Bodyshop Tutorial Part One

[Ermie]

The Sims 2 Bodyshop Tutorial – Creating a T-Shirt

Introduction:
This tutorial has been written to introduce Bodyshop and explain the basics of the program as well as a short introduction into creating custom clothes for The Sims 2. A lot of people have been asking about this on the boards lately so i thought i'd write a tutorial about it.

For this tutorial you will need:
The Sims 2 Bodyshop (included in the game or downloadable from The Sims 2)
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 or a similar graphics package

Contents:
1. Introduction to The Sims 2 Bodyshop
2. Opening Bodyshop
3. Learning you way around
4. Exporting the files
5. Editing the files
6. Saving the files and importing to Bodyshop
7. Glossary
8. Disclaimers and Notes


1. Introduction to The Sims 2 Bodyshop
Firstly, what is Bodyshop and what does it do? Well this is a program that comes with The Sims 2 (TS2) which lets you create your own skins for the game. Skins are basically the clothes your Sims wear. The technology behind the program is that it allows you to export textures and alpha files from the game and edit them to re-colour and create your own clothing. Meshes are what gives the clothing its 3D shape, for example a skirt flares out on a female Sim because the mesh is built to make the clothing flare. If you wish to make new meshes have a look at the Creator's Tutorial Guide


2. Opening Bodyshop
To open Bodyshop you may find there is already an icon on your desktop for it. If there isn’t do the following:

Go to the Start Menu – All Programs – EA Games – The Sims 2 – *Latest Expansion Installed* - The Sims 2 Bodyshop

Simple! Now just let it load up and move on to the next step.


3. Learning your way around
Now you have opened Bodyshop you’ll need to know what’s what!

On the left you will see a platform, this is where your Sim will stand whilst you are creating, a lot of the interface is like Create-a-Sim in TS2 in most respects. Now to build a Sim you will need to click the ‘Build a Sim’ icon on the top right of the blue navigation bar. We are interested in Creating Parts so click this button on the right.

On the new screen that opens select ‘Start New Project’ and ‘Create Clothing’ for this tutorial.

Now here is the interesting bit, on the left you now see a very unusual looking Sim, they are grey and hairless to provide a sort of tailors dummy for you to try clothing out on. Also to the right you will see 3 dials, each of these is a setting for your Sim. The top dial is for gender, male or female. I am going to design a male t-shirt so click the male icon.

The middle dial is for age, select adult for this tutorial. The bottom dial is for body type, it doesn’t really matter what you choose all textures will be exported the same size and wrapped around each body type accordingly.

Next we need to choose a t-shirt, select the ‘everyday’ icon (top and trousers) and then select the tops (top icon). I have chosen a long red t-shirt to re-colour.

4. Exporting the files
Now we have our clothing selected we need to export the textures so we can edit them. Once you have selected a t-shirt (make sure it is highlighted green) then click the little folder icon with the tool-tip ‘export selected textures’. Now you need to enter a UNIQUE project name. Make sure it’s something you understand and make it unique so it has no conflicts with other items of clothing in the game. I use the following format:

Name of creator_collection name_age gender type of clothing

So: Ermie_tt_ame would be Ermie_Tutorial T-shirt_ Adult Male Everyday

We do this as we have limited amount of letters to use when creating project names but we also need something to identify our work, especially if it goes up on the internet.

Once you have put in a filename click the export button again. You will now get a new display in Bodyshop. The writing at the top tells you where the files have been exported to. The default is:

My Documents – EA Games – The Sims 2 – Projects – Filename


5. Editing the files
Now we need to edit the files! I will show you a very basic re-colour here as I am assuming if you are reading this you have never used Bodyshop before or Photoshop. If you are using a similar graphics package such as Paint Shop Pro or Gimp you will have to interpret my tutorial into the tools available to you.

Now you need to open your graphics package. Go to File and Open and use the above location to locate the files you have exported. You will need to open the Texture and Alpha file.

This is what Photoshop should now look like.

Once you have opened these files it’s time to get creative! I’ve found the best way of re-colouring is firstly to use the alpha sprite to get the outline of the clothing. Basically an alpha sprite is the black and white one. It is used in the game to determine what areas of the clothing to show and not show. Black is the colour used to hide and white to show, any grey areas in between become almost transparent depending on the darkness or lightness of the grey. For more information on alpha sprites see the Glossary.

