[LG Revolution] spc_hicks09:
Hey guys! Someone recently posted that they wanted to start to making their own themes and I posted a very long reply and figured, might as well post a "somewhat easy to understand" tutorial here for everyone.

So you want to make your own themes?

First off, it is important to know that if you plan on porting any themes over and releasing it to the masses, that you get permission from the theme owner first!!

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE IF YOUR PHONE EXPLODES OR MELTS! lol

NOTE: IF YOU'RE A NOOB (you know if you are) DO NOT MESS WITH ANY IMAGE THAT ENDS IN ".9" UNTIL YOU READ UP ON THEM.......A LOT! IF YOU'RE JUST REPLACING AN IMAGE, THEN READ ON.

What you will need:

Apkmanager: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=695701

7zip: http://www.7-zip.org/download.html

An empty flashable zip: http://www.multiupload.com/DBEMBUOCND

Lot's of time on your hands!

GETTING STARTED:

Apkmanager is going to be your "all-in-one" tool for making a theme in Windows.

(I'll go into all the options of apkmanager a little later)

The process you need to follow is actually kind of simple. It's just very time consuming.

First you will need to make the images that you want (unless you are porting a theme).

Now what you need to do is one way or another, get the framework-res.apk and the SystemUI.apk from your phone, you also need the RES_cappuccino.apk (found in /system/framework. (If you don't want to mess with using adb, use Root Explorer, just copy the apk then paste on your sdcard, then copy and paste from your sdcard onto your pc.)

Extract apkmanager to somewhere easy like the desktop and you should end up with a folder named "apkmanager" or whatever.

Inside that folder, you should have the following folders:

Other

place-apk-here-for-modding

place-apk-here-for-signing

place-apk-here-to-batch-optimize

place-ogg-here

projects

Then the following files:

log

Script

DO NOT MODIFY THE NAMES OF ANY OF THESE FILES OR FOLDERS OR NOTHING WILL WORK!

Take the 3 files that you got from your phone and place them in the "place apk here for modding" folder.

Double click to open the "Script" file

Press "22" and hit enter to set your current job

Select either 1,2 or 3 for whichever apk you want to start on first and hit enter

Select "1" to extract. You do not need to decompile unless you are editing XML files.

Once the extraction is done, go inside the "projects" folder and now you have a folder inside there with whatever the name is of the apk you just extracted.

Inside that folder are the images and XML files you need to replace (you might not have to edit any of the XML files, that's a little more advanced unless you already know how to.)

Most of the images you will need to edit will be in the following folders of each apk:

res>drawable

res>drawable-hdpi

Once you get everything done and you're ready to test it out, you need to go back to that "Script" file in apkmanager and open it back up. Now you're going to do pretty much the same stuff you did when you were extracting the apk, in order to rezip the apk.

In the Script for apkmanager, you're going to press "22" and hit enter, then select which file you want to compile first by either pressing 1, 2 or 3.

Select the file and hit enter, then press "3" and press enter

Now press "1" so that apkmanager knows it's a system file and will retain the files signature.

As long as you didn't mess anything up during the process of changing stuff, you shouldn't receive any errors. If you do, you need to figure out what it was you messed up on and fix it.

Go through and rezip all the apks that you edited. Once that is done, you will go to your "place apk here for modding" folder again and you will notice that you have 3 new files in there:

unsignedframework-res.apk

unsignedSystemUI.apk

unsignedRES_cappuccino.apk

Remember that empty flashable zip you downloaded earlier? Now you need it.

Right click on the flashable zip and mouse over "7zip" and click on "Open Archive"

Take the unsignedSystemUI.apk and place it in the "app" folder. Now rename that to its original name:

SystemUI.apk

Now take that unsignedframework-res.apk and unsignedRES_cappuccino.apk and place them in the "framework" folder of the flashable zip. Rename those to:

framework-res.apk

RES_cappuccino.apk

Now you can close out of the flashable zip file and place it on your sdcard.

Reboot into recovery, wipe cache partition, wipe dalvik.

Now go back and flash the zip file you just put on your sdcard.

Since you wiped your cache and your dalvik, the reboot will take a little while. You should now be good to go!

NOTE: Since I did not create apkmanager, I will not be able to answer many questions about it but feel free to ask. If I don't have an answer for you, Just go back to the post above where you downloaded it, and post your question there.

Please enjoy and happy themeing!!!!!!

And to add. There is also another great way for beginners to start making themes. It's very simple, all you do is select the changes you want made, then upload the framework-res.apk and the SystemUI.apk and it does all the work for you!!!! Even puts everything into a flashable zip! All you have to do is download the zip file then flash it! Here's the link to the UOT Theme Kitchen:

http://uot.dakra.lt/kitchen/

Also, thanks to drt054 for pointing out that Apkmanager is being improved on and the name is changing to APK Multi-Tool. If you use this tool instead, I will not be able to help with any troubleshooting because I just recently started using it. You can download it here:

APK Multi-Tool: http://apkmultitool.com/