While I'm doing a new hairstyle, I wanted to share one topic that has been on my mind for a long time. I finally figured out a more or less easy way to create textures, and I really, really want to share it. I'm not going to explain the basics, so I expect that you already understand basic concepts like uv, and are familiar with baking ui in blender and know shader nodes basics (please, enable node wrangler...)
Also you'll need this add-ons for better uv manipulation and uv-packing
FIRST STEP - UV
To begin with, we need a hair model, preferably one you’ve created yourself. However, game hairstyles also partially fit these requirements, since they're colored in a similar way. I’m basically trying to replicate something close to the Maxis pipeline using the tools and methods I have.
The model should be unwrapped and shouldn’t have overlapping UV islands. If you used hair curves, your UVs are probably already rectangular. Just rotate and resize them as you normally would when applying game textures.
You can place some UV islands in the head’s texture space, where the hairstyle overlaps the mesh. You can also check the game textures for reference. There’s usually plenty of space used by the hair textures, not just that tiny rectangle in the top-left corner.
This is how my UV looks like:
To achieve this result, you can use free add-ons for uv packing such as UV-packer.
I prefer hand modeling over using curves, so my UVs look a bit different. I used the UV manipulation add-on I mentioned earlier to get them this way, but that’s not the topic for today.
IMPORTANT: All UV islands should be as straight as possible and oriented vertically. Otherwise, this method won’t work. This is crucial because the noise texture stretches vertically to imitate hair strands. It’s too time-consuming to handpaint them, and honestly, no one really does that.
SECOND STEP - Material setup
I - Go to the Shading tab. We’ll set up a small procedural node material.
If you’re not familiar with the shader editor or how nodes work, I recommend watching a few blender tutorials on the basics first. Othervise my instructions may be confusing for you.
You’ll need two nodes to start with: Ambient Occlusion and Noise Texture. Above, you can see an example of what you should get using this setup.
Use a UV Map node with your hair UVs. Usually, it’s called uv_0, or just UVMap if you haven’t renamed it yet. (I have multiple UV sets in my project because I was experimenting a bit.)
To get the correct mapping for the noise texture, connect the UV Map node to a Mapping node, and make sure you stretch the texture along the Y axis. This is exactly why your UV islands need to be aligned vertically, so the strands flow in the right direction.
I usually set the Noise Texture scale to 100–200 to get a nice strand-like effect.
Plug the Ambient Occlusion node into a Color Ramp to reverse the colors and adjust the contrast. Do the same with the Noise Texture. I recommend it to tone down the strong contrast a bit.
If you have the Node Wrangler add-on enabled (which I highly recommend), you can press Ctrl+Shift and click on a node to preview its output.
Use the result from the Ambient Occlusion Color Ramp as the Factor (think of it like a mask in Photoshop) in a MixRGB (color mix) node. Then, plug the result from the Noise Texture Color Ramp into the A socket, and set the blend mode to Multiply (again, just like in Photoshop).
You can control how dark the ambient occlusion appears by adjusting the color in the B socket of the color mix node.
After, I plug result into color ramp again to adjust contrast.
II (optional) - gradient.
Though not necessary, I do it to add a little variation to tones. You may skip it.
It makes little difference - but don't make mixing factor too high or it will be too dark later.
III - Principled BSDF and lighting setup for baking.
Although stretched noise texture with occlusion works wonders, hair wouldn't be hair if it didn't have shine. This “shine”, although it can be painted, is in most cases just baked-in highlights.
First, change the render engine to cycles and set following options:
You don't need too high amount of samples.
You'll need a little scene setup. If you have any lights, delete them.
Then, create two cylinders and delete top and bottom side. in the modeling make something like in the screenshot. Sometimes one cylinder above is enough.
Create material for them and use simple emission node. This cylinders are necessary for that gloss effect hair does have.
Create area light and scale. Put it above head - and set power around 10, not too strong.
In left top corner of shader editor switch to the world. Set it to black.
Go back into object shader editing. Select your hair in edit mode. Create Principled bsdf and empty image texture ( 1024*2048 or 2x bigger). Remember noise texture? Create bump node and plug it into height. Copy the values below to make effect subtle. Plug bump node to normal.
