mind.

Tastes are different here

Yes, of course. But there are a few "decent" fanart skins available for MP2 already but not a single "pure fanart" skin. If you count the numbers of users that uses StreamedMP or PureVision or similar, I'm pretty sure this will be a huge part of the whole MP1 user base. Probably more than the half of all MP1 users. And this big group has nothing comparable on MP2 side...

amount of colors and contrasts can disturb and make the user not see the most important controls.

This is not necessarily the case. Only a matter of how the controls are placed and coloured. I've used Backdrop Skin for MP1 as long as possible. This was the most fanart oriented skin I've ever seen and the most beautiful too. And, you never had any issues to see or read the important stuff, no matter how the fanart was looking. It's my all time favourite...
If you don't know this skin and want to have a look:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/backdrop-skin-released.91743/

Some day I want to have a skin for MP2 that comes as close as possible to Backdrop... Bud sadly my skills in XAML are far away from being able to do this by myself... E.g. I've spend the whole afternoon to find the place where the "not focussed" listview items are defined. I wanted to add a darkened background to the grid cells (as without sometimes it's really hard to read), but I wasn't even able to find the right xaml file where those are being defined at all... The main structure is sooo confusing to me, I simply can not see the logics behind this...

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
A very first version od the Cloudy theme can be found in first post.
If something did not work as expected, feel free to ask. Have fun.

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
There is a patch for Cloudy to V0.1.1 available in first post. Aside a further improved fanart handling there are some bugfixes in the patch. That's why I recommend it to all users. Simply extract the archive and overwrite the existing files.

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
I have finished the work on the cover views and on the audio part.
Cloudy now utilizes features that will be introduced in the next "Weekly" build. That's why I can't release Cloudy V0.2 now, also it is ready for release. Planed release date for the next "Weekly" Build is "next year" (2016.01.01) So tomorrow, after your headache is gone you will find a new toy to play with here in your favorite forum...

Happy new year to all of you and see you again in 2016...

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
Hope you all have a very happy new year.

As a bonus the new MP2 build (aka New Years Build) is ready for download:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/mediaportal-2-weekly-snapshot-2016-01-01.133219/

And for this a new Cloudy version V 0.2 is ready for download too:
https://www.team-mediaportal.com/extensions/mp2-skins/cloudy-theme-for-blue-vision

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
After some time something new here.
Maybe you've noticed that SlimTv now supports zapping by entering channel numbers and also displays Channel numbers next to the channel name. More to find here:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...apping-by-channel-number.134152/#post-1181637
For the channel numbers to be displayed there are modifications at skin files necessary. I've done so for Cloudy.

Simple replace the original SlimTVStyles.xaml with attached file and you are done.
The original file can be found in:
c:\Program Files (x86)\Team MediaPortal\MP2-Client\Plugins\SlimTv.Client\Skin\BlueVision\themes\Cloudy\styles\

But use this only with the new SlimTV version from the linked post above. I don't know if this file is working with older versions of SlimTV plugin.