Megalegacy98
Nintendo 3DS Legend
Towns Folk
Hey everyone, today I will show you how to make your own custom themes in the easiest way possible. This will cover how to make the theme, correctly size the images, how to make and loop background music, custom sound effects, and how to load your theme!
Requirements:
A Windows computer (sorry Mac, Chromebook, Mobile, and Linux users!)
YATA+ 1.3.1 (that's the version we will be working with)
Audacity
BRSTM Converter
BRSTM2BCSTM
A sample body_LZ.bin
An image editing program
Optional:
Ironhax/Tubehax (if you want to run your theme)
CHMM (needed to load your theme on your 3DS)
For your convenience, all these tools (except your Windows computer, tubehax/ironhax, and the image editing program) will be put in a ZIP archive that you can download here!
STEP 1:
In Step 1, we will prepare our environment. First, extract the .zip into a folder, until it looks like this:
The first thing you should do is install Audacity if you haven't already. If you already have it delete the setup if you want.
That's all really! Alright second step:
STEP 2:
Ok, step 2! Here we go into the fun part!
NOTE: MAKE SURE YOU SAVE ALL THE PHOTOS YOU EDIT AS .PNG OR ELSE YOU CAN'T IMPORT THEM IN.
First we will make the top screen. Open up your image editing program and make a new image.
Instructions for the top screen will be split into 2 parts:
IF YOU WANT YOUR TOP SCREEN TO BE STATIC:
If your top screen is static, the resolution of the image will be 412 x 240. After your finished up making your top screen, make another image and make the resolution 512 x 256. Copy and paste your 412 x 240 image to your 512 x 256 and put it on the top left. When your done, it will look like this:
That's how you want it to look. After you are done, save it as a .png and put it in a folder.
IF YOU WANT THE TOP SCREEN TO SCROLL:
If you want your top screen to scroll, make an image with a dimension of 1008 x 240. Once you are finished with that, make another image with a resolution of 1024 x 256 and copy and paste your 1008 x 240 image on to the 1024 x 256 and place it on the top left. It should look like this afterwards:
Yeah yeah I know it looks bad, just giving an example. I'm sure yours would look way better.
Save that as a .png in a folder.
STEP 4:
We will now learn how to make the bottom screen! The bottom screen will be separated into 3 parts:
IF YOU WANT YOUR BOTTOM SCREEN TO BE STATIC:
Make a image with a resolution of 320 x 240. After your done with that image, make a new image with a resolution of 512 x 256 and paste your 320 x 240 image over to that one and paste it. Move your image over to the top left if it isn't there already. After all that it should look like this:
Save that as a .png in a folder.
IF YOU WANT THE BOTTOM SCREEN TO SCROLL:
If you want your bottom screen to scroll, make an image with a dimension of 1008 x 240. Once you are finished with that, make another image with a resolution of 1024 x 256 and copy and paste your 1008 x 240 image on to the 1024 x 256 and place it on the top left. It should look like this afterwards:
Once again, I know it looks bad, just giving you an example.
IF YOU WANT YOUR BOTTOM SCREEN TO BE ANIMATED:
Simply make 3 images with a resolution of 320 x 240. Then make a bigger image with a resolution of 1024 x 256, and paste the 3 other images you made right next to each other, with the one you want viewed first at the top left. After it's done, it should look like this:
NOTE: YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE 3 OF THE SAME PICTURE!!! I was just using an example here.
Save this in as a .png and put it in a folder.
STEP 5:
In step 5, we will learn how to make our own folders.
Open up YATA+ and go to File -> Open. Open the body_LZ.bin file I gave you in the zip. (I know it's the Sonic Boom theme, sorry
)
In the "Images" section, go to Folder Closed, then go to Edit -> Save Image. Do the same for Folder Open.
