Caution
This page features an uncensored, if undetailed, nude skin.
Caution
This page features an uncensored, if undetailed, nude skin.
While The Sims Creator is good at dressing sims like dolls, you may want more than just the available doll clothes after a while. SimShow is better for wholesale edits to skins, insofar as you don't need to shut the program off to refresh the list, making it easier to see your edits in realtime and get an idea of how they interact with sims in the game.
• The Sims Creator
◦ Modifying garment primitives
◦ Colours and textures
◦ Decals
• SimShow
◦ Making skins from scratch
◦ Convincing The Sims to accept your new skin
◦ Making head skins
• Recolours
◦ Finding skins
◦ Changing the colours
The first thing you'll notice is how the one-size-fits-most garment primitives don't actually fit the majority of meshes without substantial modification. And, yes, there are instances where primitives are more beneficial to your work than making new skins from scratch each time.
Before you modify a primitive, you should get an idea of how it interacts with the mesh you want to put it on and what needs to change in order to make it fit. In our example, we can see that ManShirt4 and ManShorts3 fit B001FaFit very poorly. However, we want to use these primitives because we're trying to make a polo shirt and khaki shorts ensemble for this mesh. The first step is determining how short we need to cut these garments in order to fit them on properly.
Using The Sims Creator's paint tool, we have applied the straightest-possible line to this mesh's nude skin. The lines represent the first visible pixel above the rise of the crop-top and the shorts. As you can see, the garment primitives extend below the rise by a substantial amount. Another thing you have noticed is that the lines do not touch each other on the skin texture; this is because the texture is actually not fully UV-mapped to the mesh. This "overscan" area can be used to hide signatures or, if you are adding new geometry to the mesh, textures for additional UV maps.
Now that we know how much of ManShirt4 and ManShorts3 we have to lose in order to make them fit onto B001FaFit, we can save our reference lines as a skin and open up the TarGA files in GIMP.
Saving our reference lines makes it easier to decide where to cut the TGA overlay. Open both the reference skin and ManShirt4_UM from the Maxis\The Sims Creator\SimsResource\Garments directory in GIMP. With the reference skin onscreen, go to Image\Mode... and select "RGB" so the TGA image retains its grey colour throughout the operation, then copy the entirety of ManShirt4 and paste it onto the reference. Press CTRL+SHIFT+N to paste the TGA into a new layer. Make sure you do not "Anchor Layer", because it will overwrite the reference skin, and we still need to make edits here. Using the Rectangle Selection tool, select the entire torso portion of the primitive up to the collar, then use the Move Tool to move the selection over so the reference lines we drew earlier are visible.
Please note: do not move the texture off the canvas, like I did, because it may get truncated. Learn from my mistakes.
Right-click in the selection and choose Tools\Transform Tools\Unified Transform to begin squashing and stretching the selection. Pull the handle at the bottom of the selection up to the point before the reference line becomes visible, then press ENTER to confirm the transform. Using the Move Tool again, move the selection back to the correct location on the texture.
Using the Colour Picker Tool, sample the lightest colour from the primitive and use the paintbrush tool to draw over unwanted visual details. In our example, we don't want the buttons to go all the way down the front of the primitive, so draw a line over it. At this point, use the Smudge Tool to even out the shadows. Finally, right-click the transform's layer in the list on the right and select "Anchor Layer" to finalise the transform with the primitive. Press CTRL+A to select the entire layer and copy it to the clipboard with CTRL+C.
"Anchor layer? Won't that merge the garment with the reference skin?" No, because we pasted ManShirt4_UM onto its own layer, overlapping but independent of B001FaFitLgt_reflines. The way GIMP works is, when you select something and transform it, it becomes its own temporary layer so it can be moved about without overwriting anything. Anchoring the selection layer will merge it with the nearest permanent layer, which in this case is ManShirt4_UM, which is precisely what we want to have happen.
Back in ManShirt4_UM.tga, clear the entire image and press CTRL+V to paste the new primitive into position. It shouldn't need to be moved, but if it does, move the pasted layer so the top-right block of grey pixels are in the top right corner of the canvas so that no transparent pixels are showing. Anchor the layer, then export the file as "CropTop1_UM.tga" onto your Desktop or another folder outside C:\Program Files (x86). Attempting to save directly into the SimsResource\Garments folder will throw an "Access Denied" error message, but that's fine because we're still not quite through working with our new primitive.
