How to make Walls, Floors, and Ground Cover (Beginning Creators Start Here!)

[HystericalParoxysm]

If you've never made anything for the game before, start here! Walls, floors, and groundcover are the easiest things to make, and a great introduction into editing textures, moving around files, and learning how to get a good result in the game. You also don't have to worry about your creations' compatability: all walls, floors, and groundcover are compatible with any EPs and just the base game, too. Plus, there's no meshes to worry about either! Yay!

Difficulty: Very easy!

Requirements:

Homecrafter, which will take the images you feed into it and make them into files which the game can use for walls, floors, and groundcover. It can be downloaded free from the official EA site (it does not come with the game).

-and-

Any graphics editing program capable of cropping, adjusting and tweaking colours, multiple layers, and a variety of brushes. This can be pretty much anything except MS Paint. You may already have a graphics editing program on your computer. Some common ones:

Adobe Photoshop: The industry standard, and among the most powerful graphics editing programs you can have. This tutorial includes instructions on how to create walls, floors, and groundcovers using Photoshop. Photoshop CS2 will be used for demonstration, but these instructions should be fine for earlier versions, at least as far back as Photoshop 7. If you can't afford the newest Photoshop but you still really want to use Photoshop, try eBay for cheap copies ($40-50) of older versions.

Corel Paint Shop Pro: Also very common, and should function in most of the same ways as Photoshop.

Ulead PhotoImpact: Often included in software bundles with scanners, printers, and prebuilt computers. Its functions should also be fairly similar to Photoshop.

GIMP: A little different to use than other graphics editing programs, but rather full-featured, especially considering it's free for download online. You will also need the GTK+ 2 Runtime Environment, also available from that link, which you'll need to install before you install GIMP. Quite a few people use GIMP, but I've found some major bugs in it personally. If you've already got it and like using it, it's also capable of doing the steps shown here.

Paint.NET: Doesn't include as many interesting filters and effects as GIMP, but it's also free, and a little more user-friendly and easy to pick up than GIMP. In light of this, I'll also be including instructions on how to do these steps in Paint.NET. Unless you already know you have the .NET Framework 2.0 installed on your computer, make sure you get the 49.1 MB installer that includes .NET Framework 2.0, not the 3.41 MB installer that does not include the .NET Framework 2.0.

If you are not using Photoshop or Paint.NET but another program instead, you should still be able to use the instructions here, as most graphics programs should have all of the functions listed in some form. If you are using a different program, using the instructions for Photoshop will probably be your best bet. If you're having trouble figuring out the functions of your graphics program of choice, the best place to look is that program's help documents or their official site.

I'll be explaining in basic terms where the tools I'm using are located, and offering screenshots of any filters or major steps, but this tutorial's difficulty level assumes you can install the programs yourself according to any instructions on the manufacturers' websites, open and close files, navigate to a given directory, and move files from one place to another. Menu commands will be written separated by - for submenus, i.e. if you should open the File menu and click Save, I'll tell you simply to File - Save.

Though you'll be creating the three types of Homecrafter content separately, this tutorial is meant to be read in order (so you know what I'm talking about when I refer to something in subsequent steps), so start with the wall, then do the floor, then do the ground cover or you may be confused.

Of course, if you're using Photoshop, you don't need to read the Paint.NET part of the tutorial, and vice-versa (they're just telling you how to do the same thing in different programs).

[HystericalParoxysm]

Tiling Textures

Just because you've found a nifty looking image doesn't mean it's necessarily going to work to make a texture. Unless an image has specifically been made to tile, when you put two sections of it next to each other (as you'll be doing for walls, floors, and groundcover), you'll see where each image meets the next as an obvious line, and it won't look very realistic. Finding a site that not only contains good images but actually has images that already tile is an exciting moment for a texture artist.

Finding Textures

This is probably the trickiest part of making walls and floors, and the best creators spend hours finding just the right textures to use for their work (when not creating them by hand). Learning to find great source images is almost as much of an art as creating things with them itself, but below is a list of some places to start.

Google: Often the quickest and best place if you're looking for something general, plinking around for ideas, or looking for something in a particular style. Often some of the best resources for images of walls, floors, and groundcover are companies that sell wallpapers, flooring, and groundcovers, and Google connects you to them in abundance. Try search terms like: wallpaper, wallpaper borders, tiling textures, wall textures, floor textures, tile floors, carpeting, etc.

Google Image Search: Better than a general search if you're looking for something fairly specific, and a great way to find a site that tends to have high-resolution pictures (if you find one that's nice, you can see if the same site has more that are good too). Try search terms like: damask, floral print, polka dots, stripes, plaid, crown molding, ceramic tile, stucco, brick, grass, ivy, leaves, etc.

Web Graphics Sites: Findable in great abundance by searching Google, and often set up to tile, and most sites offer background images previewed on a page, so you can make sure it tiles properly and looks nice repeated over and over. However, just because that funky green lava looks really cool on the background of your Myspace doesn't mean it makes any sense as a wall or floor in a sim's house. You can normally tone down some of the weirder patterns by applying a fairly heavy add noise filter to make it look speckled, like carpeting, but try to remember: there's only so many abstract blotchy orange, green, and purple carpets one sim needs. Try to stick to textures that look like they belong in real peoples' homes.
The Inspiration Gallery: Wonderful textures that are already set up as tiling, so you don't have to worry about your walls repeating right at all, and they're happy to have their textures used for sims projects, as long as you link back to them. We'll be using images from The Inspiration Gallery for this tutorial.

Because of the "for beginners" nature of this tutorial, we'll only be covering the use of tiling textures for your walls.

If you're fairly comfortable working in your graphics program of choice, you can make your own tiling textures... These two tutorials both basically cover the same thing, but have different techniques presented differently. Between the two you should be well-covered.
Seamless Textures Tutorial (http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=Tutorials:Seamless_Textures)
Creating Textures from Images (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=136074)

Otherwise, start with some stuff from the Inspiration Gallery or other sites that have tiling textures.

If you want to follow along exactly, the source images are attached to this post.

[HystericalParoxysm]

This part of the tutorial is just if you're using Photoshop - if you're using Paint.NET, skip past this part to the Paint.NET instructions.

Wall Texture

1: Start by opening Photoshop. It should have a Start Menu shortcut under Programs, and possibly a Desktop or Quick Start icon, too.

2: Let's start by creating the right size image for a wall texture, so we have a canvas to work with. File - New (or CTRL-N) will bring up options for your new image.

a. Name your project something descriptive. You can leave it untitled but it can help to have it named so you know which open image is which when you have a lot of different bits and pieces you're pulling from.

b. Make sure all of your settings are the same as shown, especially the size, 256 x 768.

http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial01-s.jpg

3: File - Open and open your source images. I've laid everything out so I can clearly see all my documents and everything I'm doing:
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial02-s.jpg

4: Switch to the document with the background image, and Image - Image Size.

a. In the image resize dialog box, make sure Constrain Proportions is unchecked, so we can change the width and height independently, not relative to one another.

b. Then, change the width to '256' to make the image the same width as the wall texture.

c. Change the height to '384' - this will make it a little taller than it was originally, but won't distort it too much. We're using 384 because it's half of 768, so we'll repeat this image twice along the height of the image.

http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial03-s.jpg

4: Now Select - All (or CTRL-A) and then Edit - Copy (or CTRL-C) from the background image. Then, switch over to the wall texture and Edit - Paste (or CTRL-V) to paste in your background image as a new layer.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial04-s.jpg

5: Using the Move Tool, click on the pasted background and drag it into place at the top of the image. It should snap into place pretty easily. Then, Paste the background in again, and using the Move Tool, click on the new piece of background and drag it into place at the bottom of the image.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial05-s.jpg

6: The texture as-is would work for a wallpaper, but it's a little bland. Let's add the border to the top. Switch over to the open document with the border and Image - Image Size again. Again, make sure Constrain Proportions is unchecked, and then change the width to '256' (the width of the wall texture). Because this is a rather tall border, I think it'll look better if we make it a little shorter, so I'll take it from 130 pixels down to 100. If it were a little shorter to begin with, I could just leave Constrain Proportions checked and change the width to 256, and let it make the height the right number to stay in proportion with the width change.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial06-s.jpg

7: With the border document still selected, Select - All, then Edit - Copy. Switch over to the document with your texture and Edit - Paste. Use the Move Tool to click and drag the border to the top of the texture.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial07-s.jpg

8. That looks a lot nicer, but let's do one more little thing to make this a bit more interesting. Switch back to the border, and using the Rectangular Marquee Tool, select just the bottom of the border. Edit - Copy that piece of the border.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial08-s.jpg

9. Switch back to your texture, and Edit - Paste the little bottom bit of border into your texture document. Edit - Transform - Scale will bring up the scale controls for your layer. Change the height to -100%, so the layer you just pasted in will be flipped vertically (upside down).
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial09-s.jpg

10. Use the Move Tool to drag the piece of border to the bottom of your texture. Then Maximize the image by clicking the box on the upper right corner of the document window.

a. Click the Zoom Tool to bring up the zoom controls on the toolbar.

b. Then click Fit Screen to get a good look at your image from top to bottom. Make sure everything looks right, is in the right place, etc.

c. Finally, click Actual Pixels to get a look at your image at actual size. There shouldn't be any weird pixellation or crunchiness, and all of your bits and pieces should be properly positioned.

http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial10-s.jpg

11. File - Save As. If you don't already have one, make yourself a 'Sims 2 Projects' folder somewhere you can find it easily (in My Documents or on your Desktop are good places) with a subfolder for Walls. Save your document as a .psd - that way if we want to go back and make changes, shift some positioning, change the colours of a certain part, etc., we still have all the bits and pieces separated out in a Photoshop-format document. If you get a Maximize Compatability dialog, just click OK.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial11-s.jpg

12. File - Save As (yes, again). This time, change the Format from .psd to .bmp. This will change the filename it wants to give it from 'YourProjectName.psd' to 'YourProjectName copy.bmp' so you need to change it so it reads 'YourProjectName.bmp' and then save to the same directory you saved your .psd document.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial12-s.jpg

*** Edit: New information discovered June '06! You must first resize your walls to 256x512 before saving as a .bmp. Walls at 256x768 (or ANY other sizing except 256x512) will show as grey for Mac users, though they'll work fine for PC users. Please resize before saving so your walls work correctly for everyone.

Floor Texture

We're going to take a nice floor and change the colour so it matches the walls, and make it a little more carpet-like.

13. You'll want the finished wall texture and your source image for the floor both viewable, so you can compare them visually to each other. You should still have the wall texture open, so open your floor texture and arrange them something like shown.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial13-s.jpg

14. With the floor image selected, Image - Adjust - Hue/Saturation. Fiddle with the settings in the Hue/Saturation dialog until you get something you like. There's really no trick to getting the settings on this just right; just keep playing with the sliders until you get something that looks right to you.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial14-s.jpg

15. Filter - Noise - Add Noise. On the Add Noise dialog, make sure Monochromatic is checked, and then just play with the slider and the Uniform/Gaussian toggle until you get something that looks right. You want enough noise so that your pattern isn't crisp, like it's stenciled on, but you also don't want so much that you can't easily see the pattern.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial15-s.jpg

16. Image - Image Size and change the width and height of the floor both to 256. Again, make sure Constrain Proportions is unchecked.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial16-s.jpg

17. File - Save As and save your floor as a bitmap (.bmp) in a subfolder of the Sims 2 Projects folder you made called Floors. You can then close the floor texture. If it asks you to save, you can tell it no; there's nothing in that image (since we didn't use layers) that you don't have in the .bmp you just saved.

Groundcover Texture

18. Because we're making ground cover, it doesn't have to match exactly to the wall texture, but if we were going to use them on the same lot, it might be nice for them to be similar in colour or tone, for a little more unity for the whole lot. So let's open the source for the ground cover, a nice craggy rock texture, and the wall texture we've created, and arrange them as before, so we can see both of them at the same time.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial17-s.jpg

19. Image - Adjust - Hue/Saturation. Again, make sure Colorize is checked and adjust the sliders till it roughly matches the wall texture.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial18-s.jpg

20. Select - All and Edit - Copy and then Edit - Paste to duplicate the image on a new layer, Layer 1.
a. Click on the eye symbol next to Layer 1 in the Layers window (if you don't have a Layers window, bring it up by doing Window - Layers or by pressing F7 on your keyboard) to temporarily hide Layer 1.

b. Then click on the Background layer to select it. This will make our changes apply only to the Background layer, not to Layer 1.

c. Image - Adjustment - Hue Saturation again. Colorize is still checked. Adjust the sliders till you get a nice mossy green.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial19-s.jpg

21. Now let's combine the moss with the regular texture.

a. Un-hide Layer 1 and click to select it. This will make all of our changes apply only to Layer 1, not the Background layer.

b. Click the Eraser tool.

c. Make sure all of your tool settings match those shown in the screenshot.

d. Now use small single-clicks on the image to erase little bits of Layer 1. Don't get too close to any of the edges or you'll have an obvious line where two pieces of ground cover come together. Also, take care not to overdo it; we want a little bit of moss, not overgrown. You can always Edit - Undo if you make a mistake, or use Edit - Step Backward to undo several recent changes at once.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial20-s.jpg

22. Image - Image Size to resize the ground texture. Constrain Proportions is still unchecked. The width and height will both be 256.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorial21-s.jpg

23. Now, File - Save As and save your document as a Photoshop Document (.psd) so you have the layers intact in case you would like to change or adjust something later. If it asks if you would like to Maximize Compatability, tell it Yes.

24. File - Save As again and change the Format to Bitmap (.bmp) to save a copy of your groundcover that can be read by Homecrafter.




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Tutorials:How_to_make_Walls,_Floors_and_Ground_Cover

[HystericalParoxysm]

This part of the tutorial is just if you're using Paint.NET - if you're using Photoshop, skip past this part to the Homecrafter section.

