Finally! Took me a while, huh. This is the updated version of the Tattooer project. It skips some steps, making the workflow much, much faster! Huge thanks to @applewatersugar for his
suggestion on how to bake textures while preserving the transparency. This is kind of a repost of the original Tattooer post, but it actually has some new stuff and a few changes here and there, so please take a look if you want to learn how to use this new version.
This is a series of Blender template files already set up to quickly bake textures from The Sims 4 to The Sims 2. The different Blender files will allow you to:
-Bake body textures from TS4 to TS2 (Female)
-Bake body textures from TS4 to TS2 (Male)
-Bake body textures from TS4 (Female) to TS2 (Male)
-Bake body textures from TS2 (Female) to TS2 (Male) [Bonus!]
-New! Bake face textures from TS4 to TS2 (Unisex) [Bonus!]
-Bake head textures from TS4 to TS2 (Face + Scalp) (Unisex) [Still experimental]
Check the file names to see which one is which, and the resolution of the baked texture it will give.
Everything you see in the render above was 100% converted using those Blender files.
Download here! SFS / GD
Update: Version 3.4.1 (27/08/2023) Fixed some issues on the shoulders for the AF-body-4t2-1024 and AF-body-4t2-2048 templates. Now the top straps on most converted underwear/swimwear should look right.
Update: Same version (13/12/2023) As requested, added a new spanish version of the included pdf guide!
These templates were made mainly to bake and convert tattoos, but there’s more you can do with them if you get creative. I have to say, these are NOT perfect. Results may vary depending on what you are trying to convert, so! With that in mind, this is all the stuff you will be able to convert almost seamlessly from TS4 to TS2:
-Tattoos.
-Other body details such as body hair, scars, freckles, supernatural/occult details…
-Body painted underwear and swimwear, as well as some other clothing that’s mostly painted on the body.
-Socks, stockings and maybe leggings.
-Even skintones! In some areas they will look weird, so I recommend editing and blending them with other existing TS2 skins.
-Makeup, eyebrows and beards. In the old version this was just a proof of concept, but now I’ve added a new Face file template which gives some pretty decent results!
-Hair scalps. Very useful when converting some hairs! Although keep in mind part of that texture might also need to be baked on the face mesh, you know, that hairline makeup stuff.
Got your attention? Nice! Editing some of the textures from TS4 to match the UV mapping in TS2 using a 2D editing program can be incredibly hard. That’s where texture baking in Blender comes to the rescue!
You will need to download Blender, at least version 3.4, but you could always use a newer version. It is only incompatible with versions older than 3.4.
-You can download Blender for free here.
-You will also need Sims 4 Studio to extract the original Sims 4 CC textures you want.
In the first version of these Blender files, there was a necessary step using Photoshop, but that’s no longer needed. However, there’s still a tiny extra step which requires resizing the newly baked texture on some of the high resolution templates, so you might need a 2D editing program like Photoshop. More on that later.
So, before we begin, let’s clear out some questions you might have. What the heck is this texture baking thing and what does it do? Well, let’s imagine you have a video projector and point an image into a blank wall. Then you pick up some brushes and start painting and copying that projected image in that wall. Texture baking is kinda like that when it comes to 3D models. You align two models and match them as closely as you can in shape and form, and once you adjust some parameters and values, Blender does the rest for you: it will give you a new texture for a new model with a different UV map. These files I’m sharing have everything already set up, so it’s a matter of plopping in that Sims 4 texture and you will get that new texture for TS2 in just a few clicks.
This tutorial assumes you know literally nothing about how to use Blender, so if you feel uncomfortable with it, worry no more! This will guide you with pictures showing where you need to click and explaining what is happening. For Sims 4 Studio and Photoshop the process might be a bit less detailed, but still this should be pretty beginner friendly. For this tutorial, I will use some tattoos as an example (properly credited at the end of the post). Alright, enough with the rambling. Let’s get started!
·EXTRACTING TEXTURES IN SIMS 4 STUDIO:
First things first, you will need to extract as pngs all the textures you want to convert from TS4 using Sims 4 Studio. It should be pretty straightforward. Just open the packages and export the Diffuse textures. Keep them organized in a folder for easy access.