Open your favorite image editing software and open up the folder images. You should see these images:
If you just want to edit a logo and color (FOR BOTH KINDS OF FOLDERS), here's an easy way to do so. Add 2 "Layers" to your image. Adding a layer is usually done by selecting the "Layer" sub-menu in the top left area of the window, then hitting "Add New Layer" (might be a bit different for GIMP and Photoshop users). Then you want to open the "Layer" mini window (done by hitting "Window" in the top left area of the window, then pressing Layers. Again, a bit different for GIMP and Photoshop), and select the 3rd layer (should be at the very top) and click it. Find a suitable logo online on google images or something. Make sure it's transparent. Download your image and open it. Select it with "Rectange Select" then copy it. Go over to your folder image, with the top layer selected and paste it in there. Resize it, and move it so it's on top of the logo. This will insure that you are doing it right. To change color, go back to Layers and select the middle one. Go to the Paint Bucket, go to Colors and find a color you want, then fill the background with it. Repeat with the other photo Done! Save both folder images as a .png . It should look something like this:
Alright, alright, you have all these themes in a folder, what do you do with them now? Go back to YATA+, then in 'Images' click a image. First we will start with Top. Click Top, then go to Edit -> Import image. Make sure all the images you saved are .png (as mentioned earlier) or else it won't show! Navigate to the folder you put your images in and select your top screen. Do the same for the rest of the images, EXCEPT FOR "Top Screen 'SIMPLE' Background"! That's important!
STEP 6:
OK, we're halfway through! So now you might want to test your theme, just to see how it looks. To do so just press "Simulate" ! YATA+ will generate a preview for you, but you can't scroll or see how your folder looks (yet!), but it lets you have a brief look at it.
IMPORTANT INFO: If you don't want your theme to look glitchy when you (or others) load it,
after you save it, in YATA+, go to "Theme Settings" then at the top of that window you should see "Frame Data".
As circled in red, that's where Frame Data is. Select what kind of screen it is. For example, if your top screen scrolls, you may want to choose either "Slow Scroll" or "Normal Scroll", if it's static just choose "None". For the bottom screen, if it's static choose "None", if it's animated you can go to either "Flipbook (cyclic)" or "Flipbook (tile)" (unaware of the differences sorry) and if it scrolls you can choose either "Slow Scroll" or "Normal Scroll".
STEP 7:
Alright, in this step we will put different colors into the palette. What is the palette? Let me explain.
See this picture? It's the Sonic Boom theme. See the red buttons on the bottom? See the white/light blue arrows on the side of the bottom screens? See the L + R and Y buttons and the home icons and icon resize icons? We are gonna be editing all that, so it matches your theme!
How to do this? Go to "Theme Settings". You should see a bunch of palettes on the side:
Click the color to change them. Also, while you are in this menu, hit the "Enable use of SFX" checkmark because I will not show how to make SFX in this tutorial (yet).
After you are done with editing the colors, hit "Save". Go to "Simulate" and check ig changes you want are right. If they aren't, simply go back and fix them.
After you are done with that, go to File -> Save As. Name the file body_LZ. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, IF YOU DO NOT NAME IT body_LZ YOUR THEME WILL NOT LOAD. Save it in a folder.
STEP 8:
Alright now on to music! Our goal here is to finish here with a .bcstm file that's 3.3 MB or less! Simply get a piece of music from the internet and save it to your computer. It can be any format, as long as Audacity supports importing it. Import your music into Audacity. The very first thing you should do is go to the bottom left corner of the Audacity window, where it says "Project Rate (Hz):" with a drop-down menu. Click the drop-down menu, and select 32000. This is important, because it lowers the file size of our video. Also, if you want, you can cut part of the music out (by selecting the part then hitting Delete) to get rid of some size. If it's still too big make it less than 32000 until it's under or the same as 3.3 MB. After you are done, go to File -> Export Audio. Name it whatever you want, then under "File Name:" you should see "Save as type:" with a drop-down menu next to it. Click the drop-down menu and you should see "WAV (Microsoft) signed 16 bit PCM". Click that. Save it in a folder.
Open up BRSTM Converter C#.exe. Go to "Tools" then press "Simple WAV>BRSTM". Select your WAV. You should then see this menu:
IF YOU WANT YOUR MUSIC TO LOOP, BOTH OF THE LOOP CHECKBOXES MUST BE CHECKED!
