Title: Ask Uncle Yakov: Make my own hairy skintones? Post by: BeosBoxBoy on July 25, 2006, 12:52:58 am Quote ...is there a file I can use to put your body hair pattern on a custom sim skin? I wish I had not been such an artist and more of a computer geek when I was doing the various edits to my hairy skintone based on AllenABQ's original work; I did all of my edits directly to the texture rather than as an overlay that I could have saved as a transparency :( Many many times I have regretted this. When I made the "gold" version for Marvine - it was such a phenomenal pain in the arse that I gave up all hope of doing any further body hair skin tones. If anyone is a saint and benefactor and wants to send me the items mentioned below, this might change. There are overlays out there on the net - they are meant for use with Poser or DAZ or other 3D Model renderers; I could never find them or anyone willing to share them (persons who make stuff for 3D art and the Sims 2 tend to not give away things that make their products "special"). If you have Adobe Photoshop (Gimp may be ok - but Paint Shop Pro does not seem to work very well for this) you can make a transparent layer over any skintone texture and paint the hair - it is tedious and meticulous work, I suggest making several layers, each having the body hair for certain sections of the body: Layer 10 - hair on back of neck Layer 9 - hair on middle sides of torso Layer 8 - hair on back (shoulders) Layer 7 - hair on central back (spinal area) Layer 6 - hair on lower back (the rear treasure trail) Layer 5 - hair on the buttocks Layer 4 - hair on the legs Layer 3 - hair on the chest & stomach (heavy) Layer 2 - hair on lower stomach (treasure trail) & light hair on chest Layer 1 - hair on the groin and arm pits Background - skintone One could alter the colour of the hair by pressing Ctrl+U and colourising the layer; making various adjustments to hue, saturation, and lightness. Additional layers could be used to colourise and augment the contrast and shadowing of the skintone in a manner like the example for which you gave me a link. These additional layers could be something like: Layer i - tattoos 3 (later in life) Layer h - tattoos 2 (adult) Layer g - tattoos 1 (teen) Layer f - muscle shadowing 2 (fit/cut) Layer e - muscle shadowing 1 (normal) Layer d - softening of features (fat) Layer c - colour enrichment 3 (select regions) Layer b - colour enrichment 2 (select regions) Layer a - colour enrichment 1 (general) Background - skintone You could "save for web..." various versions of the image with layers visible or not visible as a 24-bit colour PNG and then either "build DXT" in SimPE or further save the PNG as a BMP for use in a Body Shop project. Additionally - you could test the match-up of the front-back seam in MilkShape 3D by assigning it as the material for a 3D model mesh of the appropriate type and making minute changes needed to make it pixel perfect. This could also be seen in Body Shop but would require you create a default mesh replacement for the Body Shop mannequin of the various ages and sexes for which you are making skintones. For the latter, you need Targa's True Nude Body Shop mannequins for males from SexySims2.com: -- http://www.sexysims2.com/showthread.php?t=91972 (http://www.sexysims2.com/showthread.php?t=91972) this is an adult site and requires membership (if you were formerly a member of MTS2 with adult section privileges you are already a member). The female I know is probably on the same site - but I didn't take the time to locate it since this wasn't germane to your question. hope this helps, Uncle Yakov |