Wall Texture

1: Open Paint.NET. It should have a shortcut on your Desktop as well as under Start - Programs - Paint.NET and possibly a Quick Start icon as well.

2: Let's start by creating the right size image for a wall texture, so we have a canvas to work with. File - New (or CTRL-N) will bring up options for your new image. Make sure all of your settings are the same as shown, especially the size, 256 x 768.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn01-s.jpg

3: Start another copy of Paint.NET (as it won't let you have two things open in the program at once... a bit of a limitation, but, hey, it's free) and open your background image.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn02-s.jpg

4. We're going to want the background repeated once across each piece of wall, and twice down each piece of wall. Let's resize it so it fits. Image - Resize to bring up the resizing dialog box.
a. In the dialog box, make sure Maintain aspect ratio is unchecked, so we can change the width and height independently, not relative to one another.

b. Then, change the width to '256' to make the image the same width as the wall texture.

c. Change the height to '384' - this will make it a little taller than it was originally, but won't distort it too much. We're using 384 because it's half of 768, so we'll repeat this image twice along the height of the image.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn03-s.jpg

5. Because Paint.NET's resize kinda blurs images, let's sharpen it up a bit. Effects - Sharpen will bring up the sharpen filter dialog box. A value of 2 will return the image to about the same sharpness as before, perhaps a little more sharp, but since we'll be continuing to manipulate the image, a little extra sharpness can't hurt.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn04-s.jpg

6. Now Edit - Select All (or CTRL-A) and then Edit - Copy (or CTRL-C) to copy your resized background image. Then, switch over to the blank wall texture. The Layers window should be at the bottom right of your screen; if it's not, you can bring it up in Windows - Layers or by pressing F7 on your keyboard. Click the New Layer button to give a new layer to work on and then Edit - Paste (or CTRL-V) to paste your background image into the new layer.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn05-s.jpg

7. Click the Move tool so you can move the background image. Use the down arrow on your keyboard to move the new layer down to the bottom of the wall texture. You can hold down CTRL and press the down arrow key to move in larger increments, or just use the down arrow by itself to move it by a single pixel.
a. Use the Zoom tool and click on the image to zoom in to get a closer look at the bottom of the image.

b. Use the Move tool again if you need to fix the background's positioning - it should come right up to the bottom with no white space.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn06-s.jpg

8. Right-click with the Zoom tool to zoom back out. Create a second new layer the same way you did the first, and then paste another copy of the background image into your wall texture document. This second one you shouldn't have to change the positioning of at all; it should be right at the top.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn07-s.jpg

9. The texture as-is would work for a wallpaper, but it's a little bland. Let's add the border to the top. Switch back to the other open copy of Paint.NET (with your background image in it) and open the border image (you don't need to save changes to the background unless you want to for some reason). Again, make sure Maintain aspect ratio is unchecked, and then change the width to '256' (the width of the wall texture). Because this is a rather tall border, I think it'll look better if we make it a little shorter, so I'll take it from 130 pixels down to 100. If it were a little shorter to begin with, I could just leave Maintain aspect ratio checked and change the width to 256, and let it make the height the right number to stay in proportion with the width change.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn08-s.jpg

10. Again, because of the resize it's a little fuzzy, so Effects - Sharpen again (or Repeat Sharpen should be at the top of the Effects menu). Edit - Select All and Edit - Copy to get ready to move the sharper resized border over to the wall texture.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn09-s.jpg

11. Switch back to the wall texture image and create another new layer. Edit - Paste to paste the border into the wall texture. Niftily enough, it'll be right at the top. Isn't that convenient? :)
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn10-s.jpg

12. That looks a lot nicer, but let's do one more little thing to make this a bit more interesting. Switch back to open document with the border. Edit - Deselect to remove the previous selection. Using the Rectangle Select tool, draw a box from outside the image's bottom left corner up and to the right to select just the bottom part of the image as shown. If you mess up and grab too much or too little, Deselect and try again. Edit - Copy to copy the selected part of the border.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn11-s.jpg

13. Switch back to the wall texture. Create another new layer and Edit - Paste to paste that little bit of border into the new layer. Layer - Flip - Vertical will flip the new pasted piece (it'll also pop it down near the bottom). Edit - Select All and then click the Move tool. Now use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the piece of border to the very bottom. Remember, you can CTRL-down arrow to move in larger increments, and the Zoom tool to make sure you have the piece right at the very bottom.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn12-s.jpg

14. Zoom out and take a look at your wall texture. Everything should be positioned just right. If it's not, select the layer the part is on that you want to change, then select the Move tool, and use the arrow keys on your keyboard to change its positioning (but if you followed the directions above, everything should be fine already).

If you don't already have one, make yourself a 'Sims 2 Projects' folder somewhere you can find it easily (in My Documents or on your Desktop are good places) with a subfolder for Walls. File - Save As and save your image as the default type, .pdn. This will save the document as-is, with all of the layers intact, in case you want to go back and make changes later.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn13-s.jpg

15. Then, File - Save As again and change the Save as type dropdown to Bitmap (BMP). Homecrafter will only import bitmaps, so this is what we want. Save your file as a bitmap, too, in that same Walls folder.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn14-s.jpg

*** Edit: New information discovered June '06! You must first resize your walls to 256x512 before saving as a .bmp (and sharpen them too, in Paint.NET). Walls at 256x768 (or ANY other sizing except 256x512) will show as grey for Mac users, though they'll work fine for PC users. Please resize before saving so your walls work correctly for everyone.

16. When you get a message asking if you would like to flatten the image, say Yes.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn15-s.jpg

Floor Texture

We're going to take a nice floor and change the colour so it matches the walls, and make it a little more carpet-like.

17. You'll want the finished wall texture open in one Paint.NET window, and to have your source image for the floor in another, so you can see them both. If you just finished the wall part of this tutorial, you can use the still-open window with the border image to open your floor image; otherwise open both of them and arrange the windows as shown by un-maximizing them and pulling on their edges and corners. You may need to close some of the windows (like the layers and colours) to see everything.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn16-s.jpg

18. Blue? That certainly doesn't match the wall. The goal is to make that floor a nice, low-saturation light yellow-brown. Layers - Adjustments - Sepia will give you this as a result:
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn17-s.jpg

19. Sepia's a lot closer, and evens out the difference in colours in different parts of the pattern (the original was a little more yellowish in places), but it's still too red. Layer - Adjustments - Hue/Saturation will allow you to adjust this more exactly. There's really no trick to getting the settings on this just right; just keep playing with the sliders until you get something that looks right to you.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn18-s.jpg

20. Now that it's pretty close to the wall, you can maximize the window for the floor texture to have a little more area to work on. Image - Resize and change the width to 256 and the height to 256.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn19-s.jpg

21. Again, the image is blurred by doing this, but in this case, that's okay, since we're going to make a carpet and the pattern wouldn't (and shouldn't) be very clear anyway. In fact, let's make it look more carpet-like. Effects - Add Noise. Turn the Color Noise slider down all the way to 0, and then play with the Intensity slider. You want enough noise so that your pattern isn't crisp, like it's stenciled on, but you also don't want so much that you can't easily see the pattern.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn20-s.jpg

22. That looks nice! Let's save it. If you haven't already, make yourself a folder under your Sims 2 Projects folder called Floors. File - Save As and save your floor as a bitmap (.bmp) in the Floors folder. We don't have any separate layers to worry about, so we don't need to save it as a .pdn first, just a .bmp.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn21-s.jpg

Groundcover Texture

23. Because we're making ground cover, it doesn't have to match exactly to the wall texture, but if we were going to use them on the same lot, it might be nice for them to be similar in colour or tone, for a little more unity for the whole lot. So let's open the source for the ground cover, a nice craggy rock texture, and the wall texture we've created, and arrange them as before, so we can see both of them at the same time.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn22-s.jpg

24. Layer - Adjustments - Hue/Saturation. Play with the sliders until you get something nice that coordinates fairly well with the wall texture.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn23-s.jpg

25. Then you can maximize the ground cover window as we won't be needing to compare it to the wall anymore. The result of the Hue/Saturation is nice, but it's a bit boring. Let's make the texture look like there are bits of moss clinging to the stone. Edit - Select All and Edit - Copy to copy the texture as-is. Click 'Add New Layer' on the Layers window and then Edit - Paste to paste the texture into this new layer. You'll now have two layers, both with the same texture on them.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn24-s.jpg

26. Let's get a mossy background colour.
a. Uncheck the box next to Layer 2 to temporarily hide the layer.

b. Click on the Background layer to select it, so our changes will be made to it and not Layer 2.

c. Then do Hue/Saturation again, and play with the sliders to get a nice mossy green.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn25-s.jpg

27. And now we'll combine the moss with the regular texture.
a. Re-check the box next to Layer 2 to make it visible again.

b. Then click on Layer 2 to select it, so our changes will be made to it and not the Background.

c. Click on the Eraser tool.

d. Adjust the tool settings so they match the ones shown in the screenshot.

e. Now use small single-clicks on the image to erase little bits of Layer 2. Don't get too close to any of the edges or you'll have an obvious line where two pieces of ground cover come together. Also, take care not to overdo it - we want a little bit of moss, not overgrown. You can always Edit - Undo if you make a mistake, or use the History window to undo several recent changes at once.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn26-s.jpg

28. Now we'll make the image the right size. Image - Resize and change the width and height both to 256.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn27-s.jpg

29. File - Save As and save your document as a .pdn, so if you'd like to make any changes, you still have the layers separate. Save it in your Sims 2 Projects folder, under folder you'll create called Groundcovers

30. Image - Flatten will combine Layer 2 with the Background so all you have is one layer, the Background. Then Effects - Sharpen again to get rid of the blurriness caused by resizing.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialpn28-s.jpg

31. File - Save As and save your image as a .bmp in your Sims 2 Projects/Groundcovers folder.

[HystericalParoxysm]

Well, we've got all of our textures ready. Let's make them usable in the game.

1. Open Homecrafter. It should have a shortcut on your Desktop, or you can find it under Start - Programs - EA Games - The Sims 2 Homecrafter Plus. If you have a lot of custom content in your game, it might take a few minutes to load, so be patient.

2. Homecrafter creates the folders it will look in for the content you're creating the first time it's run. Once it's running, we'll go ahead and copy over those files. Open up a regular Windows Explorer (folder view) window to move the files around on your hard drive. You may want to do this in two windows, one for the source directory (the one you're copying from and one for the destination (the one you're pasting to), to make it easier.
a. Open up your Sims 2 Projects/Walls folder. Copy your wall texture .bmp file. Navigate to My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Projects/HomeCrafter Plus/Walls and paste the .bmp file into that folder. You'll then have two files in that folder - the one you just put there, and Template.bmp.

b. Open up your Sims 2 Projects/Floors folder. Copy your wall texture .bmp file. Navigate to My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Projects/HomeCrafter Plus/Floors and paste the .bmp file into that folder. You'll then have two files in that folder - the one you just put there, and Template.bmp.

c. Open up your Sims 2 Projects/Groundcovers folder. Copy your wall texture .bmp file. Navigate to My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Projects/HomeCrafter Plus/Ground Cover and paste the .bmp file into that folder. You'll then have two files in that folder - the one you just put there, and Template.bmp.

Making the Wall

3. When Homecrafter is fully loaded, you'll have three choices. We'll start with the walls, so click Create Wall Covering.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialhc01-s.jpg

3. Then click the big blue plus symbol to Create New Content.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialhc02-s.jpg

4. Select the name of your texture in the list (it shouldn't be hard, there's only two).
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialhc03-s.jpg

5. Now we get to choose all the options for the wall texture.
a. First, make up an interesting name for your wall texture. Give it a price, too. Most walls will probably fall in the 1-10 range, perhaps as high as 20 for a very fancy wall.

b. Then, write a description for your wall. You don't have to get too fancy, just a few words. If nothing else, put your name (or the nickname or username you post under online) and the address or name of the site that you post your work at. This way, if someone would like to use your wall texture in a lot they're creating, they can track you down to give you credit.

c. Choose the category your wall will show up under in the game.

d. Toggle the gridlines off so you can see where the tiles of your texture come together.

e. Examine your texture closely, especially along where two tiles come together, to make sure it's crisp and sharp and that there are no obvious seams where the tiles meet. You can click and drag to swing the wall view around, and right-click and drag to zoom in and out (or use the controls below the window). You can toggle the gridlines back on when you're zoomed in to see exactly where your seams are, to make sure they match up perfectly.

f. When you're satisfied with your wall texture, choose Import to Game to have Homecrafter package up your texture into a game-readable format. It'll ask if you're sure, and then confirm that your creation has indeed been successfully imported.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialhc04-s.jpg

6. Now you'll be back to this screen.
a. Verify that the wall you just created shows up in the catalog. It's usually the first item in the list.

b. Click on the Browse Flooring button to continue to the next part.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialhc05-s.jpg

Making the Floor

7. The floor screen looks rather like the wall screen, doesn't it? Remember the big blue plus (+) to Create New Content? This screen has one too. Click it. :)
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialhc06-s.jpg

8. Then choose the floor texture you made.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialhc07-s.jpg

9. Now you get to choose all the options for your floor.
a. First, make up an interesting name for your floor texture. Give it a price, too. Most floors will probably fall in the 1-15 range, perhaps as high as 25 for a very fancy floor.

b. Then, write a description for your floor. You don't have to get too fancy, just a few words. If nothing else, put your name (or the nickname or username you post under online) and the address or name of the site that you post your work at. This way, if someone would like to use your floor texture in a lot they're creating, they can track you down to give you credit.

c. Choose the category your floor will show up under in the game.

d. Choose how many tiles your texture will cover. We'll choose 1x1 for this texture, but if you were working with a larger bitmap file (like 512x512 or 1024x1024) with a lot of detail in it, you could make them 2x2 or 5x5; you'd just have to make especially sure your texture is very sharp and crisp or it will tend to look blurry or pixellated over such a large area.