·BAKING THE TEXTURES IN BLENDER:
PRELIMINARY STEP 1: CONFIGURING BLENDER’S GRAPHICS SETTINGS:
Open your preferred Blender file depending on what you’re going to bake and the desired resolution (in this example I’m going to use the AF-body-4t2-1024 file). Before we start messing around in Blender, there’s one thing you should set up. It is a onetime step, and once it’s done, you won’t need to do it again. So, does your computer have a dedicated graphics card? If you don’t know or you’re not sure, just skip to the next step. Configuring Blender so it uses your graphics card instead of your CPU will make the baking render much faster, so it is recommended you set it up correctly.
If your computer has a dedicated graphics card, click File (1) > Preferences (2) > and on the window that pops up click System (3) > and select CUDA and make sure your graphics card is there and tick it (4). I have an Nvidia Graphics card but your case may vary. Once you’re done, click on the tiny button on the bottom left corner and Save Preferences (5).
PRELIMINARY STEP 2: CHOOSING THE RENDERING DEVICE:
Click on the tiny camera button on the right, called Render Properties (1), and on Device (2) select GPU Compute if it’s not already selected. If you’re not sure if you have a graphics card or not, just select CPU. Then select the Material Properties tab (3) and Save your changes, either by pressing Ctrl + S, or clicking File (4) > Save (5). You might need to do this second step with the other Blender files, but once you have it done and saved, you won’t need to do this again. Okay, time to get into the good stuff!
·STEP 1: LOADING YOUR TS4 BASE TEXTURE:
In the Material Properties tab, click the folder icon that says Open (1) and on the window that pops up, navigate through your folders and select your first texture. To navigate easily, the 3 buttons on the top right (2) are for the display mode. They will show your files in list mode, vertical and horizontal, and the one on the right will display the file thumbnails, pretty useful if you want to easily preview your textures here. The icons on the left side (3) will let you go one folder back and forward, go to the parent directory, and refresh the folder in case you just dropped something new in there. Double click on the image you need and that will load the texture into the Sims 4 body model, named “ts4 body”.
·STEP 2: SETTING UP YOUR SELECTION AND BAKING THE TEXTURE:
On the top right of the screen, you will see the names of the 2 models in the scene. Hold the Ctrl key in your keyboard and left click on the “ts2 body” model (1). If you did it correctly, you should see “ts2 body” in a yellowish orange color, and right down below, “ts4 body” should look more like a red orange. If not, try again by clicking first on ts4 body, and then while holding Ctrl click again on ts2 body. Then switch to the Render Properties tab by clicking the tiny camera icon (2) and click Bake (3). Depending on your screen resolution, you might need to scroll down a bit with your mouse to see the Bake button. Wait a few seconds for it to finish. You will see the progress percentage down on the bottom of your screen. Don’t panic if you notice your computer fans start ramping up, that’s completely normal! As I said in the beginning, using your GPU will bake the textures much faster than the CPU.
·STEP 3: SAVING YOUR NEW TS2 TEXTURE:
Once it’s finished, switch to the UV Editing Mode by clicking “UV Editing” on the top of your screen. And there it is: your new texture! You might have to scroll up your mouse wheel a bit to zoom in and see it in all its glory on the left side of the screen. We’re still not done yet though. You need to save it to yet another new folder (always try to keep your stuff organized!).
You can save it by pressing Shift + Alt + S, or clicking on Image* (1) and then Save As… (2). That will pop a window where you’ll need to navigate again and save it somewhere. Give it a proper name (3) and hit Enter to save it… well, Enter doesn’t always work for me for some reason, so if that happens just click Save As Image (4). And that’s it! You’ve successfully converted your baked texture. Congrats!
·STEP 4: GOING BACK TO STEP 1:
Alright! If you’re done with your textures, you can close Blender without saving and call it a day. But let’s say you want to keep baking other swatches. In order to go back to step 1 and start the process once again, click Layout (1), go back to the Material Properties tab (2), select “ts4 body” (3) and click on the folder icon (4) to open and load your next swatch.
Then it’s just a matter of repeating the process from step 2. When you’re ready to move on, close Blender without saving. If you see a small check telling you it will save some images, make sure you uncheck it, so you will be able to use it again in the future from the starting point with no issues. I don’t think it really matters if you accidentally save your progress in these files, but I like to keep it clean and fresh so I can do the process where I left it from the beginning next time I open it. And in case you mess up and save somewhere, you can always just delete the .blend file and download the template files again.
