-----Chapter 5 continued-----
Now is the time when we begin our artistic part of our work. Open up your graphics program and open up all that you will need to be working with. For me, that's the b675fafitlgt_lifeguard bmps, and the pics of Chyna.


You will open the bmps up in the C:Maxis/Simshow/Gamedata/textures directory (provided you did the default installation of Simshow). You will only have in the directory what you put into it. In the links section, I will tell you where I got most of my default bmp's so you have a good selection to choose from as well. The basics that Simshow starts you out with isn't that broad of a buffet, if you know what I mean.

Now this next part is pretty important. So that you don't accidentally ruin the original bmp by drawing over your base texture and saving it like that, select it and click "save as". I'm going to rename the whole thing, to make the new textures match the body file names. The logic behind this is that I will need Chyna's outfit to go with the 505fafit body model. This is so that when I finally get to the Character Edit screen in the game, it will show up. I'll rename the file numbers of the textures to match the body and head models, and the description, naming it Chyna so I know what it is.
example:
c003falgt_asian01 becomes c513falgt_chyna
b675fafitlgt_lifeguard becomes b505fafitlgt_chyna
can't tell you exactly how to do it, since every graphics program is set up different. You will have to play around with the drop-down menus a bit to figure it out. Just look for the key-words like "24 bit color" "8 bit color" and things like that. For example, mine is in the "Image" then "Convert To" drop down menu.

Once you have it converted to 24 bit color, you are ready to paint. (FINALLY!!!) And don't be afraid to zoom in on your work. It makes it SOOOOOOO much easier to get details and fine-tune things.

For Chyna, I'm going to use alot of the lines in the swimsuit for her leather outfit. It makes things much easier to make when you have a pattern to work with. As you can see, the bmp looks kind of strange, so places where you think clothing may rest on the bmp might not be where it ends up on the model in Simshow.

Therefore, during your work, it's a good idea to convert back to 256 colors and check your work in Simshow every once in awhile. That way you wont get too far if you make a mistake.
Take a look at it and figure what you want to do next, get back into the graphics program, convert it back to 24 bit color and keep going.

And that about sums it up for the body texturizing.
You can take a look of these screenshots of the work in process. Click on the thumbnails.
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