pinketamine

I have moved to Dreamwidth. I deleted everything here because of bandwith.

From now on, you can vesit me at Green Drugs Box

As in my normal default skin creating, we will create all the skintones from an already existing replacement, mainly because it is much easier.
Well, first of all, here is a list of the creatures that have came with The Sims 2 and all the EPs. Not all creatures have skitones, some of them have simply overlays that act like full body make up, covering the original skintone. As my normal skins tutorial already covers how to do default skin, in this one, I will only explain how to make the overlays.

Aliens --- Basegame
Zombies --- University
Vampires --- Nightlife
Servo (Open for bussines) We can’t edit the skin (because they don’t have xD), so we will not talk about this in the tutorial.
Werewolves/Lycans --- Pets
Plantsims --- Seasons
Bigfoot/Yeti (Bon Voyage) --- He is actually wearing bigfoot clothes and a face mask.
Genie --- Hobbies
Good witches and warlocks --- Apartment Life
Neutral witches and warlocks (Apartment Life). They do not have any ovelay so… they will simply have their normal skintone.
Bad witches and warlocks --- Apartment Life
I don’t want you to lose your time searching default skins, so you can click the link of the supernatural and you will go to the download page.

SKINTONES VS. OVERLAYS
Not all creatures have skintones, some of them have simply overlays that act like full body make up, covering the original skintone. As my normal skins tutorial already covers how to do default skin, in this one, I will only explain how to make the overlays.

SKINTONES
These skins work the same way as normal skins do. As I do not want to make this tutorial too long, go to the normal skins tutorial and follow those steps, using the skin you have downloaded.

• Alien
  
• Zombie
  
• Werewolf
  
• Plantsim (plantsims have two skins: the green one and the wilt one. These are independent files, so you can edit just one of them or both)
  
• Genie
  

OVERLAYS: HOW TO CREATE DEFAULT SKINS THAT USE OVERLAYS
Vampires and witches skins are really overlays that cover their skin. For this reason, the way to create default replacement for them is a bit different than the way to create normal skins.
Vampire skins, good witches/warlocks skins and bad witches/warlocks skins work exactly the same way. Both three are only for teen and up and both three are semi-transparent. In this tutorial I have followed the example of a vampire skin, but you can use it for BOTH three, as they work the same way.

STEP ONE

• Export the textures of the skin you want to use as overlay. You can do this in Bodyshop.
  
• Only teen sims or older can be vampires, and they only have one body texture for each age and gender (only one AF body texture, for example). Delete all unuseful textures. As it is an overlay, go as simple as you can, I recommend you to work with: tf-af body, ef body, tm-em body, unisex hair, one face for everyone. This way you will only have 5 textures to work with.
  
• Open the textures in Photoshop, GIMP, etc. You have to make them transparent. Make sure they act as a layer. In photoshop you just have to double-click the background layer and you will have a menu for it to act like a normal layer.
  
• Give it the opacity you want.
  
• You can use the textures you have as a simple guide to add only some details, this way you can make your vampires have their normal skintone but with eyebangs, veins, etc. If you want to do this, remove the face/body layer and save the overlay layer you have created for them.
  

NOTE: Do you want your vampires to have the eyes they had before turning into vampires? Turn the part where eyes are into transparent, totally transparent. You can too make it semitransparent if you want some kind of color overlay or something like that. Feel free to make your own experiments.

STEP TWO

• Open the vampire skin you have downloaded in SimPe.
  
• Click one of the textures and look at it in the Plugin view. You see? It is semi-transparent, your overlay should look like this too!
  
• Import your textures. To do this, right-click on the texture preview and click Build DXT.
  
  
• You will get a menu, DON’T change anything.
  
• When it is built, click commit.
  
• Do this with all the textures.
  
• Go to File—Save as… and save it somewhere with a descriptive name.
  

STEP THREE: Want to reduce file size? Sure you do!
Delete these textures in Simpe (right-click and delete, they will appear labeled): amfacevampire-pale, effacevampire-pale, emfacevampire-pale, tmfacevampire-pale; embodyvampire-pale, tmbodyvampire-pale; tfbodyvampire-pale; ufhairbaldvampire-pale.
Save. You will now have 7 textures, you do not need more.
Now you have to link each texture to the correct base texture.
I will explain this with an example

• I want teen-elders to pick the textures from “affacevampire_pale_txtr”, the only texture I leaved for all of them.
  
• On the Material Definition list I search the “affacevampire_pale_txtr” name. In the Plugin view, click the Categorized Properties tab, scroll down until you see Default Textures, and search for “stdMatBaseTextureName”.
  
• You will see it is named “affacevampire_pale_txtr”. Press commit, the color of the letter will change.
  
• Look now for the AM, EF, EM, TF and TM faces. In the Plugin view, click the Categorized Properties tab, scroll down until you see Default Textures, and search for “stdMatBaseTextureName”. Replace the name you find there with “affacevampire_pale_txtr”, this way those faces will pick the texture from the adult female face texture. Don’t forget to press commit.
  
• Elder females will have their own body textures, adult males and females too. Teen females pick the texture from the adult females body. Teen an elder males pick the textures from the adult male texture.
  

Now we have to compress the textures. This does not generate pixelation, and makes the file size smaller, which is something good for space saving.

• In the textures menu, go from Plugin view to Resource.
  
• You will see that it says Compressed. They default option is no, scroll down to yes and click “force commit”.
  
• Save your package file.
  

You have finished your vampire replacement.
Witches and warlocks skins use this same method.

