Tutorial Creating a 3ds custom theme from scratch with YATA+ v1.1

Would you like a some videos on how to make themes ?


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exelix11

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Download YATA+ from here

Before starting, let's answer a question:
Can a custom theme brick my 3ds ?

NO !, installing a custom theme means that you are coping the theme files in the extdata of the console, on the sd card, if you install a theme and then your 3ds doesn't turn on anymore, just put your sd card in your pc and delete the contents of the folder D(or your sd letter):\Nintendo 3DS\<ID0>\<ID1>\extdata\00000000\000002cc for JAP 3ds, 000002cd for usa 3ds, 000002ce for eur 3ds
<ID0> and <ID1> are two folders with a long name made of random numbers and letters.
(if you have unlinked emunand, in "Nintendo 3DS" you should see more than one ID, to be sure delete the theme data from both IDs)

Hi,In this guide we are going to make 3 different themes from scratch, one with a static image on the top and the bottom, one like the simple color themes and one like the Mood Matrix one.

First, these are the sizes of the images nedded for making a theme:


-Image sizes:

TOP SCREEN TEXTURES:

If the top screen texture is static, the image needs to be 512x256px and the drawable area is 412x240px (From top left).
If the top screen texture scrolls, the image needs to be 1024x256px and the drawable area is 1008x240px.
If you are using the solid color o solid color with texture settings both the top screen image (Foreground, moving) and the the top screen "simple" background , must be 64x64 GREYSCALE, And must be rotated 90° Clockwise


BOTTOM SCREEN TEXTURES:

If the bottom screen texture is static, the image needs to be 512x256px and the drawable area is 320x240px.
If the bottom screen texture scrolls, the image needs to be 1024x256px and the drawable area is 1008x240px.
If the bottom screen texture is animated, the image needs to be 1024x256px and is split into three separate 320x240px frames.


MENU ITEMS:

CLOSED FOLDER: the image needs to be 128x64px and the drawable area is 74x64px.
OPENED FOLDER: the image needs to be 128x64px and the drawable area is 82x64px.
BIG APPLICATION ICON: the image needs to be 64x128px and the drawable area is 36x72px.
LITTLE APPLICATION ICON: the image needs to be 32x64px and the drawable area is 20x50px.

Make sure to have your images ready before making the theme, so open YATA+ and click on File -> new and select where to save the theme

-Top screen:



This is the most easy: Go to the theme settings and set the Top screen draw type to “texture” and the frame type to “none” for a static image and “Normal scroll” for a panoramic image, alternately you can choice “Slow scroll” for a slower scroll of the panoramic image:

Sy8X4Ur.png


then press Save

So now, in the main window of YATA+ select in the list the first image and press “Edit -> Import image”, select your image and… taaa-daaa

P65wAwZ.png


Now, if you want to, you can save the theme from “File -> Save”



For creating this kind of themes you must go in the theme settings and then select “Solid Color” for draw type of the top screen (the frame type doesn’t matter because it will be ignored), then press save, now Re-open the theme settings, and you’ll see that the last group on the bottom of the window is now enabled:

1md5Fws.png


Here you can set the background color, the background gradient and the opacity of the squares, then press save.

When using this setting the top screen image won’t be used, and when saving it will be automatically removed from the theme.

Now save the theme.



So, this theme is similar to the normal color theme, but here you can also set 2 images instead of the squares,"Top screen" will be animated, while the other will be static, the static image is the “Top screen “Simple” background”, you must import an image for both the voices in the list, you can also disable the background by selecting "Remove background".
Remember that this time it must be 64x64 px grayscale (only the Red channel will be loaded).

Qazouph.png

-Bottom screen:



Same process as the top screen, first go in the theme settings and be sure that you are using “Texture” as draw type and select the type you want for frame type:

EAg0jlU.png


The difference between Flipbook Cyclic and Flipbook tile is that in Tile the order of frames will be 1-2-3-1-2-3 etc.. while in Cyclic it will be 1-2-3-2-1-2-3-2 etc…. (so the second frame will appear after the third too).

