Tutorial: Custom 4t2 Wall Conversion Part 3

This is the third and final part of my custom 4t2 wall conversion tutorial. For part 1, please click here, and part 2, please click here.

Part 3 begins below the cut!

PART 3: HOMECRAFER

Okay! Now we’re moving onto HomeCrafter. Fire up the program and let it load while you’re getting your files situated – it usually takes a few minutes (at least it does on my computer…this is also a good time to brew a nice cup of tea, since this last part can be kind of tedious, depending on how many recolors you made ☕).

Step 1
First you’ll need to copy all your pretty new textures to the proper folder. Your folder path could be different, but most likely you’ll find it by navigating to Documents > EA Games > The Sims 2 > Projects > HomeCrafter Plus > Walls. If you’re unable to locate your folder, please jump ahead to Step 4 – the Create New Content menu will tell you your working directory – then come back to this step. Paste all your recolors into this folder:

Step 2
(This is just how I set up my workspace; you may find/have a process that works better for you. I’ve downloaded too much CC over the years with frustrating/unclear/random file names, so I’m a little obsessive about making sure my stuff is clearly named.)

Navigate to the Downloads folder – this is where HomeCrafter will export your new walls. I like to sort this by “Date modified”; it just makes it easier to keep track of the files since HomeCrafter will assign them each random names:

Then I open Notepad and put that window next to the file explorer window. At the top I put the description I want for my walls so I can easily copy and paste it while I’m working. Since these are conversions, I always include credit for the original creation in this description:

Step 3
Once HomeCrafter has loaded, hit the giant button to create new Walls. A screen will load with all your currently installed walls. Click the plus sign button on the lower left:

Step 4
Choose your first recolor and click the checkmark:

Step 5
On the next screen, you should see your recolor tiled on the left, and some empty fields on the right. Enter the name of your new wall, the price per panel, and paste in your description. Under subsort, select where in the catalog you’d like your wall to show. When you have all this entered, click the import button.

And as you can see, the wall now appears in the HomeCrafter catalog. Hooray!

Step 6
Minimize HomeCrafter and check your Downloads folder. You should now see a new package file with the prefix wall_, followed by a string of random letters and numbers. Copy this file name and paste it into your notepad file, then add something to identify it – I prefer to use color names since I use those with my swatches and in the catalog, making it easier to identify files in the future. Since the files are being used by HomeCrafter, you won’t be able to simply change their file names now – you’ll need to come back and do this after you close the program, hence the extra steps.

Step 7
Repeat Step 4 - 6 for all your recolors.

Step 8
When you’re finish, close HomeCrafter. Now you can rename your files using your text file to match up the HomeCrafter file names with your desired file names (if you’ve sorted by Date modified, you can just work your way backwards up the list – I always check the last couple of digits of the file names as I go to make sure I haven’t messed anything up). I usually give them a file prefix (in this case, “sils_pm_chevron_walls_”) and then put the color name at the end (so the complete file name for the example wall is “sils_pm_chevron_walls_mmeltdowns”). Since long file names contribute to long load times, try to keep this short while still providing enough information that it’s not confusing to anyone who might download your content (if you intend to share it – if not, just use whatever makes sense to you!).

Step 9
Load up your game and enjoy your freshly converted walls!

Okay! I hope that was clear and useful! If you have any questions, please feel free to hit me up and I’ll do my best to help! This is my first time writing a tutorial, so please also let me know if I messed anything up or if any areas could use improvement. I’ll try to get a PDF version of this put together in the near future as well.

Lots of love,
Spacey

PS – I should be finished converting this whole set soon, so I’m hoping to have it up this weekend. <3

Tutorial: Custom 4t2 Wall Conversion Part 2

This is the second part of my custom 4t2 wall conversion tutorial. For part 1, please click here.

Part 2 begins below the cut!

PART 2: EDITING YOUR TEXTURE
You may already have an image editing process, but since this is a start-to-finish tutorial, I’m going to cover my own process here.

Note: As you can see, I’m using an older version of Photoshop (CS3), so depending on your version/program, everything here may or may not be applicable. I apologize in advance if this section is not helpful to everyone – I am not familiar with graphic editing software outside of the Adobe Suite, so you may need to seek more general tutorials for your software to get through this part.

Step 1
Open the texture!

Step 2
Choose your first color, select the Rectangle Tool (U) and, as a shape layer, drag a rectangle that covers the entire canvas. This will create a new layer. You can likewise create a new layer above your texture and fill it with your color, but I prefer the shape layers since their color can be changed very quickly – my smallest palette is 25 colors, so I like to speed up the process where I can. :)

Step 3
Change your new layer’s Blending Mode to Multiply. You should now see your color applied to your texture.

