Beos question...

[nina]

Hi
I have a question regarding the linked skintones (BeosTan) that were included with Warlokk's HiRes bodyshape meshes.

These skintones contain only 13 textures and use a single female (and male) texture for adult, elder and teen sims of all weights. I've always found these packages to be very useful, but I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to create similarly economical skintones using Body Shop exports and SimPE. I assume this involves more than simply deleting unwanted textures from the package and would welcome any pointers as to the method involved.

Thanks
Nina

[ugly_duck]

I'll post a quote by HystericalParoxysm that's very useful:

This really isn't something that's documented in a tutorial format. If you search the Body Shop Skinning section (advanced search) for posts by me, containing the words "default replace" there's some info on it, but it really wouldn't get you into doing stuff quite like this. Best thing to do is look at some mods similar to what you want to make and get an idea of what they're doing and how they're put together, and then experiment with doing the same kind of thing on your own. Just as a hint, this uses (mostly) material definitions to point the good and evil witch skins to the neutral skin textures, instead of their defaults. I extracted the material definitions (TXMTs) for both skins from the game files by searching for their names (took a while to work out which were the right ones), added them to a new file, and then replaced the stdMatBaseTextureName line with the neutral witch skintone name instead.

Yep, that's exactly how it works. Rather than replacing the actual textures with new, blank ones, I just pointed it in the material definitions to the already-existing blank ones for neutral witches. Keeps the files nice and small. As an aside, the same technique can be used for almost anything - if you, say, age-convert an outfit from teen to adult, you can point the adult recolours at the teen textures, saving space. Or if you make a celebrity skin that only changes the face from an existing skin, you can point all the body textures to the existing skin, and just leave the face textures in your celebrity skin recolour file. My Idolatry of Flesh skins use a similar technique for the defaults - they point to the textures of the non-defaults, making for much smaller default packages that require the non-defaults to work.

What he did, was pointing all the material definitions to the same texture, then he deleted all those unwanted textures of another ages and weights.

[nina]

Mmm... material definitions, eh. Mmmm... well...

I'll have to do a little experimentation... actually, I play on a Mac and have to ferry files back and forth between that and my partner's VAIO in order to use SimPE, and her VAIO is a Jap operating system to further complicate matters. It's a bit of a nightmare and means I am not as familiar with SimPE as I would be if it resided on the sanity of my Mac, though I am probably more familiar with SimPE than I am with Windows in any language.

Anyway, thanks for the pointer, and if you can add anything else that might further simplify matters, I would be most grateful.

Nina XXX

[Mickey57]

I do this all the time when creating skin tones for myself from other people's work.  For instance, I love hairy sim guys, but sometimes people only make the adult sim hairy and then leave the elder and teen sims barbie style. In bodyshop, I simply export the skintone that I want to take the hairy body from and give it a new name.  Then I copy the adult male parts of the tone into two separate folders, one labeled teen and one labeled elder.  Then I take the items under teen and rename them as the teen parts of the skin tone are named and I do the same for the elder.  Then I copy them back into place and import the file back into the game.  You can also do the same for the female parts of the sims body and the outcome is you have a skin tone that has the same appearance from teen to elder it sounds hard, but I can do it in less than 30 minutes, a little longer if I tweak things like the face to match.   


I think I misunderstood the original question.  What  you would do in the case of the beos tones is to export the beos tone from bodyshop.  After that, export the tone that has the body that you wish to use for the teen - adult (but in the more economical package).  Then copy the artwork for the adult male and female from the second tone onto the beos artwork and simply paste the body type you want over his artwork.  Of course, leaving out the parts that beos tone excluded.  You will then reimport the beos tone with whatever name it is you wish to use for it.  Basically all you will be doing is overwriting the beos tone and renaming it to suit your new skin tone.  If you need help, feel free to pm me and I will be happy to maybe get on messenger and walk you through it. 

