Launch of New PCDJ Dex 3 Skin Designer - Revamp Your DJ Software Look!

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PCDJ DEX 3 DJ Software is now available , and we’ve released a new ‘Skin Designer’ that allows you to create and map your own DEX 3 skin easily.

The new graphics engine included with PCDJ DEX 3 is still “skin based” – that simply means you can select a different skin in options to change the entire look and feel of the DEX 3 GUI (Graphical User Interface). DEX 3 already comes equip with all new 4-Deck and 2-Deck default skins at all (high) resolutions, each with a revamped video mixing tab (now with separate preview windows), effects grid tab and sampler tab.

Our community is always looking for new user created and submitted skins we can include on PCDJ.com for download for DEX 3 (complete with credit to the author and quite possibly some other incentives if we choose to include the skin with the DEX 3 installer) Different DJs have different needs and requirements while mixing, so much of the time user submitted skins fill a niche that other DJs with similar needs gravitate to.

Since DEX 3 is also designed to be touch-screen friendly, and as you can see in this video the new browser has been created with this in mind, we would enjoy a few skins with large buttons and just the main necessities for touch-screen DJing.

DOWNLOAD THE PCDJ SKIN DESIGNER

Here are the requirements for DEX 3 mixing software skins:

You can do 2 things here to generate a skin design that can be mapped properly:

2 .PNG Images:

The first one: The background image (with all the buttons in their off state, no slider cursors, no knobs cursors, no text that the app will display itself — but you can still leave descriptive text,etc)
The second one: This is basically the same as the background image but with ALL the buttons in their pressed/on/lighted state, the cursors on the knobs and sliders, all the texts, etc.

Please note that the 2 images need to PERFECTLY OVERLAP !

Option 2

Create only 1 png file in the format of the other skins — meaning — just use the 2 images at #1 to make the bigger one. If you are able to start the second image at position 1000 (on the Y axis) that would be great as there will be exactly 1000 pixels difference between a button’s off state and it’s on state, (this will be easier to map the XML using the skin designer)

Either formats will work, but basically #2 is just the images at #1 put together.

Other Important notes:

The elements of the skins should not overlap (eg. you can not have 2 buttons overlapping, or a button and a jog wheel, or 2 buttons, etc)
The target resolutions (that will basically account for more than 95% of all laptop screens) are: 2880 x 1800 — this is 16:10 & 2880 x 1620 — this is 16:9
I would suggest that only the playlist/browser are placed at the bottom, because of different aspect ratios — 16:9 vs. 16:10 — we basically need to cut the bottom part of the 16:9 skin so that’s why.

New Capabilities Included In The DEX 3 Graphics Skin Engine:

Ability to show waveform progress bar (just like for the main decks) for the sampler players
Show album artwork on jog-wheels
Use per-pixel transparency and even masking for some objects
Use progress bars (to left-right) for sliders/knobs
Use circular progress for songs (around the jog-wheels)
Overlap controls, non-rectangular shaped controls (with mouse-click masks)
Panels/groups inside panels …. inside panels — you get the idea!

Again, if you plan to take a shot at creating a touch screen skin, which should be very popular amongst our user base, please be sure to make button surface area large enough for the fat fingered types (me!). You may want to limit DJ deck functions to the basics, with large grabbable areas for pitch and crossfader.

Please send your PCDJ DEX 3 DJ mixing software skin submissions to [email protected]

DOWNLOAD LINK FOR THE EXISTING DEX 3 SKINS INCLUDED WITH THE SOFTWARE (USE EXISTING SKINS TO LEARN THE SKIN DESIGNER OR AS TEMPLATES FOR YOUR SKIN):