[fantasticn]

I totally agree. I was also suprised by the fact that those skins seemed to be almost finished (from the pictures and the videos) and then have never been released.

Also I am quiet surprised about the lack in support Android devices get with respect to kodi development in general. If you look at the prices (Android boxes starting from 25 US$) and the power they offer (4k/60Hz, HEVC, support for apps and gaming, voice control etc.) there is no other plattform that can compete with them. The Raspberry PI does not even offer half this much functionality (and is not future proof because of his lack in 4k- and HEVC-support). And regular PCs are much more expensive with Windows being a much too complex system (installation, configuration. administration, drivers, antivirus-tools etc. etc. etc.) for only a media player. With Android already dominating the Smartphone and Tablet market (80% market share worldwide) and now comming to media players, with Philips, Sharp, Sony, Hisens and other manufactures implementing Android TV in their TV sets and with even NVidia offering a powerful Android TV box (Shield TV) Kodi could become the absolut standard in media player solutions on the software side. Therefore I was hoping for a significant increase in support for this plattform especially from team kodi and other developers. However, this isn't the case. Sometimes it almost looks like they are trying to ignore this plattform, stigmatizing the Android devices by calling them only "makeshift soluitions" (so what is the Raspberry then?) and even killing all code that has been implemented to support special characteristics of this plattform. Ending with koying leaving the team and having no Android developer at all nobody knows if and how kodi will support Android at all in the future. That is quiet a shame. However, we are just the users and the beneficiaries of the developers work. So we have to live with whatever is offered to us. Maybe in the near future we will have to look for other solutions that are - furtunately - offered for Android, like Plex, Emby etc. Let's wait and see.

For now I put my hope in this skin actually comming to a release. But we will face a problem then: The skin is only developed for Krypton (which I understand and agree with since Krypton is already announced as the next kodi release). But Krypton has dropped a lot of the support for the technical necessities of Android devices. Therefore koying has reactivated SPMC which currently is only built on Jarvis and it does not look like he will work on a Krypton based version in the near future. So staying with SPMC will not make it possible to use this skin, but switching to Kodi Krypton will have us losing some of the implemented Android functionality. Again, that is a shame.

[stueeey]

I'm still hoping BigNoid, shall release his version once his other priorities are addressed (all quite for some time on his WIP release).

I'm no expert on the legalities of Kodi skins copying other OS looks.... but could that be why they have not come to fruition?

...conscious that Hitchers FTV skin never made it to the official Kodi repo.


Sent from my iPhone

[thedeadman]

Sadly completing a home screen and some views does not a Kodi Skin make. It's all the little dialogs and idiosyncrasies that take by far and away the most time to do. Skinning Kodi is quite the labour of love.

As for legality, the issue is often to do with copyrighted fonts. For obvious reasons, Kodi won't allow that on their official repo.

[stueeey]

Sadly completing a home screen and some views does not a Kodi Skin make. It's all the little dialogs and idiosyncrasies that take by far and away the most time to do. Skinning Kodi is quite the labour of love.

As for legality, the issue is often to do with copyrighted fonts. For obvious reasons, Kodi won't allow that on their official repo.

arrhhh ok, thanks for the insight @thedeadman. much respect to all skinners out there!! keep up your great work


Sent from my iPhone

[im85288]

Sadly completing a home screen and some views does not a Kodi Skin make. It's all the little dialogs and idiosyncrasies that take by far and away the most time to do. Skinning Kodi is quite the labour of love.

As for legality, the issue is often to do with copyrighted fonts. For obvious reasons, Kodi won't allow that on their official repo.

Yup MASSIVE plus 1 for this, skinning is a fruitless labour that brings no rewards. As an example it took almost 6 months of approx 4-5 hours a day to complete Eunique between two of us. In the end the skin was pretty unsuccessful. I can see quite clearly why many, many skins do not get completed or continued.

[thedeadman]

Chin up im85288 ;-)

[im85288]

Chin up im85288 ;-)

Cheers dude

[Martijn]

Chin up im85288 ;-)

Cheers dude

http://addons.kodi.tv/show/skin.eunique/
Still 80k installs on Jarvis

[fantasticn]

I think Eunique ist a great skin. It has amazing annimations and a very unique look. And I was faszinated by the fact that the day it was published the skin was not only far beyond a half-baked "WIP"-stage but already a "final version" with everything working out of the box. However, I think Eunique has some issues which may have prevented it from becomming one of the top skins. And those are:

1. The color design is inconsistant, veriegated and not very harmonic.
2. Same applies to the font design. You should have sticked with only one simple font style and not to many different font sizes.
3. The design of the menu bar is boring whereas on the other side the widgets makes the look much too complicated. In common the main menu is not very intiutive.

These aspect somehow contradict the spirit of time which has the Apple-like simplicity (frameless graphics etc.) dominating all designs. Unfortunately I cannot describe it in better way but if you want to see what I mean just compare it e.g. with KOver. It has the right tone in everything, except for being very complicated in setting it up (the opposite to Eunique).

However, I think you did a great job with this skin and maybe you should just revise it in the aforementioned aspects (Eunique 2.0) or at least use the groundwork to come up with a new project. Anyway, especially since I am myself not capable of skinning I very much appreciate what you did and have to say that - though it might not be perfect in the described aspects and therefore did not get enough attention - you did a great job with it!