In case you’d like a video tutorial on how to use these files, the amazing @platinumaspiration recorded this fantastic video showcasing the process! You can watch it here.
One final note: some of the baking .blend files save the textures with a resolution of 2048x2048 pixels, as clearly stated at the end of their file name. That’s way too overkill, because TS2 only properly supports up to 1024x1024 for most of its textures and you should always resize your final product to that max resolution (or lower if needed). I just made those 2048 versions because there might be some really tiny and slim details on some tattoos that might look a little too blurry when baked into a 1024 resolution texture, so for those cases use that if you want and then resize them using your 2D editing software of choice.
In Photoshop, in the Resample mode of the Image Size menu, there are a few options to choose. For the fine details, I like the Nearest Neighbor (hard edges) option, which, even if it looks a bit pixelated, it still preserves most of the texture and quality.
For anything else, I would just directly bake them using the 1024 versions in Blender (512 for the face and scalp).
And for the folks who feel comfortable playing around in Blender, this is just the beginning! Texture baking opens a LOT of possibilities, so feel free to move stuff around and edit the models to your liking! If you notice the baked textures look warped or stretched somewhere, or don’t like where some textures are placed in the S2 body, poke around that area moving stuff and then give it another try. The main objective of the baking process is keeping both overlapping models as close in shape as possible. You may also edit and save new copies of the templates, or make new ones from scratch using mine as a reference (keep a close look on those Baking settings and values, I think they work pretty well) and share them if you want to. Go ham, do whatever you want with them! I still have plans on making templates to convert body textures from Sims 3 to Sims 2, but for now it’s not on my priorities, so we’ll see when that happens.
Whew! Hope none of this was too confusing. Need help or have any issues with these? Please ask/message me here and I’ll be glad to help when I’m able to!
Credits for the CC used in the render demonstration:
-Skin by Sims3Melancholic.
-Eyes by Northern Siberia Winds.
-Eyebrows by PeachyFaerie.
-Tattoos by xtc.
-Top by SerenityCC.
And the Tattoo I used for the tutorial can be found here, by ValhallanSim.
Last but not least, a huge thanks to all the people who somehow contributed to make this project and update possible, either by doing initial testing, finding issues to fix, or teaching me new Blender tricks to make the workflow way faster and easier. So thanks again to @elvisgrace @moyokeansimblr and @applewatersugar on Tumblr! <3
And thank you for reading! Hope you have fun playing with this (not so) new toy hehe.
After several tries, I managed to make actions to convert TS4 beddings into TS2 beddings with a few clicks. It requires CS3 and higher. If you don’t own it, just download the file anyway 😏
Tutorial under the cut
The .atn file should be placed in AppData > Roaming > Adobe > Adobe Photoshop CS3 > Presets > Actions
First, you’ll need a bedding and a pillow texture. Let’s say you extracted this :
First, cut the bedding texture to have this :
Make sur the size is exactly 515x512px. Resize it if needed.
Select the entire texture (Ctrl+A), copy (Ctrl+C), and close the texture.
Open the .psd included. Don’t change any Layer name.
Once the .psd is open, run the bedding action ! There are two of them : original one, and “mirrored” one. It depends on the texture you’ll use. Try the first one to get used to it (the texture I show needs this action, not the mirrored one).
Make sure you did not copy any other texture in the process : you need the 515x512 texture copied in your clipboard.
The action will paste the bedding texture and place it properly on the layer.
You’ll have this :
Then, let’s do the pillows.
You’ll need two textures with the exact same size. Place one of the top of the other one to have something like this :
You don’t need them to have an identical texture. You can do something like this if you want :
Then flatten your image and resize it if needed to be at the exact size of 162x187px
Copy and close the pillows texture to only have your .psd opened, and use the pillows action. It will also paste your texture and place it properly on the .psd. And you’ll have this :
Then, you can select the layer named “bottom” and recolor it the way you want. I usually use the Image > Adjustments > Photo Filter option. You can apply any color you want with these settings :
And tadaaaaaa :
Save your work as .png, and use it to recolor as you usually do.
