Samsung has released the Samsung Gear Watch Designer (GWD), which is used to create custom watchfaces for the Gear S2, S3 and Fit 2. The is a handy bit of software that makes it possible to make some sophisticated and exciting watchfaces for your Tizen smartwatch.
The app is still in beta release but has received steady updates with improvements to supported functions and performance. This is a tool that is designed with both amateurs and experts in mind. There is a selection of bundled sample templates that the beginner can begin “tinkering” with. You can arrange the relevant items by dragging and dropping them in place.
Anyone comfortable with Adobe Photoshop or After Effects should feel comfortable with the User Interface as it has the same ‘feel’ to it with layers. You can have the custom hands, analogue clocks, digital clocks, heart rate, steps, floors, battery, weather, and much more. You can now design and distribute your own watchfaces without the need to learn any special coding language.
Marcus Pheonix wrote a little tutorial on how you can create an animated background for your wearable tech (video further down) and we are publishing it here for your reference. It’s quite simple and a good way of making your watch stand out from the crowd.
Instructions
- Find a .GIF file that you want to set as your background.
- Now you need to Split the .GIF file. GWD uses a string of JPG or PNG files to create a small video that runs like a gif and will animate at 15 fps. You can use EZGIF, but you can use any other tool that you are comfortable with.
- The output files are still .GIFs. They need to be converted to JPG or PNG files. In this case Bulk Image Converter was used (It’s free).
- After the files are converted click the Animation selection from the left panel (Must be on an ACTIVE face) and select ALL converted files.
Example background
https://www.facebook.com/100007994013411/videos/1839938382949278/
Video
Check out the following video to learn more about Gear Watch Designer:-
GWD runs on Microsoft Windows 7 or later (32-bit or 64-bit), Apple Mac OSX 10.8 64-bit or later. You need 2GB RAM, 1 GB Free disk space, JRE (Java Runtime Environment) 1.8 or later.