e. Choose the sound that your floor will make when sims walk on it. Try to use some logic here... It shouldn't sound like gravel when your sims walk across carpet. ;)

f. Toggle the gridlines off so you can see where the tiles of your texture come together.

g. Examine your texture closely, especially along where two tiles come together, to make sure it's crisp and sharp and that there are no obvious seams where the tiles meet. You can click and drag to swing the floor view around, and right-click and drag to zoom in and out (or use the controls below the window). You can toggle the gridlines back on when you're zoomed in to see exactly where your seams are, to make sure they match up perfectly.

h. When you're satisfied with your floor texture, choose Import to Game to have Homecrafter package up your texture into a game-readable format. It'll ask if you're sure, and then confirm that your creation has indeed been successfully imported.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialhc08-s.jpg

10. That'll bring you back to this screen.
a. Verify that the floor you just created shows up in the catalog. It's usually the first item in the list.

b. Click on the Browse Ground Cover button to continue to the next part.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialhc09-s.jpg

Making the Groundcover

11. Again, start by clicking the big blue plus (+) button to Create New Content.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialhc10-s.jpg

12. Select the groundcover texture you created.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialhc11-s.jpg

13. Now, choose the settings for your groundcover. A little simpler than before, eh?
a. First, make up an interesting name for your groundcover. You don't need to enter a price (nor would it let you if you tried).

b. Then, write a description for your groundcover. You don't have to get too fancy, just a few words. If nothing else, put your name (or the nickname or username you post under online) and the address or name of the site that you post your work at. This way, if someone would like to use your groundcover in a lot they're creating, they can track you down to give you credit.

c. Toggle the gridlines off so you can see where the tiles of your texture come together.

d. Examine your texture closely, especially along where two tiles come together, to make sure it's crisp and sharp and that there are no obvious seams where the tiles meet. You can click and drag to swing the groundcover texture view around, and right-click and drag to zoom in and out (or use the controls below the window). You can toggle the gridlines back on when you're zoomed in to see exactly where your seams are, to make sure they match up perfectly.

e. When you're satisfied with your groundcover texture, choose Import to Game to have Homecrafter package up your texture into a game-readable format. It'll ask if you're sure, and then confirm that your creation has indeed been successfully imported.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialhc12-s.jpg

14. Your new groundcover should show up in the catalog, usually as the first entry.

Click on the little door at the bottom to exit Homecrafter.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialhc13-s.jpg

Congratulations! You just made a wall, a floor, and a groundcover!

Notes on Homecrafter

Why does the template and readme for Homecrafter say to use 256x512 bitmaps, when the tutorial says to use 256x768, etc? PC users can make walls, floors, and groundcover at whatever size they want, and often creating certain elements at larger sizes (512x1536) can give more detail for certain projects. However, be aware that if you create your textures at any size except the -exact- texture size given on the Homecrafter template, your items will not work whatsoever for Mac users. Please try to stick to the template sizes whenever possible, and if you do stray from them, put a note on the upload mentioning the problem, so Mac users don't waste their time downloading items that won't work for them.
Stuck on something in Homecrafter? The readme file that comes with Homecrafter is a often-overlooked source of information about the program. You can access it under Start - Programs - EA Games - The Sims 2 Homecrafter Plus.

[HystericalParoxysm]

Testing Your Creations In-Game

Go ahead and load the game and go into your neighborhood of choice. Create yourself an empty lot to use for testing. I think I used a 2x2, but it doesn't really matter what size you use.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialwn01-s.jpg

Enter the lot and put down some walls. Again, doesn't really matter where... Just make sure you're looking at the light side of the wall. The light on the lot comes from a certain direction, and if you're not looking at the correct side, the wall will look much darker and you won't be able to see your texture as well. Put down two or three sides of a box, like you're making a square room, and wallpaper the walls with your new wallpaper. It may not be the first thing in the catalog now, even if you have no other custom walls in your game. Cover the area of ground between the walls you made with your carpeting. Now take a look at your handiwork!

I was actually a little surprised when I saw these together... the background of the walls seems a lot warmer than the more yellow border and floor, but after looking at it for a minute, I kinda liked it better than if I'd done it the uniform yellowish-beige I'd intended the whole thing to be, and eyeballed in the graphics programs I'd built it in. The background being warmer is a little more interesting.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialwn02-s.jpg

Somewhere on another part of the lot (you can get rid of the walls and floor if you need more space), use the raise terrain tool on the smallest setting and just... click randomly around a small area to make some craggy, uneven terrain. Then go in to the groundcovers and, still on the smallest setting, just lightly dust the tops of the rises in the terrain you just made with your new groundcover. Rotate around and tweak it to taste. The screenshot below is just some quick craggy terrain I threw together, the groundcover just assembled, a couple clicks with the water tool, and a couple trees. The larger areas of green are just the default green grass that I left here and there in the low spots.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialwn03-s.jpg

If you don't like the result in-game...

You can go back and make changes! Remember, for anything with layers, you should've saved a layer-separated version... a .PSD if you're using Photoshop, or a .PDN if you're using Paint.NET. You can go back, open the file, and edit it to your liking. Save a new copy of the .bmp version, move it into the right Homecrafter folder, and make a new version of it.

Where are my creations located?

If you'd like to share your new creations (or if you'd like to delete an older version if you've made changes), you'll find the files you made residing in My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Downloads. Unfortunately, Homecrafter doesn't make the file names very descriptive, beyond wall_, floor_, and terrainPaint_, ending with a string of characters, but since we only made three at once, it's pretty obvious which file is which. If you're doing more than a few at once, write down the order you made them in, and then sort the newly created files by Date Created... You can then rename the files in the same order as the order you created them in, and it should all match up. You can also open the files in SimPE and look at the Text List inside it to see which is which as long as their names or descriptions you gave them are different, but that's for more advanced users (i.e. anyone who knows what I'm talking about with that one sentence of instructions).

Rename your files to something much more descriptive. For example, I would name a floor I created:

F_Carpet-ImperialEggshell_HystericalParoxysm-DemusedSims.package

You don't necessarily have to get that specific, but it is VERY helpful, both as a creator and a downloader, to be able to tell what a file is and how to track down the creator at a glance.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialwn04-s.jpg

Sharing Your Creations

If you've created a particularly nice set of walls, floors, or groundcovers that you would like to share with the community, that's great!

A great help to beginning creators is the Creator Feedback Forum here at MTS2. There you can post pictures of your works in progress and get pointers from experienced creators and downloaders on how to improve. It's a great way to get lots of helpful tips and info, and it's strongly suggested that beginners make use of that forum before uploading. Just make sure you read the rules for that forum first. ;)

Once you've decided your creations are ready to be released to the world, check out the Creator Guidelines for info on what you'll need to upload your walls, floors, or ground covers, and RAR or ZIP your .package files. A guide to things you can do to take better screenshots is available here. It is strongly recommended that you take screenshots for your creations by using the Print Screen key on your keyboard to put a copy of your current screen on the clipboard. Then you can paste the image into Photoshop, Paint.NET, or even MS Paint to crop it and save it as a JPEG. This method is greatly preferrable to using the C key to take pictures using the game's camera, which tends to take much smaller pictures with a lot of JPEG compression (crunchiness). If you're not running in windowed mode, it can be hard to switch programs, so if you'd like to set that up, it's very easily done by these instructions.

What to make after walls, floors, and groundcover?

Starting with walls and floors gets you used to texturing on the game's scale and looking for seamlessness in your textures, without having to worry about your texture being stretched or distorted over a mesh. Once you've become very skilled and confident in creating walls and floors, and have done a lot more to make interesting effects than the very simple techniques shown here, you may be ready to move on to something more.

If you're pretty good with computers and don't mind something a little more complicated, you can graduate from walls, floors, and groundcover to doing simple object recolours like paintings and furniture.

Alternately, as it doesn't require the use of SimPE, recolouring clothing in Body Shop is relatively easy, and very well explained starting with the first in a series of great tutorials on the subject.

If you have questions or are having trouble...

First, go back and re-read everything very carefully and look at the screenshots. 90% of problems are usually due to having missed a step, done something incorrectly, or trying to skip ahead. If you're truly an absolute beginner, it's highly suggested that you do the tutorial using the same source images I did, so every step you do will be exactly the same, and so you can compare your work to my screenshots. If you're having trouble with something in the graphics program you're using, try its help file. Most graphics programs also have forums on their official sites full of useful information.

If you're still having trouble, you can ask your question here. Please make sure you include what -exactly- you are stuck on (what step of what part) and what program you're using. Screenshots are also helpful, if applicable to your problem. "I don't get it," is a question that can't be answered, and won't help anyone, especially you. Ask a specific question about a specific problem after going through the whole tutorial carefully. ;)

[tylersada]

The tutorial is great. I was having so much trouble with walls and floors before doing them with your tutorial. I am not an expert now but have a much better idea of what I am doing.

:D

[kbresh1]

Where are the textures to download? :|

[HystericalParoxysm]

kbresh, I'm assuming you mean the textures I used to create the walls and floors? They're attached to the second post in this thread, and should show up under "Screenshots" right under where it says "If you want to follow along exactly, the source images are attached to this post." Try reloading the page and waiting for it to load completely (as this is a very image-intensive page with all the screenshots) if you don't see them there.

[Ichigo-chou]

For some reason, I don't have Homecrafter. Is there any reason why, or any way I could get it?

[IgnorantBliss]

You have to download Homecrafter from the official site, it's not included in the game. HP has a link in the first post of this thread to download it.

[teaguevm]

Thank you so much for this great tutorial. I've been playing the Sims 2 since January and have been coming here for all the awesome downloads shortly after that. Two days ago I began playing with this tutorial, and now I'm having a blast making my own walls and floors. I even got brave and tried another tutorial - and -WOW - now I'm doing bedding, too!

I'll get better, then start sharing here. It will be nice to give back to a site that has given me so much.

Thanks again!

[tomboy]

I have downloaded the tutorial but it does not cover what I would like to do.

I do not know if what i am about to ask is permitted, so please tell me if it is not.

I would like to change some of the walls that I have downloaded to my game.

For example make the top half of a log cabin wall into wall paper using the top section of a different wall. Both walls do show in Home Crafter.

Is this possible if so is there a tutorial to help me do so.

Thanks

[HystericalParoxysm]

If they're custom wallpapers (user-created) that you've downloaded, you can edit them, but you cannot redistribute them without permission from the original creator. But if you're just doing it for your own personal use and you never share those without permission, sure, that's totally doable.

Go into Homecrafter, and find the first wall of the two you want to use. Select it, and next to the big blue + button to make new content, you'll see two smaller buttons - Edit selected content, and Clone selected content. Choose Clone.

That'll take you to the main wall editing screen. Look below where it displays the wall with the gridlines and you'll see it says "Texture to Edit:" - It'll display a directory and filename of the .bmp it has created down there. Open that directory, and open that file in your graphics editor. In Homecrafter, click the X beside the "Import to Game" button to cancel that project. Then go find the other wall you want to use and do the same thing - clone selected content, look at the directory and filename it's using for it, and open that in your graphics editing program, too. If you're using Paint.NET you'll need to open it in a second instance of the program. Then just copy the parts from one that you want to use over onto the other - like how I showed copying the little bottom piece of border in the tutorial. Once you have your new image with both parts adjusted, you can create a NEW project (+) and save your new wall with both parts into the same directory as I showed in the tutorial.

[waggles]

this tute rocks HP! big thanks and a compliment to you!

[zuzu20]

Thanks so much for this!! I'm so happy you have so many taturials using Paint.net. on the site. This one is amazing! You made it very easy to understand and helped me to get even more familiar with how to use the program. I'm off the make walls for the rest of the night!! Thanks so much for enhancing my simming passion!

[tomboy]

Thank you HystericalParoxysm for the information concerning the custom wall and floors. The new floors and walls I create will be for my own use.


Thanks also for the Tutorial. I am creating with out problems now.

[Pixelhate]

Thank you for this extensive and very comprehensible tutorial.
Tough, you don't mention anything about bump map, I'm quite sure there must be a way to add one to a wall. Do you have any infos about it ? or a link ?
Thanks again anyway.

[amberandcarlos33]

The inspiration gallery link doesn't work. I did a search for it and it's: http://www.theinspirationgallery.com/ I'm working on your tutorial now. I know how to make wallpaper and have done so but am hoping for a more detailed approach so that my wallpaper looks the best it possibly can be. Thanks for sharing it!

[blastin528]

However, just because that funky green lava looks really cool on the background of your Myspace doesn't mean it makes any sense as a wall or floor in a sim's house.

Ha ha, you nailed me there. I was just thinking how cool my red and white hearts would look in a little girls room when I read this. We'll have to see if mine turns out ok...

[Andreea29]

Thank you very very much! It's very easy to use and I did my first recolor!!! :lovestruc :up: :beer:

[orangerevolt]

what happens if you accidently delete the template?

[HystericalParoxysm]

Um, no idea, orangerevolt. I doubt it makes a whole lot of difference one way or the other. You really don't need the template - it's just there to tell you the finished size you need. If you did delete it and things are asploding because of it, try restoring it from your Recycle Bin, or if you've gotten rid of it from there, reinstall Homecrafter?

[*Laure*]

Hi,

I want to thank you for adding the bit about wall textures needing to be exact size of the homecrafter template :) in order for them to show correctly in the Mac version of the game. I wanted add that the same is true of floors - they must follow the default sizes or the too will show up as gray.

[amy9301]

dude the inspiration gallery link dont work i have tried googleing it, and using the links on this page but it always comes up with 'cannot find server.' any ideas?

[HystericalParoxysm]

I have no idea why that is, amy9301, but I get the same thing... even if I don't try to follow the link and just type it in, I get that... Googling it comes up, I can get to it through there, and then the links on this page and typing in work fine. They've got to have some weird referring links strangeness settings on their server, or sunspots, or swamp gas, or something.