There are actually three discrete files that compose a garment:
1. A TXT file that contains the default colour instructions in 16-bit RGB,
2. The TGA mask that actually appears in Sims Wardrobe mode, and
3. An 80x80 preview image in 24-bit bitmap format.
The filenames are all important as well. A, U, and L correspond to "Accessory", "Upper", and "Lower"; this tells the program where to sort the item when Sims Wardrobe mode is loaded.
M means "mask", O means "overlay", and P means "preview".
Sometimes, you will find parts that have both "_AO" and "_AM" TarGA files associated with them. This is done for parts that are not allowed to be recoloured. The "_AO" will define a coloured illustration that will display over the mask file. Even if the TXT file does not specify "EnableTextures = 0", the overlay will always override the mask. If you wish to make a primitive that cannot be recoloured, fill the mask with pure RGB white, then use the overlay to define the sprite you want placed over the mask. Ideally, the overlay should be the same shape and in the same relative position as the mask so only the overlay can be seen in Sims Wardrobe mode.
All of these files are set to "Read Only". Any file not set to this will be ignored. This was probably done to make it difficult for people to modify garment primitives while the program is running. "Read Only" flags can be set in Windows by right-clicking the selected files and choosing "Properties".
Only primitives that have all of these files defined will display in Sims Wardrobe! If something does not display, it is likely that one of two things has occurred:
1. There is a file missing; either a TXT, TGA, or BMP.
2. One of the files in the ensemble is not set to Read Only.
In our case, we need to create a TXT file, called "CropTop1_U", to define what the default colour should be. Open Notepad and enter the following...
Color = (Red = RRR Green = GGG Blue = BBB)
...where "RRR", "GGG", and "BBB" should be replaced by a colour value. 1- and 2-digit values can just be expressed as "6" or "14", they don't need to be "006" or "014". For convenience, the default colour value of ManShirt4 is 160/107/150, resulting in this tasteful cast of lilac. Once a colour has been defined, save the file as "CropTop1_U.txt" to the same location where you saved the TGA file.
As for the preview image, Maxis used the software to generate all of the stock preview images, but, paradoxically, we can't do that because we need a preview image so we can actually select the garment in Sims Wardrobe mode. Any 80x80 24-bit bitmap named "CropTop1_UP" will suffice, so just use Paint to create one. We can either keep the temporary image as the permanent preview icon, or we can use The Sims Creator to make a more permanent version that corresponds to the design of the other icons. Select all 3 of your "CropTop1_" files, right-click on one and select "Properties", then check the box next to "Read Only" and select "OK". Copy the files from their current location into Maxis\The Sims Creator\SimsResource\Garments and answer "Yes" and "OK" to any security prompts Windows insists upon showing you. "Oh, no! You're modifying the contents of your own computer that you own and is yours and you own it!" Once the files are safely tucked away into Garments, launch The Sims Creator and use Sims Wardrobe to generate a preview image. I printscreened Wardrobe mode and resized it to 80x80 to achieve the effect pictured here.
Using the same principles, we can now make the desired changes to ManShorts3 and we can carry on dressing our doll—er, sim.
Garments are helpful to have around when you need to quickly deploy the same design across all three skintones and, in certain cases, several different meshes. While the B001FaFit example here will probably not be compatible with any other mesh, garments made compatible with meshes such as B003MaFit can be used on a variety of other meshes (this one in particular ports very well to B003MaFat, B003FaFit, and B003McChd). It's a little bit of work that can go a long way, especially if you're trying to make a range of colours. Our example here can be recoloured and retextured with a click, instead of needing to torturously select and rebalance things in an image editor. Since we're on the subject...
Garments aren't the only image The Sims Creator is capable of using. The textures that you use to fill the garment masks are JPEG files in 32x32 or 64x64 size. Texture filling is somewhat less precise than we need sometimes; it's really only good at filling an area with solid colours. More intricate patterns, such as lines that change direction when they hit collars and patterns that don't fill the entire space, cannot be done in Creator. Well, not unless you want to spend all day in Creator's Paint screen, torturously applying patterns by hand before accidentally clicking "Cancel" and losing it all.
However, if meticulous patterning is not a concern, you can use a texture to dump colour onto a garment quickly and easily. All you need is a tileable texture. You can find one online or create one yourself in whatever media suits your fancy.
