I've been asked how I do this, so I thought I'd write up a tutorial for anyone else who wanted to try.
Tools Needed:-World of Warcraft installed on your computer (though you don't have to have an active account - you can download the client for free)
-
WoW Model Viewer version 0.7.5.0 (November 2013) or later
-A graphics program that uses layers. You should be comfortable with reordering, resizing, and duplicating layers.
-
Topaz Clean (optional)
-Milkshape 3D or another modeling program of your choice
-SimPE
-BodyShop
ExtractionOpen up WoW Model Viewer. If you're on Windows Vista or later and you installed it outside of the Users directory, you will probably have to run it as an administrator so it will export everything properly.
First, you need to open up the outfit that you want in WoW Model Viewer. There are several ways you can do this:
-View an NPC
-Import a character direct from the armory
-Load a character model and then load an item set
-Load a character model and dress it up manually.
For the first two options, your menu looks like this:
Viewing an NPC is in the View menu. To dress up your character model, you press the buttons along the right side:
And then find your item in the list that pops up. It doesn't matter a whole lot which race you pick, but make sure 1) you pick one that wears shoes (ie, no trolls, draenei, etc), and 2) you pick the correct gender, since the chest textures at the very least have boob shadows for the ladies, and sometimes can be dramatically different. It's not necessary, but I recommend a tall race (elves, humans, orcs) so you can see how the whole outfit looks before you export.
After your character is dressed the way you want, you'll need to export the textures. Go to File->Export Textures and this box will pop up:
Press "Export All to PNG" - there are a bunch of textures and it's a pain to get them all manually. Open up the WoWModelViewer/Export directory to verify your textures did indeed export.
If you're just doing a recolor of an existing model, then you can close WoW Model Viewer. If you are meshing shoulders and/or a helm, then there's a couple more things to do. Go to View->Show Model Control.
Click the dropdown box at the top and make a note of what the models besides the first are called. You'll want to search for them in the search box at the top of the file list. Find your model in the search results.
Next, go to File->Export Model and then choose a format. (This tutorial assumes you select Milkshape 3D but you can do whatever you are comfortable with.) Save it in a place you'll remember, ideally a folder for all the files for this project. Repeat this for the other models - though, if your shoulders are symmetrical, you really only need to export one of them.
Close WoW Model Viewer. Since WMV loads all of WoW's art resources into memory, you're probably going to choke your computer if you try to use BodyShop at the same time! If you need to see what your outfit looks like and have the ability to spin it around, use
WoWHead's online model viewer.
TexturingOpen up Bodyshop and create a new project using whatever outfit you'll be putting your textures on. If you're making a new mesh, don't worry too much about which outfit you base it off of since nothing will line up the same anyway, though I recommend picking something that has an alpha group in case you need alpha-enabled shoulders.
Open up the exported Sims Textures in your graphics editor, and also your exported WoW textures. There will be more there than you need - just grab the ones that are obviously related to your outfit. They'll look something like this:
THIS IS ACTUAL SIZE. 64x128 px, and some of them are even smaller, like 32x128 px. It takes a lot of stretching to get them Sim-sized.
Pick a WoW texture, then copy just the left half of it (ie, a 64x64 square). Paste it on your Sims texture, then duplicate the layer. Flip the duplicated layer horizontally, then move it over so the duplicate's left and the original's right are lined up.
Flatten the layer. Repeat this process with the right half of the texture, except the duplicate's right and the original's left will be lined up. Now, put this layer directly on top of the first one, then pull the first one to be on top in the layer list. Link them together, then stretch the texture out on the model where you want it. Unlink the layers, and then nudge the second layer over to the left - if you do this with keyboard and not the mouse, then they'll stay exactly aligned.
BUT WHERE SHOULD YOU PUT THE TEXTURES? Here's a handy guide based on the filenames of your extracted textures:
This is specific to my meshes, but in looking at it you can figure out where they should go on other meshes. Here's where it all ends up on the model:
It's hard to see, but Sleeve_AU goes from shoulder to elbow, Glove_AL goes from elbow to wrist, and Glove_HA goes from wrist to fingertips. Also note that the belts are layered on top of the pants - make sure that the Pant_LU top is touching the Chest_TL bottom.
