What is skinning? I need some magical powers to do a skin?
Skinning is a simple picture changing mechanism that osu will load upon selecting certain skin.
Creating skins is easy (creating elements is a little more difficult thing to achieve). First you need to find your “Skins” folder that must be inside your osu! directory. To start creating new skin, install template (download it and just open, osu! will do the rest) rename template folder to your skin name and start editing it. (or copy template skin if you will need it for something).
Actually we have skinning elements for all four game modes :
- osu! standard,
- Catch the beat,
- Taiko,
- osu!mania
Together there will more than 200 elements to edit (without animations).
But don’t be scared with the amount of files. You are not forced to change everything.
What skin should contain?
Generally - skin elements and skin.ini with is important part of your skin. What is skin.ini I will explain later in “skin.ini” part. Which parts you are going to add it’s completely up to you. Every part that you won’t change, will be taken from default skin.
You are free to add different folders with alternative parts into your skin, osu! won’t care if they are there or not.
What is new and old style skinning :
Old style skinning is a style that was used by old default skin (before March 2013).
With “March 2013 update” peppy introduced new default skin and it’s new behaviours and parts.
There were few important changes like new spinner, countdown, hitbursts, ranking-panel behaviour. More about these parts you can read about later.
To active new skin behaviour select this in skin options :
or add to skin.ini "Version:1" to force old behaviour, "Version:2' to force new behaviour.
Using elements from other skins :
This is important rule of skinning.
Never use other users elements without permission. If you got permission or user is no longer active and it’s impossible to contact with them remember to credit them properly. (Something like : Elements xxx from <name of user>’s <skin/beatmap link/name>). Especially DON’T USE parts that come from skin mixes and “creator” of mix doesn’t know where he get these elements. If you can’t find original creator of skin part (asked some people already, searched in skinning subforum), you shouldn't use it, but as long as there will be note that you are still looking for author of xxx.png, it’s fine.
If you are going to make “skin mix” keep it for yourself or post it on your profile page. We don’t need them in skinning subforum.
Parts that can be animated
osu! allows to create animations for some elements. To create animation all you will need to do is creating frame by frame and naming them by <name of part>-0.png, <name of part>-1.png, <name of part>-2.png etc. You are not limited to amount of frames. Exception is only sliderb with is named sliderb0, sliderb1, sliderb2 etc.
List of files that can be animated :
- followpoint
- fruit-ryuuta
- menu-back
- play-skip
- scorebar-colour
- sliderfollowcircle
- taiko mascot
- taikocircleoverlay
- taikobigcircleoverlay
- hitbursts (300, 100, 50, miss)
- hitcircleoverlay
- sliderb
- Probably few more, will add them when found.
If your animation is too fast, you can fix that in 2 ways. First, try to make them longer by doubling frames. For example frame 0 and 1 are the same picture (so picture will last 2 frames), frame 2 and 3 are second picture, etc. This will make animation slightly slower. But it won’t work on menu-back and hitbursts. In that case you need to use “AnimationFramerate” option. Read more about it in skin.ini part.
Important information about game mode skins :
osu! standard
Normal - Kind of skin, that skinner creates as he/she wish. Follow or don't follow template sizes. These are often colourful and creative. May contains many different animations. Typical skin for casual player.
Simplified - This kind of skin is directed to a players who dislike distractions, but like to see some things. Skins like this often have minimized size of hitbursts (300,100, 50 etc.), size of parts aren't larger than template's, less colourful, less animations.
"PRO" skins - This kind of skin it totally focused on removing any distractions that skin can provide. Skins like this contains transparent hitbursts, no animations, reduced amount of colours used in it, larger "followpoint.png", semi-transparent hitcircle.
Catch the beat
For CtB skins is important to keep droplets large (but not huge) and visible. These are small and is easy to miss.
For catcher you must be careful with plate size. If you make it too short, player won’t be able to play correctly with it since “catching” area is wider. In other hand making it too wide will mislead player and will often miss since catching area is shorter than plate.
Taiko
VERY IMPORTANT in taiko skinning is that you must make Don (red notes) and Katsu (Blue notes) visible as possible. Taiko is dynamic game mode and you don’t have time to think if it’s a Don or Katsu.
osu!mania
Still gathering data. Sorry!
If someone can provide some info about important things while making osu!mania skins, go ahead and post them here.R-15 and R-18 content in skins :
Probably some of you
perverts would like to make a skin that will contain mature content.
Case is simple, if you are going to post a skin that have it, you are only allowed to post R-15 "ecchi" (suggestive, visible underwear, swimsuits/bikini etc.and you need to avoid adding characters with really skimpy clothing) . Also you must add warning that your skin have these.
You are NOT allowed to post skins that contains any R-18 (nudity,pornography etc.) in skinning subforum. If you post somewhere else in osu! community be aware that you might be punished for that. (But if you release it outside osu! community nobody will hunt you).