All that needs to be done to create a new texture is to change the image size to 32x32 or 64x64, then save it as a JPEG. This can even be done in MS Paint, it's that uncomplicated. When finished, set the "Read Only" flag on the file as mentioned before and load it into SimsResource\Textures, and you're done. Unlike garment primitives, textures don't follow any special naming convention; however, they're arranged in reverse alphanumerical order in Sims Wardrobe mode, so if you have a lot of textures that begin with the number 0, they'll end up at the back. As you can see by examining the filenames of the stock textures, Maxis gave the solid colours the highest numbers so they would appear last. It's quite up to you whether you keep to this naming convention or not.
The last editable feature of The Sims Creator is the decal menu. Decals are 64x64 TarGA files that you can reposition and scale in Sims Wardrobe mode. Using GIMP again, we need a suitable image file that's relatively square that would be appropriate as a clothing decal. How about this obscure design?
Surely no giant, multinational corporation would object to this strange shape appearing in a fair-use tutorial! Whatever shape you use should be centred in the transparency if it is not square. It doesn't have to be centred, but it'll help later when it's time to adjust its position on your skins. Also, this picture is huge: 1179x1179--far too large for Creator. Go to Image\Scale Image... and resize it to 64x64. Obviously, details are going to get lost, but you wouldn't be able to see those details in the game anyway. Now we can save our new decal as a TGA. Like textures, logos don't keep to any particular naming convention; unlike garments, we don't need three discrete files. We can save the image as anything we want, so we'll call this one "MiyahonHVC.tga", then set the Read Only flag, and load it into SimsResource\Logo.
If you wish to place the decal on your sim's back, you will need to flip it, which Creator has a dedicated button for.
And that's about all there is to know about The Sims Creator. It was a dream-come-true in 2002 for people who couldn't draw; they could now create their very own custom skins for The Sims without needing to drop $400 on Photoshop and art lessons. However, for people who are serious about realism and detail, Creator can only take you so far. Let's take a trip back to 1999 to see how to work the OG skinning program...
Released months ahead of the actual game, SimShow is less of a skin "editor" than it is a skin "viewer". The point of SimShow is not to make skins entirely within a single, one-stop software application--instead, it is to use SimShow as a surrogate for The Sims to see how edits you make to skin files in Photoshop, GIMP, or Paint will actually interact with sims.
It's not much to look at, but believe me when I say that this unassuming program helped build a Y2K web empire. As you can see, feature-wise, SimShow is a lot less advanced and more technical-looking than The Sims Creator, and it doesn't look like it would be of any use at all. But, you notice that big ol' "Reload" button there? That's where the magic happens! Unlike the game, where you really shouldn't mess around with files while it's running, and The Sims Creator, where it simply ignores any changes until you restart it; SimShow allows you to edit things in your image editor, then reload the skin you made edits to without having to stop and shut it off.
Just like The Sims Creator, it's helpful to start with a template. To that end, SimShow comes with a number of skins from the game. Not many, but they'll get you started. Optionally, if you already have the game installed and you've gotten custom meshes for it, you can load these into SimShow's own GameData folder to view and edit them. For the purposes of this tutorial, we'll draw from Sean Baity's tutorial from 1999, changing the Photoshop tool names to match GIMP.
Digital cameras weren't in wide use in 1999, but the lucky few who owned one could simply take a picture of their own clothes to use as a basis for their skins. Fortunately, cameras are somewhat more common now, so if you don't feel that you possess either the skill or the patience to simulate denim trousers with the Paintbrush tool alone, feel free to just lay one of yours out on the floor and snap a quick photo. Alternatively, you can go online to a store's website to find a photo of the garment you want to make a skin out of and nick that. I think it would surprise you to learn how many of the first 1,000 or so skins that made it onto the first fansites were made in exactly this manner.
At last— Walmart.com is good for something! There's a dearth of pyjama bottoms for men in The Sims, so we're going to make one from this exemplar we found on the internet. You'll notice that a human model is wearing the trousers, allowing it to hang naturally on the body, which obviates our needing to simulate shading and folds. These trousers seem like they'd fit nicely on B008MaFit.
Using the skin's well-defined abdominal muscles, we can determine where the centre of the trouser is, then we can determine how much we need to shrink the reference image so it will fit onto the skin. In this case, a height of 149 will do.
