Custom UI in MAya?

[Gremlin]

thats easy (well, not as easy as just selected a theme file) but you can change all the colors in maya. Just goto Window >> settings/preferences >> colors... :D

Cheers,
:beer:

[Sammy]

that looks like a unix version of maya ... besides checking out the color prefs IN maya, also take a look at your system appearance options in your control panel.

If you're still stuck on the look/style of the windows - check out windowblinds ... you can find a demo at download.com. It could help you give windows a unix style look - although it eats a bit into your overall system resources ...

-Sammy
rhibit@lilypad.ca
-+-

[thomaspecht]

seems like shown in the pictures is maya running with the 4dwm window manager which is the default for sgi unix boxes. there are several choices for emulating this under linux, not sure about other platforms.

[Renderizer]

Agreed - this looks like Unix.

But as Gremlin pointed out - you can simply change your colours via the display settings tab.

There is a nifty little freeware prog that lets you change nou just your system colours, but also your icons, cursors and sounds.

It's called Desktop Architect (http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_download/0,fid,6503,fileidx,1,00.asp) .

Note: this doesn't work with WinXP.

To my taste, WindowBlinds digs a bit too deep into the system.

BTW: I love to keep my colours dark, too... ;)

Renderizer

[SheepFactory]

I would be interested to see how you guys set up the dark ui colors.

I am not interested in installing window blinds or similar software .

when I try to modify the regular colors dark , I always mess it up , either the text becomes illegible in maya or the icons have a big gray square background and it looks ugly.

if you managed to figure it all out please post your screenshot or settings :)

[Renderizer]

Have a look... it's rather small, but 20.000 bytes are not that much.

Renderizer

[Velocamonkey]

Thanks for the response, I thought this thread would just slide into nothingness, I'm glad others are as picky about viewport colours as I am:)

Renderizer, that pic of your UI looked cool, how did you get it that way? Did you use Desktop Architect?

I always find the colours customize thing confusing, I can never find which colour effects the overall menu colour and also get that nasty light grey look around the boxes.

Anyway, let me know how people go and how Renderizer got your look.

[Renderizer]

Velocamonkey


Yes, I am indeed picky about my screen colours. I feel that a darker colour scheme is more pleasing to look at (at least to me, that is).

Desktop Architect is nothing more that an enhanced version of the system appearance control panel, but here you can also change your icons, cursors and sounds. You can't change the actual (bitmap) appearance of the UI elements.

You can find the app by clicking at these words. (http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_download/0,fid,6503,fileidx,1,00.asp) .

I have attached a theme with dark colour scheme. Note that this doesn't include cursors, icons, fonts or sounds, just the colours (otherwise, the file would be a bit too large, just above a half meg).

Put it in your Desktop Architect theme folder and take a look.

Hope that helps. ;)

[Bpanting]

I have been trying to get that kind of a look for awhile, and now I can't use it. I just upgraded to XP over the weekend. Oh well hopefuly they will have an upgrade to XP soon. :D

[Renderizer]

Er...no. They won't.

The development of DA has been stopped, as XP comes with it's own theme manager.

And you can actually use any .theme files with it... just put it in some convenient place and use XPs control panel (system appearance) to browse to the file.

I can't tell you exactly which buttons to push, as I don't have XP installed, but it should be easy enough to find.

And as I pointed out before - the attached file just provides you with the colour scheme, not any other fancy icon stuff (even though you could use that with XP as well - I just don't have them included with the package).

[Bpanting]

Cool, I will have to try that out. Thanks :thumbsup:

[thomaspecht]

well i prefer the dark color schemes, too (co-workes refer to it as my night-vision setup ;) ). here's maya on unix:
http://home.arcor.de/th0mas_p/maya_ui_colors.jpg

it should be fairly easy to edit the display settings of your window manager by scaling down the maya window but keeping it visible while editing the colors.
i too messed around with windowblinds quite some time ago and i got the impression that it added another "layer of instability" on top of what windows already delivered - plus it most likely hurts the system performance.

[Renderizer]

Yeah, I don't really trust WindowBlinds. I think that it's doing something creepy to your system.

Changing Windows' system colours is really drop dead easy. It just takes some time to find the right balance, that's all.

