Gloves

One of the most popular things to make is gloves. The only drawback to this is, is that they will always be wearing them, even in the tub. But if you can live with that, the here is what you do.

In the Simshow Textures file, if you look towards the end, you will see a bunch of files named HFROmed and HMROdrk, and HUAOlgt and HUAPmed, etc.

The easiest way to do this if you want both hands to be the same color is to get a HUAO .bmp for whatever color your texture is in. If you have a med texture, then you will want to load up the HUAO_med bmp in your graphics program. Convert to 24 bit color, paint as you see fit and convert back. When you save it, you will have to save it in the game folder, not the Simshow folder, since simshow won't show it. When you save it, you will also need to rename it a bit.

For example, Shi's gloves went from being called HUAOlgt to HUAOdrk_shi. The ending tag tells the game what hands to use, so make sure it matches your body end tag. If you have a B504MaFitdrk_murphy .bmp, then you will need to name the hands HUAOdrk_murphy.

If you just want one glove to show, (perhaps a Michael Jackson, or Kane) then depending on the gender of your Sim, you will rename the files accordingly:

male right hand: HMROdrk, HMROmed, HMROlgt
male left hand: HMLOdrk, HMLOmed, HMLOlgt

female left hand: HFLOdrk, HFLOmed, HFLOlgt
female right hand: HFROdrk, HFROmed, HFROlgt

child hand (aLL) HUACdrk, HUACmed, HUAClgt

I do one of each so that there is a set, even if one hand stays the default color.

I'm doing the HUAP, the HUAC, and the HUAO ones as well, so that the hands stay in all hand animations and positions.

But anyways, for the gloves, I just did a recolor, matching the color as close to the red in the body texture as I could. 2 shades of red won't look so good, you know? Then I save them a sHUAOlgt_shi and HUAPlgt_shi. These and the rest of these custom textures will go in the skins folder, just like any normal skin download.

There are times that this won't show up, and if it does, try uninstalling and reinstalling. Makes no sense, but it does work alot of the time, though you may have to do it more than once. There may be a character restriction as well, limiting the length of your end-tag. Try to keep those relatively short, if you can.

Not all computers display things the same way, as I will get into in the swimsuits section. It's happened to me and I don't know why. I had a wonderful Grinch Skin for Christmas, but it was bug-infested for reasons still unknown. Not a perfect science, at least on my end.

Formal Wear

This was a tough one to decide. She seems to favor traditional kimonos in all the pics I found online, but the formal mesh in the Sims Game doesn't. I just went with a nice red long dress , since it would match her gloves she will have on all the time, and the long dress as well.

This one was easy. I just did a basic recolor of the default wedding dress, matching the dress to the glove color.

The trick to custom skins is making something you like with the default meshes provided by the game. Formal female has a long skirt and no real sleeves. Their Pj's are long sleeved and long pants, and the swimsuit is a basic "nude" mesh. These can be changed, but thats another tutorial for another time, after I get a better understanding of it all.

Anyways, I start out with the default .bmps since they show you exactly where the major lines lay. I got those with Far-edit and out of the main game .far files, so if you don't want to hunt them down, you don't have to. You can get them yourself, which is useful if you accidentaly overwrite anything, like I do all the time. Or if you feel like downloading them anyways, you can get them all here, in the downloads section, under the skins category. There are a bunch more interesting one, like the flight suits for the military carreer, the burglar outfits, catsuits, etc. and the meshes that go with them. If you want the meshes, you will also need a .bmf converter to convert them to normal .skns and need to make names and .cmx files for them. Enough about that though.

The next step is the naming, since with improper naming, it'll do what most textures do, and not show up at all.

The naming for these are:

male : FMFitlgt_?, FMFatmed_?, and FMSknlgt_?
female: FFFitlgt_?, FFSknmed_?, and FFFatdrk_?

the "?" is for whatever end tag you have. These will also go into the "skins" folder of the game, along with the textures already made for the normal everyday body mesh.

Therefore, for Shi, her formal texture file name will be FFFitlgt_shi. Why? I'll break down the file name.

F - formal
F-Female
Fit- Fit body mesh (of the original body mesh type)
lgt- Light skins tone
_ - is the divider between the mesh info and the name of the Sim .bmp
shi- the name I gave the original body .bmp Any custom skins must have the same name as the original body .bmp, gloves included.

Knowing this, you can look at the other file names above and figure out what they mean as well.

Pajama's

For this, I decided basic black silk pajamas would look best. I still have the ever-present red gloves, but in this case, it'll have to be ignored.

The naming system of pajamas is as follows:

female: name it as PajamaFlgt_??? PajamaFmed_??? and/or PajamaFDrk_???
male: PajamaMdrk_??? PajamaMmed_??? PajamaMLgt_???

So I will change the basic pajama texture to this:

and name it PajamaFlgt_shi.

Swimsuit

If you are going to make custom swimsuits, I highly suggest making one of a default replacement as well. If you are making a swimsuit for a Sim you made, like I am for Shi, you would make her custom swimsuit texture, put it in the "skins" folder of the game as well as have a default swimsuit of the same skin tone and put that in the "skins" folder as well. So if you make a swimsuit for a drk skin, then make a default for it as well, just to kind of push your Comp. in the right direction so it doesn't start making things up as it goes.

I realize that's probably confusing. So I will go step by step, somewhat.

For the easiest results, I loaded up the default purple swimsuit and drew Shi's swimsuit over it. This kept all the lines the same, so her straps would match up properly, as well as the lines for the swimsuit bottom. Then I named it UFFitlgt_shi. (I don't understand the "U" part of this naming, just ones of things we have to accept.)

Now that I have a custom suit to put in my games Skins directory, I need to make a default to "match" it.

Get the default suit, or something with the "sim"suits .bmp and rename it to UMFitdrk_01:

It will be the UFFitlgt_01 since Shi is also a lgt, and paste this in the Skins dir as well with the custom swimsuit.

If you actually want to make a default replacement of your fit or what have you category swimsuits, then design whatever suit you want and rename it

male: UMFitdrk_01, UMFitmed_01, and UMFitlgt_01
female: UFFitdrk_01, UFFitmed_01, and UFFitlgt_01

To rename for your own custom suit, use the UM .bmp for the skin tone you are using (lgt, med, drk) , draw thre new custom suit for your Sim, and just replace the _01 part with the end tag of your original body .bmp .

Nudes

Yes, my fellow pervs, time for the nudes....

here's the naming system for them:

NMFitdrk_??? NMFatmed_??? NMSknlgt_???
NFFitlgt_??? NFSknmed_??? NFFatdrk_???

Therefore, Shi's would be NFFitlgt_shi..............If I was making one for her. But since I don't really see the need in making one for her, I won't. She's fairly normal, so far as I can tell. I just did the others for fun.

I'm going to add all of these new files to my Shi project folder, so I have them all in one central location, and it's easier to cut and paste all these related files, make sure I have all that I need, and such. This is the last step for me, before I test everything out in the game, so that's where I'm heading next, but you can go where you want. See you in the final chapter!

And that's all I have to say about that.

Select your next course:

Basic Texturing
Mesh Adjusting the Body
Mesh Adjusting the Head
Making the Accessory (the naginata)
Sim Show testing
Game Testing
I'd like to go home now.