★★ R E T E X T U R I N G . T I P S ★★
For me a good hair retexture should have two things: the shine on the right places and curved textures if the strands are curved.
Many people make the bangs with shiny tips or straight hairs with inconsistent shiny areas. But here we can see how real hair looks like. Whenever a curve forms, that should be the "shiny" part.
Sometimes it's hard to do this because the hair was meshed in a way that makes it impossible to do it, but other than that, if you want a realistic looking hair for your sims, observe how your own hair looks like and try to imitate that with your retexture.
Usually the tips for most hair meshes are slightly curved, and making this effect in Photoshop is very easy.
You have to right click the layer with your texture and duplicate it. Then go to Image > Image Rotation > 90º CCW.
With your duplicate selected, go to Edit > Transform > Scale, then press this button usually at the top.
Now the Warp options should show up with a drop-down menu. Choose from there the Flag option with Bend at 12,0%.
Click any button from the Tools menu and Apply the Transformation. Now the whole texture is curved, but you want only the tips. Select and delete the rest, then adjust it to match the straight original layer below.
Once you're done go to Image > Image Rotation > 90ºCW.
★★ T S R W . & . C U S T O M . T H U M B N A I L S ★★
So now that we know those things, let's start with TSRW. Open the program and go to Create New Project > New Import. A pop-up window will ask you to choose your file, but before doing that you have to choose the file's format, if it's a sims3pack, package or a workshop project (.wrk).
Select you file and hit Next.
Follwing this you have to choose your Project Name and Title. The second one is not that important for hair retextures, but for objects, this is the title you see in buy/build mode. Same with the Description. It's important that you always include your creator's name and/or url, and always give credit to the original creator in case you're using a custom mesh.
Write a descriptive Project Name and click Next.
Now you can start working!
Under Project you can choose the categories, and this is very important because very few creators pay attention to these details. Sneakers don't go under Formalwear, caps don't go under Sleepwear, and pants don't go under Swimwear!
Hairs should always be working when your sim gets naked. Ponytails and updos don't need morphs because they won't clip so make them ValidForMaternity. Your pregnant sims will appreciate it.
And this is my personal choice. I always disable the ValidForRandom category. Why Vivian, WHY?? Because if you don't disable that, every NPC or random sim that pops up in your sim world will have a custom hair and this will make your game very slow. The more CC random sims have the slower your game gets.
Under Texture you have the textures (Control Map and Diffuse Map) that you have to edit. Click on the images and the Edit button should appear. Click on Edit to Export and Import the images (.dds).
The CAS Thumbnail option is under Configuration. If you click there it will give you the option to choose the image you want to use for the thumbnail in .png format. This image should be 256x256 pixels.
IMPORTANT: For hairs that don't have accessories it is necessary to edit the file with S3PE once you're done, otherwise the thumbnail won't show up in CAS. I'll explain this below.
And finally under Mesh you have the Specular and the Normal Map.
The Specular is what makes the hair shine in game. Make it too white and it can look like plastic. The Normal Map gives the hair a more 3D effect.
Once you're done with your retexture you can export it as a sims3pack. File > Export > Sims3Pack, and then convert it to package with Sims3Pack Multi Installer. Or you can go to Edit > Project Content > Export > To .package. Either way works.
Remember that if your hair doesn't go under the Hats category, then we need to edit this file with S3PE for the thumbnail to work, and now I'm going to explain why.
Open your file with S3PE, and make sure Displey: Names - Tags are both ticked. This makes finding things much easier. What we need to edit is the THUMB file. When you find it, right click on it and go to Details. You should get a pop-up window.
Now, when you add thumbs with TSRW, the group you get is always 0x00000001, but this group only belongs to hairs with accessories/hats. The group for non-hat hairs is 0x00000000, so you have to replace that 1 with a 0 for your thumbnail to work in CAS.
If your hair has accessories, then you leave it as it is.
With TSRW you can add an individual thumb for each "recolor" your mesh has, and sometimes some hairs have both a recolor without the accessory and one or more with the accessory. The recolor without it should have the group 0x00000000, the first recolor with the accessory should be 0x00000001, and the second should be 0x00000002.
And what if you can't add thumbs with TSRW?
Let's just say you're retexturing a very old hair that you can't open with TSRW, but you still want to add a thumbnail.
Open your file with S3PE, and find CASP, then right click it and choose Details. The same pop-up window we saw before will show up and what you need to copy is the Instance number. Every file, every recolor has a unique instance number and this is how the game knows that certain thumbnail belongs to a specific recolor.
Copy that number (ctrl+C) and click ok. Now go to Resources > Add. Again the pop-up window. Under Instance paste the number you just copied (ctrl+V). Under group you write the corresponding group I just explained above. And under Type, choose from the drop-down menu the option THUM 0x626F60CE.
Click OK.
Now you have a THUMB but it doesn't have an image. Right click on THUMB > Replace. Find your 256x256 png thumb and Open.
Save you file and you're done!
It's important that I mention that it's possible to edit the categories, gender and age corresponding to any CAS file with CASP as well.
You have to select CASP and click the Grid button at the bottom.
Cick Commit and save your file after the changes.