[ladylarke]

Great tut :) However, I'm having difficulty making plain paint walls. I've tried various noise filters to the walls, but they aren't showing in-game the proper color. I've searched the forums but can't find anything relevant. Perhaps I'm not using the right search terms..

I don't have a Mac, I've saved the images both at the 768 and 512 heights, doesn't make a difference. I've checked when the walls are in actual rooms, not just on a lone wall, and though they seem 'right' in a full room, the colors are still off.

Suggestions? What can I do or how can I alter the way the file saves to improve color quality in-game??

[HystericalParoxysm]

ladylarke, I think a lot of that depends on your monitor settings, your graphics program settings, your eye for colour, the colour of the light in the room you put the walls in, the time of day in game, and a number of other factors... but I do know what you mean. My recent set of Victorian wallpapers I uploaded, they look like a really aged yellow on my texture, and in the game they're sort of... greyish beige. It seems like it desaturates some... maybe by like 5%... I think if you add a little saturation right before saving with each one, you should be able to get a little closer to your intended colour. You may have to play with it a little bit to get the exact mixture and feel for it right.

[jdbRISTOWE]

I used photoshop my walls came out great but my floor and groundcover had white lines running through, I guess space inbetween the tiles. Do you know what i did. This tutorial was helpful and I would like to make more floors and groundcoverings but I need to no what I did wrong. Thanks in advamce.

[HystericalParoxysm]

jdbRISTOWE, that does sound like what happened... spaces in between your tiles. Make sure you are using tiling textures like from the Inspiration Gallery, resize your images so you're sure they're the right size, and if you're putting several tiles together, I'm not sure but the "snap into place" thing in Photoshop may be a feature of later versions (CS/CS2). If it is and your image pieces don't seem to snap right into place, you can uncheck "show transform controls" so you can see all your edges, maximize the image, and zoom in. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to nudge the image exactly into place, paying attention around the edges for any white space.

[jdbRISTOWE]

thank-you HystericalParoxysm your tutorial was very helpful and your instructions on how to fix my problem were very accurate and I had it fixed within seconds once again thank- you for all your help

[Sophia_Hudson]

Thanks so much for this! I've finnaly found something i'm good at! (Except for re-colouring clothes...)

[Bonita!]

Nice tut! Very helpful

[ingaus]

My thanks too. I definately needed a "for dummies" guide, but the well-structured layout let me jump over bits I didn't need - something which, unfortunately, a lot of people don't take into account when writing instructions. I am horribly afraid of the creations I might now unleash upon my unsuspecting Sims...

In the interests of clarity (and because I am a pedant and you may quote me on that!) - right at the end of your tute you mention you don't know why the HomeCrafter template prompts you to save walls in 256x512 format. Obviously you've since answered that one (ie for Macs as you edited to include earlier) and I just thought it might be good to update that bit too.

And now I'm beginning to wish I'd never started this, I do sound like I'm having a whine! My main point is to say thanks, so thanks!

[HystericalParoxysm]

D'oh, you're right, ingaus. That bit of info on the template sizing came up after the tutorial was complete, and I sometimes forget to edit little bits out. Thank you. :)

[ingaus]

No worries HP, always glad to make my tiny contribution... :D

[anitae]

i have coral paint shop pro and none of the buttons and stuff are the same and i have to things to say:

1. This is really complicated and i was wondering if maybe you could explain to me how to do it in coral paint shop pro X?

2. i dont mean to say your work is bad its really good.

3. please help me!

[shelldevil]

I have photoshop 7, but when i try to save the file as a .bmp there is no selection for it in the dropdown menu. Is there any way i can make it appear there?

[IgnorantBliss]

Is there an option for Windows or OS/2 Bitmap? That should be the same thing as BMP.

[tiggerypum]

shelldevil, I have photoshop 7 and BMP is like the second choice on the list. That's a bit puzzling.

[ogdj1122]

Thank you for this wonderful tutorial

[hidingloops]

Thanks way much now im cool

[tomasz25]

Thanks for this tutorial, but i made something following every single step and it looked good on homecrafter and everything, but when i zoomed in in the game it was all pixely. is that just my graphics settings or what?

[kosya27]

Yeah your tutorial is just wondeful !!!!!!!!!!!! I was just 0 in all this things to create such as walls - but now ,well.... i understand it !

[HystericalParoxysm]

tomasz25, sorry for the slow reply, didn't see your message till now - if you save your images at the default size, if you're zoomed all the way in, even if you have your graphics settings to the highest level, you'll see some pixellation. After all, the wall texture you're using is 512 pixels high - and the game is stretching that texture over a wall that, when zoomed in, is quite a bit taller than 512 pixels in the game. Now, if you've got your texture detail settings set lower, then everything is going to look pixellated like that, your wall texture, Maxis walls, other custom walls, and everything else in game. If that's the case, turn your graphics settings up.

If it's just a matter of it being pixellated when you've got your nose up against the wall, so to speak, you can either not worry about that (as Maxis walls are going to be like that too), or you can use a larger graphic when you save the image. Using graphics at 256x768 gives you an image at the actual aspect ratio the game uses (which is why I show you how to build your graphics at that resolution, so they look right) but if you save at any other size than 256x768 your walls simply won't work for Mac users. You should probably try to be as compatible as possible, but if there's a particular wall you really want to be nice and sharp and crisply detailed, well, just make sure you note that it won't work for Mac users somewhere big and bold if you upload it anywhere.

I did that on my Victorian Advertising Wallpapers because I really wanted the images to be readable in the game as that's the charm of that sort of wallpaper, so I built it at... erm, double 256x768... 512x1536. This is normally REALLY not necessary for walls, but for something very special like that, where I had a really specific goal in mind (readability of some of the larger text and headlines) it's okay, and I tried to make it very prominent letting Mac users know it won't work.

Hope this has clarified that some for you. :)

[alana66694]

i followed every step but when i tryed to save it didnt have the .bmp choice only the psd one. I'm using photoshop 5.5 is there anyway to get the .bmp one on it? :S
Please help!

[LaylaSims]

I really want to thank you also, HP, for a wonderful tutorial. For the first time since I discovered The Sims in 2002, I feel like there might actually be *something* I can finally create for my game. Your tutorial was packed full of step-by-cohesive-step information, leaving nothing out, including your own patience. I wish others who write tutorials would write them that well! Someone suggested a book for Dummies. Would you consider writing a Sims 1 & 2 Creating ALL Custom Content for Dummies book in the future? LOL Can't wait to try all this out!

[Lhea]

Thank you very much! :king: You are the king.

[tomasz25]

Okay, sorry for my slow reply. I tried your suggesetions and things are working better. I assumed that the size you stated was the only one that worked. I didn't want to reply until I tried lots of different possibilities. I also tried different thing with floors, and a floor set that I made got accepted to the site a few days ago. Without your wonderful tutorial, it would not be possible. Thank you. The set that I am talking about can be found here:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=196221

[obsessisim]

I've made some decent floors and walls and found both this and Faylen's texture tutorial very helpful, however, I wonder if I am trying to do the impossible. I have some images from TheFatStrawberry and also some photos of my own that I want to use for walls and carpet. The problem is, there seems to be no way to keep them from showing obvious seams. I was able to successfully make some by choosing a spot in the pic where there was less detail but that wasn't the effect I was after. Am I trying to do something that simply can't be done? Are there certain patterns or heavily textured images that can't be used without the seams showing? Or is there an advanced magic trick that I am not aware of? thank you.

[Ebbe]

Any tips on making Wallaper Murals, or is it pretty much a hit and miss till you get aligned righ? Please help...

[HystericalParoxysm]

tomasz25 - I like your set, especially the black and white squares. Good job!

obsessisim - Well, getting a seamless texture out of a non-seamless pic has vexed texture artists since the beginning of the pixel. One thing you can do with very soft pics (like clouds) is, in Photoshop, use Filter - Other - Offset and change the horizontal offset (for walls - for floors you would do both horizontal and vertical). This will immediately show you where the seam is, and then you can use a soft fuzzy brush to paint (or clone stamp) to fix the seam, then offset again to put it back (if you want - shouldn't really be necessary but I do it). I found a little tutorial, not specifically for Photoshop, but showing this technique here: http://www.highpoly3d.com/writer/tutorials/tileable/seamless.htm

A google search for "making seamless textures" or "making textures seamless" seems to bring up quite a bit of good info on it.

Unfortunately there's no one trick... plenty of programs that claim to do it but make ugly stuff, and a lot of skill and practice involved. Eventually, after working with textures for a while, you'll be able to glance at a pic and go, "Oh yeah, that could easily be made seamless" or "that's gonna be a total pain, nevermind, I'll choose something else."

Ebbe - I've done it in Photoshop with great success by using Guides. You'll need to get the pic set up so that the height and width are correct - the height should be 768, and the width should be a multiple of 256. You may need to crop or resize to stretch it a bit one way or the other. Then use View - New Guide to add guides to your pic. If you want three tiles across, then you'd add a vertical guide at 33% and 66%, to divide the image into thirds. Make sure Snap is on (View - Snap) and then use the rectangle select tool to select the left third - your selection will automatically snap to the guide so you get a perfect seam with no effort. Copy it, paste it into a new document, resize to 256x512 and save as your first wall piece. Go back to your big texture, select the right third, copy, paste into a new document, resize, and save that as your third wall piece. Then set your selection to additive and select both the left and right thirds, so you have everything but the middle selected, and Invert Selection to have just the middle piece selected. Again, copy, paste into a new document, save, and save as your second wall piece. Then make the three walls in Homecrafter.

If you notice a seam between the wall textures, try setting the background colour in your new documents for each piece to a colour that more closely matches the general colour of your textures - i.e. if your textures are mostly red and orange, choose a reddish-orange background colour instead of white.

[obsessisim]

HP thank you for your response. I finally had a eureka moment and realized the textures I was trying to use were just too, well, textured. So I used render-clouds, no pun intended. It worked, it wasn't exactly what I had been after originally of course, but it looks really pretty. I'm going to try the offset procedure next. Thanks again.

[just_the_way_you_are]

im also having the same problem as shell and alana,im usuing photoshop 7 although when i finish creating there is no option to save as a bmp, can anyone help me with this? :blink:

[tomasz25]

one suggestion i have is to save it as a .jpg and then opening your new .jpg file with microsoft photo editor, then pressing save as, and then selecting the bmp option

[Jewelz1174]

Very nice tutorial. I've never custom made anything for the game until now! :)

I have one question though. I made a specific wall for the outside of a shop I'm building. Problem is.. there is a sign that is about as wide as a wall. I don't know how I would make a sign individually at that width and all but, I figured that I could add it into the wall that I made. Problem is.. the sign shows up 3 times in the final product and I don't want that. Is there anyway I can incorporate a sign that says "The Dot Grill ect."or would I have to make that seperate from the wall itself?

Thanks again and great tut. ;)

Jolene

[Icky]

If I hadn't read this, it would've taken me forever to figure out. Great tutorial! And its given me something new to do on sims! XD
Thanks!

[landrot107]

thanx a lot

[summer_wine]

thanks for this tutorial, now i'm addicted to www.theinspirationgallery.com and am totally inspired by you. thanks! i'm trying this when i get home.... this friday! that's 4 days away!!!!!! :(

[ImperfectPerfection]

OMGISH! Thank you SO much for this. I just made my first recolour (*squeel*) And it looks... normal! Thank you once again, so much for this wonderful tutorial.

[Melynna]

Thanks a lot, your tutorial is really good, and I'm actually beginning to understand the very basics. :Pint:

But I have a problem with the wall. I put the size as you said, everything looks good, but when I opened it in the Homecrafter, I see the wall, and then two black spaces on the sides, as if the wall I just created was too narrow for the template.

I tried several times and with different sizes, such as 256 x 768 and 256 x 512, but they all look the same. I also exported one of the Maxis wall and opened it with Photoshop, so that I could compare mine with Maxis, and so far I can't notice any difference. I can't understand why I see those black spaces.
What do you think the problem is? I'm trying to google it, but so far I haven't come up with any solution.
Thanks again!

[tomasz25]

Melynna: Those black spaces are just gridlines. There is a grid option, and its defaulted to start with having them on, so just click on the off box
http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/1287/gridbe6.jpg

[CrimsonWish]

I did everything as you said, with saving the files, but it still fails to show on the New Content Window. When I looked at the files, I could see the Wall I just made has a photoshop logo next to it. So as a test run I cloned another wall that was already in the game to see if it had some different logo, and when I looked at it, it had the Microsoft Office Picture Manager logo next to it.
I became confused, and tryed to paste the wall I had just made to the cloned wall, and saved it. I had trouble getting it to save as the same template, but when I did get it to save correctly, it failed to show on the HomeCrafter. So I went into My Documents, and opened the photoshop file with Micosoft Office Picture, and it did the funniest thing. It showed up as the original cloned wall, and had none of the changes I made to it.
I'm lost as to what to try next to fix this problem. I don't have a mac, and the picture is the correct size... what's the problem?

[princess_robby]

Thank you for taking the time to post this tutoirial.. it was a great help and helped me create my first wallpaper :)

[katatem17]

I'm having troubles.. I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9, I made a wallpaper and saved it as a .bmp. I did it twice, once using Paint Shop, and another time with MS Paint. (both different filenames, both ending with .bmp) and when I open them on HomeCrafter, I see it on the right, but not on the left. (Check the screenshot) This happens for both of the files. What can I do? :(

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e242/Katatem17/homecraft_scrshot2.jpg

[JLonier]

Ok, I've been making walls and floors since I first got my hands on homecrafter so I'm not unfamiliar with the process. What I am unfamiliar with is the photo editing software. While I wait for a new Photoshop disk (discovered a 1" crack in mine this morning :cry: ) I'm using Paint Shop Pro X. What I want to do is change the color of the Maxis siding Applause! All Natural Clapboard to a variety of colors to upload here for builders to use to cover up wonky walls. I have a set, but the creator doesn't allow her recolors to be uploaded with lots anywhere other than the site I got them from. So, now that I've removed hers from my game I need to make a set of my own!