This is a long tutorial, read it carefully, if you have any doubt (even a really small one) feel free to ask. Creating default skins is technically easy, but it can be a pretty tedious and time consuming project.
If you get bored easily... don't continue reading xD.

Before starting, you will need:
The Bodyshop.
SimPe
An already done default skin. You can simply download it from MTS

Things that you will learn
How to make normal default skintones (from a template).
How to avoid pixelation on default skins.
How to reduce file size so this skins are not big as hell (default skins tend to be 30mb big if you do not reduce their file size).

Things that I assume you already know
Basic bodyshop usage.

PART ONE: Extract skin textures
Some creators are pretty generous and simply share their textures, so creators can access to them easily.
Anyway, this is not exactly the most common thing. Usually you will have to export the textures.
For doing this, simply open Bodyshop--Create a new project--Skin.
Look for the skin you want to make into default, export it and put a descriptive name (example: default-s3).
I usually simply close the project and extract the other three tones.
You should finish having 4 new projects in you projects folder (My documents/EA Games/The sims 2/Projects).
When you are done extracting the four tones textures, simply close Bodyshop.

PART TWO: Delete unuseful textures
When you extract a skin, you get a total of 40 textures, plus the swatch and the package. You will not use all of them.
Observe carefully all the textures and see which of them you can delete. I recommend you to do 3 separate folders inside the folder you have the skins in, this folders can be: hair, faces and bodies.
You will always get only one hair texture (hair textures are those plain colored squares).
The most common amount of faces is three or four: baby, toddler and children-elder; sometimes elders have their own face, because of different age marks like wrinkles.
In the bodies there are different possibilities, but they ALWAYS follow this scheme:

• Baby unisex body
  
• Toddler unisex body
  
• Children unisex body
  
• TF-AF bodies. You can just have from one to three, depending on how different are the fit/normal/fat states.
  
• EF bodies. You cannot use the adult textures for elders, because their body is different and the breast shape changes. You can just have from one to three, depending on how different are the fit/normal/fat states.
  
• TM-EM bodies. You can just have from one to three, depending on how different are the fit/normal/fat states.
  

I recommend you to write somewhere will textures will you use, it can be very helpful later.

PART THREE: Making the default skin
There are different ways of doing this. Some people import all the textures on the skin template and LATER reduce the file size. This is a correct way to do it, and it can be considered (somehow) easier, but it is way longer. The first time I discovered how to reduce file size I hadn’t read any tutorial, so I figured out how to do it and I could, but I followed the long way, and I want to teach you the shorter one, which works well too and will save you some time.

STEP ONE:
Open the default skin you want to edit in SimPe.

When it is opened, your Resource Tree should look like this.

Click on Texture Image (TXTR), you will see the 33 textures.
As you have deleted unuseful textures in the previous part, you already know how many textures you will actually use.
Right click and delete the textures you will not use. When you have deleted them, they will appear overlined.

When you are done deleting, go to File—Save as… and save it somewhere, putting a descriptive name.

STEP TWO: This is the most dificult step. You really need to pay attention.
Go to the Material Definition (TXMT) tab on the Resource tree. You will find 78 files.

I will explain this step with a descriptive example.
I have three face textures in the skin I’m making (baby for both genders, toddler for both genders, and children-elder for both genders).

• Babies and toddlers will have their own face and body textures. Look for them in the Material Definition list. When you have found them, just press Commit (in Plugin view), this way you know you already don’t need to touch anything else on those. Commit ONLY face and body textures, don't touch anything else... by the moment.
  
• I want children-elders to pick the textures from “afface-s4_txtr”, the only texture I leaved for all of them.
  
• On the Material Definition list I search the “afface-s4_txtr” name. In the Plugin view, click the Categorized Properties tab, scroll down until you see Default Textures, and search for “stdMatBaseTextureName”.
  
• You will see it is named “afface-s4”. Press commit, the color of the letter will change.
  
• Look now for the AM, CU, EF, EM, TF and TM faces. In the Plugin view, click the Categorized Properties tab, scroll down until you see Default Textures, and search for “stdMatBaseTextureName”. Replace the name you find there with “afface-s4_txtr”, this way those faces will pick the texture from the adult female face texture. Don’t forget to press commit!
  

You simply have to do the same with all the other textures, remember that you will have:

• Baby face
  
• Baby body
  
• Toddler face (it can be the same than the baby one sometimes)
  
• Toddler body
  
• Children – Elder, for both genders, face.
  
• Sometimes children faces are different, mainly there are teeth differences sometimes.
  
• Elder face if there is any noticeable difference like agemarks.
  
• ONE hair texture.
  
• TF-AF body (you can have 1-3, depending on the differences that the fit/normal/fat states have)
  
• EF body (1-3)
  
• TM-EM body (1-3)
  

NOTE: In SimPe, fit state is named “cut” and fat state is named “soft”. In SimPe each age (for teen and up) has 9 body textures: three for normal (body, top, bottom), three for fit, and three for fat. You have to modify ALL of them.


STEP THREE:
Go again to Textures (TXTR). You now have to import the new textures. To do this, don’t click import, it generates pixelation. What you have to do is right-click on the image and choose Build DXT.

You will get a menu, open the image you want and don’t change any of the settings. Then click Build.

When the DXT is built, you have to press commit. Do this with all the textures.

STEP FOUR:
Now we have to compress the textures. This does not generate pixelation, and makes the file size smaller, which is something good for space saving.
In the textures menu, go from Plugin view to Resource.
You will see that it says Compressed. They default option is no, scroll down to yes and click “force commit”.

When you have done this to all the textures you have, you can save you package.


Now, it is ready to share.