Title: Tips on Skinning. Post by: BeosBoxBoy on May 05, 2006, 09:48:31 am Foreword [/B]First and foremost: Be patient, look at other people's work, and above all look at fashion/couture magazines and advertising for ideas on textures. The texture or base skin is the colourful part that we most ready notice about a skin. The easiest skins have only the texture and the alpha. If you have a clear idea of what you want to make, it will be easier by far than dabbling until you end up with a good product. Second: Don't expect to turn out a satisfactory product until you have a basic understanding of how the alpha works. An alpha is like a polarising lens, the dark area is blotted out, the light area shows through, the grey areas are shown a little. E.G. true black is blocked out completely, true white is shown completely, grey varies on how light or dark it may be. Third: the first time you see or find a bumpmap don't freak out. Bumpmaps are a sort of 3D level to a skin, it can raise or not raise portions of the texture. These will cause shadowing to appear in such a fashion so that (for example) a belt is higher than the level of the pants and the belt loops are higher than the level of the belt. However, it should be understood that in some very complex meshes these items may be rendered as completely seperate pieces. If you alter a texture too far outside it's bumpmap without changing the bumpmap also, you run the risk of having an odd looking skin; in some cases this is pleasing, most times not. Fourth: Having a good graphics programme, like Adobe Photoshop, makes things easier, some people say Gimp is as good as Adobe Photoshop, but those are generally people not all that familiar with all the features of Photoshop. The chief benefit of Gimp is it is free. I don't have much regard for PaintShopPro, but many people use it with very good results. If you have the patience of Mother Teresa, you can even use Paint that comes with Windows. Lastly: Remember the first thing, be patient and read the many good turorials on skin creation here, MTS2, and in other game sites, even some that don't deal with the Sims2 but other games altogether. The ideas will work for the Sims2 as well as they work for Unreal Tournament. Making Pixel-Perfect Skins [/B][/U]See this TUTORIAL: Making Pixel-Perfect Skintones (http://www.insimenator.org/showthread.php?t=11026). The same method can be used for making pixel-perfect clothing items. Adding Young Adult or Other Age Categories [/B][/U]See this TUTORIAL: Using SimPE to Change/Add Age Categories of Clothing (http://www.insimenator.org/showthread.php?t=7546) This same method can also be used to add or change Clothing-type Categories. |