I've been using bucketfill on the background layer with opacity at 50% and I don't like the results I'm getting. It looks a bit "washed out" for lack of a better term. And when I adjust the opacity I'm not getting a dark enough result. This is the only method I've found through my own research including two books I bought. (other than just adjusting the hue and saturation which doesn't give me as much control as I'm looking for... I have the values for some specific colors I want to use but I can't figure out where to plug them in to adjust it without completely losing the texture of the original wall ie I'm just getting a big rectangle of color rather than a recolored maxis wall texture) Clearly I'm not looking in the right places or using the proper terminology when I'm searching the net. Is there another technique I should be using? Gee, I never imagined I'd be asking this question for walls when it's also the only thing preventing me from recoloring objects as well.

Please give me a kick or shove in the right direction if this isn't the place to ask. I'll gladly take my questions to the appropriate place and still share my results here.

Thank you :!:

[tomasz25]

JLonier: um...i hope i understood u correctly JLonier. fistly, create another layer that is just one solid colour, or pattern that u want the wall to end up looking like. then, set the layer with you're textured wall above the sold colour one, and then set the textured layer to luminosity. I have photoshop, so im not sure if with Paint Shop Pro, the thing is called luminocity, but what it basically does is that by setting it to luminosity, it takes on the colour of the layer behind it, thus changing it to the colour u want without distorting your texture. hope this helps....

CrimsonWish: if you see a photoshop logo, that means your picture file is set as a .psd or whatever the photoshop file name is. in photoshop, u have to save as a .bmp or if by some chance it doesn't let you (it may not for some people with low ram, etc) save it as a .jpg after you do this, open your new.jpg file with microsoft photo editor, then press save as, and then selecting the bmp option. hope this helps...

[JLonier]

tomasz25, thank you for responding. I tried as you suggested (it's called luminance in paint shop) and after fudgeting around a bit it worked! However, the color I've ended up with doesn't match the values I've got it at. I'm not understanding, but I'm further on my way than I was earlier this evening. I'll keep at it. Thanks again.

I've messed about a bit more and am not understanding why it's coming out so bright. I'm not sure if you can tell from the screenshot, but the color I want is a nice, rich, deep, dark, victorian red. The color I'm getting (putting my texture on top and setting it to luminance) is more of a neon circus color even though you can plainly see the layer below it isn't that color. Can you tell what I'm doing wrong? At this point I probably need to put it away for the night and pick it up again tomorrow. Now that you've given me another way to try I will do some more searching in the morning and we'll see. Learning like this can be so frustrating! But you also never forget it.

[tomasz25]

okay, well i don't think this will get you exactly what you want, but get it a bit better. on your textured layer, turn saturation all the way down. Turn lightness, or brightness, or whatever paint shop calls it down just a touch. also, change your red layer slightly darker.

[katatem17]

:cry: I guess nobody could help me with my problem...? :cry:

[tomasz25]

katatem17: i really don't know why that's happening, sorry

[katatem17]

katatem17: i really don't know why that's happening, sorry
its alright... I'll try to think of something... :faceslap: :blink:

thanks anyway, tomasz25... I wonder if it'll show up on the game if I just import it without looking at it that way... I think I'll try that.

[JLonier]

tomasz25, Nah that didn't do it. However! I played around a bit more this morning and got close enough to the values I want that I will be submitting my wall recolors some time today. There must be a way to recolor using exactly the color you want. Maybe it's just not possible in paintshop? I dunno. Since my PSE disk was ruined I decided to upgrade to PSE 5 (reasonably enough my hubby won't let me get the full version until I'm experienced enough with the software to mesh) which will be here (according to Amazon) on Tuesday. I think I know where to go in PSE to do what I've been trying to in paintshop.

Anyway, thank you for your help.

[F.usic]

Can't you save it directly in the mydocuments/EA games/projects/HomeCrafter Plus/walls or w/e. instead of copying and pasting from your folder into it?

It would be easier + when you modify if (IF you modify it) then when you clicked save it'd save and you could press refresh before uploading it to the game.

[Michelle1970]

HP, thanks alot for taking the time to write this tutorial. It is a huge help for us beginners. I really appreciate all the hard work you put into this. It has been a huge help.

[HystericalParoxysm]

F.usic - You could do that, yes, but the refresh button only works when cloning or modifying projects. It doesn't work on new projects.

[billielith]

This is a very nice and complete step-by-step tutorial. It must have taken you a lot of time to write and put together. Nice work, really. I will try it soon. Thanks a lot.

[Elstumpo]

Very nice tut. I just did it now, and I feel good with myself.

*Hands HP a cookie*

[Vicke]

Firstly: thank you for making pedagogic tutorials with a sense of humor so they aren't boring to read :)

Secondly, my problem: I've made a wall paper that I'm quite happy with (the first thing I would like to upload...). I have made it with HomeCrafter and I hope that I did everything right. Shame on me, I didn't follow a tutorial for this. But I can't upload it, because it's a Sims2Pack file. How do I make this a .zip or .rar file? Is it even possible? I suppose I'll have to redo everything just because I was so ignorant. Blah.

I downloaded CEP today but this wallpaper doesn't require it.. or does it? I used one of Maxis wallpapers (like you can do in HomeCrafter) so I assume not, but I'm not sure.. and I have Pets, people without Pets can still use it, can't they?

I'll attach a picture of the wall paper as well if you're interested, critizism is always welcome. :)
(Credits: chair by muranomobilia.com, part of Mono Kitchen set; floor by sims24ever.de, part of Fine Bathroom set)

[littlejohnnyhoward]

I followed yout Tute to the letter, I even went on and made some other walls and floors in photoshop, as I found it fun and easy to do. I put them into homecrafter and all was fantastic, with all floors, walls and groundcovers.
My problem arose when I opened up my game and tried to test my creations. All the walls were fantastic, Ground cover was great, but the floor tiles came up green. Texture was obviously there, but they were all in a really bright green colour. I went over the Tutorial again and cannot see where I went wrong, I even tried searching for answers through the replies and forums but couldnt find anything. Does anyone know where I went wrong? :wtf:

[F.usic]

Where can you find cool ideas for walls? I need a purple theme or something...just a website for real wall/floor house recoloring stuff. This way you can use colors similar and get that theme for the game..

[heatherfish24]

I loved this tutorial! I've never made anything for the sims2 before, but now I've got a better idea of how to go about making stuff. Thank you for getting me started. :up:

[littlejohnnyhoward]

I followed yout Tute to the letter, I even went on and made some other walls and floors in photoshop, as I found it fun and easy to do. I put them into homecrafter and all was fantastic, with all floors, walls and groundcovers.
My problem arose when I opened up my game and tried to test my creations. All the walls were fantastic, Ground cover was great, but the floor tiles came up green. Texture was obviously there, but they were all in a really bright green colour. I went over the Tutorial again and cannot see where I went wrong, I even tried searching for answers through the replies and forums but couldnt find anything. Does anyone know where I went wrong? :wtf:
I have searched High and Low for an answer to my dilemma and The Sims2 BBS came to the rescue. Another Simmer had a similar issue (though their floors turned pink/purple) and someone suggested to them that they remove the Transparent tiles from their CC, which fixed their problem. I went and disabled the transparent tiles from my CC and went back to the game only to find that my floors were still green, so I went back to Homecrafter and re-imported them into the game and that seems to have fixed my problem, my tiles and carpet look fantastic.
I must also thank HP for the fantastic Tutorial (I forgot to do it in my first post) I am off to find more textures to make my Sims' homes the pillar of fashion! :D

[tomasz25]

vicke: you put the sims2 pack file into a .zip or .rar

[butterflyiii2006]

Hi,
If this was posted elsewhere I didn't see it. So, I will apologize ahead of time.
I have made my pictures into BMP's-- I can see them in the Home Crafter-- but the minute I turn on my grid-- Home Crafter crashes!!!Every time!!
Is it compatible with Sims2 base- and EP through OFB?
I don't know what else to do--I've uninstalled it-- defraged-- and reinstalled-- and yep it crashed again...... Ok?
HELP!!!!! I'm pulling my hair out!!!!!!!
I really want to try and do this-- but can't get past this problem....
Thanks guys-- if anybody can figure this out -- you guys can!
I appreciate your help
ButterflyIII2006

[IgnorantBliss]

butterflyiii2006, have you downloaded the latest version of Homecrafter? It was updated some time ago.

[Vicke]

vicke: you put the sims2 pack file into a .zip or .rar

But... how? :D

[JLonier]

But... how? :D

Right click on the file you want to rar and a menu with a list of options will come up. Select add to archive.

[JLonier]

This may be more of a photoshop question and if I should put it elsewhere please poke me in the right direction.

In an efffort to learn photoshop (with an eager eye to recoloring 'cause I'm gettin' bored with walls and floors) I've started playing around with making my own wall/floor textures. I've made a nice plain brown four square tile that tiles seamlessly as a wall and a floor in photoshop. Problem is when I import it into homecrafter it turns into one big brown wall instead of my nice little four square brown tiles at the bottom of the wall.

Here's what I did. I made a 256x512 file. Then I opened a new file and made it 256x256. I bucket filled it with a nice shade of brown. Then I drew a white stripe down the center, through the middle, and around the outside edge for my grout. I offset it and made some adjustments then saved it. The floor tile looks just fine in bodyshop. Needs some fine tuning for shading and whatnot, but it's the four square seamlessly tiling floor tile I intended. When I copy it, paste it onto my 256x512 file, move it to the bottom portion, offset it, merge it down, save it, and open it in bodyshop it's a plain creamy brown wall with no tile pattern. I am totally stumped, but also quite sure I'm not the first person to experience this.

Can someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong? Thank you.

[HystericalParoxysm]

JLonier, can you please post a pic of the texture you're trying to use, and what you're getting in Homecrafter? My lack of coffee today is making that description of yours mae less sense than I'm sure it would to someone with a higher caffeine-to-brain ratio.

[JLonier]

Surely, here we go. As you can see they're very simple.

EDIT: Well, I got it to work. I imported the floor via Homecrafter and then put it in edit so it would appear in the working directory. From there I shrunk it down to half it's size, copied, cut pasted etc... bottom line it was no longer a brown wall but a tiled brown wall.

Also I ditched it for an overall smaller tile, added some shading and texture (you wouldn't believe how long it took to figure out how to do it) and it's come out quite nice. I'm trying a different pattern today. Onward!

[Lillz.]

Some how I can't get my preview of my flooring to come out as clear as yours. It's the correct flooring, but it comes out too bright on the preview in Homecrafter. Is there a way to fix it?

[TimSimser]

on some sites you see a sort of mirroring floor how can you make that?

[HystericalParoxysm]

<iAMellieSWEETY>, I have no idea what would cause that. Are you starting by clicking the big plus rather than going from an existing floor?

TimSimser, there are no settings you can do to actual floor tiles to make them mirrored or reflective. For that you must place objects over the floor to either create a mirrored effect, or create a reflective effect on an existing floor. My favourite for that are the Murano Mobilia floors (available here (http://www.muranomobilia.com/products/others/millenium/millenium.html) which can be added to any floor to make it shiny. Just make sure you turn on reflections in your graphics options or they'll be flat black - and you have to have a really nice graphics card to run them at any decent framerate.

[Safy]

thANK you thank you thankyou i wanted to learn all this ages ago but cudnt due to time great tutorial i only had a problem when the extensions got messed up bt i got it in the end thanx

[starwyn]

I hope this hasn't been asked already, if so i missed it, sorry. When making another wall etc, do we place that one in the eagames/sims2/projects/homecrafter/walls folder? And every other wall we make?
I'm assuming the answer is yes but just want to double check.

Great tutorial btw and Thankyou :)

[catrix12]

thanks for this tut! very helpful cause i know hardly anything about creating ._.; but this is a great one!

[rulespotter]

Thanks for the help.

[tacos]

thank you for this tutorial but i have a question

when i saved my walls and floor and ground as a .bmp none of them work. i am using paint net. and when i go to the home craft plue it says there was a problem creating a pattern with this .bmp please make surethat it is a valid .bmp snd try again? please can you help

[ColinSkyes]

I'm having the same problem katatem17 is having. I will edit this post later if I can find a way to fix it.


Edit: I haven't found a way for it to show up in the bigger view, but if you import it to game, it should show up and work fine; you just have to go by the smaller view, until someone finds a way to fix it. ;)

[summer_wine]

sorry if this has been asked before...

is there a way to recolor existing maxis wallpaper? or maybe change a part of it? thing is i really like those wallpapers with the wainscotting and beadboard and i wanna change the actual paper, not the wooden parts, how do i do that?

[HystericalParoxysm]

Yes, you can do that, summer_wine. Look at my reply to someone else previously here: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1245975#post1245975

[MaureenH]

Thank you so much!! I've gotten really tired of the same old boring carpet and wall colors... Fantastic tutorial, very easy to follow!

[kathy]

do they have a toturial for it using gimps?..

[zqyx]

I don't have any "Walls folder", why?
The tutorial was great, but I can't follow it trough becouse there is no folder called "Walls", so when I am in HomeCrafter, there is nothing else to choose but the testwall with the yellow triangle on it.
What did go wrong?
I saved my wall and floor on the desktop, because I didn't know where else to save them.
Please help me if you can, and explain in simple english, because I'm from Sweden :P

[Rincewind010101]

Thank you so much HP! I have just made my first walls and floors - yes it took me a couple of days and I made some dumb mistakes, but I did it (and then I danced around like an idiot for a while, singing a happy song). Step by step you led me on the road to actually making something! :)

[becaskenette]

Thanks for the great tutorial! I've been wanting to take the dive into CC for a while now, but had no idea how or where to start.
I love the wall & floor that I created with your help, and can't wait to do more!

[riiko14]

Thnx Hysterical!

U really help me, I've been like searching for hours and days to find the perfect black walls but I couldn't find it but now thnx to Photoshop and you I've got it!

Yay! Goth house here you come!

