I went ahead and uploaded them here, since I'd already extracted them myself. To edit them, you can just use the hue/saturation tool in PhotoShop if nothing else. They'll make more sense once you open them.



Yeah, that 'misplaced belly button' is from bumpmapping. I managed to get a decent replacement for the females, but can't get a working replacement for the males. Something just seems fundamentally messed up with the male bumpmapping, as it's half the size of the female one.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! It worked! Actually, I was experimenting and I thought I would try to gradate 4 different colors. And that worked too! So now the 'yellow' ramp has yellow fading into brown, fading into white, fading into grey. Yay! More options! The children might come out a little funny, though.

Thanks again. :D

This is a nice guide, but the programs I need to download are all for windows..

Do you/does anyone know what programs to download for someone who uses a Mac?

I've heard that Postal (package editor like S3PE) and Gimp (Imaging program) work with Mac.

how to you see the age and the sex at the files?

AF = Adult Female fx?

I'm a little confused?

yaxxe: AF=Adult Female, AM=Adult Male, etc. They're pretty obvious until you get to PU, which is both male and female ('universal') Toddler.

Holy Cats, thanks for this tutorial Aikea Guinea. Maybe all the gazillion hours I put into learning and actually making Sims2 skins (most of which I never got around to releasing) isn't going to go to waste after all if the market for them dries up by the time I get off my dead butt and decide to upload. Rats, but I don't have Adobe Photoshop, just Ulead Photo Impact. I don't think it will accept this plug in. Ahh well, I can get around that. Anyway, thanks ever so much for the tutorial and the extracted files. Looks like it's back to school on cc-making for me. I didn't understand a word of the tutorial, but I never do understand anything I read until I actually try to do it. It was encouraging to me to hear you say you thought it was harder to do skins for Sims2. I'd say it was probably more tedious, but it looks/sounds like the knowledge of different kinds of file formats for Sims3 type of files and the mechanics of making things work is more rigorous than what I'm used to. I "get" the creative side of it but the technical side may just bury me. Still, there's hope. Thanks for showing the way.

Hello Aikea Guinea!
Thanks for your tutorial.

Just one question, you said that there were spectral, ambient and bump mapping files that could be applied on skintones?

Does anyone now where I can get thoses files?

Thank you!!

Really useful I already got your skins so now I see how it's done!

I think, somebody uploaded them already. if not, you could still extract them from Fullbuild2.package.

I have them here, but uploading is rather compliccated for me, because they are rather large, and my internet is not that fast.

I am going for my first try at editing something in Sims 3, but my Photoshop won't load the package files of several custom-made skins. I have downloaded the files named in the tutorial yet it won't work.

Is there a way to unpack the packages so I can edit the pictures?

EDIT: Nevermind, I found out that S3PE does have an export option, silly me. However, it seems I am not able to save them as DXT3 files and neither as DSS files becauses there are too many channels. Could I just save it as a jpg or something and then back to DSS, then finally importing in into the sims package?

I don't know, how you save the DDS files. if you configure your exporter right, there should be no problem. (If you have multiple layers, you maybe need to merge them first. And you shouldn't import mipmaps.)

Of course, you can also use the last solution. But don't use jpg as the quality will be low and it doesn't support alpha channels. The tga format is a nice alternative. I explained it here, how I convert my files: http://modthesims.info/showthread.p...786#post2855786

Yes... this is a great suggestion. Always remember to flatten your image. If the file you are trying to save as a DDS does not contain only a background layer, then there is a good chance that there are other layers that may be hidden--in which case the DDS plugin sees them as channels and gives an error.

First thank you very much for the tutorial aikea.

Regarding the excerpt from the tutorial above, I am the type of person that really pursues the ideal of "teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.....".

I know the audience here basically wants to get the fix completed successfully and get back to the game, but am fundamentally flawed for some reason because I cannot do anything if I do not know why I am doing it. So the excerpt above brings up a question....

I know when there is no alpha, we use DXT1, and for all of my clothing which contain an alpha channel that actually contains a mask I save as DXT5..... So what is DXT3, and how is different from DXT5?

I am going to speculate based on experience...and you someone can tell me if this is correct. But I notice with skintones, that there is indeed an alpha channel, however, it is completely transparent (white). So does this have anything to do with it? Further, why would you use an alpha channel if it does not mask?ump

Also.. (and I apologize if I am annoying... I am starting to ask a lot of questions around here, and I do not want to seem as though I am asking for a course in 3D rendering.... ) one other question...

You bring up ambient, specular, and bump "maps". I am really having a hard time discerning what these actually do when the image is finally rendered. I read that the specular map is the shiny-ness of the object... but this confuses me because I thought the texture (including a satin texture for instance, which is "shinier") was all done in the multplier/texture map. I do not know what ambient actually does... And I know what a bumpmap "does"... but is it just a 2D texture? Or is it 3D? If it is 3D, why wouldn't it be part of the mesh which the skin tone is using?

