Theme Layers Bug?

EctoOne

So i just found something weird. I was working on cloning the Mimic Theme from Kodi to ES so i could have the same look on both systems. I created a MIX Profil for Universal XML Scraper which put fanart as background, 2 semitransparent bars at the top and bottom and the cover in the left bottom corner.
Then i set that image in the theme at max size but i noticed that the gamelist was behind that image. All other metatags appeared in front of it.

Here is what it looks without an image:
layer1

Here is it with only the Cover and Bars (See how the gamelist is darker):
layer2

And finally with the fanart:
layer3

So is there a way to get the gamelist to the front?

FlyingTomahawk

You have to move the gamelist code more down or the fan art image code more up inside the xml file.
Think of it as layers that need to be in a certain order.

Fan art image
Half transparent background
Game image
Metadata
Game list

mattrixk

@EctoOne: Sorry, no. ES has a set z-index for each of it's metadata elements, and unfortunately, gamelist appears to be at the bottom of the pile. I know Rook and myself have both had this idea, only to be stuck at this hurdle.

There is one thing I just thought of... The new Video Preview mod uses a <marquee> tag that tends to sit behind pretty much everything. You could scrape into that instead of the <image> tag and it might do what you want. It might work, it might not.

If I wasn't already elbows deep into my own new theme, I'd give it a go. If you hurry you could be the first to have full-screen fan-art.

Just a question: what size are you scraping those images at? Is the resulting MIX image 1920x1080, or did you go for smaller (like 1280x720) and then let ES scale it up?

mattrixk

@EctoOne It appears you have 2 conflicting opinions. Try @FlyingTomahawk's suggestion first (as it's pretty easy to test out). If it doesn't work, then give my idea a go.

EctoOne

Dang, i just tried what @FlyingTomahawk was saying but it didn't worked.

And ya @mattrixk i was thinking about the marquee tag myself but i don't want to put the video mod on my card now. Need to buy a new one first before i mess around with that (Unless there is a windows version i have missed). And i've set my images to 1280x720.

mattrixk

@EctoOne said in Theme Layers Bug?:

Unless there is a windows version i have missed

Here you go. It's what I'm using to test video previews for my new theme.

Edit:
You just need to remember that for the Video View, the background needs to be <image name="background">. It needs to be named "background" and you have to remove the extra="true", otherwise the background will cover the video.

screech

An other solution (I use for the fullbackground MIX template ;) )

Just cut a hole in your final image (or only in the fanart) ;) with something like :

<Element>
	<Name>FusionCutTEMP</Name>
	<Source_Type>GDI_Function</Source_Type>
	<Source_Function>TransparencyZone</Source_Function>
	<Source_Value>0.50</Source_Value>
	<Target_Width>%0.359</Target_Width>
	<Target_Height>%0.68</Target_Height>
	<Target_TopLeftX>%0.610</Target_TopLeftX> 
	<Target_TopLeftY>%0.22</Target_TopLeftY> 
</Element>

Source value to 0 to have "real" hole, or just 0.x to have just an transparency zone ;)

So the Gamlist will be on the back and you can see it thrue the hole ^^

(Nice theme and mix by the way ;) )

mattrixk

@screech: That is a viable solution, but it means the gamelist won't have the fan-art as background.

screech

with transparancy it will ;) (like a 50% transparancy value = 0.5)

but you will have a "zone" on your fanart with this transparancy...

Its cheating, but my advice :

Instead of putting a black image with transparancy over the fanart. put a transparancy zone the same size of the black image with a lvl of 0.50... You will have near the same effect, but you can see your gamlist ;)

EctoOne

@screech I will try that tomorrow if it works I even could make the dark bars in ES instead of UXS which would be so much easier. I almost rage quit when I was working on the MiX because I had to scrape the image so often to find the right spots and often it wasn't scraping either the fanart or the box art. Then my left mouse button broke and I had to work on my laptop with TouchPad. So for now I need a break from this project.

@mattrixk Thanks for the link. Looks like I missed it but I never really cared for the video feature so I wasn't paying to much attention to that.

EctoOne

@screech Well i got it kinda working. still needs some tweaking tho. But now i need a way to MIX my own selection of images even more. I don't know if you ever heard of TinyMediaManager, it's an Database/Scraper for Movies/TV Shows. It let's you pick all images on your own if you want. And if we can make UXS into something close to that i would be so happy.
One more question, is there a way to apply a color to the scraped images? As you can see, i added Playercount and Genre Icons in the Bottom Right Corner under the description to get closer to what Mimic looks, but they are dark and i want them pure white (although i'm not sure if it would work with the playericon because the number is white). With ES i was able to add the <color> tag to the systemlogo.

Done

Anyway i will mark this as solved. Thanks for the help.

screech

Sorry for the DB (and so downloaded media) issue... We've got some problem with the server who don't deliver a good picture every time... We working on it to solve this (and normally it will pretty good right now..)

Your Mix is very nice ;)

for the picto, actually they are only "black" or "color" for some of them... I need to check if I can apply a mattrix color on them in a MIX function...
An other solution is (like I did in the bigpicture mix) put a small back to the logo... (like a white square juste under it)

EctoOne

@screech No worries about the DB it's an awesome service. Only working on the Mix was a little frustrating. Edit the file, reload the Mix in UXS, Scrape some images, Test it in ES...

I also have put a white circle behind the picto but it still looks kinda weird because the players nummer is more greyish than the black genre.
Anyway without a way to quickly create Mix images from local files the theme is kinda worthless. But it was a good learning experience. :D

screech

In my long shot to do list :

Create a software to create MIX (and why not ES Theme ;) )
Modify the MIX function to use a "Batch/Bash" file using Imagemagick... so when the script is created from the MIX profile, you can use it with what you want ;)

But it's not for tomorrow ^^