How to use transparencies

[jewishj]

How can I use transparancies with a winamp skin?

In other words, I want to make numbers.bmp transparent, is there a way to do this?

[Nini]

You can't make them really transparent, unsless you want to have a hole in your skin (real transparency)
But you can make a 1 color background (or stripes) and paste your numbers on it then. - fake transparency
Quote on transparency from WSD skins (explained very well me thinks):

There are two ways of transparency :

1. True transparency (region.txt)
You can make the winamp skin transparent, by writing a region.txt file. When you make this file the skin will be transparent all the way through winamp (you can see the desktop or whatever you have in the background).

2. Fake Transparency (bitmaps)
When you change the bitmap size you can make some of the buttons transparent and make it look a bit different.

TRUE TRANSPARENCY

You can make the winamp skin transparent by writing a region.txt file. When you make this file the skin will be transparent all the way through winamp (you can see the desktop or whatever you have in the background). There are some limitations to the region.txt file :
The windows you can make transparent is : The main windows, the windowshade window, the equalizer, the equalizer windowshade.
You can't make the playlist or the minibrowser transparent, because they are resizeable !


Are you ready to read, write and try ??? (there's a lot of reading !!!) I suggest you have several things open to test this: Winamp, Notepad, a graphics program to read coordinates with, a screenshot of your skin.

The region.txt is basiccally like this:

[normal]
Numpoints=
PointList=

[WindowShade]
Numpoints=
PointList=

[Equalizer]
Numpoints=
PointList=

[EqualizerWS]
Numpoints=
PointList=

When you make the region.txt file you post what you WANT to have shown on the skin !
You define a set of coordinates to make a polygon and it's shown.

FAKE TRANSPARENCY
You can't make the buttons on the volume and balance sliders transparent in the region.txt and still have the background of the skin shown, but there is a way.

You can make volume.bmp a bit smaller and remove the sliders !

You can do the same with the balance.bmp (68 * 433) then the canvased size is ( 68 * 420 ).

The easiest way to make fake transparency is to make the buttons / bitmaps look like the background

[offtopic]my 1000th post yay![/offtopic]

[PeaceMaker]

Removing the buttons off the sliders in the vol and bal bitmaps isnt really called Fake Transparency. The buttons are cropped out of the bitmap, gone fro good, so if there is no buttons how can any object (in this case the button) be transparent? True transparency is really only shown in from the region.txt file. There's no fake transparency, just cropped components.

[jewishj]

What do you suggest?

I want to make the numbers show up on the background of the skin, not with a background color... but since the background behind the numbers is several different colors.. how could i make the background of the numbers transparent (true or fake)

[Nini]

can you show us a screenshot? If your backgound is a bit tileable it may work to paste numbers on it...
Example: attachment (skin was made by Raydream, I'd have shown you his ss, but it's gone - here is the thread about it:
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=65121)

[jewishj]

heres a screen shot of the skin

[Forevever]

with that particular background - yes it would be near to impossible to make the background of the numbers appear transparent

however, I think the blue is kinda nice if you make it more of a window looking thing

[Nini]

you can try to make the a semi-transparent black (blurred!) rectangle behind the numbers. Then it might look not to bad....