Hi Lumxnance!
For the skinning basic, you do need a spreadsheet of which skin elements are skinnable.
Taking from Jangsoodlor's points:
1.) The reference mentioned is the osu! skinning wiki. More in-depth, you can check:
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Skinning interface (All of the osu! UI like the song selection, mod selection, menu-background etc.)
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Skinning osu! (osu! gameplay like the hitcircles, default numbers etc.)
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Skinning osu!taiko (osu!taiko gameplay like the taiko bar, taiko hitcircles etc.)
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Skinning osu!catch (osu!catch gameplay like the fruits, drops, catcher etc.)
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Skinning osu!mania (osu!mania gameplay like the mania notes, mania keys etc.)
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Skinning osu! gamesounds (All of the sounds in-game from hitsounds to UI sounds.)
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2.) And also mentioned by Jangsoodlor is the
skin.ini wiki that is really essential. Act it as a heart or CPU of the skin where you can use it for configuring the colour combos, animation framerate, and this is usually used in mania skinning where you can change its notes and key images freely.
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Alternatively, you can also refer to this
osu! Skinnable Spreadsheet. It is roughly the same as above but a more simplified and easy to refer to!
Tips:
1.) In some skin elements, it is noted that some are needed to follow by its canvas size in order for the skin not to be too big or too small for its view in-game.
2.) Feel free to look at the ideas of other skins, so you can get a glimpse of how they work and understand more about skinning.
3.) Look through the
tutorial for your first step in learning how to skin.
And there are also
resources you can check out with tools that can assist you.