Desktop Architect makes it a bit easier, too.

Something else: as you seem to use Maya on Linux - what do you think about it? I didn't have the chance to try it myself, so I'd like to hear some opinions.

[SheepFactory]

windowblinds is crap and it slows down the computer a lot.

I like your colors GI joe , trying to make a similar one now.

I wish the icons were transparent , the grey bg looks ugly :(

[Velocamonkey]

Hey renderizer thanks, Desktop Architect is just what I wanted,
does the trick nicely and Maya looks very nice.

My only problem is that I'm trying to customize colours
in Maya and I want to change the colour of the line you
use in the Graph Editor to scroll backwards and forwards
in time, but I can't find anywhere to change it's colour?
What's it under?

[thomaspecht]

renderizer: my screen shows maya running on irix, not linux ;)
maya on linux-experience varies greatly depending on your gfx-card/driver-combo and the linux-distro and windowmanager, you plan to use. i've seen maya some time ago running on mandrake/kde with a geforce-3 and it seemed to be comparable to the windows version but not anywhere near the stability of the irix-version.
better use what a|w recommends as the distribution and get rid of bloated window-managers to enjoy maya.


sheep factory: you mean the default mel-script shelf icons? yeah, i hate those too - and i especially miss an option to use a plain text button instead of an icon. normally i create my shelf icons manually in photoshop as they can be seen in the screenshot, but there wasn't much time for this lately ;)
i guess it shouldn't be a problem to replace the default mel-icon though.

[Renderizer]

Blind me...:blush:

[Levitateme]

so does anyone know of anything that will let me change the bitmap of my close window for exp>? i would like to get my windows to look just like LINUX. any editing program taht will let me do that?

[Renderizer]

Here we go again: WindowBlinds from Stardock (http://www.stardock.com/).

These guys offer you a whole range of tools to change your desktop appearance, but this stuff goes really hard on your resources.

Me, I don't care about any fancy skinning stuff, I just need a colour scheme that takes the strain off my eyes.

But yeah - skinning is all the rage...

[Levitateme]

yah, i know of window blinds also i used about a year ago. i just want to change the image of my X to close the window. if that is a bitmap, cant i change if i knew were the file was?

[Renderizer]

I'm afraid there is no easy way to change the shape of the Windows system GUI elements.

That's why WindowBlinds was so ground breaking for what it does.

Quote from WindowBlinds:

On Windows XP, Microsoft's skinning engine uses a system hook to intercept paint calls to the title bar. This is done at a very low level so the overhead in doing this is negligible. When a program attempts to paint its title bars, Microsoft's hook intercepts the call and re-directs it to a DLL called uxtheme.dll. WindowBlinds instead re-directs it to its optimized wblind.dll instead which then uses uxtheme.dll or its own functions to handle painting (WindowBlinds can thus pick and choose between more APIs so it picks the fastest and most compatible APIs between the two).

WindowBlinds uses a system hook to re-direct paint calls to the system to wblind.dll which then handles the painting. This way, WindowBlinds avoids painting over the original title bar but instead becomes the original title bar itself. Because these versions of Windows weren't designed originally to be skinned, Stardock has spent years enhancing and improving application compatibility.

That way, you have to use WB or leave things as they are.

Renderizer

[dAfTiE]

I've used LiteStep to customize my desktop for ages, and it's just GREAT! :)
You have to write some config files to roll yer own theme,
but there are tons of premade ones to choose from if you want to just start using it.
Never tried it on XP,as I never plan on installing XP, ever,
but it works nicely under 2k and 9x at least.

Linkage:
General LiteStep stuff:
http://www.litestep.net/
http://www.litestep.com/

LiteStep themes:
http://www.deviantart.com/thumbnails.php?section=litestep
http://www.deskmod.com/core.mod?show=showcat&cat_name=litestep

Please note tho,that this is a replacement for the MS explorer.exe shell,
and will not allow you to customize the window widgets,just EVERYTHING else :)
:beer:

[Renderizer]

I've tried LiteStep some years ago, and didn't like it too much.

It's the same as with WB - it just digs too deep into your system resources.

And on a sidenote, I found it not very intuitive to use.

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