The difference between the normal and “mirrored” version of the beddings actions is this :
Normal :
Mirrored :
The mirrored may be useful when the texture have some kind of details on the very edges so it can be applied on both sides of the single bedding. You might need to move from 1 to 3px the beddings parts to align aesthetically but for that, I’ll let you learn by yourself as it’s hard to explain. You’ll understand by trying a few times :)
This is just a base for the beginners, but obviously feel free to get creative if you are experimented enough with Photoshop !
Download the 4t2 beddings kit (.psd, actions, and a surprise...) : SFS
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.
[This version is OUTDATED! Please, check the new version here. I updated the workflow, skipping a lot of unnecessary Photoshop editing. It's way faster! I'll leave this old version and files up though, for archiving purposes. But yeah I still totally recommend you use the new version!]
Finally! I’ve been working on this for so long and I couldn’t wait to share it. This is a series of Blender template files already set up to quickly bake textures from The Sims 4 to The Sims 2. Really neat for cc creators! The different Blender files will allow you to:
-Bake body textures from TS4 to TS2 (Female)
-Bake body textures from TS4 to TS2 (Male)
-Bake body textures from TS4 (Female) to TS2 (Male)
-Bake body textures from TS2 (Female) to TS2 (Male) [Bonus!]
-Bake head textures from TS4 to TS2 (Face + Scalp) [Experimental]
Check the file names to see which one is which, and the resolution of the baked texture it will give.
Download! SFS / GD
Everything you see in the render above was converted using those Blender files. I only did a couple tiny edits to the eyes and lips to fix them.
These templates were made mainly to bake and convert tattoos, but there’s more you can do with them if you get creative. I have to say, these are NOT perfect. Check out the eyebrows on the render above. They look a bit wonky compared to the original, don’t they? I left them as is to keep your expectations with these as realistic as possible. Results may vary depending on what you are trying to convert, so! With that in mind, this is all the stuff you will be able to convert almost seamlessly from TS4 to TS2:
-Tattoos.
-Other body details such as body hair, scars, freckles, supernatural/occult details…
-Body painted underwear and swimwear, as well as some other clothing that’s mostly painted on the body.
-Socks, stockings and maybe leggings.
-Even skintones! In some areas they will look weird, so I recommend editing and blending them with other existing TS2 skins.
-Makeup. Kinda bad but hey it works! Eyeliner and anything that is around the eyes looks terrible for now, but other stuff like blush may look just okay.
-Eyebrows and maybe beards. A bit of hit or miss with those.
-Hair scalps. Very useful when converting some hairs! Although keep in mind part of that texture might also need to be baked on the face mesh, you know, that hairline makeup stuff.
Got your attention? Nice! Editing some of the textures from TS4 to match the UV mapping in TS2 using a 2D editing program can be incredibly hard. That’s where texture baking in Blender comes to the rescue!
It is recommended you download Blender version 2.91.0, which is the one I use. Don’t worry, it’s free! There’s also 3 Photoshop actions you will need to set up the textures for baking and then putting them back together, because unfortunately Blender doesn’t support transparencies in that baking process, so that takes a couple extra steps to make it work, but I think it’s still pretty fast and easy. And just in case Tumblr manages to blow up or something, I decided to include a pdf with the upcoming tutorial that will guide you step by step with all this process, so if this post gets deleted somehow (I really hope not!), you will still have that pdf as a backup archived.
You can download Blender here. Personally I recommend picking the fourth option, “blender-2.91.0-windows64.zip”, which is a portable version and doesn’t need to be installed.
You will also need Sims 4 Studio to extract the original Sims 4 CC textures you want.
As for Photoshop… I’m not going to tell you to buy that subscription service and give Adobe some undeserved money, so… yeah, there might be some other options out there to get it (very legit, yes yes).
So, before we begin, let’s clear out some questions you might have. What the heck is this texture baking thing and what does it do? Well, let’s imagine you have a projector and point an image into a blank wall. Then you pick up some brushes and start painting and copying that projected image in that wall. Texture baking is kinda like that when it comes to 3D models. You align two models and match them as closely as you can in shape and form, and once you adjust some parameters and values, Blender does the rest for you: it will give you a new texture for a new model with a different UV map. These files I’m sharing have everything already set up, so it’s a matter of plopping in that Sims 4 texture and you will get that new texture for TS2 in just a few clicks.
