Up until recently, I've been using the existing shading/contouring by desaturating the texture file, increasing the brightness and contrast, then laying my new texture on top, making it less opaque, flattening the layers, then darkening or adjusting the hue back to the originals. I'm not much of an artist when it comes to drawing or painting, but i'm starting to play around with the burn and dodge tools. I'm finding I get better results, still, using those tools on the desaturated image than on the colored one, because the burn, especially, can make a color that's way too extreme for me. I'm also finding that I like to dodge and burn and then use the blur tool to blend it all. I'm sure there are far more professional methods, but it seems to be working OK so far.

That's ok if you are only recoloring something that already exists, but I want to make my own clothes, which means changing the Alpha texture as well as the clothing texture.

To me the dodge and burn seems too cumbersome. Like you said the colors are way to extreme.

All you have to do is turn the opacity way down. Depending on the fabric, I usually use something between 5 -10%.

Hmmm... but it still looks unnatural to me. Like it's painted on.

I tried to do it by the way Faylen said with making each piece an object (layer) and then making it opaque (transparent). Placing it over an original maxis dress and then trying to get the original color back, but it didn't work.

My dress so far looks very blurry in the game. Do you know anything about that and how to fix it?

Here's a fairly dast method I've used to use to get shadowing to look fairly natural fast:
Create a new transparent layer.
Draw a line in a colour that is darker than the dominant colour underneath it
Draw a line in a colour that is lighter than the colour underneath, partially obscuring the first line.
Draw a line in the same, darker colour, partially obscuring the second line.
Grab the smudge tool, and taper off the ends of the lines.
Give the whole layer a gausian blur at a radius of about 4.
Decrease the opacity of the layer to about 50%.

It can actually look pretty good considering it's a very fast way to do it.

The blurriness is most likely your video card. Low and even mid-grade cards have a tendency to do this. The only possible solutions I can suggest are downloading the latest video card driver for your card, adjusting the in-game settings to try to reduce the blur, or getting a new card.

Don't worry how painted on it looks at first. Keep working with it. In the beginning most of my files look as if they'll never turn into anything worth keeping and in the end most of them come out looking pretty nice.

You kind of have to just trust that it will work out in the end. (Not easy to do the first couple of times). Take a look at what my creases looked like after the the start:http://mysite.verizon.net/vze3qhzc/Previews/Pleats1.jpg

And the end:http://mysite.verizon.net/vze3qhzc/...ishedPleats.jpg

You can really see on the model, under his right pocket how the fabric looks as if there's a fold there, not just painted on.


Try this: Do a burn stripe first ( I like to use a brush width of 9 and opacity around 5 %). Then do a dodge stripe right next to it, overlapping just slightly also with a width of 9 and an opacity of 5%. Then take the blur tool at 11 or so and run it over it at full opacity and see how that looks.

Edit: Yeah, what Echo said. That's similar to what I was suggesting in the last paragraph, but he beat me to it. You just need a faint dark line next to a light line to create the look of a wrinkle. That's it.

Gigge

Ok, I'll try out those suggestions. In the meantime I made a couple of eyes: vivid purple and rose. I got a little frustrated so I had to do something else.

As for my video card: I did download the current driver. Not everything is blurry-only some things. I really don't want to get a new card because my card is compatible with Win 98 and I like to run duel operating systems.

Yeah, you do need to experiment. The nice thing is that if you do it bit by bit, you can step back and eliminate mistakes. You can also adjust the percentage on the burn and dodge if they're too dark or light for your taste. I'm still playing around with the placement of the highlights and shadows, not being enough of an artist to be confident with this, so I will use the blur tool on individual creases once I have them right so I can edit out the yucky ones.

I found another problem with the dress now. I don't know how to even discribe it. There is a raised area around the neckline from the original dress and I don't know how to get rid of it on the sim. Here's a pic so you understand what I'm talking about:

Oops...ok, the stuff below is for another problem. But, something you should know if you didn't already.

After squinting at the pic, I see that you used the dress with the rope neck, yes? The mesh is actually molded that way so you'll have to go look up the mesh tutorials and figure out how to alter it, alter your dress to accommodate that bump, or pick another model.

Sorry for the bad news.

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Your picture is really small, so I can't see it. But, from what you're describing, I'm guessing you didn't alter your normal (or bump) map. So, you're seeing a bunch of lines where the original dress was when you turn the model at certain angles.

The normal map is the one that has a name like body~stdMatNormalMapTextureName.bmp. When you open it, it will look like a grey image of your orignal dress. There are two ways to adjust this.

1.) The easy way. If you have Photoshop, use the eyedropper to pick up any grey on the image. Go to Edit > Fill and flood fill the image so it's a solid color. Save it, close it, and don't worry aboutit any more. Th graphics card on the computer I skin with doesn't have these capabilities, so I can't work with the file to get it to match the fabric. Many cards out there don't have this ability (even after altering the graphics config files). But, if you're seeing the bumps, you do. So, you could try...

2.) Altering the bump map to match your dress. I don't have good advice for this process because I can't use it my comp. But, in vague terms, it alters the way light reflects on the fabric and can be used to create 'bumps' such as textured fabric, buttons, seam ridges, etc. I think the lighter, the more raised it is. Altering the color (other than grey) can also change the appearance somewhat.

Gigge

Wait... are you saying this is a bump map? I can't see the wording on the shirt in the Bump Map test, so if this is a Bump map, what is going on?

Sorry the pic is so small.

One outfit/item often takes me many days/weeks because I zoom in and do it pixel by pixel (When I create my own textures-for simple things, I have been known to take textures from other places, but I still zoom in really close and do it myself on pixel at a time, then zoom back out over and over again to seem how it looks. I also rarely use purely white alphas, is you put in varies tones of gray it helps accnet your textues folds and such in some places, and I'm been trying out bump/normals maps and such or whatever you call them, because a lot of the base skins I extract to work from have had them, so I"ve read the tutorials and stuff to see what effects I can get, I've been trying to make chinese/japanese silk dresses that actually have a mild shine with the graphics effects. I like making genetics better. I only make skins if I need them for a particular storyline or project I am working on.

No, I'm saying it looks like the mesh.

Gigge

Oh, ok, and meshes can't be changed?

By the way someone told me to make the Texture Graphics set to high in my game and when I did that my dress came out correct - not fuzzy like before. So that is one problem down.

lol, yeah using low settings will do that too.

The meshes can be changed now...with alot of work. But, not in body shop. You need the mesh extractor, probably a plug-in, and a 3-D program. It's another long process to do this.

Oy! Does that mean I should give up? :D

Haha, never give up. You can try the outfit on another mesh and see if that works or alter the design a bit so it covers the 'bump'.

Yeah, that's a mesh thing. What I do sometimes is fill both the texture files with a solid color, don't touch the alpha, and see where I get lines. Those are the lines that will stay no matter what you do to those files. (Unless you change the mesh. . .) I like to do that so that not only do I get an idea of my limitations, but also so that I can see the clothes as kind of a blank canvas and get other ideas.