Then click on save, so in the main windows click on the second image in the list (Bottom) and import your image from Edit -> import image

2x911fp.png


Then you can to save the theme.



To use a solid color as bottom screen go in theme settings and select in the bottom screen draw type “Solid color” and check the “Enable bottom screen solid color” and the “Enable bottom outer screen color” fields, then click on save. Now Re-open the theme setting and the two color selectors for the bottom screen will be enabled:

YGwwo4b.png


Now, set the colors you want and press save

When using this setting the bottom screen image won’t be used.

Now save the theme.

-Icons:



To add icons in your teme, go in the theme settings and be sure that the checkbox for the Icons you want to add are checked:

mkOIWMR.png


If not, check theme and click save.

In this theme I won’t use custom borders, so I’ll uncheck that checkbox.

So, like you done for the top and bottom screen select the images you want to add in the list and click Edit -> import image


YUNUdNR.png


-Sounds:

WARNING: AFTER CREATING OR IMPORTING A CWAV CHUNK YOU MUST SAVE THE THEME AND RE-OPEN IT IN YATA Not anymore, YATA+ v1.2 automatically reloads the theme



IF YOU CHECKED "Enable use of sfx" BUT YOU DIDN'T ADD ANY CWAV, YOUR BGM WON'T BE PLAYED.
The bgm.bcstm file MUST BE SMALLER THAN 3.3 mb or else you wouldn't be able to install it
In YATA+ v1.3 i added a WAV -> BCSTM converter to add background music in the themes, to do this you'll need audacity:


First, open audacity and import your audio file, here on the bottom bar you should see on the bottom the "Selection bar", here click with the left mouse button on one of the time text boxes and select the unit "samples" ("campioni" in Italian), it should be the seventh from the top
OSKedvq.png

Now, if you only want to reduce the file size, change the project frequency to 32000 or lower (this will lower the sound quality), then export the song in wav format.
If you want to loop the song, search for the loop points (start and end) and remember their position in samples, so if we want to loop the selected part of this song:
KMnH5ka.png

We need to remember the where the loop (the part we've selection) starts and ends, so 298623 samples and 2814144 samples
Then if we made some changes to the song we can export the song to a wav file.
(The wav file is uncompressed so it will be bigger than 5 mb, don't worry, in the next step we'll reduce the size)


Now open YATA+,Drag the file in the yata windows and click on "Auto WAV to BCSTM" or click on Edit ->BGM CONVERTERS -> "WAV -> BCSTM" and select the wav file.
Then select where to save the file, and in the window that appears if you want to loop write the samples positions that you found before (You should keep the loop flag checked even if you don't want to loop the song, or else when the song ends the 3DS won't play anything)
KvgP9R5.png

Then click on "Okay".

At this point you should have your bgm converted in a bcstm file,if it's too big for the 3ds just lower the frequency in Audacity.

Remember to enable the flag "Enable BGM" in the theme settings !




To create cwavs you neet a tool from the nintendo SDK, place it in the same folder as YATA+ and click
Edit -> "WAV -> CWAV"

There are still some unknown things about SFX in the themes so some of them may not work, the only way to make every CWAV in the theme work is to convert everyone of them to 8000HZ which will make the sound awful so this is a trial and error process, automaticly YATA+ from v1.4 converts them to 11025 , but you can edit this value by opening settings.ini in notepad and changing opt_samples=11025 to opt_samples=<Your Hz value> and restart YATA+

For this you’ll need yours CWAV files already converted.

if you want to convert a WAV in CWAV you need a tool from nintendo SDK, you must find it by yourself

First, make sure that in the theme settings “Enable use of SFX” is checked, or else the CWAV chunk won’t be saved

WB73YxC.png


then in the main window of YATA+ click on Edit -> Create CWAVs chunk and click in the list the sound you want to add and
click on select CWAV.

THIS WON’T ADD THE CWAV IN THE FILE !!!