Thank you!

Since I'm not very good at explaining things, perhaps this wiki article on the differences between the DXT compressions will prove useful.

Basically, "DXT2/3 are well suited to images with sharp alpha transitions, between translucent and opaque areas..." So things with very sharp black/white areas in the alpha channel.

"Because DXT4/5 use an interpolated alpha scheme, they generally produce superior results for alpha (transparency) gradients than DXT2/3. Some consider DXT5 to be the most flexible general purpose compression codec." This can be high-contrast black/white areas or greys in the alpha channel.



Yes, the specular is indeed the shiny-ness of the object, based on the light falling on it in the game, and in the same way, bumpmaps give the illusion of various minor changes in height on the mesh depending on where the lighting is coming from. The multiplier/texture is still 'flat,' but can give the illusion of 'shine' or 'folds.' However, given the way TS3 renders things, this can look extremely off, so it's (generally) best to keep your multipliers fairly basic.

As for your specific questions about bumpmaps, they're 2D textures, and in TS3, they're linked to specific meshes unlike in TS2, where they were linked to other textures.

I hope that cleared things up a little!

Hey I was just reading this and someone said that you can only replace default skins and not make new ones. But I was wondering if you could have a new skin as an accessory like how the tattoos are.

I have a problem with reading DDS files. I have Adobe Photoshop 7.0 and I have installed the plug-in, but It doesn't work. What to do? Please Help.

EDIT:

OK, I found the right Photoshop. It's CS2. But I know nothing of graphic. Can anybody tell me If I can just switch the textures from TS2 to TS3? The look much different.

Thanks for the tutorial. Now I can make my own skintones, thank you so much.
There are some good replacements out there, but not exactly what I want for my Sims (especially concerning nipples and pubes). Now I can try to make a skin that fits.

Thanks, aikea guinea.
I now mixed your skin replacements with the moonlight bodies by kanno.
I just took the nipples of his skin and painted it onto your replacements, looks perfect now.

Is there any way of altering just one skin tone, or assigning a replacement skin to one skin tone - for example blue? Its just I want just the blue to be tiger striped with the white glow spots to create 'true Na'vi'

Yes, see here:

http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=383795

Thanks for that - I'll give it a go

The link for S3PE is broken.

Sooooo; Here's my situation - I actually work in 3d with C4d and other irrelevant modeling programs. I am extremely familiar with texturing and what not - but I've been on hiatus for a long while now. I decided to buy the Sims3 and start modding it, to give me some inspiration to get back to my real work. But I hardly understand any of the terms/slang used for this game in these tutorials. Is there somewhere that explains how the skins work in the game a bit more in depth.

In the folder you provide it appears that only the female skins are provided?

You mentioned editing the bump, specular, scalps and so on, but I don't see anything labeling which file is which. For instance af body s looks like the spec map, but what is af body a? the af body n looks like it could be a bump map, but I'm not sure, and I'm not sure which af body o or m is the base texture.

It appears only the adult female textures are included.

Also I notice this tutorial is from July of last year, but I am having some other issues with it.

I downloaded the Nvidia plug in , but the option to save as dxt3 argb 8bpp explicit alpha is not there. There is dxt3 argb explicit alpha, but nothing at all in the whole drop down list that says 8 bpp. So in the very first phase I'm having trouble following.

I saved as the next closest thing (dxt3 argb explicit alpha)

Next step, the importing into s3pe.

tutorial says to start new, for a new "package" ok

then it shows import from the file menu.

*In the version of S3PE that I was able to download, there is only import available from the resource menu. I don't even know if that matters, so I import from there.

*then I get a file that shows up that looks nothing like yours - I have a file name of many many numbers that look like this 0x000000 and so on adding more zeros as it goes to different catagories.

I don't mean to toot my own horn much here but I am an expert texture artist and I KNOW I could offer some fantastic skins to the sims community if I could just figure out the process to do it. Any and all help is greatly appreciated. (learning new program jargon is always a joy ) lol

I am grateful for your efforts in this tutorial, especially since it is the ONLY one I could find -
but I am in great need of finding more in-depth information. This tutorial assumes a lot of sim common knowledge, that I just don't have. Aside from that I think there may have been some program updates or changes since this tutorial was made, so it may need an edit as well- no offense intended there.
Can anyone point me to more in-depth tutorials? - and/or assist me with these questions?

I have attached n (bumpmap) and m (texture) skintone dds images for all ages.

o (overlay) and s (specular) isn't included, but it's not that important anyway.

In S3PE use Ressource->Import->From file, select all files, check maybe "use resource name", and click import. You can also drag&drop the files into the white area. Mayke sure, you don't rename the files, S3PE needs the numbers to get the right TGI.

dxt3 argb explicit alpha is ok, but it would be better to save the m textures as dxt1, and the n textures as dxt 5. This saves space.