[BlooM]

However....
You can only link those textures to teen throug elder if the bodyshapes attached to those skintone files share also the same mesh or are build similar.
For instance a adult Maxis female skin texture will not fit a elder Maxis female and vice versa.

You do need Simpe to relink the text's(texture files) to the txmt's(material definations), not hard if you know how all the linking is done.


edit,
lol, makes 2 of us mickey


If you simply want to convert skintone textures to another shape(or vice versa) with bodyshop you just have to give the texure file for teen/adult and elder the same texture.
Bodyshop will reconize identical files and will use just one the moment you compress all files together in the game package.

[nina]

Edit: I eat my hat... Bloom was absolutely right about Body Shop minimising identical textures. Using a previously edited package as a base, I just managed to create a fully functioning skintone of just 8 texture files! So, question answered... thanks a million!
 2thumb

I should point out that I use the current crop of Warlokk/Bloom body shape meshes exclusively, so any textures I make will be linked to a specific top/bottom combination and based mainly on packages by Beos.

Elderly Sims are not permitted in my neighbourhoods, and those that the game throws up will simply carry a custom default skintone... until I drop a satellite on their heads! I use my own ageing system in the game... when I decide a Sim ought to start looking older I'll either give them a wrinkly face mask or edit the textures in their skintone, if it isn't in use by another Sim. In all other respects, they will NEVER get old... just like me.

Of course, I have replaced ALL the textures in every single Beos package that apply to the body shapes I use in the game, and more recently Szielin's XHi JW/ILJ series too, so with both the Christianlove and Szielin custom skintone changers I have a great deal of flexibility in changing the way existing female Sims look as I develop them from young teens to older adults. It's a lot of work but it beats actually playing this stupid game.

Thus far, for any skintones I've made in Body Shop, I have only replaced the female teen and adult, and baby textures in SimPE, happy to leave all the rest as a pixelated mess as they'll never be used. But it does seem rather a waste of space, especially since most of these skintones are intended for single characters... tattoos, whip scars, bite marks, warts and all. For this reason, the Beos minimal package format would be very suitable for my needs.

I'm going to try Bloom's idea (love the alpha meshes, by the way... and the sexy feet!) and see if Body Shop will actually recognise identical files and minimise them on compressing, though I must say I'm sceptical... I mean surely it will only recognise body textures by title as nude, cut and soft rather than by the actual image they contain.

But somebody is going to have to explain to me what "re-link the text's(texture files) to the txmt's(material definitions)" means; apparently it's "not hard if you know how all the linking is done" - I'd hazard a guess there's a tutorial on the subject somewhere... any ideas?

Anyway, thank you all for your suggestions... I'm thoroughly confused.

Nina XXX

[ugly_duck]

Bloom, I didn't know that Bodyshop work that way. My little experience with default replacements, made me wrongly presume that everything worked that way. Until now, I've never known why a hair with so many groups had only one texture file. It makes so much sense now. Thanks a lot!

Nina, I'm sorry, I've failed to answer you. Guess I didn't understand your question at all. But, I can show you how to link a texture file to the material definition. Well, at least, the way I do. If there's something I'm doing wrong, I'd like to know, please.

I'm using a skintone as a model. Let's say I want to link the adult female with normal body to another texture. I'll screenshot it, its easier to understand.



That value is the texture file name (or whatever it is). Changing that value, will change which texture is linked to that material definition.

In "Texture Image" select which texture you want to be linked. Like this:



Don't copy the "_txtr" part. Then, go back to the material definition, and replace the previous value to the new one you've just copied. Commit and save. Only delete the extra textures, after making sure no other material definition is linked to it.

You can link to a texture that's not in the same package as well.

Not really good with words, hope you can understand it. If not, here is a much better written tutorial:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=222953

[nina]

Thanks, Ugly_Duck... this is all interesting stuff to know, whether I use it or not. I'm just pleased for now that I've learned how to create a minimal skintone.