Difference between revisions of "Tutorials:CAS Creation From Start-To-Finish - Glossary"

Revision as of 13:05, 20 January 2012

alpha channel ambient anti-aliasing autosmooth Blender 3D bone assignments bones bump map CAS CAS Part caspart channel clipping cloning commit compression contiguous CTU DDS design export face geom GIMP imaging program import joints key lod mask material mesh meshing Milkshape 3D multiplier normal map overlay package Paint.NET parameter part mask Photoshop plugin png polygon RGB mask RGB value repository scale specular stencil S3PE texture texture linking texturing TGI thumbnail UV map vertex wireframe XML

AS Parts A .caspart file itself can be thought of as a "placeholder" in Create-A-Sim. By linking meshes, textures and other details to the .caspart, you create what is commonly know as a CAS Part. CAS Parts are what a the game actually displays on the sim (i.e. shirts, shoes, watches, etc); this includes the mesh, shape, color, lighting, transparency or anything else that affects the look of the design. [edit]DDS Files A DDS file is a type of raster image, commonly used by many games, including both Sims 2 and Sims 3. DDS files can be saved in a variety of formats, both compressed and uncompressed. You will need to save your textures in DDS format for use in the CTU.

Image Editor Your everyday run of the mill image editor like MS Paint or Paintbrush will not suffice for TS3 skinning. Instead you'll need a program that at least has these basic features: RGB Mode Channel View Layers Image Adjusters (i.e. desaturate, colorize, etc.) Most people use Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. However, there are free alternatives like GIMP or Paint.NET.

Plugin Many imaging programs do not initially know how to save/handle DDS files, so you'll have to install a plugin for them. Here are two of the most common ones. Photoshop GIMP [edit]Packages The CTU saves your finished creations as .packages, similar to what was used with The Sims 2.

For help with installing .packages, see Installing Sims 3 Package Files

Parameters To help quicken the search for a mesh, you can dial up the type of mesh you wish to use by setting the age/gender/type parameters. [edit]Mesh Once you set the parameters, you can either pick the mesh you want to use from the drop-down list or you can select it using the Quick Find box by clicking on the thumbnail.

Bump Maps Additionally bump maps may be found under the Meshes tab. To extract, click on the appropriate TGI link then hit the find button. When the DDS preview window comes up, click the export button at the bottom right corner of the screen.

[edit]Textures The easiest way to extract textures is to use the "Extract Textures" button in the Find a CAS tab. However this will give you all the game textures linked to that mesh.