Peace,
Riiko

[riiko14]

I don't have any "Walls folder", why?
The tutorial was great, but I can't follow it trough becouse there is no folder called "Walls", so when I am in HomeCrafter, there is nothing else to choose but the testwall with the yellow triangle on it.
What did go wrong?
I saved my wall and floor on the desktop, because I didn't know where else to save them.
Please help me if you can, and explain in simple english, because I'm from Sweden :P



Make a folder.
My Documents>EA Games>Sims 2>Projects>HomeCrafter Plus.

IF YOU DON'T HAVE A FOLDER FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS BELOW:
Right click once you click on the HomeCrafter Plus folder.

Then go down and press 'New Folder' that makes a folder name it: 'Walls'

Hehe!

There ya go!

Just leave it like that.

PEACE :bunny:
;) Riiko

[lilmonkeygray]

Hi!

I'm having a problem with Homecrafter crashing. I probably shouldn't put this here but I can't find any info anywhere else so I'm hoping someone here can help.

I just downloaded it yesterday and was able to open it up twice. Those two times I didn't do anything except look around at how the program worked. So today I made some walls, the first time I opened it, it opened and I was able to go to the create content screen but nothing pulled up and then after a few seconds it crashed. So I tried to open it again with no success and then decided to uninstall and reinstall. I've reinstalled it three times with no luck. When I click on the icon, a little crash window pops up. Can anyone please help me?

Also, is there any way to use SimPE to do walls?

[Kathy's Creations..]

is there any toturial for gimp..for floors and paint making..pleace help

[tiggerypum]

lilmonkeygray,
do you have reflective or transparent floors? Try moving your downloads folder to your desktop and running homecrafter, maybe you have some bad files in there.

Kathy's Creations - no. There is a great book online about learning how to use Gimp - if you can get skilled with general editing and *layers* you should be able to do everything in this tutorial following along, the programs have similar commands.
free: http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/

[wndy26]

I have been searching high and low on MTS2 site but I can't find where to submit my newest wallset for sharing on the downloads forum. Can anyone give me a link to where to use the upload wizard that I read about in the creator guidlines?

[tiggerypum]

Click on CREATE on the blue bar. Go to the lower right hand part of the screen. Check the creator guidelines first for stuff about good screenshots and anything else that might be needed. Then there's also an upload link for you.

[wndy26]

Wow...now I feel really stupid...LOL...I was looking only on the left hand side of the screen. And there it is on the right. :D

[wndy26]

My latest wall set was accepted for the download section! This set is a half brick/half siding set - 4 walls in all. Check it out! http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=234429

[lilmonkeygray]

Tiggerypum: It's taken me a few days to get back because I accidently deleted all my files. I had around 12gb of custom content. I ended up downloading a program to restore them all and then spent the last week re-downloading files that were overwritten. I made the mistake of not backing up my files since Oct. right before OFB came out.

So, finally I'm back to fiddling with my own CC. I uninstalled my games and reinstalled them. Then installed HomeCrafter to see if I could get it working. I have no CC in my TheSims2 downloads. I opened HomeCrafter again and it let me pick out the wall and then brought me to the window for specifics; name, price, etc. In this window it doesn't show the wall in the preview box and if I click on the box or the grid options it crashes. I can put a name in and select a price or wall type without any problems but nothing else.

[tiggerypum]

lilmonkeygray - did you try downloading and installing homecrafter again. I'm not sure what to suggest - that and maybe deleting/removing your 'projects' folder and seeing if the game will remake one - maybe that's corrupted. Otherwise, try in the 'game help' area on site for technical suggestions for getting it working.

[TecnoGirl2]

Thank for the tutorial but... I think the size you wrote downis wrong because I did that and the image was too big shouldn't it be "265x512"

[JLonier]

*** Edit: New information discovered June '06! You must first resize your walls to 256x512 before saving as a .bmp. Walls at 256x768 (or ANY other sizing except 256x512) will show as grey for Mac users, though they'll work fine for PC users. Please resize before saving so your walls work correctly for everyone.

[Nomine]

An excellent tutorial! Really understandable. Thanks a lot :)

[konabicis]

ok. but. Where I can download homecrafter plus program?

The tutorial is excellent.

[HystericalParoxysm]

It's linked in the first post.

[rongrong94]

:rofl: Hey thanks so much for the wonderful tutorial. i have read many tutorials before and this is the onle one i could understand fully. very specific. Keep up the good works. i shall look for your tutorials. it is really good thanks! :lovestruc

[mastwrt]

thank u sooo much hystericalparoxysm 4 teaching my dumb@#$ how 2 make floors and walls!!!!! i've always wanted 2 that i just could never understand how! i'll give props 2 u when i share my floors and walls 2 every1.

[rosewalh]

Thank you so much, I have made some walls and floors for my very first time. I'm very happy for that.

[hardrock13]

thanks so much for this tutorial! unlike many others i have tried, i didn't find one single thing that was confusing. i'm not sure if you have any other tutorials but if you do (especially ones for meshes) i will definitely try them 1st. thanks again, this really is a great tutorial! :gjob:

[enaid]

These are more paint.NET questions, but I can't find anything on the paint.NET website. First, how do I make my projects show up in different windows, so that I can match and compare the colors for the wall/border? Second, how do I set the brush settings so they match what is in the tutorial? I have v. 3.08, just downloaded yesterday. If this is the wrong place for this question, can you let me know where I should be looking? As has been said before, awesome tutorial - these were the only points of confusion for me. Thank you so much!

[Dabih]

These are more paint.NET questions, but I can't find anything on the paint.NET website. First, how do I make my projects show up in different windows, so that I can match and compare the colors for the wall/border? Second, how do I set the brush settings so they match what is in the tutorial? I have v. 3.08, just downloaded yesterday. If this is the wrong place for this question, can you let me know where I should be looking? As has been said before, awesome tutorial - these were the only points of confusion for me. Thank you so much!

I have the same problem. I couldn't open Paint.net in two windows at the same time. Therefore, I was unable to easily match my wall and floor colours. Also, I think the eraser is different in v. 3.08 because my tool bar didn't look the same as the tutorial. I just couldn't get the eraser to work as described in the tutorial so the moss colour doesn't show through.

Can anyone help? ps. excellent tutorial. Many thanks.

[tiggerypum]

I don't know enough about paint.net right now, but it does use layers

When I need to match something in photoshop, I don't use 2 windows. I actually grab a sample - big enough so I get enough of the color, but not enough to hide what I'm trying to match - and cut and paste it into the same window (on a new layer) as the thing I'm trying to match. Then I do my thing with the rest of the graphic... and when I'm done I delete the sample (or hide that layer)

[enaid]

tiggerypum, that helps, i didn't even think of trying that. thanks!

[Kiraditz]

I have a bit of a problem. I use Paint Shop Pro 7 and I do everything it says in the tutorial. Ive been told that both PSP and Photoshop are almost the same so I followed the Photoshop tutorial part. My problem comes when I transfer the save .bmp file to HCP (Home Crafter Plus) when I run the program and I get to the part where I make the wall it looks like too much light is hitting it and makes it look really bad. I went back to the tutorial and tried doing the Effect-Sharpen thing that says in the other part of the tutorial, just in case PSP is different there but it does nothing. (Yes I copied and pasted the new ones to HCP)

Can anyone tell me how to fix it? So it isnt too bright?

[tiggerypum]

Kiraditz -
I'm not sure what the difference in with psp or anything like that, but this is the first thing I'd try: try simply darkening your graphic. The game has lighting in it, which shines on everything. White should be light gray - black should actually be dark gray (pure black tends to make a dark flat black-hole sort of appearance in game).

If you look, you can see HP's graphics and how it looks in game are slightly different. Seasons if you have that, adds even more variation to the game lighting.

Sharpen is only going to change how crisp the edges in the graphic appear.

[Kiraditz]

Thank You. I tried HomeCrafter Plus once I think I only had the base, no expansions or stuff packs, and it didnt look so bright, maybe its what you said every expansion adds more brightness. :wtf:

Here is a picture of the work when in HCP and one in the game after defragmenting my computer. Before I defragmented my computer the ingame picture looked like the one in the HCP, but Im still worried about how it looks there. If any wall gives me problems I'll try changing the brightness, I didnt thought of that one :cry:

Well thank you for the help. :)

[kingdomheartsgirl111]

awesome but i want to use paint the way i do with my clothes can you do that? ps:i havent uploaded the clothes because they suck.

[HystericalParoxysm]

kingdomheartsgirl111 - Err, read... the first part of the first post? It explains what you can and can't use and has links to programs and info and stuff - and mentions Paint too.

[lowcamifo]

Is there something that I am missing I am unable to open more than 1 instance of paint.net

Ok after doing some reading about paint.net I found out that the version 3 that I downloaded does allow you to have more than one thing open in the program at once.

[tiggerypum]

lowcamifo - message #130 has a work around

[juanki091]

amd what happens if you don't have a projects folder? please reply?

[HystericalParoxysm]

Homecrafter will create a Projects folder when you go to create a new project if you don't already have one.

[Simpenguinz]

I'm having a problem....I have the floors in-game, and I got happier a little inside when I finally found them free after months of searching. I died a little on the inside when I found that they're not working properly :((((( They show up, but when I put them on my floor, they show up black *Cries* Can anyone help me?????

[HystericalParoxysm]

Simpenguinz, this tutorial is about -making- walls and floors. If you're having trouble with something in your game, try the Game Help section.

[talkenia]

i have a big big problem when i look under images i can't see image size
so i can't change the sise of my image who can help!!!! :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

[crzyme]

Thank you for this. I am a very artistic person tha never thought I could do anything like this. I am so happy. Thanks again.

[Fall_Out_Boy_Rocks]

I couldn't find a 49.1MB download on there.

[tiggerypum]

Fall_Out - make sure you are installing Framework, whichever way in which it currently presented on Paint.Net's site. There's 2 parts - the paint.net application, and the system used to run it, framework.

[babysims2]

Thanks i don't have paint.net or photoshop but i figured it out.

[Simpenguinz]

Simpenguinz, this tutorial is about -making- walls and floors. If you're having trouble with something in your game, try the Game Help section. Oh, Ok thank you. I found the problem, though. The Reflection was off in the Game Preformance Section :blink: I feel really dumb.... :rolleyes:

[tellemonstar]

Thanks for writing such an easy-to-follow tut. *eyes HomeCrafter manically*

[playingdiva]

Thanks for a great tutorial! Very easy to understand and follow. I was even able to follow using a different graphics program which was great and made a great set!!!

[Vikinga]

Incredibly awesome and simple to follow tutorial!!!!!!

Thanx a lot for your time and for sharing your knowledge :)

[littleminnie1000]

Hey HystericalParoxysm, thanks so much for this tutorial, its awesome and especially good as I really want to delve into the creating pot with full vigour! But, I've managed to hit a brick wall at great speed; no matter how many times I try, after I've gone through the part in Homecrafter when you write a description etc and confirm that you want to import it into your game, I can never find the finished project in any section nor in my game itself, 'tis quite frustrating you see. Its sort of snubbed my desire to create seeing as I can't even get a wall to work :cry: If anyone has any ideas I would be so grateful, I'm certain that I've followed all the points down to every last detail but nothing is working as of yet. :(

littleminnie1000

[EDIT!!] I'm officially the biggest fracking idiot ever, please disregard the above post, I've got it sorted. Again, thanks for the uberly cool tutorial!

[vherhonne]

Wow!!! Such great tutorial you've got there, and so easy to follow.
Looking forward to doing more tuts here at MTS2...

Hope I'd be able to upload my works here... someday! >.<

Thanks so much!!!

[SpazsGirl21003]

This was very easy to follow, thank you!

[pinkctr13]

Uhm.... Is homecrafter ONLY for windows a.k.a. pc? 'Cause I have a mac os 9. :help: :cry:

[Elvira0731]

check on the ea site....that's where you find homecrafter... they MUST have a mac compatable version :)

[Shan-Chan]

This is a great tutorial. Except that I made my template thing but i don't understand how to get it into Homecrafter. I have it downloaded and everything I know you're supposed to create new wall coverings-add (+) i don't have a subfolder Home Crafter Plus in my projects folder. Do I create one or did i install it wrong?

[starwyn]

I just looked through all these posts to make sure this hasn't already been answered and i want to check something. Since walls have to be resized to be used for mac users also. Can't we just start it at that size? Or does it have to be made in the original size and then saved at the different height when it's completed?

[stealthspy589]

Much thanks HP ^^.

[tiggerypum]

starwyn - the reason for the sizing issues and the recommendation to do it one size and then scale it down - is scaling. If you design the wallpaper at the shorter size - then it will be 'stretched' when it goes on the walls - it might not matter for some designs, but for others it definitely will look stretched.

[starwyn]

[Quote]You must first resize your walls to 256x512 before saving as a .bmp. Walls at 256x768 (or ANY other sizing except 256x512) will show as grey for Mac users, though they'll work fine for PC users. Please resize before saving so your walls work correctly for everyone.[Quote]

What i mean is can we make the wall at 256x512 or do we have to make it at 256x768 and then resize it? Wouldn't it make the wall look squashed if we resize it to 512 after the wall is made? I'm a bit confused.

[HystericalParoxysm]

starwyn - The actual aspect ratio of the wall used in game is 256x768 so you should build your walls at that size so your graphics look correct. However, the actual texture size used by the game is 256x512 and if you don't resize to that size before importing, your walls will just look grey for Mac users. The game stretches that 256x512 graphic over the whole wall though - so though you lose a little detail in resizing, your actual textures will show up in the right place and won't look stretched. :)

[redautumnx3]

umm im trying to download paint.NET and you said to download the 49.1 versions because it includes .NET 2.0 but i cant find it under downloads just 3.10 and 3.20 please tell me how to get 49.1 please!

[tiggerypum]

redautumn - we cannot be responsible for the regular changes over at paint.net. Go find a current version and follow whatever directions are on site to make sure you can run it. You might have to download .NET 2.0 also.