Repeat this operation for every sound you want to add and WHEN YOU FINISHED click on import


NC7q0Ec.png



REMEMBER: importing will delete every cwav already inside the theme, so if you want to add one cwav to the existing ones, you must dump the others and then add them again !


Also, if you want to use only one sound for all the bottom screen frames just add that sound only for the first frame.


You can use CHMM to have always every theme you want on the sd,
if you want just install a theme use the install theme function in YATA+ v1.5.1

BEFORE INSTALLING A THEME MAKE SURE YOU SELECTED ONE OF THE DEFAULT COLOR THEMES OR ELSE THE INSTALL WILL FAIL
REMEMBER THAT IF YOUR THEME DOESN’T HAVE BACKGROUND MUSIC YOU MUST DISABLE THE “Enable BGM” FLAG IN THE THEME SETTINGS

And those are the 3 themes that I made by doing this guide (those are screenshot from a 3ds not from the emulator) :

BtALi9f.jpg

5QYrwq2.jpg

zRX59i6.jpg
 
Last edited by exelix11,

EpicInki

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Great guide, I'm attempting to make a Rainbow Dash Theme because why not, I just spent about 2 hours? I don't know making a unique style based on my background, I finally did it right (I think) and also the top bit so it can scroll, I hope I did it right:
Ww29jGd.png

EDIT:I need a little help though, it seems it doesn't want to simulate scrolling, so I guess it's not implemented (nor in latest version which I just downloaded after this).
Also what is the drawable area mean? like on top screen etc. On the new version the H is cut off some reason.
 
Last edited by EpicInki,

SomeGamer

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Great guide, I'm attempting to make a Rainbow Dash Theme because why not, I just spent about 2 hours? I don't know making a unique style based on my background, I finally did it right (I think) and also the top bit so it can scroll, I hope I did it right:
Ww29jGd.png

EDIT:I need a little help though, it seems it doesn't want to simulate scrolling, so I guess it's not implemented (nor in latest version which I just downloaded after this).
Also what is the drawable area mean? like on top screen etc. On the new version the H is cut off some reason.
The drawable area means that anything outside it will be invisible on the 3DS.
 

EpicInki

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The drawable area means that anything outside it will be invisible on the 3DS.
Oh right, I guess I'd best be fixing my work ;3
EDIT: Honestly I really am enjoying making a theme, and when I can do the OOT Exploit I will be using it :D Here is bottom screen:
NkyHiOx.jpg

Anyone got any recommendations for Rainbow Dash music? no? Idk
EDIT2: Does music have to be less than 3mb? Because I just sneaked past a 9mb into a BRSTC etc and it plays on YATA Plus as a BGM.bcstm, not sure whether it will work on the actual 3DS though...
 
Last edited by EpicInki,

xWaterLily

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Is it possible to simulate things like folders or panoramic screens?

EDIT : Thank you for the guide I have been looking from something like this for weeks, wonderful job. Perhaps a little little video series on actually creating a themes inside a photo editing program would be cool. Just to give a people an idea of a possible way of doing it

EDIT 2 : I am almost giving up hope with all this custom thing stuff. I'm trying to make a Persona Q theme and it's just getting to the point where it's frustrating. I'm using ninjhaxs 2.0 for this (frimware 9.9) and starting that up is crazy as I normally get a white screen/blue screen and have to reset 2-4 times until I get the menu.

I would like to have multiple themes so I starting trying to use CHMM but that's another frustrating experience as loading it creates an error "ATP:A lock handle" after restarting alot of times to get pass that I got this -> Error: [string "?"]91:error writing file which leaves me with no option then to restart and have a blank theme.

There has to be another way to see what the theme looks like on an actual 3DS without all of that
I have done my best to find out about these errors but not having much luck with that to be honest...

Am I doing something wrong?
Also when I see people's themes they tend to have amazing resolution or the quality is just very sharp why is that?
I can't seem to get that effect without recreating/drawing the designs myself

Any help would be very much appreciated!!
 
