Difference between revisions of "Tutorials:Body Shop Recolouring Tutorials"

Revision as of 22:23, 8 February 2007

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Introduction So just what is all this crazy Body Shop stuff about? Frequently Asked Questions Err, what now? Clothing Learn how to make pretty dresses. Hair How to dye your sim's hair green. Eyes Give your sim that come-hither stare.

Eyebrows and Eyelashes Scowly brows, lovely lashes, and grizzly facial hair. Like a bear. Makeup Slap some lipstick on that ugly sim! Piercings ... And then stick some metal in 'em! Skintones and Simming Want to make a sim that looks like someone, or make lovely skintones? Body Shop Modding All the nuts and bolts - everything Body Shop related that isn't skinning or meshing.

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Hair Tutorials

Creating realistic hair textures can be extremely challenging. There are a lot of different techniques you use. Which one(s) you choose depends on your project, your expected outcome, and your level of skill.

• Tutorials: Hair Recoloring Tutorial - Teaches how to recolour and manipulate Maxis texture to make new hair textures. This is the easiest technique, and this tutorial is written specifically for The Sims 2.

• There's some discussion on how to use Photoshop to create hair textures in this thread. The discussion starts at post #25 and continues on for a few posts. This little tutorial with pictures is basically showing the same thing, without the Clouds step, which adds all kinds of lovely waves.

• Painting Hair in Photoshop - This isn't a sim tutorial, but one on handpainting realistic hair textures in Photoshop. You'll need a graphics tablet to handpaint hair, but it's the best way to create completely original hair that looks truly realistic.

• Enayla, also known as famed fantasy artist Linda Bergkvist, has some tips on her method of painting hair at her site, Furiae. Click on Gallery, Tutorials, Painting Hair to get to it.

• Here's another tutorial on deviantART on handpainting hair textures...

• Another good tutorial, this one specifically relating to texturing hair for low-poly hair models. It also looks like a simpler handpainting technique that someone might actually be able to do with a mouse, for straight, simple styles.

• Another handpainting tutorial that uses a 3d model similar to sims. In this one you can see how the part, bangs, highlights and shadows work on the flat graphic and then wrap on the 3D mesh.

Eye Tutorials

Tutorials: Custom Eye Colours Using Photoshop (Beyond Just Recolouring) - A fairly simple but neat technique for making eye textures in Photoshop.

For a considerably more complex tutorial on doing so (that will probably teach you a lot more about Photoshop along the way too, try Iris Texture Map Tutorial. Make sure to do that one exactly as it's written the first time, with the suggested colours, or it just won't work.

Enayla also has a tutoral on how to paint eyes (using a graphics tablet) at her site, Furiae. It's in the Gallery section, under Tutorials, Painting an Eye.

If you are creating eyes, consider using Knightskykyte's sclera PSD - she has created a layer-separated image that you can use to create a very realistic shading to your eye - just pop in your iris and highlight and you're done!

Eyebrow/Eyelash Tutorials

Though there aren't any tutorials specifically on making eyebrows, this thread explains exactly how you can make new eyebrows using source pictures: Tutorials on Creating Eyebrows - Solved :). This thread explains a little bit more eyelash-specific: Eyelashes?.

Makeup Tutorials

All Body Shop projects follow the same basic rules: you use your texture as "paint" and your alpha tells it how much of that "paint" to apply in those areas.

Makeup, like skins, are some of the hardest Body Shop projects to make, simply because there is no one way to do them. It's just a matter of messing with things till you get something you like. The closest tutorial is Tutorials: How to Make a Sim's Face Using Source Pics - makeup from source pictures is made in much the same way, just on a smaller scale - one feature rather than the entire face.

Go through that, see if it makes sense, and then just start playing. Experiment. It will likely take you a long time to get something that looks pretty good, but that is part of the learning experience. If you want to accomplish something specific, like, say, a semi-transparent lip gloss, examine existing makeup that accomplishes that well. Look at other custom content items by other creators: make an actual project of them so you can see how their alpha and texture interact to create the effect that you like, then try to reproduce it.

Again, it's not easy or quick, but if you're persistent, patient, and willing to just spend a lot of time experimenting and playing with it, you'll likely stumble upon something that looks good to you.

Piercings Tutorials

Again, for piercings, there's no full tutorial, and much like makeup, they're mostly a matter of trial and error, looking at photos, and looking at existing sim items that you like the look of. However, there are some good tips on creating piercings in this thread.

Skintone/Simming Tutorials

Skintones are one of the hardest things to recolour, with many textures and requiring a lot of time and effort to do anything but recolouring an existing skintone. If you want to photoskin a skintone, the technique in How to Make a Sim's Face Using Source Pics explains how to pull apart a texture to apply pieces of it to a face. The exact same technique is used, just over and over on the whole body, to create a photoskinned skintone.

• Tutorials: How to Make a Sim's Face Using Source Pics - Explains how to sculpt a sim's face in Body Shop, and how to do custom texturing for that face.

• Tutorials: Realistic Faces for Skins - Similar to the above, using a different technique. Google translated from German.

• Tutorials: Making a New Skintone for Beginners - Explains how skintones differ from other Body Shop projects, what all the images are for, and includes a lot of tips on working on skintones. Doesn't cover specific editing techniques, but that's more a matter of skills you'll have learned before you get to skintones.

• Tutorials: How to Adapt Skintones and Clothing to Custom Meshes

• Want to paint skins like Enayla? Check out her article, Thoughts on Skintones, at her site Furiae. You'll find it under Gallery - Tutorials there. She's been drawing amazing fantasy art for years now, though, and you'll need a graphics tablet to truly do it well, but there ya go.

• There's also some tips on creating new skin textures, and painting skins in this thread.

Where to get textures for skintones:

• 3d.sk - By far the best, this site offers thousands of high-resolution photos of all sorts of people, in various states of undress (so yes, there is non-sexual artistic nudity there, you are warned). You do have to pay for a membership, but the prices are incredibly reasonable, the service is great, and the quality and range of pics is just not available elsewhere at any price. If you're serious about creating an all-new photoskinned skintone, pick up a month or two of membership here.

• Skins.be - Celebrity and model wallpapers, mostly female. Can be useful here and there.

• Fashion Spot - This particular post on the Fashion Spot forums links lots of great, high-res pics of female model faces, with and without makeup. And in general, there are tons of pics threads on there, of specific models and celebrities, types of makeup, and just about anything you can imagine. It can be a lot of fun to explore.

• Backgrounds Archive - Check out the celebrities sections, male and female, and people. Lots of nice, big pics that may be useful in skinning.

Body Shop Modding Tutorials

These are tutorials on how to modify Body Shop content in certain ways - they're not exactly recolouring, but not meshing either.

Tutorials: Changing the Hair Used with a Hat

Tutorials: Changing Makeup Layering and Wearability

Tutorials: Converting Clothes to Different Age Groups

Tutorials: Converting Clothes to Different Genders

Tutorials: Correct Footstep Noises on Skins

Tutorials: Creating Default Skin Replacements - Simplified Method

Tutorials: Default Skin Replacement Tutorial

Tutorials: Give Your Elders an Easy Hair Dye

Tutorials: How to Add Bump Maps to Skins

Tutorials: How do you change the lens colour of glasses?

Tutorials: How to Bin Hair Recolours with SimPE

Tutorials: How to Remove Unwanted Hair Ages

Tutorials: Making Eyes Townie-Friendly