[bbear0287]

Very nice tutorial!
I have a quick question - can this tutorial and other endeavors such as recolouring clothing, skinning, and object recolours be done in Adobe Photoshop Elements (the lastest edition)? I'm not familiar enough with that program to know whether it has the required tools. I don't have it yet, but I might be getting it. Thanks!

[tiggerypum]

bbear - no idea. If photoshop elements supports 'layers' then you ought to be able to do many of the things most of the tutorials go through (with your own learning of the program)

[stonekeeper]

How would you make your flooring tile shinny? I would love to have shinny wood flooring.

Stonekeeper

[tiggerypum]

That's a special... hacked object - a shiny floor. You lay it over the flooring you have

[stonekeeper]

Where would I find it at ? and what is it called ? I loved these floors when I saw them. I forgot if it was on here or a site. Thank you for you imformation on this.

Stonekeeper

[coldfloral]

It seems as though Homecrafter doesn't load every Maxis wall; why is that?

I'm specifically looking for a particular Maxis brick wall, and it (as well as many other Maxis walls) is not showing up in Homecrafter.

Any ideas?

[milka268]

when i get up to resizing for the sencond time i can't find how, i use GIMP as the graphics design thing :\

can anyone help?

[tiggerypum]

milka - Gimp book - online - free -- it's for an older version of gimp, but if that doesn't help, try looking on the web for general gimp tutorials.

http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/

[rhinsmsi]

Thank you so much for this tutorial! I've been wanting to make some new walls and this is great.

[milka268]

ty so much :]

[Dani12095]

Paint.net will not let me open 2 at once. I open it then click on the shortcut again and my old window came up. Any way you know how to fix this problem???

[putowtin]

thanks for this! hugs and kisses on their way to you!

[ariesmoon]

Hey, that's a great tute. thanx a lot. i kinda knew how to do it but i had forgotten how to get my wall back into the Homecrafter - its the little things that stump me - but scanning thru your tute to find out how i read thru some of it. its really good. even i can follow it! and your wall is beautiful.

[imas14]

in my homecrafter when i tried to upload my creations into the program, (around step 5 or 6) I was naming it and giving it a price, but the part to the left where it shows the wallpaper looked blank. Is there a reason for this? i used the same starting pictures as you so i figured it would look the same as yours. i was using photoshop cs3... so idk if that has something to do with it. the same thing also happened when i tried to do my floor so i figured i might have messed something up.

any ideas?

[rahela]

I have a doubt.
What can i do to fix the problem with floors, when i make
a set, floors looks different than walls, and sometimes this
doesnt looks fine...
Any ideas?

[bluetexasbonnie]

Ima -- is your graphic a .bmp type file? Photoshop tends to put things in .psd format unless you specifically tell it otherwise.

Rahela -- As a builder, I find it extremely rare that exactly matching wallpapers and floors look good ... so rare I can't even remember a case.

My first guess is that you are not taking into account the aspect ratio of each. You can not use exactly the same graphic for walls and floors and have them come out looking the same because they have different 'shapes'. Homecrafter will stretch the graphic to fit the shape.

I've never tried to do this, but here is what I would try first, and then adapt depending upon how it looked ....

Start with the wall graphic. Make it 'just right' at 768 x 256. Save as a new file name and crop to 256 x 256 --- it has to be crop, not resize! You want to use only the bottom square of the wall graphic. Save as .bmp for your floor. (And your floor will need to be the 1x1 tile - the multiple ones will require additional figuring.)

Now go back to your wall file and resize to 512 x 256. Here it has to be resizing -- you want all of your wall scrunched into the 512x256 format. Save as .bmp.

Put them thru homecrafter and see how it comes out. Good luck!

[HystericalParoxysm]

It's also worth bearing in mind (beyond bluetexasbonnie's very useful tips) that walls and floors will just simply look slightly different, even if you use the exact same colours for both. There's something about the settings for them or something... you can see it in my examples too: http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialwn02.jpg

"I was actually a little surprised when I saw these together... the background of the walls seems a lot warmer than the more yellow border and floor, but after looking at it for a minute, I kinda liked it better than if I'd done it the uniform yellowish-beige I'd intended the whole thing to be, and eyeballed in the graphics programs I'd built it in. The background being warmer is a little more interesting."

Best, then, to -not- use identical images to start your floor and walls as they aren't going to match exactly anyway, and just intend them to roughly coordinate.

Just an addition to bluetexasbonnie's tips - if you do crop the bottom of the wall graphic, you need to make sure that what you crop is seamless - if it doesn't tile properly over multiple tiles, you may have to adjust things till it does - either by cropping at a different spot, or working to make it seamless, or choosing a different texture for your floor.

[rahela]

Well thanks both, i think i will have to
work harder in order to creat something
that looks fine.
Here is my example for you to see it
http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/8504/snapshot000000013508293oo2.jpg

It really looks like Arrgghh!
But in ps looks fine...i think i will have to choose
different textures just to fit them.
Right?

Thank you so much for answers! :)

[bluetexasbonnie]

Yes, those two look bad together. You might try taking your flower graphic, shrinking it and turning it into tiles. Alternately, select one of the medium colors from the floral trim to make a modereately uniform carpet look.

The main wall coloring could use a little more work to make it truely seamless and more uniform, without being boring. (That is exceedingly hard! A solid color with a light application of a B&W texture pattern in the multiply mode often works nicely.)

[rahela]

Yeah as i told you i will have to work harder XD

Thanks!!

[Hawkheart5]

Great guide.I have Paint Shop Pro 7. Will that work?

[bluetexasbonnie]

I've never used Paint Shop, but there are a lot of wall/floor builders who do, and they make gorgeous things. Since the functions I'm talking about are fairly basic graphic functions, I would expect Paint Shop to have them.

[timbit2006]

hey, is there anyway you could send me the version you have there? i can't seem to do anything i want to with the one i have. it doesn't listen to me.

[timbit2006]

hey, is there anyway you could send me the version you have there? i can't seem to do anything i want to with the one i have. it doesn't listen to me.

nvm i got the experimental version. it's screwed up

[timbit2006]

Thank you very much! You are the best tutorial person ever! Now i am making my own custom textues so far i have 2 walls. i didn't download any of the textures or anything. I hate it how when you're making walls in paint.net it loooks crappy so you keep fixing it but when you look at in in homecrafter it looks so nice :D

[Augustsim]

Thank you so much for taking the time to put this tutorial in for us. I'm a newbie and I started playing Sims2 about a year ago and I had no idea you could make custom content for it until a week ago and I have been on this site every day since. I decided I wanted to start making my own custom content and share it with everyone when I get better at it but I had no idea where to start. This tutorial is very well laid out and is understandable and you did a wonderful job!

Augustsim

[OpenHouseJack]

thanks HP

[OpenHouseJack]

Testing Your Creations In-Game

Go ahead and load the game and go into your neighborhood of choice. Create yourself an empty lot to use for testing. I think I used a 2x2, but it doesn't really matter what size you use.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialwn01-s.jpg

Enter the lot and put down some walls. Again, doesn't really matter where... Just make sure you're looking at the light side of the wall. The light on the lot comes from a certain direction, and if you're not looking at the correct side, the wall will look much darker and you won't be able to see your texture as well. Put down two or three sides of a box, like you're making a square room, and wallpaper the walls with your new wallpaper. It may not be the first thing in the catalog now, even if you have no other custom walls in your game. Cover the area of ground between the walls you made with your carpeting. Now take a look at your handiwork!

I was actually a little surprised when I saw these together... the background of the walls seems a lot warmer than the more yellow border and floor, but after looking at it for a minute, I kinda liked it better than if I'd done it the uniform yellowish-beige I'd intended the whole thing to be, and eyeballed in the graphics programs I'd built it in. The background being warmer is a little more interesting.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialwn02-s.jpg

Somewhere on another part of the lot (you can get rid of the walls and floor if you need more space), use the raise terrain tool on the smallest setting and just... click randomly around a small area to make some craggy, uneven terrain. Then go in to the groundcovers and, still on the smallest setting, just lightly dust the tops of the rises in the terrain you just made with your new groundcover. Rotate around and tweak it to taste. The screenshot below is just some quick craggy terrain I threw together, the groundcover just assembled, a couple clicks with the water tool, and a couple trees. The larger areas of green are just the default green grass that I left here and there in the low spots.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialwn03-s.jpg

If you don't like the result in-game...

You can go back and make changes! Remember, for anything with layers, you should've saved a layer-separated version... a .PSD if you're using Photoshop, or a .PDN if you're using Paint.NET. You can go back, open the file, and edit it to your liking. Save a new copy of the .bmp version, move it into the right Homecrafter folder, and make a new version of it.

Where are my creations located?

If you'd like to share your new creations (or if you'd like to delete an older version if you've made changes), you'll find the files you made residing in My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Downloads. Unfortunately, Homecrafter doesn't make the file names very descriptive, beyond wall_, floor_, and terrainPaint_, ending with a string of characters, but since we only made three at once, it's pretty obvious which file is which. If you're doing more than a few at once, write down the order you made them in, and then sort the newly created files by Date Created... You can then rename the files in the same order as the order you created them in, and it should all match up. You can also open the files in SimPE and look at the Text List inside it to see which is which as long as their names or descriptions you gave them are different, but that's for more advanced users (i.e. anyone who knows what I'm talking about with that one sentence of instructions).

Rename your files to something much more descriptive. For example, I would name a floor I created:

F_Carpet-ImperialEggshell_HystericalParoxysm-DemusedSims.package

You don't necessarily have to get that specific, but it is VERY helpful, both as a creator and a downloader, to be able to tell what a file is and how to track down the creator at a glance.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial05/tutorialwn04-s.jpg

Sharing Your Creations

If you've created a particularly nice set of walls, floors, or groundcovers that you would like to share with the community, that's great!

A great help to beginning creators is the Creator Feedback Forum here at MTS2. There you can post pictures of your works in progress and get pointers from experienced creators and downloaders on how to improve. It's a great way to get lots of helpful tips and info, and it's strongly suggested that beginners make use of that forum before uploading. Just make sure you read the rules for that forum first. ;)

Once you've decided your creations are ready to be released to the world, check out the Creator Guidelines for info on what you'll need to upload your walls, floors, or ground covers, and RAR or ZIP your .package files. A guide to things you can do to take better screenshots is available here. It is strongly recommended that you take screenshots for your creations by using the Print Screen key on your keyboard to put a copy of your current screen on the clipboard. Then you can paste the image into Photoshop, Paint.NET, or even MS Paint to crop it and save it as a JPEG. This method is greatly preferrable to using the C key to take pictures using the game's camera, which tends to take much smaller pictures with a lot of JPEG compression (crunchiness). If you're not running in windowed mode, it can be hard to switch programs, so if you'd like to set that up, it's very easily done by these instructions.

What to make after walls, floors, and groundcover?

Starting with walls and floors gets you used to texturing on the game's scale and looking for seamlessness in your textures, without having to worry about your texture being stretched or distorted over a mesh. Once you've become very skilled and confident in creating walls and floors, and have done a lot more to make interesting effects than the very simple techniques shown here, you may be ready to move on to something more.

If you're pretty good with computers and don't mind something a little more complicated, you can graduate from walls, floors, and groundcover to doing simple object recolours like paintings and furniture.

Alternately, as it doesn't require the use of SimPE, recolouring clothing in Body Shop is relatively easy, and very well explained starting with the first in a series of great tutorials on the subject.

If you have questions or are having trouble...

First, go back and re-read everything very carefully and look at the screenshots. 90% of problems are usually due to having missed a step, done something incorrectly, or trying to skip ahead. If you're truly an absolute beginner, it's highly suggested that you do the tutorial using the same source images I did, so every step you do will be exactly the same, and so you can compare your work to my screenshots. If you're having trouble with something in the graphics program you're using, try its help file. Most graphics programs also have forums on their official sites full of useful information.

If you're still having trouble, you can ask your question here. Please make sure you include what -exactly- you are stuck on (what step of what part) and what program you're using. Screenshots are also helpful, if applicable to your problem. "I don't get it," is a question that can't be answered, and won't help anyone, especially you. Ask a specific question about a specific problem after going through the whole tutorial carefully. ;)

can we make different colors of that one wall and floor?

[newsteenfan]

Thanks so much for this. I just got the game recently and I've been going through the site and learning so much, just created my first wall/floor. :)

[HystericalParoxysm]

OHJ - Of course you can. You'd just want to make a new project and replace the .bmp it makes for it with one from your layer separated documents. I wouldn't suggest cloning the existing project and recolouring that, as that will degrade your textures, but recolours are easy. :)

[OpenHouseJack]

OHJ - Of course you can. You'd just want to make a new project and replace the .bmp it makes for it with one from your layer separated documents. I wouldn't suggest cloning the existing project and recolouring that, as that will degrade your textures, but recolours are easy. :)

is it just like recoloring objects? how do we package them all together as a set of walls or floors of different textures , because I saw that it's not a zip or rar file it's the package installer type

[OpenHouseJack]

Hi HP.
I did a wood wall with bottom border, I like how it looks except for the seam where the two tiles meet. How can I fix it?

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/9144/image1ic3.jpg

[bluetexasbonnie]

Look at it in game before you actually decide whether it needs fixing or not. The view on the left in homecrafter currently has "grid" on. That dark line is not actually part of the file and will not be in the ingame view. Even if you turn it off, you still need to look at it in game. Some can look bad here and look okay ... though more often they look okay here and look disgusting when you fill a room with them.

You really need to judge ingame.

[~Dee~]

Bonnie is right,turn the grid off and the lines disappear.
To get a seamless wall,in your graphics program go to Effects/Image Effect/Seamless Tiling.
Your walls will be seamless,that applies to floors as well.
it's always good to check in game first.
You package each wall and floor seperate in Homecrafter,then do a folder,give it a name
of your set.
Put them all together in that folder and just .rar or .zip it.
Sorry,turn it into a rar or zip file.

