Question about buttons in Maestro

[Commander XJL]

I was wondering if you can use a button created in photoshop in Maestro like you can spruce. I'm talking about a button you create in photoshop that has the button background, a mask, and a subpicture for highlight, that is saved as a photoshop file. You can import these buttons into Maestro, but when you drop them into your main menu Maestro seems to think you want to use the button as a menu and blows it up huge to fill the whole menu. The reason I ask this is you can make buttons in photoshop to look like anything you want, you can't do this with Maestro. Also, what is a subpicture in Maestro? I always get a message that no subpicture was defined so it uses default blank subpicture. Also, what is the purpose of a subpicture in Maestro?

[TRILIGHT]

As for the first part of your question: not if it is like ReelDVD. I have not used Spruce but I know that ReelDVD will automatically create a subpicture, etc. from the layers in your Photoshop file. Maestro does not do this. However, you can make your buttons and menu however you want in Maestro. You can still use Photoshop to make your menus for this. What is required is to understand how the subpicture works for masking. There are guides in the guide area that explain how this works.

[beta-horizen]

Originally posted by Commander XJL
...you can make buttons in photoshop to look like anything you want, you can't do this with Maestro. Also, what is a subpicture in Maestro? I always get a message that no subpicture was defined so it uses default blank subpicture. Also, what is the purpose of a subpicture in Maestro?

When you make these buttons in Photoshop, you should put them on a full size menu (e.g. 720x480 NTSC); this way, when you import it into Maestro, it will be considered the background of your menu.

In terms of the subpicture, it is the second bmp associated with the menu. This is the same for Scenarist. When you make a subpicture with other than the default blank one, you can change the color of highlights, button borders, etc.

So...
Say you put a 720x480 NTSC menu with 2 buttons on it in Maestro as your main menu. Next, you make a subpicture of size 720x480 with either red boxes over where the buttons would be, and add it to your menu as a subpicture. When you drag to create your selection buttons in Maestro, depending on what color is on the subpicture, it will map to a different color on your finished menu (default for red subpicture is black 10 when not selected, yellow 10 when highlighted, and dark grey 10 when action performed).

With a multicolored subpicture for your menu, you have the potential to have a very sophisticated menu. For more info, check out Doom9's Maestro guide at http://doom9.org/mpg/maestro.htm.

Best of luck.

[fruitbat]

If you save your background/subpicture as a two layer .psd
photoshop file (background first layer) you can just drag/drop
this image into Maestro and it automatically finds the two layers,
and sets them for you, makes things a little easier if you work
with photoshop.


btw
if working with PAL system you background should be 720x576 pixels