In principled bsdf, set metallic 1, roughness around 0.4. Open specular tab and put anisotroptic to 1. Create tangent node, change to Uv map, choose your map and plut tangent node into tangent.
Don't forget to plug principled bsdf into Material output node!!
Phew, setup is done! Go into render preview and enjoy results!
It should look like this:
Now we have to bake this. it's easy - go into render tab again, scroll down and open bake menu. Open margin menu and set 8 px at least - or more (just cut later to hair area). Change magrin type to extend.
Now, select your object - and select Uv map you're baking to. In shader tab, select blank texture you had created before. Go into render tab again, and in the baking menu press bake. Now wait - and voila!
Now go back into the shader editor and plug the texture into the color mixing node into B. Plug into A procedural texture we're done before. Set mode to Soft light.
Now, since you know how to bake I won't explain it over again - create new blank texture with same resolution and bake result to it.
Save the texture and color it in any graphic editor you have with gradient maps. You may adjust texture contrast we're created before, but that's all.
You're done!
Here, in part 2, I will explain how to color this grayscale texture.
hey guys C: i finally posted a blender tutorialll!! this is my very first tutorial so idk if it's any good tbh.. i think it's a little fast paced tbh. i'll probably post a better one sometime in the near future soosos
How to apply textures in Blender 4.0 For newbies (´｡• ᵕ •｡) ♡
So you imported your lovely doll into Blender 4.0, but the textures are messed or missing, here's how to apply base simple textures from the scratch!
I'm using Blender 4.0.2 (Sorry 4.3, but your EEVEE is currently nothing but tears for me) and my lovely Aidan is here to assist me. SO! Seat your bum comfortable and let's begin!
1 - Split your working space by pulling the corner of the screen:
2 - Then click on Material with your mesh selected.
3 - Pick Shader Editor on the left part of the screen and hit New in the Material on the right. You'll get something like this:
4 - On the left choose Add - Texture - Image Texture. We need three of them at very least :D
5 - First Image texture: Connect Color to the Base Color and Alpha to Alpha. Second Image texture connect to Specular IOR Level. Don't forget to upload your textures! Color - is well... color pics. Specular looks like Black/White pics and Normal is purple!
6 - Now add Normal Map. And connect it like on the picture below:
7 - Specular and Normal maps should be NON - COLOR in the Image Texture - Color Space
8 - Turn on the alpha. In Material - Settings - Blend Mode/Shadow Mode change on Alpha Hashed + You can check Backface Culling. In some cases it's vital :D
9 - Change the Specular settings in case of weird shining by changing IOR and Roughness parameters.
How to rip NPC models from Destiny 2 for fan art and reference purposes!
For this tutorial, you will need:
Destiny 2 installed on your computer
Blender 4.0 or later
The latest version of Charm
The latest version of the D2 Blender Importer addon
Note that this tutorial is intended for those with working knowledge of the basic usage and functions of Blender. If you're brand new to the software, there are plenty of great tutorials out there on youtube and other sites. Personally I would recommend Grant Abbitt's tutorials, he's the one I learned from the most when I was new to Blender.
This is also not the only or definitive or even necessarily the best way of doing this. It's just what I have found works best for me with trial and error.
Image-heavy tutorial below the cut!
If you don't already have Charm installed, the first part of this video goes over installing and setting it up, so I won't cover that here.
Once Charm is installed, open it up and you should see the main menu.
Select the "Dynamics" tab.
It will probably take a bit of time to load, especially the first time you open it. Just let it finish and you should see a screen like this. In the text box in the top left corner, search for whatever character you want to export. In our case, we'll be looking for our renegade failson Dredgen Bael.
Usually NPCs will show up in either a "NPCs" or "Cinematics" category. Sometimes they will show up in multiple categories, as there are variations and duplicates in the files. In this case Bael's models are in the same category but there are two of them, with slight differences.
One of them has his Praxic Blade included, while the other has a more complex rig. If you can't see the rig, make sure "has skeleton" is "true" and that "Show skeleton" above the model preview is checked. We will be exporting the second one for this tutorial. Make sure "Apply texture" and "Export entity children" are checked and click "Export Current". The files will be exported to wherever you chose when setting up Charm.