Note that the sleeves, gloves, and boots don't follow quite the same pattern as above. For the sleeves and gloves, you'll still be duplicating and flipping, you just won't be joining them together because the parts are on opposite sides of the body.
Boots are a special case. You just copy each side without duplicating and put them in the indicated places.
Note that WoW shoe texture mapping is different from most Sims mapping - ie, Sims usually have side views of the shoes in mapping, while WoW's textures are top & bottom views. If you are not using one of my meshes, you may need to get creative about how you recolor shoes.
Shoulders are also a special case. Often, when you export shoulders, they will be semi-transparent:
After opening your file, copy the layer and paste it like 20 times until it doesn't look transparent anymore. Sometimes, even that isn't enough, and you will need to add a layer of color at the bottom to make it the right color. After you've finished making layer adjustments, flatten the image, then copy it over to your Sims texture file.
When you're all done, it'll look something like this:
Yours may vary a bit based on the mesh you copied.
Now, you might notice that it is super pixelated - that's what happens when you stretch images to 4-5 times their original size! >.< I highly recommend using Topaz Clean to tidy it up.
So much better! If you don't have Topaz Clean, you can mess around and try to use other filters in your graphics program to get it looking nice.
Save this file as body~stdMatBaseTextureName in your project folder, then create the alpha and bump map files. Go back to body shop and import this sucker back into your game!
Mesh Editing: ShouldersThis part of the tutorial assumes that you are comfortable working with the 3D program of your choice, and that you have gotten your base body mesh and texture to a place you are happy with - ie, this mesh would be totally done if you weren't adding shoulders. My pictures and instructions are for Milkshape.
Make sure you have your mesh open and your texture(s) assigned to your mesh parts!
Go to File->Merge and go to the Milkshape file you exported from WoW Model Viewer back before you started texturing. You'll get something like this:
It's huge, it's not in the right place, and the texture's all wonky! Let's fix the last one first.
Go over to the Materials tab and assign the shoulder (it should be called Geoset_0 or something) the same texture as the rest of your body. (If it's the alpha mesh, then the same texture as the alpha part.)
Now go into the texture coordinate editor and shrink it down to the area on your texture where the shoulders are.
Close the texture coordinate editor. Now you've got a huge shoulder in totally the wrong place still, but at least it looks nice now! Rotate and move it to the right spot.
Shrink it down some - .75 is usually about right, adjust until it looks right to you.
If your shoulders are identical, then do Edit->Duplicate Selction, and then Vertex-> Mirror Left to Right. (The wrong one is highlighted in the picture, sorry.
)
If your shoulders are not identical, then repeat all the previous steps for the other shoulder.
Looks pretty good! Now we need to assign bones to them, or else they'll just sort of float their weirdly while our Sim moves around. Select one entire shoulder, and one vertex near the collarbone. Then do Vertex->Sims Unimesh Bone Tool.
You'll only have one option because only the last vertex you selected has a bone! Click Apply to All and then Commit All. Now your whole shoulder armor is attached to the clavicle and will move with your Sim's shoulder! Repeat this step with the other shoulder.
Now, select both shoulders and click Regroup. They'll become a single group with a name like Regroup01. Click the group that it's going to be a part of (probably either body or body_alpha), and then click comment. You'll get a box like this:
Copy everything in that box. Click on your Regroup01 again and rename it to body/body_alpha. Then click Comment and paste what you just copied. Even though the stuff's not regrouped into a single group, it will still show up properly! This is especially useful when you have a mesh with fatmorphs and pregmorphs - then your shoulders will appear for all the morphs, not just the body morph, and you don't have to copy them three times. Keeping them separate also makes it easier if you have to go back and fiddle with it.
Save your mesh and export it - now you're ready to go into SimPE, make your mesh file, and attach it to your recolor!
(Next up: Helm mesh!)
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