You can also select when you want your music to loop etc. but I am assuming you want your whole song to loop. It's easy to select when you want your music to loop anyways, just hold the down or up arrows next to the numbers by "End:" and play the music and see if that's where you want to loop it.
Hit "Okay" then in main menu, hit OK. It should make a .brstm file for you, in the "output" folder in the same folder of the BRSTM Converter. Leave the file there. Now, go to the BRSTM2BCSTM folder. Open the program. Navigate to the .brstm file you made in the output folder. Open it. It will have converted it to a .bcstm file. Rename the file to BGM.bcstm. Make sure it's under 3.3 MB! You can check how big it is by right clicking the file then going to "Properties". If it's not under 3.3 MB, go back to audacity and use my tips from the first paragraph of this step to make the file size lower. Put it in the same folder as body_LZ.bin.
STEP 9:
In step 9 we will learn how to load your theme! Exciting, isn't it? NOTE: To actually use your themes you must have Ironhax/tubehax, more information can be found here: http://smealum.github.io/3ds/
You will also need the CHMM app I put in the .zip file. Open up your SD card and put the CHMM folder in the 3ds folder, like so:
Inside the CHMM folder there should be 2 things, CHMM.3dsx, and a Themes folder. Move the Themes folder from the CHMM folder to the root of the SD card (basically means the front of the SD card) so it looks like this:
Now, in the Themes folder, make a new folder for your theme. I named mine SuperSmashBros64. You have to make a new folder for every theme you want to put in a new theme.
In the folders, you put your files in.
and that's it! Put your SD card in your 3DS/New 3DS/2DS. MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE NO THEME ON, THIS IS REQUIRED TO LOAD YOUR THEME! Boot up homebrew menu, navigate to CHMM, open it, use the control pad to navigate to your theme, press A to install it, press Start and Select at the same time to go back to the homebrew menu, then press Start then press A to reboot. You should then be in your custom theme! Congrats! If you're stuck there is a little tutorial video on how to run your theme (that I made):
Hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial! Please leave any feedback, feedback would be appreciated. If I missed something or something is unclear please tell me.
Requirements:
A Windows computer (sorry Mac, Chromebook, Mobile, and Linux users!)
YATA+ 1.3.1 (that's the version we will be working with)
Audacity
BRSTM Converter
BRSTM2BCSTM
A sample body_LZ.bin
An image editing program
Optional:
Ironhax/Tubehax (if you want to run your theme)
CHMM (needed to load your theme on your 3DS)
For your convenience, all these tools (except your Windows computer, tubehax/ironhax, and the image editing program) will be put in a ZIP archive that you can download here!
STEP 1:
In Step 1, we will prepare our environment. First, extract the .zip into a folder, until it looks like this:
The first thing you should do is install Audacity if you haven't already. If you already have it delete the setup if you want.
That's all really! Alright second step:
STEP 2:
Ok, step 2! Here we go into the fun part!
NOTE: MAKE SURE YOU SAVE ALL THE PHOTOS YOU EDIT AS .PNG OR ELSE YOU CAN'T IMPORT THEM IN.
First we will make the top screen. Open up your image editing program and make a new image.
Instructions for the top screen will be split into 2 parts:
IF YOU WANT YOUR TOP SCREEN TO BE STATIC:
If your top screen is static, the resolution of the image will be 412 x 240. After your finished up making your top screen, make another image and make the resolution 512 x 256. Copy and paste your 412 x 240 image to your 512 x 256 and put it on the top left. When your done, it will look like this:
That's how you want it to look. After you are done, save it as a .png and put it in a folder.
IF YOU WANT THE TOP SCREEN TO SCROLL:
If you want your top screen to scroll, make an image with a dimension of 1008 x 240. Once you are finished with that, make another image with a resolution of 1024 x 256 and copy and paste your 1008 x 240 image on to the 1024 x 256 and place it on the top left. It should look like this afterwards:
Yeah yeah I know it looks bad, just giving an example. I'm sure yours would look way better.
