:weep: OK my idea didn't work.I removed the mesh and the skins and downloaded them again.Still doesn't export.I dont think its the mesh because I have found skins made for this mesh by other people.Any thoughts on fixing this would be appreciated.I'll try some more tomorrow and if I find anything I'll let you know.Thanks for your help Gigge.

Edit:I guess my computer just doesn't like this mesh.I reinstalled the game and put it back first(I needed a clean start anyway) still no good.

I found out what the problem is.It is not the mesh but the textures.Bodyshop will not export any texture with a "blue normal map".If anybody knows a way around this I would appreciate your help.

Thank you for this thread! I never knew about the function keys, and if I had it would have made things much easier. The dark default background makes it really hard to accurately see how a new skin tone is coming out until you've put it in game. I've had skin tones look good in bodyshop, but then I make up a sim in game and it looks horrible! I can't count how many skins I've thrown away because I couldn't see the details in bodyshop.

Again, thank you for the informative thread.

Wow...I missed the replies on this thread.

PAF: I think body shop does work with blue normal maps. I've used them when I was testing bump maps after I upgraded video cards. However, Maxis did switch from using blue normal maps before game release to black and white bump maps after game release. I think the problem you're having is that you're trying to import a pre-release mesh/skin. There is a workaround for it. I forgot specifically what involves, but I do remember you need to install the old body shop and then do something with them to get them in the new body shop. :/


Po: Thanks for the compliments! The tutorial is not only not complete, it's not coded for the web yet. So, I really can't post even part of it. But, your interest has motivated me to work on it some more so I'll try widdling away at a bit more.

I wonder if bodyshop can be used to assign each type of clothes for a sim, because until now I can only assign the casual outfit for my sims before saving them. I want to assign all clothes for them since they're child to elder, and pack them for upload, is there any possibility to do that?!? THANKS

PAF- "cannot upload mesh error" has happened to me when the picture for the mesh is too big! It was all good when I resized it to the original size

How do you import a celebrity face onto a sim? I have seen it done. how are people doing it?

JJ

don't forget while in the f3 mode..
you can use - and + (for zoom)
xts

I can't.

I forgot about this tip that's not in the readme.txt. You can change the mannequin's skin color. To change your mannequin:

1. Open up body shop.
2. Select "Create Parts"
3. Before choosing "Start New Project" or "Load Saved Project", click on the "change mannequin" icon (underneath the randomizer dice). You can then choose from all the skin colors you have loaded.
4. Click accept and your mannequin will have the new skin you chose.

Gigge

Thank you all, there's no thank u button here, so I'll do it like this!

How do you take a pic of the sim you are working on in body shop?

Same as anything else. Print Screen, open a new window in PhotoShop (or whatever you're using) and paste. Why you would want to do that is beyond me, though. BS pictures are horribly lit and don't necessarily look like the finished product in-game. FWIW, this is why we're trying to make sure all downloads are accompanied by in-game screenshots. The game changes the color values, sometimes drastically, and smoothes lines, sometimes putting them askew when they looked fine in BS.

cool! THANX SO MUCH for the tips everyone!!

-Pineapple.3000-

P.S. In body shop, if you keep both mouse buttons clicked, you can actually move about :D

i'm not sure if you know that already, but i thought u might wanna kno

THANX AGAIN!!

I got the official prima guide to sims 2 and it says that the bodyshop hot keys f3 and f5,are an exclusive feature to the bodyshop version that shipped with the game

The downloadable version was very limited, Maxis said so, and it actually crashed my game when I first bought it! I was mailing EA for weeks until they suggested removing the downloaded version and it worked fine.
PAF, was it you who said you couldn't extract certain items of clothing? I had this problem with a maxis vest and a maxis female top. I tried three times to export, close bodyshop, reopen and export again. Each time failed until I restarted my computer. They extracted first time then! I have no idea what caused it. By the way, these happened on two seperate occasions...

I'm feeling rather stupid today, and this might be a stupid question, so bear with me please. After the very long exhausting weeks it took me to download BodyShop, since of course my computer has some weird video card, and the very long exhausting hours it took to download Adobe, I finally figured out how to recolor, but now I am stuck because it's only giving me outfits I don't want to recolor! It gives me (for an adult female) one shirt, one pair of jeans... and for outfits, 2 outfits! One pair of everything for everybody! I am so confused and have been sitting here searching this site AND yahoo! My brain is gonna explode! Help I just don't know how to get other clothes on so that I can recolor those

That's because you're using a pre-release version of Body Shop. You'll find the working one in My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\CS Bin\TS2BodyShop.exe. Run that, and you'll have the right version.

No I don't see it on there And when I go to play the game, the CAS bit is messed up. There aren't things to choose from anymore (faces), what did I do :'(

This has become much more than a skinning problem, then. You might want to click on Game Help on the top bar on the left and see if anyone can help you figure it out. I'm puzzled.

Hmm thanks anyways Faylen. I'm gonna keep messing around with this *sigh* Hopefully sometime soon it'll work properly :P

Do you have to be a super-skilled artist to recolor clothing and make it look real, good, or at least decent??

I'm not super bad at recoloring or art but do you take clothes that exist in real life and sim-ify them? I know you can just create them but still. This seems very difficult...

"real clothes"
 

I think what people are doing is taking pictures of clothing and then putting them on the bitmaps in body shop. I saw a person do that to Britney Spear's face, and it was the best thing I had ever seen done. They just took an album cover, because she had a blank facial expression, and then they put it over an existing face pattern and saved it as blush in the makeup section. After they put the blush on the manequin, they still had to change her facial features until it looked like Britney, but it was really awesome. (Look it up under celebrity sims.) I am trying this with a picture of myself, but the eye holes keep being too big. If I can get it to work, I'll let you guys know.

Also, if this isnt how most people are doing it, someone please let me know because I'd like to learn! :smile:

What size does the picture of the person's face hae to be?