Ok, so this is a FANTASTIC tutorial, and I'm really loving it, but I think I did something wrong. Colored the image, and saved it as a DDS file, then imported it into Tattooinator. After selecting the channels and presets, I hit preview, but the tattoo remained black. It's probably something I'm not understanding about the alpha channels, but what file type exactly are you using to save these in gimp? Just in case that's the issue. Sceenshot of Gimp DDS formats:



Thanks :3

WolfoftheNyght: The correct formats are either 'None', 'BC2/DXT3', or 'BC3/DXT5'. In general the best choice is DXT5 - it makes your files smaller and does smooth alpha shading. If you want to preserve perfect quality you can use None, but the game's going to degrade your image anyway, especially at smaller sizes.

If you're getting an all-black image, most likely it's an alpha channel problem. Looking at your image in GIMP, do you see it in full color? If so, either you didn't add an alpha channel or it's all non-transparent. (A non-transparent alpha will let you see the color layers underneath but a fully transparent one won't. Yes it's confusing.) First check that you have an alpha channel, and if not add one. Then try enabling ONLY the alpha for editing and erasing the entire alpha to background using the eraser tool, so that you see only a checkerboard. Alternatively, create a layer mask for the alpha as in the tutorial, fill it with all black, and apply it and you should get the checkerboard. Maybe I should add that to my tutorial.

makaelababy: Do you have Ambitions or just the patch? Custom tattoos do not work with just the patch. If you have Ambitions, does other custom content work in your game?

Edit: I've found out custom tattoos DO work with just the patch. You need the 1.1 version of Tattooinator to make them. Sorry!

Awesome! So I was using the right format, just goofing up the alpha channel. Me and the Gimp don't get along sadly, so I've been using a combination of PaintShop Pro and Photoshop. It seems to do the job so long as I do the alpha channel in PSP first.

Also, even though I anti-alias the black a bit in the alpha channel, and it looks fantastic in the previewer, it still shows up with somewhat pixilated edges in game. (Screenshots attached. Also attached is a .7zip of the PSD, and PSD Mask images.) There is a screenshot in there of another one I did that displays the same pixilation. I'll maybe try one of the other compression formats you mentioned in the mean time. I used the DXT5 through photoshop nvidia plugin with these.

Thank you so much I can't tell you how nice it is to have this fantastic tutorial!

Unfortunately the in-game tattoos are never going to look as good as they do in the previewer. The game seems to degrade the images quite a bit when it scales them down. However, you seem to be getting a lot of staircasing and I'm not sure why. Antialiasing in the alpha is a good idea. I'll take a look and maybe compare the game tattoos when I get home. Meanwhile, you might try using an uncompressed image and see if that makes a difference.

Thanks a bunch Cmar You're the best! I tried another one with no compression at all, and looks to be the same deal : / When I get home from work tomorrow I'll give the DXT3 compression a try.

Help!! My Dds Extension Does Not Show Up

The DXT3 compression will probably look exactly the same except any shading will have a step effect. If you use compression, DXT5 is best.

Anyway, I have only Photoshop Elements which doesn't do channels, so I spent some time fiddling with your image in GIMP. Got the same exact staircasing in the game, also with no compression. Looking at the in-game and other custom tatts, I see many with very smooth edges but they look a little fuzzy. It may be that blurring/blending/antialiasing the edges in your alpha some more may help.

Tomorrow I have a day off work and can spend more time on experimenting.



I'm assuming you mean the GIMP plugin for DDS. Download from here: http://code.google.com/p/gimp-dds/d...win32-2.0.9.zip
Unzip and put dds.exe in your GIMP plugins directory, which is probably: C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins

Awesome let me know what you find! I can't seem to find a solution to this, and it's frustrating since I have a bunch of cool ideas but I just can't get them to look nice. <3

Okay, here are my learnings:

Blurring the edges helps. I applied a mild blur to the entire alpha channel. The pics below show the tattoo before and after blurring in the game.

Now look at the image below from the previewer. You'll see a faint line of what looks like background color at the interior edges. This is because of the blurring of the alpha edges. I painted the RGB colors over the edges of the black outlines in the upper left quadrant to get rid of it. (See the pic from GIMP of the base RGB-only image.) However, it appears to make no difference in the game.

So I'd say the solution is to apply blur to the alpha until you're satisfied with the result.

Thanks so much for this. I only did a black and white cause I was kinda scared of doing color with the tattoo I picked to do but it turned out well for my first time although I find that the darker I make it the more junky the detail... but thats probably my falt, I used a color pict and wanted the color but was to scared/confused to do it.