[OpenHouseJack]

it looks seamless in game, appreciate your help thanks again

[Kayanna]

Hi- I've tried searching extensively but couldn't find the information I need. I am working in Photoshop CS3, and am having trouble making my moldings uniformly white without losing a lot of detail. All the methods I use take an inordinate amount of time, are not that accurate (dodging, for instance) and very time consuming (using the raster lines to correct line by line.) any suggestions? I just want my moldings a nice even white so they'll be seamless.

[simsmad2]

Homecrafter dosent work! i just get a file called TS2Uberkat 2008.04.24 07.26.20!
it's a crash dump file :help:

[Loo-La]

Great tutorial, but when i went to have a look at the finished result in homecrafter i was not impressed. In the view where it shows you what your wall tiles look like next to eachother, there was a thick black line between each one?

I did everything accordingly, when i went back to edit it, there was no sign of a black line or even shadow !?

Someone help me?

[HystericalParoxysm]

Loo-La - That shows the tile boundary and is not part of your actual textures, just something Homecrafter does. There's a button to toggle that on and off when you're previewing your textures. That's covered in the homecrafter part of the tutorial, step 9f.

[Yyoungvin]

thank you so much!! I finally get it .. I've been looking around for this tutorial ^_^

[daviddisaster]

:help:

Ok so hi ur tutorial really helped me in making some stuff but you talked about package files and I cant find any where on how to make package files or what they are and I was just wondering on how to put custom material in a package file so u can upload it. I know ur probably thinking what a complete dork cause he doesn't know what a package file is but im relatively new here and cant find it anywhere well thanx 4 ur time if u looked at this... :rolleyes:

[liila11]

Thanks for a good tutorial, again :) I have been using one of the latest versions of Paint.NET, and it IS possible to open several documents at a time. When you open a new document i Paint.NET, a list with the opened documents appear in the top-right corner.

[JLonier]

daviddisaster, the .package file is generated when you import your wall or floor into the game using homecrafter. They go directly into your downloads folder. Try sorting your downloads folder by date as you're working in homecrafter. The most recent .package will be the last one you imported. Copy it and paste it to where ever your project folder is. Then you can right click it and give it a good descriptive name for your downloaders. To package it for upload you'll need to see the creator guidelines for walls and floors.

[Jules!]

Hi, I have just literally rediscovered my slight obession with Sims2 and wanted to try my hand at making some of my own custom content etc, especially considering I've never done anything like this before. SO this tutorial, was absoutly brilliant, it helped and I'm now off to make loads more!! Thank you for taking the time to post this tutorial up, it is really easy now I know how! Thank you! :)

[Opa2619]

I have Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 And I can't make it work right, and my stuff won't go together like in your 2nd pic where you lay out everything. Is this because elements 5.0 isn't good for this?

[jasmine1]

Hi, I really need help. I tried to make some wood floors, in homecrafter they look fine but in game they are green :blink:
Here's a pic
http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/4201/naamloosmoo6.jpg

The images are .BMP and 256x256, so I really don't know what I could have done wrong.:(

[Yaggi]

I just found this tut after searching for one to do exactly this and I just want to say thank you thank you thank you. It was so easy. Now I've gone insane and have been doing wall and floor nonstop xD

[fitzyfrog22]

[QUOTE=HystericalParoxysm]Well, we've got all of our textures ready. Let's make them usable in the game.

1. Open Homecrafter. It should have a shortcut on your Desktop, or you can find it under Start - Programs - EA Games - The Sims 2 Homecrafter Plus. If you have a lot of custom content in your game, it might take a few minutes to load, so be patient.

2. Homecrafter creates the folders it will look in for the content you're creating the first time it's run. Once it's running, we'll go ahead and copy over those files. Open up a regular Windows Explorer (folder view) window to move the files around on your hard drive. You may want to do this in two windows, one for the source directory (the one you're copying from and one for the destination (the one you're pasting to), to make it easier.
a. Open up your Sims 2 Projects/Walls folder. Copy your wall texture .bmp file. Navigate to My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Projects/HomeCrafter Plus/Walls and paste the .bmp file into that folder. You'll then have two files in that folder - the one you just put there, and Template.bmp.

b. Open up your Sims 2 Projects/Floors folder. Copy your wall texture .bmp file. Navigate to My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Projects/HomeCrafter Plus/Floors and paste the .bmp file into that folder. You'll then have two files in that folder - the one you just put there, and Template.bmp.

c. Open up your Sims 2 Projects/Groundcovers folder. Copy your wall texture .bmp file. Navigate to My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Projects/HomeCrafter Plus/Ground Cover and paste the .bmp file into that folder. You'll then have two files in that folder - the one you just put there, and Template.bmp.

that does not make sense

[fitzyfrog22]

:help: hi, i installed home crafter and when i dubble clicked on the icon on my desk top nothing happen so i right clicked then click run as it worked but when i tryed to find My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Projects/HomeCrafter Plus/Walls it was not there all i found was My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Projects so then i uninstalledit and then deleted the insaller abd tryed to downloand and install it again. it downloaded ok but when i tryed to install it abox pops up and says: run don't run, so i cliked run but nothing happens
plz help :cry:

[fitzyfrog22]

im also new to making costom content and new to the site ive had the game for about 1-2 years and have night life and open for bussines, just thought you might like to now.

[TopSecret]

:up: thank you so much for this great explanation :) you don't have any idea how much it helped me :!:

[Netza]

An advice for when looking for good resources to wallpaper is to look in wallpaper online shops. Sometimes their pictures of the wallpapers are tiling. =)

[sheilah]

:help:

Like can you the regular paint in start and accerssories? :bunny:

[sheilah]

Cause i really want to make stuff

[HystericalParoxysm]

sheilah - No. MS Paint is crap. You need a real editor. It says that in the very beginning of the tutorial.

[arkafa]

first of all grate job!!!

i have a problem maybe someone can halp me..
i have done a wall a floor and all.. and it looks good..
then in the Homecrafter it looked good....
i have done every thing you said.. but it does'nt show in the game.. -its just not there..
and not in my download folder (i think;))...
what should i do?

[Swamtha]

This is a really helpful tutorial. You made it seem extremely easy. Thanks!

I do have one problem though. I've done everything as you've mentioned and it came out fine. But for me, Homecrafter is not working. I double click on it but nothing happens. I've uninstalled it and downloaded it again but it still does not seem to work. Do you know what could be wrong?

Thanks again!

[Sparklycookie]

Homecrafter plus doesnt work for me o.o
which is a shame,because I would like to create walls and floors for my houses.

[Miss_Neat]

Instead of using the Adobe Photoshop or Paint.NET, can you show the steps by using GIMP??? :help:
Thanks! :) :google:

[HystericalParoxysm]

Miss_Neat - No. I'm not redoing the whole tutorial for a different program. If you're at all familiar with GIMP, what is being done here should be nothing special or mind-blowing. There are other basic tutorials on GIMP on this site and around the internet.

[soulofsilence]

Thank you for the tutorial. I like that there are lots of pictures, it makes it much easier to follow. However, after I followed all the steps in the tutorial, the wall, floor, and ground cover I made showed up fine in Homecrafter, but they are not showing up in my game and I am not sure what to do. Any suggestions?

[Serar]

So, apparently it's very unfortunate for me that I own a Mac since EA doesn't convert anything on their website to be Mac compatible.

I am wondering if anyone knows of a similar program that will work on apple's computers. I really want to make my own content so that I'm not always using someone else's stuff.

[muttonchop]

Great tutorial...the only thing missing is HCP...IT IS NOT WORKING FOR ME. never evur will something work for my computer. I click the install button several times and absolutely nothing happens...

[muttonchop]

ok, HCP works, it just keeps sayin 'there is not enough hard disk space to export selected textures' >:[

[yoshifanatic]

okay i got homecrafter, but it doesn't work on my computer. i even tried uninstalling and reinstalling. i got it installed but it won't run. you said it may take a while if you have many downloads but i waited about half an hour and still nothing.

[jrb2037]

About a month ago my computer crashed. I lost all my saved Sims, towns, etc. I have recovered and started over. Now I can no longer create wallpaper using Homecrafter because it won't open. I used your tutorial before the crash and I know my wallpaper was saved but I can't get it back into the game because of the Homecrafter issue. I tried all the steps to fix Homecrafter but nothing works. Is there any way to create wallpapers, walls, etc. without exporting through Homecrafter? I have Paint.net (thank you!) and SimPE (can't figure that out at all). Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated and welcomed!!

Pawzsim
:alarm:

[JoeyFritzp]

Thank you I will try it

[SarahLovesSims]

Is Photoshop CS3 good?
I haven't installed it, but I have it. I have no idea how to use it, and don't know any other stuff about it. :/
But I want to start making some floors. :O

[Karsciyin]

I really really do wish i could do this, but HomeCrafter won't load... there's no error message or anything, is just flat out won't load! I don't know where to go to report the problem... could anyone help?

HomeCrafter Plus & Windows Vista Home Premium... if that helps...

[HystericalParoxysm]

SarahLovesSims - Wow, it must be nice to have $600 to spend on a top-of-the-line program you know nothing about...

Karsciyin - Please see here regarding Homecrafter issues: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=303443

[Karsciyin]

Thanks Hysterical!

SarahLovesSims - yes, it is really good!
However I have to say that although it looks cooler than CS2, it is harder to use... :( They history bar is taucked away and you need to open the menu to look at it. There is also no ImageReady, the qualities are embedded in Photoshop instead. I would say this is a bad thing, because although you can make *.gif animations ( which is what I used ImageReady for) you can't open them except as flat files. Fireworks opens the frames.
However, as far as image-editing/Photoshop goes, I find it very good. Once you grasp the concept of layers, it's dead-easy... and fun to poke around! :D

[Suncat]

Thanks, HP, for an excellent tutorial.

Just wanted to mention an odd little thing that happened to me, that might trip up others. I scanned the thread, but if anyone mentioned this, I missed it.

I'd finished making my image files. I don't happen to use PhotoShop. My graphics application likes to, by default, create file extensions in upper case. So, I had three .BMP files. I open HCP and start on Wall creation, there's my new file sitting in the list. I select and load it. And I have a blank left side preview and a solid black square on the right side.

After some stumbling about, I realized the problem was the file extension. I changed the three files to .bmp and they all worked in HCP as advertised.

One more stupid little thing, but I'm just pleased now that the program works for me.

[jordysims1707]

that was a great tutorial but unfortunatly for me my homecrafter is working......i didnt have the sims2 or sims2 bodyshop running can you tell me why this is happening or what i could do ? i would be extremely grateful if you coul help......thankyou :)

[HystericalParoxysm]

jordysims1707 - Please see here regarding Homecrafter issues: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=303443

[jordysims1707]

it loads for about 2 seconds then stops :S i dont get why its happening

EDIT:
ive followed all the instructions but its still not coming on is there anything else i can do?
i really want to recoulor something or omething like that but i cant because this is happening.
could someone please help me.
IREALLY WANT TO RECOLOR STUFF:(

[merged 2 posts]

[Numenor]

Jordysims, you shouldn't post in a tutorial thread if you have problem not strictly related to the tutorial itself; please post you questions about Homecrafter not loading, in the existing "Homecrafter not loading?" (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=295024) thread ;)

Also, if people don't reply promptly, maybe no one has a valid answer to your questions; bumping the threads is just pointless...

[muttonchop]

man...homecrafter loads and everything (gasp!!) but no matter what i do, when i try to create my own walls, it keeps saying "there is not enough hard disk space to export the selected textures" >:[

[Numenor]

You said that Homecrafter was loading for two seconds then stopped, you never mention this error message.
Silly question: are you really sure you are not running out of disc space? Sorry, I can't think to anything smarter, I never use Homecrafter and I don't know where it stores the exproted textures.

[juniorni]

thank you firstly for the tutorial, but my problem is that i cant start the home crafter any how, when i double click the program i have installed, there is always no reaction at all. please tell me how can i solve the problem. but i dont know if it is too late for me ask the question, since the turorial was written here in 2006 and it is 2008
now.

[HystericalParoxysm]

Guys, please don't post about Homecrafter issues on this thread. I've already posted the link to the thread to go to with Homecrafter problems. I don't support Homecrafter - I didn't make it, and I don't have a clue how to fix it. Please follow the links given already to see how to fix it and leave this thread just for questions regarding the tutorial itself.

[juniorni]

woooo, solve the problem right now! it is the language problem, thanks for my last try haha

[ILoveSchrodinger]

Ok, well i need some help, i guess i did something wrong but i'm not sure. so i did everything, saved it and copy and pasted it in the sims 2 HomeCrafter plus. i go to create wall coverings then the create new content but only the Template.bmp is there. how do i get the actual work i did working in Home Crafter plus??

[EOlsen86]

I went to put my wallpaper in the projects>homecrafters plus> walls folder but when I open up the projects folder its empty there is no HCP file to open. I have tried reinstalling it and that doesn't work what should I do?

[bluetexasbonnie]

Did you save your texture file as a .bmp? HCP won't acknowledge any other file type.

[angel195]

Thanx to everyone on this site for the information that has got me this far. This is my first message so forgive me if i have done it in the wrong place.
I followed all the instructions above on how to create walls, floors, ground, and everything went fine until i opened homecrafter to add my content to the game. My tutorial Bitmap file showed up next to the template.bmp but next to it it says "there was a problem creating a pattern with this .bmp. please make sure it is a valid .bmp and try again." i used the same templates as in the tutorial and followed all the steps. I am using adobe photoshop CS4. Its not just the wallpaper, but the floor tile and groundcover are the same. Please, please can anyone help me with this?

Ok so i went through the steps again and relised my mistake, i didnt change the format just the title of the file and i dont think i changed all the sizings correctly according to the new update. Feel stupid now!
Thanx so much for all the info on this site, im now off to see my content in the game! :king:

[TheDeadSim]

Thanks for the tutorial. I have made some wallpapers myself and I hope they get accepted after uploading them. Thanks!