This reference photo presents an interesting problem: how do we make a round image flat? The answer is, with the Unified Transform tool. We have separated the trousers into three distinct regions: waist, right leg, and left leg. Ignore the back side of the skin for the moment. Using the Free Select tool, select the waist area of the reference image, excluding the white teeshirt. Keep to a generally rectangular selection, then copy it and paste it onto the skin. Position it so the bend in the waistband is even with the skin's navel, then right-click in the selection and choose Tools\Transform Tools\Unified Transform; now, pull the selection from the sides so it matches the width of the skin's trousers. Don't pull down yet, just across.
Back to the reference image, use the Free Select tool again to select the leg, beginning at the bottom of the waist selection, ending above the model's foot. Try to keep the line at his foot as straight as you can, because it'll be easier than trying to warp the contour of his leg down to a straight line later. Deselect the waist, then copy the leg and paste it onto the skin. Just as we did with the waist, we're going to use the Unified Transform tool to stretch the selection to fit the skin. Use the Smudge tool to correct any imperfections in the tiling pattern of the plaid between the leg and waist.
Since the reference photo didn't include a back view, we're going to mirror one leg to have it serve for both legs on the front side. Anchor the layer, then use the Rectangle select tool to select from the trouser cuff up to the waistband. Copy and paste, then move the pasted bit over to the other side and flip it horizontally (right-click on the selection, Layer\Transform\Flip Horizontally). If this were a kind of trousers that had a distinct back side, we would need to construct it from the other leg of the reference image. However, this example is dark enough that it would hide any pockets or anything that the real trouser might have on the back side. In this case, we can just take what we've made and mirror it all to serve as the back.
If you're using Photoshop, you can ignore this section because it only applies to GIMP users. This adventure is going to highlight a severe failing of GIMP that I don't know how to resolve: GIMP isn't great at saving indexed-colour bitmaps. It has its own weird colour model that just can't be made compatible with The Sims no matter how many settings we change. Fortunately, all is not lost! While the original game was allergic to 24-bit bitmaps, Deluxe, Complete Collection, and the Starter Pack will tolerate them much better. And, in spite of GIMP's inability to save in a Sims-compatible format, we still have MS Paint. Even in Windows 11, Paint has enough of its Windows NT origins to save us from advances in technology. On Linux, KolourPaint can stand in for MS Paint.
When all the layers have been anchored and the final design is arrived at, go to Image\Mode\Indexed... and choose a 256-colour index with no dithering and click "Convert". Next, press CTRL+A to select the entire canvas, then paste it into Paint. With the skin still selected, click "Crop" to reduce the canvas size to the size of the skin (256x256). Deselect the skin by choosing a different tool, then press the Print Screen key (do not use the Snipping Tool) to grab the entire screen. Press CTRL+N to get a new file, then press CTRL+V to paste your screenshot into it. Manually crop the edges so only the 256x256 skin is visible, then save as a Sims-compatible filename in 24-bit bitmap format. In this example, B008MaFitLgt_plaid will get the job done. Make sure it's set to 24-bit bitmap, however. If you attempt to save as a 256-colour bitmap, Paint will attempt to index the colours and you will lose most of your texture definition. The resultant file should be 192 KB in size.
So, let's go over all that again.
1. Make all your desired edits in GIMP and index the colours.
2. Select the entire canvas and copy it to the clipboard.
3. Paste the GIMP canvas into MS Paint or KolourPaint, crop the edges if needed and deselect to get rid of the marching ants.
4. Grab the entire window with Print Screen.
5. Make a new Paint/KolourPaint file and paste the screenshot into it, then manually crop the edges so only the skin is visible.
6. Save the file into The Sims\GameData\Skins as a 24-bit bitmap.
Don't ask me why this works... all I know is that it works, and that's all want to know. If you're using an older version of Photoshop to make skins--like, from 2013 and earlier--you won't have to do this. Possibly, if you use a different program altogether that isn't GIMP, you won't have to do this. Obviously, the OG skinners didn't need to take such a circuitous route to getting their skins to load in the game, but I'm a walking statistical anomaly who decided to write a modding tutorial for a 24-year-old game.
A similar technique is used for making heads from scratch, inasmuch as you need a mesh, a skin as a template, and a reference photo. Sean Baity was much more eloquent than I could ever hope to be, so let's just look at his tutorial. For his example, he used C003MAlgt_dad02 to make his own photorealistic Sims-self. Take it away, Sean!
Here's my lovely mugshot! Don't I look happy?
This was before I worked at Maxis. Since the shirt can be done on the body texture, I need only to cut the portion of the picture absolutely necessary for it to convey my image.