Now open up Blender and use the D2 Blender Importer addon to import the CFG file that was exported.
And the rigged model should show right up!
Now the tedious part, setting up materials.
Bael's model imported with the diffuse map properly connected but not the other texture maps. We will have to do those manually. Note that this is different from how you would set up player gear materials, which is showcased in the video linked above!
As you can see there are a number of textures that were imported, but for a basic material setup we will primarily need three of them: the diffuse, metallic/roughness/AO, and the normal map. If you're not sure which is which, the diffuse is the regular color image, the metallic/roughness/AO will be red/green/blue (sometimes partially transparent, and if the material has some emissive/glowy quality it might even be mostly transparent), and the normal map will be a light purple. The other image textures included are used for further details in the material but we will be ignoring those to keep things simple for this tutorial.
Here is an example of a very basic material setup. Breakdown:
Diffuse color: Pretty straightforward. Plug this into the "A" input of a Mix Color node set to Multiply, and then plug that node into the Base Color input of the Principled BSDF.
Metallic/Roughness/AO: Each of these is packed into one color channel of the image, so we will use a Separate Color node to get each one individually.
Red: Metallic. Plug this right into the metallic input of the Principled BSDF.
Green: Roughness. Plug this right into the roughness input of the Principled BSDF.
Blue: AO (ambient occlusion). Plug this into the "B" input of the Mix Color node with the diffuse color. The factor (blend amount) can be whatever you think looks nice.
If there are any parts of the material that are supposed to glow, like the buttons on Bael's belt, you would use the Alpha output for the emission strength on the Principled BSDF and the diffuse color texture for the emission color.
Normals: Make sure this is plugged into a Normal Map node, and then that is plugged into the normal input of the Principled BSDF. Do not plug it straight into the shader!
There are multiple materials per model so make sure you do this for each of them. Then you should have your NPC ready to go!
Misc notes:
If you can't find an NPC model in the Dynamics tab, try checking in the Named Bags tab. In that case you will want to search for the activity or location they appear in. Orin's Emissary form, for example, cannot be found by searching "Orin" or "Emissary" in the Dynamics tab, but if you go into the Named Bags tab and search for the Prophecy dungeon, she can be found as "trials_vendor_scaled".
The material setup is going to vary from NPC to NPC. We got lucky in that Bael's materials were very straightforward but some NPCs will have more complicated shader node setups. (Lodi for example needed a bit of wrangling to get the patterns on his clothes to show up)
If something looks off with the textures double check the Color Space and Alpha settings of the image texture nodes. Diffuse textures should have their Color Space set to sRGB and their Alpha to Channel Packed. Metallic/Roughness/AO and Normals should have their Color Space set to Non-Color Data.
If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer!
In this tutorial, I will show you how to make your mesh seams smooth inside Blender (no Milkshape required!) and walk you through the process step by step. We will make a perfectly smooth mesh and transfer the normal data from that mesh to our main mesh using the Data Transfer modifier.
I am using Blender 3.6 in this tutorial (though you should be able to follow along using other versions as well)
You do not need to have much previous knowledge to follow this tutorial, but I assume you know some basics in Blender like how to select, things, navigate around, etc, and know how to import the meshes and put them into Blender.
For this tutorial, I exported the Sims 3 afbodyEP4DressPromBigBow mesh with TSR Workshop. You can use any clothing mesh you like though, and works on any meshes, not just Sims 3 ones.
This is our mesh. You can already tell that it has the dreaded seams on the neck and the rest of the body.
First, we need to make a copy of the mesh (in Object mode, select the mesh and hit Ctrl+D Shift+D to duplicate it, then hit Esc to stop it from moving around).
Rename the mesh (I added Seamless to the mesh name).
Make sure the original mesh is hidden (click the eye symbol) and select the Seamless mesh.
Press the Tab key to go into Edit Mode.
Now we select the parts that we want to have smooth seams. Let's select everything that is skin (you can select a litte piece of the mesh and then press Ctrl+L to select the entire piece)!
Now, press M and in the menu, choose By Distance. (in older versions, this is called Remove Doubles).
This will remove all double vertices at the seams on the selection we made.
It will show you how many vertices it removed. The skin looks nice and smooth!
