Putting decals on shirts (or how to use my PSD's to make shirts) for Sims 3.

For Simblreen I gave out Sims 4 shirts but included the PSD so that you could 

1) Add it to any shirt you wanted or

2) Put them on Sims 3 shirts.

Here's how to do that. I'll split this tutorial up into two parts, Sims 3 and Sims 4. 

Sims 3

Today we'll be doing this with TSRW as it let's you preview, which is important for beginners. Warning: TSRW is a fickle bitch and can make you want to punch babies sometimes!

You'll need:

TSRW

Graphics editing program

Photoshop DDS plugin (dunno where to find the gimp one, you'll have to search it up)

Install TSRW and open it up. Wait for it to load, it takes a bit. 

Optional: Go to edit > preferences and make sure your expansions are all set right.

Click create new project > clothing and wait for it to load.

Then, the + beside human, then whatever age you want, then gender, then double-click everyday (if that's the category you're looking to get the top or whatnot from)

Find the shirt you want and click it, then click next. Tip: If you type aftop in the bar at the bottom, you can sort through a lot of junk easier.

Name your project and put a title:

Click next, then okay.

This screen! Okay, wait for it to load and then click the texture tab. Scroll down til you find "stencils" and hit the +

Here you have stencil A, B, etc.

If your shirt has a stencil on it right now, click the + beside the stencils until you find one that says "enabled" and "true" beside it. We'll use this.

If your shit doesn't have a stencil on it right now, click "stencil A" and beside enabled hit "false" and change it to "true"

Now scroll up and find "multiplier" should look something like this:

Click edit

Click export and save it somewhere.

Now open your graphics editing program and open the file you just saved. Also, open your PSD (if you're following this from my trick-or-treat thingie), or any other stencil you wanted to use. 

(1) On windows hit CTRL A to select all of the stencil (for the PSD's make sure you have the right layer selected!) if on anything else, use the marquee tool and just select everything that way.

Now CTRL C to copy or edit > copy

Now select your multiplier file and hit CTRL V or edit > paste

This is sorta what you should be seeing. CTRL V now or

(2) Now, move the stencil into the middle of the shirt. If you need to resize then hit CTRL T or edit > free transform. Hold shift and drag only from the corners. 

Once you've got it in the spot you want it, and the size you want it, delete the background layer. If your stencil was already white, don't worry about doing this part, if your stencil is a color though, do this.

CTRL U or image > adjustments > hue/saturation. Move the Lightness all the way to the right.

Click the new layer button, and then drag that new layer (layer 2) under the stencil layer (layer 1)

Now, grab the paint bucket tool, make sure the foreground color is black and then fill layer 2.

Now merge those two layers by clicking layer 1 and hitting CTRL E or layers > merge layers

You should now only have one layer. Hit CTRL A or the marquee tool and select it all and then CTRL C or edit > copy

Now undo. Undo until you are back to just your stencil, colored if it was originally colored or white if it was originally white.

This will be done with CTRL ALT Z or edit > undo. If you followed the steps right it should take you 5 or 6 undos.

Click your channels tab, and alpha and paste it here (CTRL V or edit> paste)

With your alpha layer selected you should see your white stencil on a black background. Go back to your layers tab, and click your layer. It'll go back to your original stencil.

 (3) File > save as > name it stencil or something idc. Save it as a DDS

Go back to TSRW and click edit beside stencil A or whatever one you have enabled.

import > your stencil dds file > open > done

Once it looks the way you want, and make no mistake you may have to go back in and move it around to get it perfect, you can go up to the dropdown and delete the extras. If you want more than once stencil then just choose those and replace the stencils just like you just did with this one. If not, you can select the presets and hit delete. 

Likewise, if you need to make more presets you can just hit duplicate. 

Now just go to file > export > sims3pack and save it wherever. OR you can go to edit > project contents > export > to package

And that's it. Just install it like you'd normally install your CC and you're good to go.

Sims 4

 You will need:

Sims 4 studio

Graphic editing program

And to save myself extra work, you can refer to above when it comes to actually using the graphics editing program.

Install Sims 4 studio, and check "make standalone" and click "create recolor"

When it loads, choose the shirt or whatnot that you want and hit next. 

When that loads you want to click "export texture" and save it somewhere. Now you want to open that in photoshop. From then on you'll follow the above tutorial from 1, to 2, then do 3. Then come back to me. No need to make an alpha for this so...

import texture > import the thing you just saved > save if you're done. 

There's a more in depth tutorial for Sims 4 studio here. But as always if you have additional questions you can ask me on tumblr (pixelatedzombies.tumblr.com)

I wrote this while extremely tired and in the middle of making dinner so if any part isn't clear feel free to message me and I'll fix it up and answer questions. Thanks for reading.

