Have you ever thought that the black hair colour just wasn't black enough?
If so, I've got an easy solution for you!
DISCLAIMER! I don't mean to be hateful or rude towards anyone. Everyone is free to do as they please with their own content (as long as it complies with EA:s TOS). The original black colour just doesn't fit my taste, that's all. I made this tutorial because I thought that there might be others who share my opinion but who might not know how to change the colour. With that said, I'd like to apologise in advance if this hurts or offends anyone.
Art by Alex Espino.
The hair shown above was made by Kiara Zurk.
Let's begin!
You'll need:
- Sims 4 Studio
- A photo editing program (e.g. Photoshop, Photopea, Gimp)
1) Open the hair you want to edit in Sims 4 Studio (double click on the package file).
2) Export the blue-black texture as a PNG and save it somewhere that's easy to access.
3) Open the PNG you just saved in your editing program of choice. I'll be using Photopea for this tutorial.
4) Add a 'Black & White' adjustment layer.
5) Add a 'Brightness/Contrast' adjustment layer and bring it all the way down to -150 or whatever you prefer.
6) Optional! You can flatten the image into one layer by right-clicking on any of the layers and then click on 'Flatten Image'. I personally don't bother though.
7) Save as a PNG and import it back into Sims 4 Studio. Save the package file.
That's it! Now you've got yourself a true black hair colour.
Important! If you use a Reshade preset, you need to take into account the way that preset changes colours, lighting etc. in the game. If you use a preset that darkens the colours, the hair colour might look odd if you adjusted the brightness exactly the way I did in this tutorial.
As requested, here’s a lil tutorial on how to edit my piercing sets to your liking! I tried to make this as beginner-friendly as I could so that everyone can have fun with them :) (also beware, I'm not the best with words or explaining things, so go ahead and hmu if things are unclear lol)
Tutorial under cut!
You'll need Sims 4 Studio and Blender (don’t ask me what version, I have no idea which ones work or not for S4S lol. I'm using v.2.78)
Step 1 - Cloning the .package
(This step creates a copy that won’t conflict with the original .package)
First put a copy of the .package you want to edit into the S4S Mods folder (the path should be: Documents\Sims 4 Studio\Mods)
Open S4S and select the "Create 3D Mesh" option then click CAS (actually I think the CAS Standalone option would work just fine as well lol, I barely know the difference between them tbh)
choose all swatches (or just the ones you want) of the piercings. Change content to Custom, to find the piercings easier. Click Next and name the .package whatever you want and save somewhere.
Then export the mesh
Step 2 - Modifying the mesh
The fun part! If you’re unfamiliar with blender, here’s a useful guide to help you with some controls and navigating around, but I will also mention some of the controls you might need.
s4studio_mesh_1 is the only thing in the menu on the right we care about, since that’s the mesh for the piercings. Hop into edit mode (by pressing tab button while having that mesh selected in the menu) and now do whatever you want to the piercings.
Tip: press numpad 5 for a more manageable view
Press A to select or unselect all
Press L while hovering over a piercing to select that entire one (Shift+L to unselect it)
Press S to scale selection
Press R to rotate selection
Removing piercings:
Select the unwanted piercings and press Delete or X and select “Vertices” option
Moving piercings:
Press G to move selection, then LMB to confirm or RMB to cancel
Adding Piercings:
Press Shift+D to duplicate selected piercing
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Important!
If you move or add piercings they need to stay within the original area. This is to ensure that they’ll work fine in game with different facial expressions and sliders.
Example: In the pic below, the copied piercing is still in the left upper lip area as the original piercing is, which will still work fine in game.
However, if I were to move it to the bottom lip or the right side of the mouth (or any other part of the face that isn’t the upper left lip, which is the original placement of the piercing I duplicated) it would not move or function correctly in game.
If you want to add/move piercings to different areas of the face you’re going to have to fix the weights. (sorry but I will not explain how to do that lol. If you want to do that, look up an existing tutorial on how to transfer weights ;) )
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Don’t forget to save when you’re done editing the piercings!
Step 3 - Finishing the .package
Import the finished mesh into S4S and then save.
Since we only modified the mesh of my original .package we won’t have to do anything else in S4S.
Now it’s finished! In game it’s going to be next to my sets and without a custom thumbnail.
Extra notes
- This isn’t really necessary because of the (usually) already low amount of polys for face piercings and since they’re small and not very visible from far away. But if you want to make proper LODs add the decimate modifier in blender and lower the ratio. I usually put it somewhere around 0.5.
So LOD1 should have around half of LOD0′s amount of polys, while LOD2 has half of LOD1′s amount and so on.
But it would work just fine to either leave the original existing meshes in there or import the modified mesh we made for LOD0 into all of the LOD’s, as long as that one doesn’t have too many polys.
- This modified .package needs my original .package that we cloned to work in game. If you want it to function without needing to have mine installed as well, open it in S4S, go to “tools>modding>embed all externally referenced resources(CAS)”
I hope this tutorial was helpful! As I mentioned, feel free to hmu if anything is unclear and I’ll try to help out :)
Okay, I wanna start off by saying this is one of my first written tutorials. SO if it sucks, I truly apologize but hey I tried. :D
This is a tutorial to demonstrate how I make Tattoo CC for The Sims 4 (granted, I have only released one thing, I still make it quite often, whenever I have a need for something specific).
1. I usually go to google and search for whatever I am looking for. Since I am not making anything specific I found this random cute doodle of a cat (I don’t know the original artist but credit goes to them).
Note: When you are looking for a image, be sure to keep in mind you want something with a solid white background and the lines to be dark (off white is okay but can get bothersome to edit)
2. Once, I have the image opened, I go and make a selective color layer.
In the colors selection, I pick BLACK. Go to the very bottom slider and adjust accordingly. You’re just making the black color darker. That way when it is turned into a brush, it has better defined lines.
3. I then grab the background eraser tool (e) and erase the “white background, making sure I don’t lose any of the black lines. Once that is complete, I go ahead and merge the layers. KEEP IN MINDthis step is only needed if your background isn’t a white color. If it is white, just skip it. :)
4. Now it is time to make into a brush. Go to Edit > Define Brush Preset
You should have something that looks similar to this:
Name it accordingly and wha-lah you have a brand new fancy dancy brush!
This honestly has been the easiest method I have found for making a tattoo for The Sims 4. If anyone wants me to show them how I use the brush to make the tattoo, leave me an ask! And I’ll definitely try my best to make a helpful tutorial. :D
Happy Simming!!
Also, there is a permanent link for this tutorial >>here<<