Now, paste that into the existing face. That doesn't look exactly right. First I need to stretch the image to about the same proportions as the face underneath it so the position of the eyes and the mouth match. In [GIMP], I use the [Unified Transform tool] to stretch the entire rectangle at once. I usually move the new face layer off to the side to compare nose and eye sizes. The head model does have a nose, so that has to match, as well.
The face is the right general size but[...]the skin colour is way off. There are several techniques I can use here. I could try sampling colours from the existing face and carefully paint my face on with the airbrush or paint tool. Or, I could blend the top face into the bottom one by lowering the opacity. Or, I could change the face colour to be more like the new one. I'm going to try a blending technique.
First, I obliterate the existing face using a combination of [Paintbrush, Smudge tool] and existing colours. Then, I paste in the custom face and reduce the opacity just until the bottom layer starts to show through, but leaving the definition of the custom face intact. Then, I carefully use a combination of the Clone tool, [Smudge tool, and Blur tool] to blend the two into each other.
But, the skin tones are still seriously off. I sample the existing skin tone [from the neck overscan area of the texture] and [reduce the opacity] to paint over the lighter one. I lost some definition on the face, so I took the Pencil tool and manually added it back. Now the hat.
Since I have red hair, I'll just keep the hair, especially since making it wrap around correctly is pretty difficult. Since I want the texture to fit onto the same cranium model as the texture I am modifying, I need to use the same model key in the name: "C003MAlgt_MAXISean.bmp".
Thanks, Sean! You were great.
It bears mentioning that C003 turned out to be the wrong mesh for this face, and he ended up changing it to C004.
The Sims Creator has an extremely rudimentary face photo editor that operates in roughly the same manner, which may be useful in the initial stages of head creation, but the same effect can be achieved in greater precision using these instructions and an external image editor.
Apart from making completely new skins, you can also choose to recolour existing skins using GIMP's Colouriser or Photoshop's Colour Variations. In this case, simply open the skin file you want to recolour, select the bit that needs recolouring and choose Colours\Colourise..., then select the colour you wish to change the selection to. If the skin's own colour is interfering with your ability to recolour it, drain all the colour out of it before recolouring by choosing Colours\Saturation..., and reducing the level to 0%. This will remove the colour without affecting shadows. It's pretty straightforward and can be done without much work, but let's have a look at a test case, anyway.
You'll notice that none of the game's own skins are present in the GameData\Skins folder. This is because they're actually found in Textures in the file "Textures.far". Skins from expansion packs are found in Maxis\The Sims in the folder of the expansion they came in. You can extract these with FARout, or you can use The Sims Creator to save a new version of the skin. Since I don't happen to have COMDLG32.OCX anymore, let's use The Sims Creator today.
Open The Sims Creator and select a skin you want to recolour.
Let's change the white-striped black shirt so it's red and make the trousers blue. Without making any edits to this skin, click "Save" and save the skin as "recolour". Close The Sims Creator and open "B002MAFitLgt_recolour.bmp" in GIMP. Select Image\Mode\RGB to convert the skin to an editable colour table, then use the Free Select tool to select the trousers.
Free-select allows us to grab the entire trouser in a single pass. However, if we were to Colourise now, the trousers would be too dark to get a convenient new colour, so we'll desaturate the area first. Under Colours\Saturation..., pull the Scale factor all the way over to 0%. Now, under Colours\Exposure..., increase the Exposure factor to about 2.000 to lighten the grey colour to a serviceable level. Finally, under Colours\Colourise..., select a suitable denim blue colour.
Repeat the process on the shirt to attain a tasteful red colour. While selecting the shirt, we can deselect the white stripe by choosing the Rectangle Select tool and holding CTRL while drawing a box around the stripe. Also, since the shirt is black, we can reduce the Black Point factor while adjusting Exposure to ensure that we're able to accurately recolour the entire shirt.
Kinda looks like something your republican uncle would wear to the 4th of July, doesn't it? Anyway, with our edits now complete, we can go through that whole song and dance we talked about before, involving Paint, to save our recolour. The same process can be used to recolour heads.
And, with that, we've covered the basics of skinning. To reiterate, I really don't recommend using GIMP for this procedure because of the ridiculous hoops you have to jump through in order to get anything working in the game. I just use it because Photoshop CS2 kept crashing on my computer.
The rudiments of skin editing can also apply to object creation. Basically, the Free Select tool and whatever your image editor's recolouring process is called are your friends when making custom content for The Sims; get used to them because you'll be using them a lot.