I thought this might be a good time to put up a thread so we can share how-to's with each other, and help potential skinners. I'll start -

F3 gives you a different camera mode in Body Shop. The left mouse button will fly you around the mannequin, the right one will change the zoom as you hold it and drag it. Hold them both down and drag, and you can focus in on specific spots of the mennequin very easily.

When saving your clothes in Body Shop, you can change the category. You'll see the icons for each clothing type above the Tips box on the right. If, for example, you've made a top from a bathing suit, you'll want to click on the everyday-tops icon before importing it to the game or sharing it.

Keep going. . .

F5 in Bodyshop will give you a white background, and F6 will make the Sim lift her arms out to the side. This is helpful for checking the sides for seams, etc.
The only way to get her arms back down, though, is to either change her clothes or reload the file that you're working on :P
F9 toggles between full-screen and UI mode.

Here's my tip for taking screenshots in Bodyshop:
The horrible lighting in Bodyshop makes for some very poor screenshots. After pasting the screenshot into your graphics program, use the brightness/contrast options to "fake" better lighting. First increase your brightness by about 10-15% .. that will wash your screenshot out considerably. Then you can use the contrast option to normalize the coloring. Play around with it a bit to find the right level.

I cant seen to get mine to zoom in... I tried holding down the right mouse button and dragging it :X

I got a bikini i'm working on and trying to line up the sides on the bottom since there are cut outs on it.... :X

it works in the alternate camera view but not the default view.... is it supposed to???

in the alt view one ofthe hips is so dark its hard to tell if its aligned :X

I just wanted to add that the F3 key also allows you to adjust the focus of the light somewhat. By default the light source is to your left (your Sim's right if he/she is facing you). If you rotate the portion of the mannequin that you want to work with to the left and then hit the F3 key, the light source will stay focused on whatever portion of the Sim you had turned to the left. For example, if you turn your mannequin so that the back side is facing your left, when you hit F3, the light will stay there even as you freely rotate your mannequin. If your body shop is dark like mine, it makes a huge difference:


~Gigge

It may be because I'm using the downloaded version... F3 and F5 do nothing... Left mouse button will rotate the model sim. Right mouse button does nothing. If I do F6, the model sim disappears entirely. Still, F9 does give me a view of the model without the UI, which is somewhat useful. I think I'll still mainly use my premade models that I threw into Veronaville - can't beat the use of TAB and + and - in the game to get really good views. Alas, I require a new video card. *sigh*

Why are you using the downloaded version? Do you not have the actual game yet?

~Gigge

No, I do have the actual game (and University). Unfortunately, the video card in my computer that I have the game installed on has a conflict running Body Shop (not the game, -just- Body Shop). So I'm using the downloaded version on my other computer (installing the downloaded version on the computer running the game causes the game to stop working). Even though for some reason, despite the "content packs" showing up okay, any further custom content I try to use (including new meshes or even recolors of items using the meshes in the content packs) won't show up. And the computer that has a somewhat-working version of Body Shop doesn't have a DVD drive, and having bought the DVD version, I can't install the game on here to use the installed Body Shop. So, I'm stuck in limbo at the moment, at least, until I get a new video card. *sigh*

I'm currently trying to figure out a way to use SimPE instead as you can export and import textures, bump maps, and alpha files in it, but I'm running into what I believe are GUID conflicts (new texture shows up, but the old one doesn't) as well as the new textured clothing file, in CAS, shows the old texture's graphic instead of the new. If I could resolve those two issues, I'd be set. *crosses fingers*

Yikes! Good luck with finding a solution. That process sounds painful.

F8 to zoom in and F7 to go back

IT WORKS! Thank you! That is so friggin' fantastic! I was getting SO sick of making tiny incremental changes in the top of the neck of my nude skin I'm working on, moving the files over to my other computer, loading the whole thing up in the game, making notes about how I needed to change the Hue/Saturation/Brightness, switching back over, and starting the whole process over. Now I can tell, at a glance, in Body Shop, if I'm close. Thank you SO MUCH!

Lol, sorry. I thought everyone had read the readme.txt.....

Hot Keys:
There are several hot keys in The Sims 2 Body Shop that help you preview your Sims. Many of these can be used in combination to get a precise view of your Sim.

F3 -- Toggles between “free camera” and “set camera” modes. In free camera, you can use the following mouse controls to rotate the camera in all dimensions:

* Click and drag the Left Mouse Button -- Orbits the camera around the Sim’s head.