Using my sims 4 hair color presets

First thing you want to do is download them. Crazy, right? 

Unzip them and move them to this folder:

Your username thingie > AppData > Roaming > Adobe > Adobe Photoshop CS6 (or whatever version) > Presets > Hue and Saturation

Just paste 'em in that folder. Now close that and open photoshop. 

In here, you want to open the hue and saturation window and load them. Here's how to do that:

1. Image

2. Adjustments

3. Hue/Saturation

or

1. This icon here at the bottom of the layers window

2. Hue/Saturation

or CTRL U on windows.

But no matter how you do it, you should get this:

Hit this button here and click:

Pick your preset, you can only load one at a time but they'll all be on the list afterwards.

Open your hair, lighten it if you want. Select it and hit CTRL J to put it on a new layer.

Open the hue/saturation window and:

Make sure colorize is checked and pick your hair color. 

Lighten or darken if you wanna.

Your mileage may vary. I've probably changed the colors a bit before releasing them.

Save. Now go import to your program (I recommend Sims 4 Studio).

The end!

Creating Custom Thumbnails for CAS and launcher

TSR Workshop

The thumbnails must be saved as a .png!

You may need to make sure you name them something unique, not sure if it's like s3pe but probably so. So creatorname_itemname_thumb is probably a good start.

For launcher thumbnails you need to have a 64x64 thumbnail.

For CAS it's 256x256

Open TSR workshop, and your project and get to the project tab:

Click the + beside extras, click the 3 dots and then select your launcher thumbnail.

Now on the texture tab the place to upload your CAS thumb can either be under "configuration" or "Part Highlighting" so you just have to check around. Click the three dots and upload your CAS thumbnail.

If it's not makeup, then you can just export to sims3pack and be done with it. But I've heard that makeup is different and requires an extra step.

Edit > Project contents 

Find the PNG_PREVIEW and right click, go to renumber

Select group ID and click ok. Then export to sims3pack.

I have never personally made makeup, but all of the info I found points to this being the correct way so best thing to do is just try it out. No harm done.

Enabling clothes for outerwear!

So you want something enabled for outerwear that isn't? There's a couple ways to do this.

Sims3pack:

Open TSR workshop 

Click create new project

Click new import

browse > find the sims3pack (hit the dropdown if you need to)

Hit next, and then OK, wait for it to load.

On the project tab hit category and click outerwear

File > export > to sims3pack

Packages

Open the package in s3pe

Click CASP and then click grid near the bottom

hit the arrow beside ClothingCategory, find outerwear, click true

Save and done!

Retexturing with TSRW

How to retexture hairs using TSRW

I've written a tutorial on doing this through S3PE, now I'm going to show you how to do it with TSRW.

Things you'll need:

TSR workshop for opening and exporting the hairs.

An image editing program such as Photoshop or Gimp. I'm using Photoshop CS6 and I've never used Gimp but I've heard that it's similar. You'll also need the DDS plugin, the Photoshop one is here. 

Textures! I use a version of Pooklets that I edited. You can find Pooklet's textures here, or you can use any that you like (assuming you have the permissions to do so). You'll also need a control, I'm using the one by Anubis, here, scroll down to the bottom of the first post to find it. 

Now lately TSRW has been kinda bitchy in that it won't import all the hairs, just one or two. But hey, maybe the gods will smile upon you.

Install TSRW and your DDS plugin and your image editor (if you haven't already) and make a new folder to keep your texture/control in, so it's easy to find.

For your DDS plugin these are the settings I'm using:

Step 1:

Open TSRW

Step 2:

Click new import

Step 3: 

Click browse

Step 4: 

Step 5:

Click next like a thousand times

Step 6:

Wait

 Step 7:
Hopefully your hair isn't off to the side like this one, anyway, click texture.

Step 8:

Scroll down til you find hair textures and maybe hat textures, sometimes specular hides in there apparently.

Step 9:
Double click the texture and then when that opens click export

Step 10:

Now you might wanna make a folder to work in, to keep your stuff organized. It's up to you though, I can't tell you how to live your life. You can also export the control if you need to, but I don't cause I'm a reckless person and no one can tell me how to live my life.

Also cause I've done this a thousand times and unless it's a complicated hair, I can usually just play it by ear, so to speak.

Pick your folder

Press save

Click OK

Step 11:

Now I'm lazy and I thought this would be a short tutorial but I'm gonna copy paste this next part from my other tutorial, so if something seems off that's why. I'll try to edit out the odd parts to the best of my ability.