Save that as a .png in a folder.
STEP 4:
We will now learn how to make the bottom screen! The bottom screen will be separated into 3 parts:
IF YOU WANT YOUR BOTTOM SCREEN TO BE STATIC:
Make a image with a resolution of 320 x 240. After your done with that image, make a new image with a resolution of 512 x 256 and paste your 320 x 240 image over to that one and paste it. Move your image over to the top left if it isn't there already. After all that it should look like this:
Save that as a .png in a folder.
IF YOU WANT THE BOTTOM SCREEN TO SCROLL:
If you want your bottom screen to scroll, make an image with a dimension of 1008 x 240. Once you are finished with that, make another image with a resolution of 1024 x 256 and copy and paste your 1008 x 240 image on to the 1024 x 256 and place it on the top left. It should look like this afterwards:
Once again, I know it looks bad, just giving you an example.
IF YOU WANT YOUR BOTTOM SCREEN TO BE ANIMATED:
Simply make 3 images with a resolution of 320 x 240. Then make a bigger image with a resolution of 1024 x 256, and paste the 3 other images you made right next to each other, with the one you want viewed first at the top left. After it's done, it should look like this:
NOTE: YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE 3 OF THE SAME PICTURE!!! I was just using an example here.
Save this in as a .png and put it in a folder.
STEP 5:
In step 5, we will learn how to make our own folders.
Open up YATA+ and go to File -> Open. Open the body_LZ.bin file I gave you in the zip. (I know it's the Sonic Boom theme, sorry
)In the "Images" section, go to Folder Closed, then go to Edit -> Save Image. Do the same for Folder Open.
Open your favorite image editing software and open up the folder images. You should see these images:
If you just want to edit a logo and color (FOR BOTH KINDS OF FOLDERS), here's an easy way to do so. Add 2 "Layers" to your image. Adding a layer is usually done by selecting the "Layer" sub-menu in the top left area of the window, then hitting "Add New Layer" (might be a bit different for GIMP and Photoshop users). Then you want to open the "Layer" mini window (done by hitting "Window" in the top left area of the window, then pressing Layers. Again, a bit different for GIMP and Photoshop), and select the 3rd layer (should be at the very top) and click it. Find a suitable logo online on google images or something. Make sure it's transparent. Download your image and open it. Select it with "Rectange Select" then copy it. Go over to your folder image, with the top layer selected and paste it in there. Resize it, and move it so it's on top of the logo. This will insure that you are doing it right. To change color, go back to Layers and select the middle one. Go to the Paint Bucket, go to Colors and find a color you want, then fill the background with it. Repeat with the other photo Done! Save both folder images as a .png . It should look something like this:
Alright, alright, you have all these themes in a folder, what do you do with them now? Go back to YATA+, then in 'Images' click a image. First we will start with Top. Click Top, then go to Edit -> Import image. Make sure all the images you saved are .png (as mentioned earlier) or else it won't show! Navigate to the folder you put your images in and select your top screen. Do the same for the rest of the images, EXCEPT FOR "Top Screen 'SIMPLE' Background"! That's important!
STEP 6:
OK, we're halfway through! So now you might want to test your theme, just to see how it looks. To do so just press "Simulate" ! YATA+ will generate a preview for you, but you can't scroll or see how your folder looks (yet!), but it lets you have a brief look at it.
IMPORTANT INFO: If you don't want your theme to look glitchy when you (or others) load it,
after you save it, in YATA+, go to "Theme Settings" then at the top of that window you should see "Frame Data".
As circled in red, that's where Frame Data is. Select what kind of screen it is. For example, if your top screen scrolls, you may want to choose either "Slow Scroll" or "Normal Scroll", if it's static just choose "None". For the bottom screen, if it's static choose "None", if it's animated you can go to either "Flipbook (cyclic)" or "Flipbook (tile)" (unaware of the differences sorry) and if it scrolls you can choose either "Slow Scroll" or "Normal Scroll".
STEP 7:
Alright, in this step we will put different colors into the palette. What is the palette? Let me explain.