This tutorial assumes you know literally nothing about how to use Blender, so if you feel uncomfortable with it, worry no more! This will guide you with pictures showing where you need to click and explaining what is happening. For Sims 4 Studio and Photoshop the process might be a bit less detailed, but still this should be pretty beginner friendly. For this tutorial, I will use some tattoos as an example. Alright, enough with the rambling. Let’s get started!
·EXTRACTING TEXTURES AND EDITING THEM WITH PHOTOSHOP:
First things first, you will need to extract as pngs all the textures you want to convert from TS4 using Sims 4 Studio. Once you’ve done that, open them up one by one in Photoshop and run the “No transparency” action. This will remove the alpha channel from the image, getting rid of all the transparency. Go ahead and save a png copy of it. Then run the “Make Alpha” action on those same swatches (from the beginning, make sure you’re not running the action on an already edited swatch!), which will only show the alpha channel of the image in black and white, and save another copy of that. You should have 2 textures for each tattoo swatch. For the “No transparency” action I like to name it BASE (And your swatch number or name), and for the “Make Alpha” action I usually name it ALPHA (And that same swatch number/name). I recommend saving them in different folders named BASE TS4 and ALPHA TS4 respectively to keep it organized. If you want to make this much faster in Photoshop, there’s an automation option in it that allows you to run an action through a batch of files in a folder and then saves it all. I won’t cover how to do it in this tutorial, but you should be able to find it easily on Google by searching something like “Photoshop automate batch”. It’s really powerful and will make your workflow with actions much faster. Definitely recommend learning about that!
·BAKING THE TEXTURES IN BLENDER:
PRELIMINARY STEP 1: CONFIGURING BLENDER’S GRAPHICS SETTINGS:
Open your preferred Blender file depending on what you’re going to bake and the desired resolution (in this example I’m going to use the AF-body-4t2-1024 file). Before we start messing around in Blender, there’s one thing you should set up. It is a onetime step, and once it’s done, you won’t need to do it again. So, does your computer have a dedicated graphics card? If you don’t know or you’re not sure, just skip to the next step. Configuring Blender so it uses your graphics card instead of your CPU will make the baking render much faster, so it is recommended you set it correctly.
If your computer has a dedicated graphics card, click File (1) > Preferences (2) > and on the window that pops up click System (3) > and select CUDA and make sure your graphics card is there and tick it (4). I have an Nvidia Graphics card but your case may vary. Once you’re done, click on the tiny button on the bottom left corner and Save Preferences (5).
PRELIMINARY STEP 2: CHOOSING THE RENDERING DEVICE:
Click on the tiny camera button on the right, called Render Properties (1), and on Device (2) select GPU Compute if it’s not already selected. If you’re not sure if you have a graphics card or not, just select CPU. Then select the Material Properties tab (2) and Save your changes, either by pressing Ctrl + S, or clicking File (4) > Save (5). Okay, time to get into the good stuff!
·STEP 1: LOADING YOUR TS4 BASE TEXTURE:
In the Material Properties tab, click the folder icon that says Open (1) and on the window that pops up, navigate through your folders and select your first texture. For now we’re going to bake the BASE texture, so go to that folder where you saved the edited “No transparency” image. To navigate easily, the 3 buttons on the top right (2) are for the display mode. They will show your files in list mode, vertical and horizontal, and the one on the right will display the file thumbnails, pretty useful if you want to easily see your images. And the icons on the left side (3) will let you go one folder back and forward, go to the parent directory, and refresh the folder in case you just dropped something new in there. Double click on the image you need and that will load it into the Sims 4 body model, named “ts4 body”.
·STEP 2: SETTING UP YOUR SELECTION AND BAKING THE TEXTURE:
On the top right of the screen, you will see the names of the 2 models in the scene. Hold the Ctrl key in your keyboard and left click on the “ts2 body” model (1). If you did it correctly, you should see “ts2 body” in a yellowish orange color, and right down below, “ts4 body” should look more like a red orange. If not, try again by clicking first on ts4 body, and then while holding Ctrl click again on ts2 body. Then switch to the Render Properties tab by clicking the tiny camera icon (2) and click Bake (3). Depending on your screen resolution, you might need to scroll down a bit with your mouse to see the Bake button. Wait a few seconds for it to finish. You will see the progress percentage down on the bottom of your screen. Don’t panic if you notice your computer fans start ramping up, that’s completely normal! As I said in the beginning, using your GPU will bake the textures much faster than the CPU.