* Click and drag the Right Mouse Button -- Controls the camera zoom. Move the mouse away from you to zoom out. Move the mouse toward you to zoom in.

* Click and drag Left and Right mouse buttons together -- Changes the center point the camera is looking at.

F5 -- Toggles the 3D room off and on. If there is a bitmap graphic named “userBkg.bmp” in the “\EA Games\The Sims 2\” folder in My Documents, the image will be displayed as a backdrop.

F6 -- Displays the Sim in the “bind pose,” with arms held straight out. This is helpful for viewing parts of the Sim that may be hidden by the normal pose. To return the Sim to the normal pose, click on any Sim thumbnail or content thumbnail.

F7 -- While in “set camera” mode, displays the Sim at the far zoom position.

F8 -- While in “set camera” mode, displays the Sim at the near zoom position.

F9 -- Toggles the UI off and on.

< and > -- Rotates the Sim. (Also shown on the keyboard as the comma “,” and period “.” keys.)

Display Options:
Pressing ALT+ENTER will toggle The Sims 2 Body Shop between windowed mode (default) and full-screen.

~Gigge

Heh, well, certainly, I did read it, but my readme only mentions the ALT+ENTER - none of the rest is listed (just checked to make sure).

wow. I like the sim you used as an example. Is there somewhere I can download him? Sorry, a bit random. Thanks for the tips on bodyshop!

Ahh...this is from the readme.txt of the game, not body shop itself. I think that one is abbreviated. It's probably useful information for a few people though. I was just chuckling at myself for thinking the problem was more involved than it was. I often do that and I shouldn't.

Addiction, I sent you a PM with info on where to get the Sim.

My Bodyshop keeps crashing and I have tried reinstalling the game, removing all downloads, everything I can think of. Does anyone have any ideas? If not, then were could I download Bodyshop as I see someone else here has?? I made a really good Sim that has been asked for but can't package it to upload it. Bummer.

The readme I have in Body Shop had all that. . .hmm. Is Maxis pulling a fast one?

One of the things that might cause the crashing when trying to package the sim might be if you used someone else's custom content that has a problem. I haven't had this happen, myself, but I have heard a few people complain that they crash because of this. It's just a guess - I don't know what you're making, but it's possible.

Lol, the readme file is rather large. It has all that and much more including tips on how to resolve issues with blurry skins, known video card incompatibilities or problems, movie cheats for adding vignette settings and such, tips on running in different modes such as windowed or full screen, etc, where to get the free video codec used in the game so that others can see view your movies, and so on.

Everyone keeps telling me they don't have it, but I don't think Maxis singled me out and made sure Amazon sent me the 'special' copy.

Edit: Another thing you can try is rebooting body shop and restarting before opening any other programs. My body shop will crash when it thinks memory is low, which isn't always when memory is actually low. It also crashes if I resize the resolution while it's open.

Well, as I said, I'm using the downloadable Body Shop, not the one that comes installed with the game, so it might be different. The date of my readme at the top is listed as April 12, 2004... The text goes straight from the install instructions to "Display Options" and only mentions ALT+ENTER to toggle from windowed to full-screen, and about doing different screen resolutions by adding some switches to the end of the shortcut. Strangely, the F7/F8 thing -does- work, but isn't listed... Ah, well...

*waits for the Technology Fairies to bring her a new video card*

It's in the game readme.txt, not body shop readme. txt.

I hope someone can help me with this.Some of the clothes that I wanted to recolor will not export to projects.Can anyone give me any ideas or another way to get them to the projects folder?

Are you getting an error message? If so, what's the message?

I'll try them agian in a minuite but I think it says there was a problem exporting textures.

Edit:It says"There was a problem exporting the selected textures"

Hi PAF. Don't bother. I know the message. "There was a problem exporting the selected texture."

Are you getting it with Maxis items? Items that were created with body shop prior to the game?

Many people had this error right after the game-release version of body shop. The pre-release custom content wouldn't export, but Maxis stuff worked just fine. I can't remember the fix off the top of my head. And, I don't think it worked for everyone.

hold on....

The problems are with new textures on new meshes.Now that I think about it they may all be the same mesh I'll check and see.I might know what the problem is now.

That's another possibility. Some of the new meshes people are creating aren't 100%. Either way it's a file compatibility problem.