Let's switch back to our original mesh: Make sure you deactivate the eye on the Seamless mesh and activate the eye again on the main mesh. Then, select the main mesh.
Now, let's add a data modifier to our main mesh. Click the blue wrench icon in the vertical list of the properties panel and then onto Add Modifier, then choose Data Transfer from the list.
As the source, we choose our Seamless mesh.
Also toggle on Face Corner Data and click the Custom Normals button.
Hold on, there is a message saying that we should enable Auto Smooth in Object Data Properties. Let's do that next! (if the message does not appear for you, maybe Auto Smooth is already on).
Click the green inverted triangle button and in the Normals section, toggle on Auto Smooth.
Now we can switch back to the modifier tab by clicking the blue wrench icon again.
But hang on, what happened to our mesh? There are now black spots over the dress and shadows on the legs!
This is due to the Data transfer modifier's Mapping setting. If we change it to Topology, our mesh goes back to normal again. Phew!
Now that the normals look good, we can start the transfer of our new smooth normals from the seamless mesh to our main mesh.
To do that, we hit the Generate Data Layers button.
This button works destructively, so you cannot undo what it did, just FYI.
Note: On newer versions of Blender, Generate Data Layers may not be enough to transfer the normals and you may need to apply the modifier instead.
You can toggle the modifier's visuals on and off with the little screen icon to see the results after you click Generate Data Layers to see if it stuck. If it did not (and you see the seams of your base mesh when toggling it off), try to apply it instead.
I switched from textured to solid shading because the differences are just more noticeable in this mode. This is how our mesh looks now with the modifier turned off.
Because we clicked the transfer button, the normals have been permanently applied to our mesh. The skin is smooth now, and so is the dress (even though we did not smooth that one, hmm...)
If we toggle the modifier back on, suddenly the dress has seams again! What's going on there?
I'm not exactly sure why, but Auto Smooth seems to be doing some smoothing on the dress mesh as well.
I am not sure if this is normal behavior or not, but let's pretend that this did not happen and the modifier in fact did not smooth the dress.
Maybe we just forgot to smooth some areas on the Seamless mesh that we noticed only later on. That's no problem. We simply modify our Seamless mesh again!
So let's swap back to the seamless mesh and select it (remember to click the eye icons so only the Seamless mesh is visible).
Let's select the main dress parts and press M -> merge by distance on them.
We cannot smooth the whole dress all at once, because then that would remove some seams that we want (like those for the backfaces and the middle section of the dress where the bow is attached).
If we remove the wrong seams, we ruin our normals and will have black splotches.
Now, let's select the backfaces and areas we left out before and repeat this process: M -> merge by distance.
Look at how perfect our Seamless mesh is looking now! Now, let's transfer those beautiful normals to our main mesh.
Select the main mesh and toggle the eye icons again, to hide our Seamless mesh and reveal our main mesh.
Once again, we will use the Generate Data Layers button in our Data Transfer modifier. If you have previously applied the modifier, just add the modifier again to the main mesh and use the settings shown here.
And that's it, you are done! You have a perfectly smoothed mesh that you can export now.
Final Note: it is best to transfer the normals at the very end of your meshing process because any action that recalculates the normals can reset our custom-made smooth normals again.
Of course, you can simply use the Generate Data Layers button again to re-add them, but it saves you time to only do this step at the end.
I almost forgot to say: You still have to use Mesh Toolkit to fix the seams on the edges of your mesh and do the usual shenanigans.
Sims Blender Tutorial: Appending Clothes and Dressing Your Sim Model
The first installment in my long-requested series of Sim Blender tutorials is one of the most fundamental parts of creating a render: dressing your Sim. There are many tutorials out there on how to do this already, but this is my own process on how I dress my Sims in Blender. This is a full-length video detailing my process, and it is not sped up at all so that it is easier for you to follow along.
For this tutorial, you need the following:
Blender: https://www.blender.org/download/ (I am using v4.4)
Sims 4 Studio: https://sims4studio.com/
BlenderKit (Optional): https://www.blender.org/download/
If you have any questions, I'll do my best to help, but I am not a Blender Guru or anything like that. Most of what I know I learned via friends, internet tutorials, or trial and error (of which Blender requires a lot).