As to the Andoid skins: I think Android boxes and Android TV in general are becomming more and more popular (for the reasons I described in the other post). And especially on this plattform Kodi is only one of many apps, not the only software and not the main frontend. Therefore it is already time to have a skin that perfectly integrates with the look of the Android TV launcher and make Kodi feel as beeing an integral part of it. Several skins have been announced that would deliver such experience. but none of them was ever published. So let's hope this one will come true and make it happen - soon :-)

[thedeadman]

especially since I am myself not capable of skinning

Never too late to learn.

Some uninvited advice for what it's worth: take inspiration from 'commercial' designs, but be utterly ruthless in pulling them apart, taking a critical eye and building only what works for Kodi and for you. Take note that pretty much all of the most successful Kodi skins (Aeon etc) are completely independent work.

Chasing pixel perfect reproductions of Apple / Google / MS frontends is a fools errand. By the time you finish, they've moved on. They should be learning from us, not the other way around!

[fantasticn]

Of course you are right. Everybody can learn everything and can become everything - in theory. But practically you have to focus. There is not just skinng, not just addons, not just kodi at all, not even only PC technics (Software programming, hardware constructing etc.). There is so many other hobbies, industrial or mechanical arts and sciences . You can learn tiling, brick laying, plumbing, gardening, car mechanics etc. etc. etc.. You can even become a medical doctor, a physicist or an astronaut. Everything is possible. You you just have to do it - und you need the time for that. And since it is so many things that you could do you might have to chose. So from everything that is possible I picked a few things. Some are my profession, some are my hobbies. Skinng did and does not belong to that. Sorry. So in that respect I am depending on the guys who picked that hobby.

As to the resproduction of Apple, Google etc. you are also absolutely right. Copying is not the way it should work. However, they have professional designers and most probably investigated a lot into their designs and user-interfaces. So it might be a good idea to analyse them and maybe pick some ideas. But as to the leanbeck skin I was referring to something different. It is not about copying a design. It is more about finding a look that integrates into the design of Android TV boxes and Android Smart TV sets so Kodi will look more or less like an integral part of it.

[thedeadman]

Fair comments all.

If it helps, my Pellucid skin took quite a bit of design inspiration from Google TV and Youtube :-)

[fantasticn]

Ok, I tried Pellucide and I must say that I am really impressed. The look does not assimilate the Android TV design itself, but it is quiet close to some Android TV apps (as you mentioned the youtube app). And the animations are amazing. They have the right tone to give the skin a very professional touch. However, there a few thing that I (personally) think that need revision:

1. The menu bar: It does not comply with the preferences set in the skin-helper-addon. And it takes too many steps to enter the target entry. E.g. you will have to press "Video" in the main menu and then scroll down to "Movies" in the submenu and enter it to actaully go the movies section. And it is hard to identify at first sight wether you currently are in the main menu or in any submenu.

2. The widgets: They only come up in the submenu and only if you press right. It would be nice to see them right away and maybe have three rows of different widgets (e.g. like in ftv skin). Navigating through those widgets also would come closer to the Android TV or FireTV feeling and maybe make the usage of the actual view-sections (Movies, TV-Shows etc.) almost obsolete.

3. The views: Currently you just offer list view. The skin would need more view types, at least a thumbnail view and - for tv shows - a banner view.

4. The colors and the wallpapers: They need to be adjustable. I know that red (for the menu bar) assumes the look of the youtube-addon but actually it is not very elegant. And of course I would like to exchange some of the wallpapers for the same reason.

But anyway this is a very professional design I have to admit. It actually gives Kodi kind of an "Android TV App"-feeling.

Hmm, maybe I should have posted this review in the Pulliced thread. However, since this leanback thread is dead anyway it does not harm, I assume.

Edit: I now went through the Pellucide thread and read that you once considered implementing the skin.shortcuts-support, but dropped it. That's most unfortunate because most of the other modern skins rely on that. It would be nice to not have to reconstruct the whole menu bar again within the skin (besides the skin-shortcuts-addon should have made it easier fpr the skinner to implement the menu bar by outsourcing the whole system, I guess). Also I saw your screenshots offering kind of a thumbnail/wallpaper view for movies. I have not been able to activate it. I just get the list view and the context menu does not show any option to alter it.

[thedeadman]

Ha - probably best discussed in the Pellucid thread as you say..

Thanks for your thoughts, I really appreciate them. In brief, skin shortcuts will be included in the Krypton version (the first official release). Replacement wallpapers I will consider, along with changing the main theme colour. I won't do alternative views i'm afraid, I hard code them by content type. The thumbnail views that you mention will only appear if you have a standard Kodi library for your content. I'm assuming your movies etc are not scanned in as library items?

[fantasticn]

Sounds good. So we might possibly see color adjustment, wallpaper replacement and even skin.shortcut support in the Krypton version. Let's just hope that koying will come up with a Krypton version of his SPMC by then. Since I am using an Android TV Box (Shield TV) SPMC seems to have some advantages over the official Kodi 17 Krypton version.

As to the thumbnail views: Actually I am using the databases of Kodi. They get synced with the Emby libraries on my server. Other skin show the library views just fine. So what could be the problem then?