·STEP 3: SAVING YOUR NEW TS2 TEXTURE:
Once it’s finished, switch to the UV Editing Mode by clicking “UV Editing” on the top of your screen. And there it is: your new texture! You might have to scroll up your mouse wheel a bit to zoom in and see it in all its glory on the left side of the screen. We’re still not done yet though. You need to save it to yet another new folder (always try to keep your stuff organized!).
You can save it by pressing Shift + Alt + S, or clicking on Image* (1) and then Save As… (2). That will pop a window where you’ll need to navigate again and save it somewhere. Give it a proper name (3) and hit Enter to save it… well, Enter doesn’t always work for me for some reason, so if that happens just click Save As Image (4). In this case, I personally like to call it something like “BASE TS2”.
·STEP 4: GOING BACK TO STEP 1:
Alright! So you have your new baked base texture, but we still need to bake the alpha channel to give it its transparency. In order to go back to step 1 and start the process once again, click Layout (1), go back to the Material Properties tab (2), select “ts4 body” (3) and click on the folder icon (4) to open and load the alpha texture you did in the beginning in Photoshop.
Then it’s just a matter of repeating the process from step 2: bake the alpha channel and save it again as a new image (watch out, don’t overwrite your previous image!). This one I like to name “ALPHA TS2”. When you’re ready to move on, close Blender without saving. If you see a small check telling you it will save some images, make sure you uncheck it, so you will be able to use it again in the future from the starting point with no issues. I don’t think it really matters if you accidentally save your progress in these files, but I like to keep it clean and fresh so I can do the process where I left it from the beginning the next time I open it. And in case you mess up and save somewhere, you can always just delete the .blend file and download the template files again.
·FINAL STEP: PUTTING EVERYTHING BACK TOGETHER IN PHOTOSHOP:
We’re almost done! Open Photoshop and drop in both your 2 new baked textures, “BASE TS2” and “ALPHA TS2”. Keep both layers on top of each other and aligned. For that you can enable the snapping in View > Snap to… > All. Rename these layers so the Alpha layer is “ALPHA” and the Base is “BASE”, and make sure ALPHA is on top.
Then run the “Final Baked” action and now for real, it’s finally over! You just fully baked and converted these new textures. Congratulations!
So, to summarize, here’s a small guide with all the steps of the workflow I developed. Once you get the hang of it, baking and converting one swatch of a texture just takes a couple minutes. It really is that easy!
One small note though, some of the baking blend files save the textures with a resolution of 2048x2048 pixels, as clearly stated at the end of their file name. That’s way too overkill, because TS2 only properly supports up to 1024x1024 for most of its textures and you should always resize your final product to that max resolution. I just made those 2048 versions because there might be some really tiny and slim details on some tattoos that may look a little too blurry when baked into a 1024 resolution, so for those cases use that if you want and then resize them in Photoshop. In the Resample mode of the Image Size menu, there are a few options to choose. For the fine details, I like the Nearest Neighbor (hard edges) option, which, even if it looks a bit pixelated, it still preserves most of the texture and quality.
For anything else, I would just directly bake them using the 1024 versions in Blender.
And for the folks who feel comfortable playing around in Blender, this is just the beginning! Texture baking opens a LOT of possibilities, so feel free to move stuff around and edit the models to your liking! If you notice the baked textures look warped or stretched somewhere, or don’t like where some textures are placed in the S2 body, poke around that area moving stuff and then give it another try. The main objective of the baking process is keeping both overlapping models as close in shape as possible. You may also edit and save new copies of the templates, or make new ones from scratch using mine as a reference (keep a close look on those Baking settings and values, I think they work pretty well) and share them if you want to. Go ham, do whatever you want with them! I have plans on making templates to convert body textures from Sims 3 to Sims 2, but for now it’s not on my priorities, so we’ll see when that happens.
Whew! Hope none of this was too confusing. Need help or have any issues with these? Please ask/message me and I’ll be glad to help when I’m able to!
