Prerequisites and main menu
Finalize your object
First of all, you need to finalize your object. Themes heavily depend on link and face numbers, so these need to be fixed before your start recording your themes. And of course, working on a safe copy is always a good idea.
If you feel the need to alter your object by adding prims, removing prims or otherwise modify them, you will have to "remap" your themes. As of version 2.2 this was made easier by using the Theme toolbox, more on that in the dedicated section.
Install the scripts
When you re ready, equip your object with the following scripts:
T-O-M Preparation
T-O-M Generator
T-O-M Utilities
T-O-M Core
At this point the T-O-M Core is not strictly necessary, but adding it will enable you to test your themes using the menus. Likewise the T-O-M Utilities is only useful if you plan to use the omega and hover-text properties, but it does no harm just being there. Please refer to the Scripts section to review the role of each script.
Do not, however, add a client script yet, because this could conflict with the preparation menus.
Access the preparation menu
Once the required scripts are installed in your object's inventory, you can access the preparation menu by clicking your object.
Here is a quick description of the buttons inside this menu. Please follow the links to get more information for non-obvious options.
Make theme! opens a submenu that triggers the generation of your theme, either as notecard contents or directly to LSD storage. This submenu is covered on the Generate the theme page.
How to? displays some quick help about the Theme-O-Matic.
About... opens an informative window about the Theme-O-Matic.
Object prop opens the object properties selection menu.
Prim prop and Prim2 prop open the two prim properties selection menus.
Face prop opens the face properties selection menu.
Filters opens the menu where you can adjust the prim filter and face filter.
Test theme opens a sub-menu where you can test (apply) an existing theme, either from notecard in the prim's inventory, or as a manually entered notecard UUID (from your own inventory) or from the object's LSD storage.
Close menu closes the menu (!)
Utilities opens a complementary "utilities" menu used to adjust hover text and omega settings.
The main Preparation menu
Menu timeout
Please note that all preparation menus have a timeout of 5 minutes after which they stop responding.
Whenever you can, please use the Close menu button (instead of "ignore") to free some resources on the sim and try to reduce lag (this is a healthy thing to do for all scripted menus).