Take the wand tool

and select the white area of the alpha file. You should see the wand tool selects everything that is that colour, great isn’t it! Now we need to introduce you to the layer palette.

The layer palette is a very helpful concept in computer graphic design. Imagine you are using layers of tracing paper one over the other. You draw something on the bottom and you can see it through the one above, layers are a lot like this. Layers start off transparent and if you fill it with a colour it will block out all the layers underneath it. However you can move layers around and do all types of different things with them to get some great effects. For now we are only interested in using it to colour in.

The first layer i fill with green.

The second layer i half fill with blue

If i move (drag and drop) the first layer over the second it blocks out the blue.

You get the idea... so back to the alpha sprite, still have the white area selected? Good. Now go to the new layer icon on the layer palette (hover over the icons to see their names) and click it, notice the selection is still there but now it is on the new layer.

Now we need to select the colour we want our t-shirt to be. I’ve decided to make mine green. Click the Foreground colour box and the colour palette will appear like so:

Once you have selected a colour you like press ‘ok’. Now we need to fill our selection with the colour. To do this go to the Edit menu and select Fill and make sure you have Foreground Colour selected and Opacity set to 100%. An easier way is to press Alt and Z together.

Ok so now you can see we have coloured the white bits green! Great except it’s on the wrong file! But don’t worry this was just so we could get the accurate outline of the t-shirt. Now we need to click and drag the green layer onto the Texture image (the coloured one). To do this press CTRL and D together to deselect the wand tool and then select the move tool (m) and drag the layer from the layers palette onto the texture image (the coloured one). You should end up with this:

Now use the move tool again to line up the green layer with the t-shirt shape underneath. It can be a bit tricky to see where the t-shirt stops and the random colour begins but once you’ve spotted it it’s easy.

Once you have the green layer lined up we can now use our handy Layer Styles to make the green become the colour of the t-shirt underneath! On the Layers Palette you should see a box with a down arrow that says ‘normal’. This means currently the layer style is on normal which means solid colour. We need to make the green a colour so we have to select the ‘Colour’ layer style. Press the down arrow and a drop down box should appear, select the word colour. This should mean that the top should now appear green! How cool.

Please note that this doesn’t work for all colours, some don’t appear well on top of each other, which is why I have chosen a dark colour green here. If you don’t end up with a good looking t-shirt just change either the colour overlay or the t-shirt you have exported from Bodyshop.

6. Saving the files and importing to Bodyshop
Ok now we have made our files we need to save them! We only need to edit the Texture File and not the alpha sprite; that was just to help us. So close the Alpha sprite and DON’T save any changes! This is very important.

Next go back to your texture file and go to File, Save As. Now select .bmp from the drop down menu instead of a .psd. You now can see your 3 files you exported, click the one that matches the name of the file (without the ‘copy’ on the end of course) and click save. You will be prompted if you want to overwrite the file, click yes or ok. Now you will be prompted again as to what file type to save it as, don’t worry about this just click ‘ok’.

Now we need to go back into Bodyshop! Next to the ‘enter tool tip’ box you will see an arrow in a circle shape. This refreshes (like a webpage) the look of your Sim. Click this and the new t-shirt should appear on the dummy. You also have the option to enter a tool-tip. This is a description of the top that appears when you hover your cursor over it in the game, handy for putting who it’s by on.

Now if it all looks ok and you like it press the ‘import to game’ button and press ok when it’s done! Now you can go and build a new Sim with your new green t-shirt! Well done!

Glossary
Alpha Sprites: These are the black and white files that are exported with textures. They show the game which areas of clothing to show and which not to over meshes. Black shows the game which areas not to show and white is used to show areas. Any greys are areas inbetween which are Opaque, the darker the grey the more see-through it is, the lighter the more we see it.

Meshes: Think of meshes as skeletons. They determine the shape of the clothing. For example they decide where pockets go, the length of a skirt or how wide trouser legs are. The texture files then wrap around these meshes to give them colour and the illusion of 'clothing'.


Notes
This tutorial was written by Ermie and should not be copied.
The Sims 2 and The Sims 2 Bodyshop are copyright Maxis and EA Games.
If you have any questions or comments please PM me.

I hope this helps! If you wish to follow the second part of this tutorial Click Here.