cgrey000 23 Posted February 17, 2015 Share Posted February 17, 2015 (edited) One of my favorite skins for Kodi is Metropolis. Thought it would be fun to bring some basic MediaBrowser functonality, and add a few visual elements that it didn't have that I like. I am still learning skinning, and don't have deep skills to be able to do much more than I have here. Turned out, I was surprised to see just how much of the MB info came through the firs time I opened up my movies and TV libraries. I guess seeing that there wasn't much to do to achieve what I wanted gave me the motivation to figure out how to do it. Unfortunately, I have very little time. I don't expect to be able to do much to "support" this mod. I probably won't integrate other libraries like music or any custom libraries. I doubt I'll be able to take requests to add this or that... I mostly wanted to share what I did, in case anyone likes Metropolis and wanted to get some basic MB functionality going. I also don't have any knowledge of repositories or distributing skins, so the attached ZIP file does NOT include the entire Metropolis skin - you'll need to install that through the Kodi repo. Also, I did this mod based on the Helix version of Metropolis - I have no idea if these files will work with the earlier (Gotham) version. Included are only the 9 files that I modified to achieve this integration. Finally, it seems there has been some activity in the development of Metropolis overall lately - my changes were made against the first Helix release - 3.0.0. Again, no idea what might happen if you over write these files in a different (later) version. It would probably also be a good idea to make sure you have automatic addon updates turned off, to ensure a newer version of Metropolis doesn't get installed over these changes. All credit for Metropolis and the work to create the original skin goes to "jingai" in the Kodi community. To install this mod, unzip the attached file, and put the 9 included XML files in the 720p folder under skin.metropolis in your Kodi installation, over-writing the ones that are already there. I'd highly recommend backing up the original files so you can easily revert if anything goes wrong. If there are additional changes you want to make once you have this in place, take a look at these files to see what I've changed from the original. Surprisingly (to me, anyway) there was very little that required changing to get here, once I figured out the places that needed changing and what to replace the native Kodi components with. Given my lack of time, if anyone has the time and interest in taking this further (fuller and more automatic integration, repo inclusion, ongoing support), please feel free ... Good luck - here's a list of what I changed, and the ZIP file is attached... MediaBrowser integration for Movies and TV Main Menu Items and submenus (see screenshots below for the library nodes that are implemented in submenus) Added rotating fanart backgrounds for Movies and TV libraries MediabBrowser Media totals on home screen Redesigned video info screen to include discart (movies only) and clearart (movies and TV), remove cast information that pointed to native Kodi libraries, and removed buttons that activated native Kodi functionsFixed Movie poster on OSD when playing movies Added clearart to OSD when playing TV Shows NOTE: Other than Movies and TV, no other MB libraries or nodes are integrated - you can still use favorites to replace other default metropolis home menu items and submenu items, or take a look at how I did the Movies and TV Libraries in the Includes_HomeDeck.xml file to integrate your own custom libraries. Metropolis Changes.zip Edited February 17, 2015 by cgrey000 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 36999 Posted February 17, 2015 Share Posted February 17, 2015 Well done! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cgrey000 23 Posted February 17, 2015 Author Share Posted February 17, 2015 (edited) For what it's worth, I've found Metropolis to be pretty decent in terms of performance on my FireTV and FireTV sticks.. I like a graphic-rich skin, for me this is a pretty good balance between having lots of art and still keeping a fairly snappy UI. For these reasons, it's now replaced AeonNox for me as my "go to" skin on the FTVs (and I'm a bit more comfortable with it under the hood to customize it to my liking - the author did a pretty good job commenting what does what in his XML). Edited February 17, 2015 by cgrey000 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasonmcroy 315 Posted February 18, 2015 Share Posted February 18, 2015 Thanks for your post! I am going to download your zip and try out the skin. I have also been interested in learning some skinning techniques and your files will help get me started too! -Jason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cgrey000 23 Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 Good luck, jasonmcroy.. I first dipped my toes in to skins with AeonNox, which was a monster compared to Metropolis. For as nice a skin as it is, it really wasn't too bad to do some basic things. Hardest part for me was (is) chasing all the "includes" and figuring our the right MB variables and properties to put in place of the default Kodi ones. As a reference, I also tried to find what I wanted to do in skins like Titan and 1080XF (both very popular here) and shoehorn what I found there in to this. That said, I doubt I'll ever get further than just hacking in what I want to get what I'm after. The complex stuff is way over my head 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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