Transform Audio Creations Using PCDJ Deckard’s Newest Innovation - The DeX III Edition!

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Our PCDJ DEX 3 DJ Software will launch soon and one of the key core upgrades is the overhaul to our graphics engine.

The graphics engine is still “skin based” – meaning you can still selected different skins in options to change the entire look and feel of the DEX 3 GUI. DEX 3 will come with all new 4-Deck and 2-Deck default skins at all (high) resolutions, each with a revamped video mixing tab (showcasing separate preview windows), effects grid tab and sampler tab.

We’re looking for additional user 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. DJs have different needs and requirements while they mix, so much of the time user submitted skins fill a niche that other DJs with similar needs gravitate to.

DEX 3 is also designed to be used with touch screen, and as you can see in this video the new browser has been created with this in mind. We may very well create our own touch-screen-ready skin in the near future, but the more the merrier!

If you’re interested in creating and submitting a skin for us to map we will do the heavy lifting, at least until our new DEX 3 Skin Designer software is launched in the next few months. So we’re looking for the image submission only, and if the skin meets the posted requirements below we’ll map the skin to DEX 3 and post it up for all DEX 3 DJ software users to download.

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, making it a bit easy for us to make the XML.

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: 12880 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!

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 sent any PCDJ DEX 3 DJ mixing software skin submissions to [email protected]

We can talk compensation if we choose to use your skin in future updates of DEX 3!

Here are a couple example DEX 3 skin files you can download to work from:

And A 4 Deck Version:

Related

https://i1.wp.com/pcdj.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/skinguidecoverimage.jpg?fit=530%2C298&ssl=1 298 530 Ryan Sherr https://www.pcdj.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/pcdj-main-logo-2.png Ryan Sherr2014-07-01 09:08:572015-07-01 15:14:33We Want Your Skin! (For DEX 3)}

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