Wasnt sure how to make what I did in color like in this pict.



Sorry for size of picts... Im not sure how to make them the rite size, I should know better but I always forget.

You could try doing a gradient fill from red to green and see how it turns out. Looks nice the way it is, though, and it should be recolorable.

I think I got it but I got to go to work now so will have show and tell later.

Thanks so much for your help :D

Oooohhh! That's perfect!! Honestly, I think these posts are a great addition to this wondeful resource- thank you so much for taking a look!! I'll have to play with the alpha channels on a new tattoo tonight and see what I can come up with.

As I said before (I think? lol) You're the best! This is a fantastic tutorial, and I can't thank you enough! :lovestruc

Edit:

Oohhh yea! I totally got this now Did a soften on the alpha, then blurred it twice, and added the colors in a layer between the black tattoo and the white backdrop. I even managed to shade the green channel into the blue!! It still looks a LITTLE distorted at smaller sizes, but it looks a million times better scaling from around 50-100% which is usually the size I use anyhow.

Also, I know it's a little outdated (and not as prevalent as Photoshop or Gimp), but I would be more then happy to make a Jasc Paintshop Pro tutorial for this once I get a couple more rounds of practice in. The older version I use looks like it has pretty much all the same menus as the newer version by Corel.

You're making me blush!

And yes, I think a Paintshop Pro tutorial would be very helpful to many people. Then all we'd need is a PhotoShop tut!

Color style

Im happy with it.

I did do the one or two layer of blur to kinda soften it up a bit since people where saying theirs where pixilated. And since the pict had color and I wasnt sure if I could color in the lines proper I messed with the color settings of the pict to make it bolder and make the starting dark color on bottom closer to red (if you dont mess with color settings you might end up with sold black that turns a tint of colors in the black a bit thats how my first black and white one worked out or that might have also been cause I didnt mess with the boxes much in the program other than enable them... although I could have sworn I picked a color, now I dont remember LOL). I enabled all the little boxes for color in the program and played around and it reconized the diffrent shading as diffrent colors (dispite me only messing with color options instead of just coloring in) so I was able to do dark red, red, orange and yellow to get this. I could have easyly picked other colors to do (and I can still do so in tattoo cas or whatever) but wanted to stay true to my pict.

That looks great, congrats :D

And I would love to Cmar! I'll work on it tomorrow when I get home from work and post it as a new thread. Or should I just Make a large post in here to keep everything in one place, then you can put a link in the main post to mine?

IMO a new post is best, and both of us can link to the other and say that the comments are very instructive too. That way the comment threads won't get mixed up.

Yay! Im actually making stuff for people VTM Tattoos

This is awsome! Ok, enough of me drooling and showing off on your page LOL

Will do :3 I have some time tonight, so I'll do some screen shots and do a preliminary write up.

Hmm.. nevermind.. I had it all ready to go, but it looks like I can't post new threads in this forum.. Did I do something wrong? lol

No - post in the Create/CAS forum, title it as a tutorial, and one of the mods will move it here. I guess they screen this section.

can you do a step by step instruktion with pictures for dummies like me please so i don't need to scroll up and try to mix it with the gimp tutorial, as this does not work for me together...

sorry i'm so lame and stupid to do... it is killing my nerves that it still does not work somaybe i gonna do something wrong... so step by step with pictures would be so cool and maybe you can tell me in the end how i need to save... and how i get the ready thing in the creator because mine does only show black whatever i do

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

Ahhh, alrighty. I shall do that!

Posted and moved to this section by a Mod. Thanks to whoever moved it for me!

Paintshop Pro Tutorial is here: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=414778 :3

I'm working on trying to figure out how to do one for photoshop. And you're not stupid! Not at all! Just need a point in the right direction I've noticed when I try and do a DDS convert in photoshop that it gives me an all black preview as well- it's not just you. I would suggest getting the plugin for GIMP and converting it that way. It works perfect everytime if I use GIMP to make the DDS. For some reason Photoshop seems -very- picky.

There is also a program called DDS Converter 2 which seems to work as well when the options are sent to the correct compression and not to generate minmaps.

Be aware however, I am not sure this program works on Windows Vista or 7.

http://dds-converter.software.informer.com/2.1/

Im having an issue with shadows. I can get the colors and everything working right except when I go in game my tat is semi transparent. Meaning that the shadowed affect I gave my tattoo is transparent and when I put another tattoo behind it (like a heart) I can see the heart through the shadows. I'll take pics soon. Im going to try one more thing to see if it works, but if you have a solution I would greatly appreciate it. (I am using PS CS4)