Sims 2 Tutorial - Tumblr Posts

MrsM’Quve’s Sims 2 Hair Tutorial

I present to you my very first tutorial! This will walk you through the ENTIRE process I use for retexturing and recoloring hair. This is for Photoshop, and is meant for semi-realistic hair textures as it involves highlight placement. It’s pretty long, but I wanted to outline it carefully and explain each step in a way that’s easy to understand, with pictures.

I hope this will be useful, and if you have any questions or need help, don’t hesitate to ask me!

A little tutorial on how to quickly preview your texture for a TS2 object (or any other mesh) using Blender 2.79b - very usefull when you're working on recolours. Contains a few other tips.

Texture preview in Blender 2.79b is much more convenient than Milkshape, as you can load many textures and quickly switch from one to another. It's also much easier to figure out a UV layout.

Download (SFS)

* PDF file format

Tutorial under the cut:

(I assume you already know how to export the .obj from GMDC resource in SimPE, that's not covered here)

Notes:

This tutorial might work for other Blender versions. It will not work for Blender 3. IMO, if all you want to do in Blender is recolour previews, UV-editing and simple meshing, 2.79b is more than enough. There's even a GMDC plugin for it, that seems to work well for the chosen ones some people 🙃 Blender can read .psd files and other texture formats. GIMP's .xcf file format is not supported though, and I don't think there are any plugins for it (?) so if you're working on a file with layers, it has to be exported as PSD.

1.

If you've just installed Blender, take some time to read the button names and such.

If you create too many new windows and want to merge some, you grab that tiny triangle and drag it back to the right (or up), and drop when an arrow shows up.

2.

Please note that UV islands are not inside the texture area. It can make it harder for you to figure out the UV layout. In the last pic I'll show you how to move it without messing up the position.

3.

When using hotkeys / shortcuts, remember that mouse arrow has to be inside the viewport that you're working in.

4.

5.

And here's how to move UVs to the texture area without shifting it by accident. Of course you don't have to do it if you're able to figure out what's what ! ;)

You can also export the UVmap as texture file. While in Edit mode, click UVs in the UV Editor menu bar, and pick „Export UV layout”.

* I guess I should correct the UV selection part: you press [B] key and then you select UVs with mouse. If you keep pressing [B], then you have to click again to change to normal mouse cursor.

* You need to hover the mouse over the menu bar, to be able to scroll it.

One of those things I really wish somebody showed me how to do a few years back 😏

Maybe you've noticed that sometimes see-through textures in the game have lighter edges, even if the PNG looked fine?

That's because PNG format doesn't support true transparency channel. There is always a background, even if you can't see it. If the background is white, the edges can pick up the colour.

Here's how to fix it:

A tutorial:

How to remove transparency artifacts from .PNG files

✦ Download (SFS)

Archive includes JPGs and crappy PDF

Full tutorial under the cut:

I'll demonstrate how I do this in Photoshop (20.0.0) At the end there's a screenshot showing how to do it in GIMP. This tutorial contains a few notes that apply to both methods.

1.

Not sure why I've called it a tab when it's a drop-down menu..

2.

And by "colour it" I meant: cover it with darker colours, sort-of matching the edges. If you don't have much time, you could just bucket-paint it all brown or something - not perfect, but better than white background.

3.

Note: When you go to Select/Load selection and the pop-up window appears, you can just check the "invert" option there and skip the step 4!

4.

5. How to do it in GIMP:

Short tutorial on how to fix a TS2 Buymode/Buildmode CC mesh with two subsets and two identical textures

I still see that duplicated texture thing happen in new CC and it's really not great. Especially that it's so easy to make it right... 😖

Please note this method can also be used to fix recolour files!

Mini-tutorial on how to import/export TXMT settings

*this will work for Buymode stuff, Buildmode objects and CAS accessories (glasses, jewellry etc)

TXMT is a texture material definition that tells the game how to render object surface - is it opaque or transparent, should it glow in the dark, should it use texture or not.

I've already posted two mini-tutorials on how to edit TXMT (this and this). But sometimes you open a TXMT and.. it looks weird. There are only a few properties listed, not much to edit. OR it got messed up at some point. For example, reflections are too intense - there are a few properties that affect it, so it's enough if you get one wrong.

Here's what you can do: instead of trying to fix it or adding all the missing properties, one by one, just import working settings from another recolour / mesh

*one tiny thing: after you import new settings (step 7), you need to click on stdMatBaseTextureName again to be able to edit the Value (if recolour uses a texture, of course).

If you're not sure what you're doing, backup the file before editing OR export the original settings first, so you could import it back.

Before editing recolours that use transparency - first go to Categorized Properties tab and check transparency properties (all listed under the Default Texture Blending). If you import in settings that have transparency switched off, it will have to be edited back to how it was (if you'd like to keep transparency).

If you want to import textured recolour settings for object that doesn't use texture - after import, set the property stdMatBaseTextureEnabled to false. In case of untextured recolours, RGB value for stdMatDiffCoef is used as object's surface colour.

If a recolour file contains normal map aka bump map and you'd like to get rid of it (these are usually raw8bit format), just set stdMatNormalMapTextureEnabled to false. Then you can delete the unwanted texture.

If you'd like to edit, or export the settings from a particular mesh file, but there are many recolour TXMTs inside the package and you aren't sure which one it is, you can check its TXMT name while playing. With boolprop testingCheatsEnabled True, find the object in the catalogue, click on the recolour and hover mouse over it - you should be able to see the details, like TXMT name (and also object's GUID and CRES).

Mini-tutorial on how to make TS2 objects glow in the dark

This way you can fix lamps that do not glow when lit.

To edit glow settings, you need to open recolour file and look inside TXMT. Usual object recolour has one of these, but inside lampshade recolour you will find two: one for lit-up state, and one for unlit state.

Method A is the most commonly used in TS2 lamps even though it's more tricky. The values for stdMatDiffCoef & stdMatEmissiveCoef are just an example - for best results these have to be adjusted, depending on reflection settings or how bright the texture is.

I only use the first method for stuff that's not meant to be very luminous, like the lamp base. Or if method B is not an option ( object has only one subset and not all parts are glowing).

can you please make a tutorial on how to convert adult clothing to teen? your conversions are amazing!!!

Hello, nintendolover13 made this tutorial a while back for me. There is things that didn’t work out for me, so I made a video here showing what I do.

Thank you too^^ I hope you have a good day, nonny~.

Edit: Had to change the link… YouTube blocked the video >u

AF to TF Conversion Tutorial - Part 2

You have sucessfully completed Part I and now have milkshape open.

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AF to TF Conversion Tutorial - Part 1

caramelsmiles was having a hard time doing an AF to TF (this works as a AM to TM too or AM to AF or AF to AM - point being Adult to Teen) conversion and posted about it on GoS. I figured if one person was having a tough time, then many people may be too! So I decided to write a (hopefully) easy to follow tutorial (complete with pictures) for you all.

I will be working on converting this mesh (the AF layered shirt) by @e-neillan.

To start, you’ll obviously want to download the mesh you’re converting. And then it would be wise to create a project/work folder so you have all of the necessary files together. I have made a folder within my downloads and it is labeled ‘help caramelsmiles’ and within that I have a sub-folder named ‘Layered Shirts’ where it contains all of the files (mesh and recolors) downloaded from e-neillan.

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Figured I’d make a tutorial on how to achieve the ReShade look in your screenshots without ever having installed it on your computer because if you’re like me, your computer can’t handle it 😅

All you need is your phone and the free version of PicsArt.

I hope this helps someone! 🥰

Watch it here.