See this picture? It's the Sonic Boom theme. See the red buttons on the bottom? See the white/light blue arrows on the side of the bottom screens? See the L + R and Y buttons and the home icons and icon resize icons? We are gonna be editing all that, so it matches your theme!
How to do this? Go to "Theme Settings". You should see a bunch of palettes on the side:
Click the color to change them. Also, while you are in this menu, hit the "Enable use of SFX" checkmark because I will not show how to make SFX in this tutorial (yet).
After you are done with editing the colors, hit "Save". Go to "Simulate" and check ig changes you want are right. If they aren't, simply go back and fix them.
After you are done with that, go to File -> Save As. Name the file body_LZ. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, IF YOU DO NOT NAME IT body_LZ YOUR THEME WILL NOT LOAD. Save it in a folder.
STEP 8:
Alright now on to music! Our goal here is to finish here with a .bcstm file that's 3.3 MB or less! Simply get a piece of music from the internet and save it to your computer. It can be any format, as long as Audacity supports importing it. Import your music into Audacity. The very first thing you should do is go to the bottom left corner of the Audacity window, where it says "Project Rate (Hz):" with a drop-down menu. Click the drop-down menu, and select 32000. This is important, because it lowers the file size of our video. Also, if you want, you can cut part of the music out (by selecting the part then hitting Delete) to get rid of some size. If it's still too big make it less than 32000 until it's under or the same as 3.3 MB. After you are done, go to File -> Export Audio. Name it whatever you want, then under "File Name:" you should see "Save as type:" with a drop-down menu next to it. Click the drop-down menu and you should see "WAV (Microsoft) signed 16 bit PCM". Click that. Save it in a folder.
Open up BRSTM Converter C#.exe. Go to "Tools" then press "Simple WAV>BRSTM". Select your WAV. You should then see this menu:
IF YOU WANT YOUR MUSIC TO LOOP, BOTH OF THE LOOP CHECKBOXES MUST BE CHECKED!
You can also select when you want your music to loop etc. but I am assuming you want your whole song to loop. It's easy to select when you want your music to loop anyways, just hold the down or up arrows next to the numbers by "End:" and play the music and see if that's where you want to loop it.
Hit "Okay" then in main menu, hit OK. It should make a .brstm file for you, in the "output" folder in the same folder of the BRSTM Converter. Leave the file there. Now, go to the BRSTM2BCSTM folder. Open the program. Navigate to the .brstm file you made in the output folder. Open it. It will have converted it to a .bcstm file. Rename the file to BGM.bcstm. Make sure it's under 3.3 MB! You can check how big it is by right clicking the file then going to "Properties". If it's not under 3.3 MB, go back to audacity and use my tips from the first paragraph of this step to make the file size lower. Put it in the same folder as body_LZ.bin.
STEP 9:
In step 9 we will learn how to load your theme! Exciting, isn't it? NOTE: To actually use your themes you must have Ironhax/tubehax, more information can be found here: http://smealum.github.io/3ds/
You will also need the CHMM app I put in the .zip file. Open up your SD card and put the CHMM folder in the 3ds folder, like so:
Inside the CHMM folder there should be 2 things, CHMM.3dsx, and a Themes folder. Move the Themes folder from the CHMM folder to the root of the SD card (basically means the front of the SD card) so it looks like this:
Now, in the Themes folder, make a new folder for your theme. I named mine SuperSmashBros64. You have to make a new folder for every theme you want to put in a new theme.
In the folders, you put your files in.
and that's it! Put your SD card in your 3DS/New 3DS/2DS. MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE NO THEME ON, THIS IS REQUIRED TO LOAD YOUR THEME! Boot up homebrew menu, navigate to CHMM, open it, use the control pad to navigate to your theme, press A to install it, press Start and Select at the same time to go back to the homebrew menu, then press Start then press A to reboot. You should then be in your custom theme! Congrats! If you're stuck there is a little tutorial video on how to run your theme (that I made):
Hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial! Please leave any feedback, feedback would be appreciated. If I missed something or something is unclear please tell me.
