(Part 2)
Here are the steps:
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1.) Create a new genetic skin project in Bodyshop as usual. There is nothing special you have to do at this stage.
2.) Modify and save the base skin textures for ages and genders in your skin project as you would normally. Once again there is nothing special about this part of the process. Don't worry if your base textures aren't absolutely perfect at this stage, you will be able to replace them later.
3.) Import your new project into the game. Note we still haven't done anything with the bump maps yet but we'll get there next.
4.) Now, create yourself some bump (normals) maps. To give you a basic idea what is involved....
Create a "height map" image in a paint program (such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro) which has the same dimensions as the skin image. If you use mid grey as the background colour you can denote raised areas with paler greys with the highest spots being white, while lower areas are darker grey shading to black. The brighter/darker the shading, the higher/lower the bump/hole. Then use the free Photoshop plugin available from the Nvidia developer website to convert this gray height map.
into a normals map. The nVidia plugin will give you a preview of how your bumps will look under different light angles. The normals image created by the plugin can then be saved as a 'bmp' file for use later.
Remember that you can bump map faces as well as bodies.
5.) Open your recently created skin package file in SimPe. You must open the file from your "My Documents\EA Games\The Sims2\SavedSims" directory, NOT the one in your projects directory. Bodyshop assigns meaningless names to the packages it creates which makes it hard to identify the new package, I just sort the windows explorer view by date modified to find the most recently created package.
6.) In
SimPE click on 'Material Description' in the Filetypes list at top left. The Packed Files box will show a list of Material Description entries. Now begins a tedious job, you will need to browse each of these material description entries using the plugin view to find the ones that relate to textures you will be applying your bump maps to.
As you browse each entry, look at the plugin view Filename (the second box down). The file name will contain a bunch of meaningless characters followed by a recognisable name. For example "##0x7f5d4a1f!amface~face_txmt" is the material description for the adult male face texture, "##0x7f5d4a1f!afbodynormal~top_txmt" is the adult female normal body texture and so on. As you come across material descriptions for textures that you need to work with you should do the following for each one...
a.) Look in the properties list for the 'stdMatBaseTextureName' entry and note down the value, it will be something like "##0x7f5d4a1f!0x5fb57312' This value will be useful later on when we are trying to find the correct texture entries.
b.) Next you need to add some entries to the material description properties list that will enable your bump (normals) maps and point to the textures we will be using for them. So, with the 'Properties' tab active, click on the word 'add' (which is off to the right of your screen in the 'Property' box) 4 (FOUR) TIMES. If there is anything currently in the 'name' or 'value' fields when you do this it doesn't matter.
c.) Scroll down to the bottom of the Properties list box and you should see the four lines you have just added, they will either appear as ':' if the name and value fields were blank when you pressed 'add' or you will see some other entry duplicated four times.
d.) Click on the first of the added lines and then type or paste the following into the Property Name field on the right hand side of the
SimPE window (without the quotes) "stdMatNormalMapTextureAddressingU" and put the word "tile" into the Value field (without quotes).
e.) Click on the second of the added lines and then type or paste the following into the Property Name field on the right hand side of the
SimPE window (without the quotes) "stdMatNormalMapTextureAddressingV" and put the word "tile" into the Value field (without quotes).
f.) Click on the third of the added lines and then type or paste the following into the Property Name field on the right hand side of the
SimPE window (without the quotes) "stdMatNormalMapTextureEnabled" and put the word "true" into the Value field (without quotes).
g.) Click on the fourth of the added lines and then type or paste the following into the Property Name field on the right hand side of the
SimPE window (without the quotes) "stdMatNormalMapTextureName". In the value field you will need to type or paste the texture name from step a. above. Once you have done that insert the word 'bump' into the name so that it looks something like this "##0x7f5d4a1f!bump0x5fb57312"
h.) Double check that you now have 4 property entries that look like this..
stdMatNormalMapTextureAddressingU:tile
stdMatNormalMapTextureAddressingV:tile
stdMatNormalMapTextureEnabled:true
stdMatNormalMapTextureName:##0x7f5d4a1f!bump0x5fb57312
i.) Click the "Commit" button. You can also choose "File | Save" from the menu at this point but if you do
SimPE will reposition the material description packed files list back at the beginning and you will lose where you are up to.
j.) Now resume browsing the material descriptions as in step 6 and repeat steps a. thru j. again for each one that you will be applying bump maps to.
7.) OK, that's the material descriptions out of the way. Now would be a great time to select "File | Save" from the menu as we have finished browsing the material descriptions and don't care about losing our place. Hopefully you now also have a list of texture names that you recorded in step 6.a. What we need to do next is clone some texture image entries so that we can import our normals map BMPs.
8.) Click on 'Texture Image' in the Filetypes box at top left. The Packed Files box will now be showing a list of Texture Image (TXTR) entries. Now begins a second slightly less tedious job, you will need to browse each of these texture entries using the plugin view to find the ones that relate to textures you will be applying your bump maps to. As you browse each entry, look at the plugin view Filename (the second box down). The file name will contain a bunch of meaningless characters followed by "_txtr". For example "##0x7f5d4a1f!0x5fb57312_txtr".
You need to check the characters to the left of the "_txtr" part and see if they match any of the texture names on your list from step 6.a. It is fairly easy to tell if they are likely
candidates because
SimPE will be showing you a picture of the texture for each one.
For each texture entry that is on your list, right click on it in the packed files list box and choose 'clone' from the pop-up menu. Don't worry about finding the clone or doing anything with it yet, just concentrate on finding textures and cloning them for now.
9.) Now you can import your bump maps into the new texture image entries you created in step 8. Scroll down to the bottom of the packed files list, the bottom entries will be your clones. For each cloned texture in turn do the following;
a.) Make sure the plugin view is active and insert the word "bump" into the Filename field (the second box down) so that it reads the same as in 6.g. For example "##0x7f5d4a1f!bump0x5fb57312"
b.) Press the 'Commit' button
c.) Right click on the displayed image and select "Build DXT..."
d.) In the dialog that appears, click the word 'open' to open your normals map BMP as created by the Photoshop plugin. Make sure you open the correct file that relates to the particular texture you are viewing at present.
e.) Leave all the entries in the 'settings' area as they are and click the 'Build' button.
f.) After a short pause your normals map image should appear in the plugin view replacing the previous texture.
g.) Click on 'Fix TGI' - I am not sure if this is necessary but it doesn't do any harm to be sure.
h.) Click on the 'Commit' button again. You should probably also choose 'File | Save' again at this point but once again
SimPE will reset the packed files list to the top so you'll have to scroll back down and find where you were up to.
i.) Move on to your next cloned texture and repeat steps a. thru i.
10.) When you have processed all your cloned texture entries you are done. Select 'File | Save' from the menu again to be sure and exit SimPe.
Continue to Part 3 to read a few useful tips.