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Skinning
Tutorial
*First Off let me say You Will Not Need To Know Shading For This Tutorial!*
Now that that's out of the way lets get down to business first here are some
things you will need for this Tutorial:
-PSP or a similar Program with the same accessibility (This is written using
PSP7 but will probably be able to be translated to other programs.)But you must
know windows paint just wont cut it,You need a multifunctional/layering program.
-A computer (Lol Duh!)
-Patients (Everything wont be this quality Right away you'll need practice.This
is no longer how I usually do skins but was how I started and is very simple
for newbies and then you'll learn more so take your time and practice I promise
If you do you will get better!)
-The Base Nude skins for the sims (they can be found around several sites also
I find it easiest to just extract them from the Far files)
-At this point a basic knowledge of how skinning works and some basic naming
parts (I will help you out with this too but its nice to know. I do plan on
doing a Tutorial on both sooner or later too).
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Ok lets get started!
1. Forget anything you have seen before about skinning tutorials. They are all
great and in there own right very helpful except to me. I could never grasp
the shading aspect and there for my skins all looked hideous. I mean this is
the results I would get following them.
Absolutely Ugly! Now here's my method,Much prettier plus it looks much better.
As you can see that was about a 5 second skin but I mean the difference between
the 2 is obvious. I mean no matter how hard I tried I could never get the good
look all the tutorials showed me should happen. So I finally decided I'm gonna
do this my way and figure it out for myself I mean it cant be that hard can
it?
2.Ok lets start. First open up the female nude skin.
3.Now lets make sure this image is in 16 million colors form or else you will
be extremely limited as to what you can do with the image
4.Now we need to use the FreeHand (Or Selection) Tool 
To
select the area that we want to make the outfit on.
I Have selected a very simple area that will make a belly shirt with sleeves.
5.Next thing you will need to do is to cut this from the image. (I recommend
copying it but if your a newby cut it because you will have to reinsert it back
into place on a new layer and I even now still find it hard to replace it perfectly,
either the part comes out up to high or too low. Where-as when you cut it it
leaves a white spot so its error proof).
(The screen that is shown comes up by right clicking on the tool bar of the
image)
6.Now lets paste the new layer. Right click on the tool bar again on the image
and select Paste As New Layer.
7.Line it up so it looks as though you haven't done a thing to the image.Now
its time to color it! (Ok I admit steps 5 & 6 are not needed but with them
you will learn a thing or 2 about layering and heck if I can teach you that
over anything it'll be the most beneficial. So sorry if you didn't like those
steps but you know I couldn't make a skinning tutorial with teaching you that
;-)
8.Now go up to the menu bar. Select Color>Adjust>Hue/Saturation/Lightness...
You will get this screen asking you to choose the lightness,hue and saturation.
As you can see I chose a lovely sky blue for my outfit but you can choose any
color you would like!
9.After you hit ok you will see that your skin is now changed in the color that
you chose (yay you've made it this far!). But what is this it doesn't look like
I said it would? Well here's the easiest part that gives you all the shading
you need without the ugly results other tutorials give.
10.Now go up to the menu bar again and select effects>Blur>Gaussian Blur...
Here's the screen you will get I recommend you only use a blur of 4.50 to 5.50.
And there you go! All the shading is done, The features are easily recognizable
and it has a professional look!
11.Now do the rest of the body the way you want .I am choosing to do it on a
certain mesh so you must keep in mind how to make the image.But don't be intimidated
just do it step by step and you will find it gets easier as time goes on.
12. Ok
now here is my end result (don't expect ours to look alike but trust me that's
a good thing because you get to let you imagination go!)
Before we go any further I just want you to notice how the shading came out.Not to blurry so you cant see the features yet at the same time not to clear so it looks as though we just recolored the nude body.This is the key to good skinning as well as the biggest part that this tutorial emphasizes.
13. Ok we've made it this far its time to wrap things up. Now We need to change the image back into 256 Colors (8 bit). Do this by going to Colors>Decrease Color Depth>256 Colors. (You must do this or else in the game it will show up as white on the mesh and may cause the game to crash).
14. You will then get 2 menus.
Select yes this is just merging all the layers together.
Make sure your second screen is like this as well or the color information will get messed up.
15. Ok now time to save it! For those who don't know I will explain how to name skins (for more advanced users skip this step).
B431FaFitLgt_SimLair_Skinning_Tutorial
B= Body
431 = Mesh # (Very Important that you match this up with the mesh you want the skin to go on!)
Fa = Female Adult (Ma = Male Adult, Mc = Male Child, Fc = Female Child) Place the appropriate lettering on the appropriate skin.
Fit = Fit Body Type (Fat = Fat Body Type, Skn = Skinny Body Type)
Lgt = Light Skin Tone (Med = Medium Skin Tone,Drk = Dark Skin Tone)
_SimLair_Skinning_Tutorial =This is what I called my skin but this can be put any way you'd like but make sure there is an _ Underscore before you write or else the skin wont work.
You'll want to save it to (By default installation) C:\ProgramFiles\Maxis\TheSims\GameData\Skins\
16.Now its time to admire your skin in a skin viewing program (I use Simpose to view my skins).
Now looking at it I would have choose a different color but still she looks pretty good. But don't think your bound to this tutorial like i said be creative and let your imagination go wild. Here's an example of how different you can make 2 skins.
This Skin was made the exact same way but has a whole different look!
*Well this is the end of the tutorial but not the end of your fun. I wish every one who reads this tutorial the best of luck in your skinning career. It is something I find great pleasure in and I hope You will too!*
Written By Doug
Copy write SimLair 2002