Credits for the CC used in the render demonstration:
-Skin by Sims3Melancholic
-Eyes by Northern Siberia Winds
-Eyebrows by PeachyFaerie
-Tattoos by xtc
-Top by SerenityCC
And the Tattoo I used for the tutorial can be found here, by ValhallanSim
Last but not least, a huge, special thanks to @elvisgrace for all her help testing this for me. I’ve never shared Blender files, so hopefully everything works as intended and everyone can use them with no weird issues. Fingers crossed! And thank you for reading! Hope you have fun playing with this new toy hehe.
So this is for @frauhupfner or anyone curious in reply to THIS post.
In this tutorial, I will show you how to resize the Sims 4 textures for better sized files for the Sims 2. This tutorial can also be used for accessories. And for beginners, this is a simple tutorial. Don’t be afraid!
Edit: I made a video for those that are more visual learners. It has no sound and can be found here: https://youtu.be/bgZ3UR_E3QU
Picture heavy with commentary under the cut:
So what do you need for this tutorial? Well, you will be converting hair so Blender, Milkshape, Simpe, MeshToolKit, etc. You already got all that for the conversion. This is just for the texture specifically. So you will need a photo-editing program. I have Photoshop, but for this tutorial, I am going to be using Photopea because not everyone has Photoshop and Photopea is totally online and free to use. They are a lot alike. So if you have Photoshop, this should be very similar.
Let’s start with a preface to get you acquainted with the Materials tab and Texture Coordinate Editor in Milkshape. Let’s start by pulling up that hair you are converting.
Select the hair mesh group and click over to the Materials tab.
Let’s hit the New button, then the first <none> and find our texture, select it and then click the Assign button. I generally change “Default” to “Ignore Alpha” to see the textures better.
You should have something like this. If not, right click on the 3D model and make sure “Textured” is selected. I also make sure “Draw Backfaces” is unselected because backfaces will not show up in the game.
Let’s go to Window->Texture Coordinate Editor.
So I have scaled the image to .45 so we can view it better. You will notice that the texture for the hair will be a vertical rectangle (traditionally 1024x2048 pixels) with the texture of the hair on the top portion of the image. Sims 4 models have their textures for the sims on one texture file so hair and accessories will be on the top half, clothes and shoes on the bottom half.
Exit out of the Texture Coordinate Editor and click the Delete button in the Materials tab. Let’s get our texture ready!
So this is where our tutorial really begins. Go to Photopea (or whatever photo-editor you are using). Click File and Open then find where you have your project saved. Select the texture.
Click Image->Canvas Size.
In the window set the Anchor to the top middle box. Then set the height to 1024 (make sure it is set to pixels) so that the image will be a perfect square 1024x1024. Click OK.
Edit: If you encounter a 2048x4096 (because I notice they are becoming popular for some stupid reason), click the top left anchor and set width/height as 1024x1024.
Your screen should look like this now. This is exactly what we want.
So now we File->Export As->PNG. This gives us the transparent parts we want in the image. This is especially helpful for when you convert alpha hair.
(This part is a little different than Photoshop. You can select the kind of image you want it saved as in the Save dialogue box.)
So it will save in your Downloads folder, at least that’s where mine did. Since this is my first time using Photopea, I’m not sure if there’s a way to change the navigation, but for tutorial purposes, just find where it saved and move it to where you have saved your project files.
Back in Milkshape, go through the process of adding our new texture size (like we did at the top). You will notice that it does not look quite right. We are going to fix that. Promise!
In the Texture Coordinate Editor, you will notice the red dots (which are the vertices of the mesh) are squished. Let’s un-squish them.
First, let’s check the “Lock X.” This will make sure nothing shifts horizontally. Next, hit Scale, then change 1.0 to 2.0 in the second Factor box. Then hit the “S” box.
Edit: If the original image size was 2048x4096, do not Lock X and set both factor boxes to 2.0 and hit the “S” box.
If you do those steps above correctly, it will look like this now. The reason why this does not work for clothes is because it is on the bottom portion of the image so it does not automatically snap where the clothes are and you have to move it vertically to fit. Luckily though, hair and accessories just snap where you want it.
If we view our hair, it should look like this. This is what we want. You can exit out of the Texture Coordinate Editor and continue with your conversion.
Tutorial now over.
Edit: Remember when you go to select your image in SimPE during the converting process to select the resized 1024x1024 image; otherwise, it is set to the wrong one. I know this seems like a common sense thing, but above you can see how these look similar, but you want the pink texture on the left.