Open your image editor. 

File > Open > I LIKE EGGS Work Folder

Highlight these three files and click open. [This is assuming you exported specular, texture AND control] (You can do this by dragging your mouse to highlight them, holding ctrl and clicking on each of them, or clicking the first, holding shift, then clicking the last. Whichever is easiest for you.)

We're going to do the control first, so open your control.

Apparently the hair we downloaded up there was a retexture. If so, then I guess we are retexturing someone's retexture. What even? Oh well. 

13. Click this and drag it to get a little section. Then hit CTRL + C (for copying on a pc, I don't know about a Mac)

Open your control tab for the hair you're retexturing and hit CTRL + V.

Ours is the big one in the middle. Hit V and then move it into place over one of the squares. If this hair wasn't already retextured, they'd look just like the regular textures, but you could just put them as squares over it and it wouldn't matter. Hold on a sec I'll show you what I'm talking about.

This is the control from a hair I was working on prior to this tutorial. If it's the original mesh and textures, usually it might look like this. You can still just chunk squares over it like what we're doing, it will not matter it'll all come out the same.

Hit CTRL + T and then drag the bottom up until it matches the bottom of the original, like so. Then hit CTRL + V to paste the section again and do the same for all. Cover it just like the originals.

Sometimes you might need to chop off a bit. If so, select the layer it is on, above it you should see the word 'Opacity' click that and drag the arrow to the left. When you can see under it well enough, select the leftovers with the same tool you used in step 13, then press delete.

Press delete then move your opacity back up.

Here's what it looked like at the end, after I moved/resized all the control pieces to fit their original places.

When you're done, merge all your layers by selecting the bottom layer, hitting control, clicking the top layer, and then hitting CTRL + E. After they're merged go to file > save as and save it in your I LIKE EGGS work folder under the name of Control, and make sure the file type is DDS.

Yes I put a pic anyway because it's hard to get lost when there isn't a pic to show what you mean.

Okay, now close the control tab in Photoshop and click the texture tab.

Don't feel intimidated, this isn't even hard at all. In fact it's a tad easier than the controls. Open the texture you want to use, be it pooklet or whatever else. Then hit CTRL + A, then CTRL + C. Open your textures tab of the original texture, hit CTRL + V. CTRL + T like above, and pull it down/up to cover the whole image. 

Then, we'll go over to our layers box and hit 'channels', hold CTRL and click the icon of the alpha channel.

14. Channels tab
15. Alpha icon
16. Go back to your layers tab, hit CTRL + SHIFT + I, then hit delete. 

Should look like this if you did it right. We're not done though so don't save it. :s

See how most of the hair is flowing up and down, but there's some that's flowing left to right? Yeah. Okay, now we're going to delete the texture of the left to right part, and do basically the same thing, but after turning it the right way. 

17. Click the selection tool
18. Click the second icon up here which should be 'add' 
19. Select it, press delete.

Move your textures over to it just like before, but hit CTRL + T and then move it by the corners while holding shift to make sure that it is straight. Then click the channels tab > ctrl click the alpha icon (just like before) back to layers tab, ctrl + SHIFT + I and delete. Now it should be going the right direction. It should be a curved arrow at the corner, not a straight one, so move around til you get it. I'd move the left to right strands layer UNDER the top to bottom layers so you don't have to worry about erasing any extras that were put on top of them.

Now delete the 'background' layer and go to file > save as > texture.

Don't close the texture window. Hit CTRL and click the new layer button.

21. New layer button (hold CTRL when you click it)
22. Paint fill button
23. Hit d and make sure the top one is black
24. Fill the background layer.
25. Click the top layer and hit CTRL + E to merge.

Hit CTRL + A and then CTRL + C and go to your tab with the specular on it. Hit CTRL + V and it should paste there.

26/27. Image > Adjustments > Levels
28. Move the black arrow (not the one right where the number 28 is in the pic, the one above it) until your texture is black like this one, I leave a little bit shining through on mine, do it however you like. 
29. Hit OK

Either delete the 'background' layer or merge the two. File > Save as > Specular (DDS!)

> Okay that's the end of the copy/paste job from my other tutorial.

Pull your TSRW back up, and double click each thing and click import to put your new pieces in, like so:

It'll ask if you want to replace, yada yada yada, click yes. 

Finally you should have them all in place.

And then you can click 

Pick a place to save it, pick a name and wait for it to finish.

Bam, you retextured a hair in TSRW. 

P.S. This hair showed up fine in game even though it's off to the side in TSRW for some reason.

I hope this helped and as always if you have questions/comments/suggestions you can get them to me at pixelatedzombies.tumblr.com!