Last edited by xWaterLily,

exelix11

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Is it possible to simulate things like folders or panoramic screens?

EDIT : Thank you for the guide I have been looking from something like this for weeks, wonderful job. Perhaps a little little video series on actually creating a themes inside a photo editing program would be cool. Just to give a people an idea of a possible way of doing it

EDIT 2 : I am almost giving up hope with all this custom thing stuff. I'm trying to make a Persona Q theme and it's just getting to the point where it's frustrating. I'm using ninjhaxs 2.0 for this (frimware 9.9) and starting that up is crazy as I normally get a white screen/blue screen and have to reset 2-4 times until I get the menu.

I would like to have multiple themes so I starting trying to use CHMM but that's another frustrating experience as loading it creates an error "ATP:A lock handle" after restarting alot of times to get pass that I got this -> Error: [string "?"]91:error writing file which leaves me with no option then to restart and have a blank theme.

There has to be another way to see what the theme looks like on an actual 3DS without all of that
I have done my best to find out about these errors but not having much luck with that to be honest...

Am I doing something wrong?
Also when I see people's themes they tend to have amazing resolution or the quality is just very sharp why is that?
I can't seem to get that effect without recreating/drawing the designs myself

Any help would be very much appreciated!!

Maybe i can make some videos, but for me would require much time (both for making the video and for uploading, in italy the internet connections sucks), i could try to make them,if many users wants to.

When you install a theme with a bgm from ninjhax 2, before installing the theme you must open the theme setting and set the theme on one of the standard colors, i think this is a issue of ninjhax 2 or some kind of protection that nintendo added in 9.3+

As for the resolution i don't know, when scaling an image you lose resolution, may be there are some methods to resize without losing quality that i don't know, or they just draw or search for images of the right size
 

xWaterLily

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How does one find a sound file like this :

The WAV file should be at a minimum 22.050 kHz, 16 Bit in quality and have stereo sound [This is a standard to prevent garbled sound]
The max file size of the bcstm must be 3.371.008 bytes (or 3.3MB)

Also how do you check if it theme things?
 

Hybrixe

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Thanks for the tutorial and the great tool! This is the final result:

Preview.png


It features custom background music and custom SFX! You can find it on 3DSThemes
 
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Hyperstar96

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I don't know if this is the right place to report bugs, but I'll talk about one anyway since there's a manual fix and some people might run into it:

If you disable custom borders, save, and then try to re-enable them, saving will cause an exception at 39% and you won't be able to re-enable them. But if you highlight each border and import an image onto each one (then edit the images to be the correct sizes), then enabling custom borders + saving will work again. I just thought I'd mention that since I just ran into it and briefly thought I was screwed. The same might also be true for custom folders, but I haven't tried it.

On a slightly-related note, I'm currently working on a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2 theme. Thanks for the program!
 

exelix11

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I don't know if this is the right place to report bugs, but I'll talk about one anyway since there's a manual fix and some people might run into it:

If you disable custom borders, save, and then try to re-enable them, saving will cause an exception at 39% and you won't be able to re-enable them. But if you highlight each border and import an image onto each one (then edit the images to be the correct sizes), then enabling custom borders + saving will work again. I just thought I'd mention that since I just ran into it and briefly thought I was screwed. The same might also be true for custom folders, but I haven't tried it.

On a slightly-related note, I'm currently working on a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2 theme. Thanks for the program!

that's not a bug, you're trying to save a theme with custom borders enabled without any custom border inside, when disabled from the settings, the custom borders that the theme contains are deleted to save space, after you re-enable it you must import the new borders, because the older ones doesn't exists anymore
 

Varia

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OK seems like I've screwed up my emunand.
Tried importing my theme and now it gets stuck every time I go into gateway/classic mode.
Tried entering data managment on systemnand, but that didn't work (nands aren't linked).
What can I do now? I'd rather not format my emunand (luckily I have backups of all my saves), too much of a hassle.

Edit: is the the theme data in the extra data folder?
If so, what other data is stored there?
 
Last edited by Varia,

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