Welcome to the new section on BFK this blog will show you how to design a New Menu Bar In Kodi Part 1 , Ezz takes a look at re deigning the menu bar in the very popular kodi skin Aeon nox. This will help you pimp up your build and get amazing results.
For those of you new to BFK who may not know me I am part of team here at BFK i have written lots of blogs on the Kodi basics which i hope have helped out thousands of you get to grips with Kodi.
Big thanks to Sparky for allowing me to continue to blog on this amazing site of which we all do for free in our spare time so be sure to follow us on twitter and login and check the site on a daily basis.
Be sure to check out the companies that advertise on this site they are all hand picked and deliver great service. This generates some cash for the site to be able to continue and cover server cost etc.
Anyway myself and Damo are going to bring you these blogs via BFK to show you how simple it is to pimp up your own Kodi Build. So here is my first blog in this new section.
New Menu Bar In Kodi Part 1
If you have not read before Grendel’s amazing Create your own Build blogs have a read of them as well HERE
Anyway guys lets get down to it and have fun.
Ok folks I’m on the scene again and here to diverse on the finer points of Building your own Kodi Build.
These blogs are for the Budding Builders in the Kodi world.
I will start off by saying that everything you see in these blogs are “self taught” a little bit of the good old Google but that’s it…
Trial and Error got me what you are going to see
Ok these are the only 5 tools i use (on windows)
Aeon Nox Master FROM HERE
Texture tool FROM HERE
Photoshop…………….Its your option.
Notepad++ FROM HERE
Task Manager.
You can also find More information on The Texture tool HERE
I will start with the menu bar.
God bless Kodi for giving us what we have but i know some of you out there don’t like what you see.
That’s Ok because we can change everything in life if we know how?
Messing about in the xml files with in Kodi is not a bad thing.
Everything in these blogs are Based on “Aeon Nox Master”
The .xml will be the same in any Aeon build you use,…Just will be a “DIFFERENT” line number
I am going to run through each of my blogs so you can “Try” and get from
To
To This…..
Ok lets get going.
I used Photoshop to design everything you see.
Its up to you what Editing program you use, I am not going into the fundamentals of how and what to use.
This is a Kodi based blog.
This is my template for the menu bar in my build you see Below
These steps i am going to show you might NOT be the correct steps By the BEST Skinners (and i am no where near in there LEAGUE) but they work for me as you can find out for your self in the Wookie Community section of the Wookie Wizard on my Build.
Ok enough of me,…Lets get to you.
Design your menu bar.
Place it in a folder where you know.
Open the texture Tool.
In the second half of the section you will see “Select Input Folder”.
I always divert this to where i have my images
Then in the “Select output folder” that will be the same folder as the input folder.
When you select the “output” folder you will have the opportunity to give your .xbt file a name.
Then once you have selected the folders all you need to do is hit the Start.
Once you start the process you will get an indication that its working on your .xbt file.
It takes Seconds.
As you can see i have named mine Ez.xbt with the rest of everything else i am thinking of adding.
Also let me tell you now ANY image you are changing with your Build it is advisable after making your design is to SAVE as a .png file, as you see above.
OK now you have your .xbt file what do you do with it?
We have to copy the file and paste it in the Builds Media Folder.
On Windows it will be c:/user/AppData/Roaming/Kodi/Addons/Aeon nox/media
On Android it will be Android/Data/org.xbmc.Kodi/Files/Kodi/addons/Aeon nox/media
Once you have pasted the file in that folder.
You then now can proceed to change the image in the .xml file.
Before you pasted the .xbt file you will have noticed that there were a few other folders there aswell.
To change the image we need to go into the 1080i Folder.
In there you will see a whole bunch of files.
All .xml files these files portray what you see on your screen.
Dont worry we only need the 1 FILE for now,and the one we want is the home.xml.
We then need to RIGHT CLICK that file so we can EDIT in Notepad++
Once you have clicked on “Edit with Notepad++” you will be presented with this.
The Beauty of Notepad++ is that it has line numbers so as long as you Know what line you want to change then you carnt go wrong.
We are changing the Menu Bar so we need to scroll down to LINE – 270.
Bare in mind if you are using Aeon nox Silvo the line number will differ,… BUT it will be somewhere within that region.
Now what we need to do now is replace that TEXTURE line that says homemenu_back.png with EXACTLY THE SAME NAME AS YOUR IMAGE. ie
Once you have done that you need to CLICK FILE THEN SAVE in Notepad++ in the top left hand corner.
That’s it with Notepad++ for now.
What do we do next,…. We can go and Open kodi now.
And it will look exactly the same.
Well whats the point in that then.i will tell you what the point in that was.
If we go to my favorite place SYSTEM.
Appearances.
We will see that THEMES is set to Default.
By clicking the UP/DOWN arrow you should come across your .xbt file you pasted in the “Media” folder earlier on in this blog?
Now if you go back to the main menu you SHOULD see something like this?
Yes everything is out of sync and everything needs re-sizing but you have your created Menubar.
So from this point everything become easier, Yes believe me it DOES.
Stay tuned Folks on the next Blog i will show you how to move the menubar around the screen and scale it to your satisfaction.
Hope this was as good for you as it was for me
Hope you have found this helpful and easy to follow till next time.
Anyway guys will catch up with all of you soon.
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Ezz
