I thought this might be useful to other Psp users trying to make patterns. It took me days to figure out how to work with channels in psp7, so maybe this will spare someone else the frustration. Currently I cannot make a 4 color pattern as I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make the alpha channel "stick". I've tried everything, so if anyone else knows how, please share.

This is my pattern:


It isn't necessary to seperate the colors by vector tracing. The important thing to do is simply to make the colors clean and seperate in what ever method is easiest for you. Once you have your pattern seperated by color, make a black and white image 256x256 for EACH color that is to be on the pattern:





So, all the parts of the pattern that will be orange are seperate, all the parts that are grey and all the parts that are purple.

The next step is to go to the "colors" menu and select "split channel" and then "split to RGB".



It will give you a red, green and blue channel for EACH of your colors.



Delete the green and blue for the first image, but keep the red. Do the same proceedure for each of your 3 color seperated images, until you have one red, one green and one blue.



The red channel is for the orange pieces of the pattern, the green channel is for the grey pieces and the blue is for the purple pieces.

Next, using the red channel, go to the "colors" menu and select "Combine Channel" and then "Combine from RGB".



A drop-down menu will appear:



In the drop-down menu, select your red channel, then your green and finally your blue. Hit "ok".

It will give you your final image:



Save as a DDS and open it up in Delphy's Pattern Packager.



Once you have selected your colors, and filled in the information, save it and test in game.

I don't find the plugins dds for psp, can i help me?

Firstly I'd like to thank Sarane for the tutorial, i was looking for one for PSP, so a BIG thank you.

The dds plugin is not automatically with psp, you need to get it first from here: Nvidia Plugin
Its at bottom of their page.

It says its for photoshop, but it also works with psp as i have it installed

You should install to C:\Program Files\Jasc Software Inc\Paint Shop Pro 7\Plugins

thanks, it's work!

I am stuck here:

Delete the green and blue for the first image, but keep the red. Do the same proceedure for each of your 3 color seperated images, until you have one red, one green and one blue.


Hmm, but i just deleted the green & blue, so how can i do the same? and when i repeat it just happens all over again and i just end up with red.

I'm confused - am i missing something?

1. I open psp
2. I open a pic
3. I split the pic to rgb
4. Then I delete the green & blue (I think this is where i gone wrong)
5. ummm, I left with original pic and one called red2 background

Ok, so after you have made a black and white, 256 x 256 image for each color of the pattern (see pic 2 above), you take the first one and split it. It gives you a red copy, a green copy and a blue copy. Delete the green and blue, but keep the red. Then take the black and white image of your second color in the pattern and split that. This time delete the red and blue and keep the green. Do the same on the third color of your pattern, but this time delete the red and green and keep the blue. You end up with 3 black and white images. One red, one green and one blue.

I found out this is the step i missed. How do i 'seperate' the pattern colors exactly? Do i convert to layers?

It really depends on what is easiest for you.

What I did for my pattern was use the magic wand tool to select each color from my pattern. I started with the orange. I made a new 256 x 256 image and placed the orange parts there and filled the background black, then inverted and filled the parts to show up orange white. Then I selected only the grey parts and made a new image in the same way.

Thankyou ever so much for this tutorial! Haven't made a thing since sims 1 days but really want to for the sims 3, this will help me out loads
Cheers!

Thank you, thank you, thank you! This make so much sense. Going to give it a try.

One Question I have is where do you get your patterns from in which to custom color. I must be a total moron, because I just can't seem to find clean patterns, everything I find is very pixilated. Do I actually have to create my own patterns from scratch?

Someone please point me in the right direction.

No matter how you get a pattern it will involve some tedious work. There isn't a way around it.

In my case, I am making my own patterns. That's easiest for me - and kinda fun.

But, if you find a pattern you like you can try to clean it up. I did that yesterday and it worked well. It's also dependent on how well you know your graphics program. If you use and are familiar with Psp, then your magic wand tool will be really helpful. You can change the settings of the tool to something like 50% and select the colors that are in your pattern. Then use the eyedropper to match the color you are working on as best you can. It would involve quite a bit of clean up because most images that you find on the web are feathered to look good but it can be done that way.

You can also use HP's tutorial to with Psp. There is a drawing tool to trace over patterns. I have also done that with success. I have psp7 and the tool looks like a pencil. But make sure it isn't anti aliased if you go that route.

google image search, and filter for 'medium' or large pics only, you can then size them down in psp.

Now i just keep getting an error when trying to save as dds. It says, 'Plugin caused access violation' and doesnt save

I've installed it corectly i think.

I am using psp 9

I'm getting the same thing! Why? *sobs*

oldenBuffy:

There is an alternative to using the DDS plug-in with PSP although it's a little more complicated. See this post on Misty2004's tutorial thread:

http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...046#post2623046

*edit* It's post #33 - Firefox doesn't seem to position properly when I click on the link

This is a great tutorial and I am using psp7. Question. I tried to do a 2 color black and white image using a png file. It lets me recolor only the background in the game. Have you tried doing a png or bmp file instead of dds in psp7? How would those files be converted differently? Thank you.

DDS plugin doesn't work for the new PSP... It has to do with some update for photoshop...