Step 4
This step is more subjective. I like to use the Multiply blending because it gives a nice rich color, but it also tends to “flatten” some of the texture detail. To compensate for that, I usually make two tweaks using adjustment layers. First I create an adjustment for Brightness/Contrast and increase the Brightness. The amount varies depending on the texture, but it’s usually a pretty small increase. In this case, I bumped it up by 15:

That brightens the texture, but I’d still like to bring out the detail a little more, so next I created an adjustment for Levels and moved the center tab slightly to the right. This is a really sensitive setting so you’ll see changes with even tiny adjustments. In this case I went from 1.00 to 0.75:

Note: Depending on your texture, you may not need to do this at all, or you might need to make more drastic changes. I can’t adequately cover all scenarios in a single tutorial, but this is the process I use for most of my conversions and recolors.

Step 5
Okay! Once you’re happy with your texture, it’s time to save it. Make sure you’re saving as a BMP.

Step 6
Change the color of your shape or fill layer (the one set to Multiply) as many times as necessary for your recolors, saving each one as a BMP as you go. This is what I had when I finished recoloring in my Watchmen palette:

(I always save a PSD in case I want to revisit a project later – in this case, I’ll be recoloring these in Fantasy Floss and some neutrals as well.)

Once you’re done creating all your recolor textures, you can close your image editor. It’s time to start importing the walls into your game! Click here for the next part of the tutorial.

Tutorial: Custom 4t2 Wall Conversion Part 1

It’s finally finished! I got a message last week asking if I knew of any tutorials to convert custom walls from TS4 to TS2, and since I didn’t (and couldn’t find any), I decided to put one together myself.

This tutorial is broken into three parts, one for each program used, and covers the entire process from extraction to import. Since Tumblr won’t let me add more than 10 images per post, it’s also going to be spread across three separate posts. Fabulous.

TOOLS NEEDED

• TSR Workshop
• Image editing software (I’m using Photoshop)
• HomeCrafter Plus

Part 1 begins below the cut!

PART 1: TSR WORKSHOP

Step 1
Download the wall(s) you’d like to convert. In this example, I’ll be converting the chevron walls from Peacemaker’s Floor & Wall Tiles - Chevron and Field Designs, since they’ve been on my to-do list for awhile now.

Step 2
Extract the file(s). I usually put them in a project folder at this point, just to make things easier.

Step 3
Open TSR Workshop and select Create New Project.

Step 4
When the Create a new project menu opens, select New import (located under Other) and click next.

Step 5
The Import from .package screen will now open. Next to the “File to import” field, select Browse and navigate to the folder where you extracted the walls. You’ll need to select Package (*.package) from the file type dropdown (located next to the File name field) for the files to show.

TSRW will then ask “Is this a Sims 4 package?”. Click yes and wait until the program fills the “Projectype” field (this usually take a few seconds on my computer). Once the field is filled, click Next.

Step 6
The Project details screen will now open. You’ll need to enter a Project Name, but it doesn’t really matter what you put in since we’re only using TSRW to extract the textures. You don’t need to worry about the Title, Description or Diagonal part. Once you’ve put in your Project Name, click next. The Finished screen will now appear; click OK.

Note: I don’t have TS4, so I always get a pop-up which reads “TSR Workshop could not locate the game folder for Sims 4. Would you like to browse for it manually?” If you also don’t have TS4 and you get this pop-up, just click No.

Step 7
Once your file loads, it should look something like this:

Above the right sidebar, click on the Texture tab, and you should see something similar to this:

Select the DiffuseMap, which is the actual texture for the wall, and then click the small Edit button that appears to the right. A new screen will pop up. From there, you’ll want to click the Export button.

Note: since I don’t have TS4, I’m not really familiar with the mechanics of the game, but from what I’ve read it sounds like recolors occur within the game itself? Someone please correct me if I’m wrong about this, but I’ve never seen anything other than a base texture in TSRW, so we’ll need to recolor the textures ourselves – hence the need for image editing software.

The Export Texture window will now open. I like to give my textures a more easily-identifiable name than what the program provides, so you can change this to whatever you’d like. Change the “Save as” type to PNG and click Save.

You should get an “Export complete” pop-up once it’s finished saving.

Step 8
Once you’ve checked to make sure your texture has exported, you can close down TSRW. If your conversion involves more than one texture, you’ll need to go to the File menu, click New and follow Steps 4 - 7 again (there’s no need to save your project when asked). Otherwise, it’s time to open the texture in your image editor. Click here for the next part of the tutorial.