Tutorials:Body Shop Recolouring Tutorials

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Introduction

Want to create beautiful clothings, fun makeup, interesting hair, and stunning skintones? This is the place to start, with all sorts of tutorials to teach you every aspect of recolouring Body Shop content.

Where do I start?

If you would like to start making Body Shop content, the place to begin is with clothing. Clothing will teach you the basic techniques involved in all Body Shop projects: textures, alphas, and bump maps, and how they apply to meshes. From there, you can branch out to hair, eyes, or makeup, and if you get really comfortable and experienced working with textures, you may even want to try skintones.

What will I need?

For most of these techniques, you'll use Body Shop and a Graphics Editor. If you need anything else, the individual tutorial will tell you what will be required.

Frequently Asked Questions (Read the FAQ!)

• Body Shop is not working! Body Shop does not work as it should!

For all issues relating to the technical operation and/or misbehaving of Body Shop, please see this FAQ. If you're still having trouble you can post a question detailing your problem in this forum.

• How do you separate a full outfit into a top and bottom, or combine a top and bottom into a full outfit?

You can't take a full body and chop it in half in any way that doesn't require making a new mesh (nor can you combine two separates into a full-body mesh without making a new mesh)... And meshing is certainly much more difficult and complicated than recolouring clothing.

If you want an existing outfit in separate parts without making a new mesh, you'll can find existing top and bottom separate meshes that are similar in shape, design, and dimensions to your original full body mesh. Then, make new projects of those separates, and then copy over the top texture and the bottom textures from your existing full-body outfit separately. You will probably have to do some work to get the old textures to fit right on the new meshes, as meshes often vary in the way they map a texture to the 3d shape, but as long as neither mesh has any particularly exotic mapping, it should be doable with some time, care, effort, and a lot of reloads of the textures in Body Shop to check your work. The same thing, just reversed, will work for trying to convert a full body clothing into separates - copy textures from the full body onto projects for separates, then adjust. If you're still unclear on the way meshes and textures work and the limitations of meshes, try reading Tutorials: Skinning from the Inside Out.

• How do I make makeup/tattoos/texturing for the body?

Currently, there are only two known ways of doing this. The first is to create it as a skin-tight clothing - this will make it removable at will. Take a look at some clothings that have makeup built-in (there are several from University, as well as one blue adult female halter top from the base game with a back tattoo).

The second is to create it as a skintone, editing the age(s) and gender(s) you wish the texturing to work for. You cannot easily switch between skintones, and tattoos and texturing will then work genetically.

There is not currently any known way to create easily-removable/switchable makeup for the body in any other way than clothing. Makeup that shows up under blush, lipstick, full-face makeup, etc., has no known way of modding it to work for the full body, and there's no good way for it to work as accessories, either. Nor is there any known way of modding the overlay skintone used for vampires to work for it. If and when information on how to do so is discovered, links will be posted here.

• How do I make shiny clothing/skin/hair?

There's some discussion on how to do that here in this thread, including on how to get an actual shine to items - but make sure you read the whole thread to truly understand how to do shiny textures, and the limitations of the modding method described there.

For further tips on shiny stuff, see threads on:

• Shiny white latex/PVC
• Shiny patent leather
• Making glitter

Clothing Tutorials

If you've never created any Body Shop content before, you should start with clothing. There are two main sets of tutorials that will help you begin creating clothing. If you are using the GIMP, a free graphics editor, you should use the Gimp tutorials. If you are using Photoshop or other higher-end graphics editors, you should be able to follow Faylen's series of skinning tutorials.

Whenever you first do a tutorial, you should do the exact same project they show you, exactly as they tell you to do it. This way you can be sure you're doing your first project correctly. When you finish each tutorial, experiment with the techniques you have learned, trying something similar, a project of your own, before moving on to the next tutorial.

Faylen's Skinning Tutorials

If you are using Photoshop or another graphics editor, you can probably follow these tutorials fairly well to figure out how to make new clothing recolours. If you are confused about what tool to use if you are using a different program, try your editor's help file.

Tutorials: Faylen's Skinning Tutorial 1 - Basic Clothing Recolour

Tutorials: Faylen's Skinning Tutorial 2 - Selective Recolour, Adding a Simple Texture

Tutorials: Faylen's Skinning Tutorial 3 - Adding Textures

Tutorials: Faylen's Skinning Tutorial 4 - Working Around the Mesh

Tutorials: How to Add Shadows and Highlights

Vashti's Gimp Tutorials

Vashti's tutorials are great for beginners, and give a lot of information on using the GIMP.

Tutorials: Basic Clothing Recolour using The Gimp

Tutorials: Gimp Clothing Tutorial 2 - Using a New Texture

Tutorials: Gimp Clothing Tutorial 3 - Changing the Alpha

Other Basic Tutorials

These tutorials are also beginners, designed to introduce them to creating clothing.

Tutorials: Modding with Paint.NET

Toolbox Tutorials

These tutorials relate to clothing, but are specific techniques, tools, and tips helpful to beginners and more experienced skinners alike, for trying something specific.

Tutorials: How to Adapt Skintones and Clothing to Custom Meshes

Tutorials: Beyond Photoskinning: Transformation and Displacement Mapping in Photoshop

Tutorials: Creating Textures from Images

Tutorials: Exporting UV Maps for Better Clothing Recolours

Tutorials: Skinning from the Inside Out

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: How to Add Bump Maps to Skins