Tutorial: Regional Markings

[tachyglossus]

How To Create Custom Regional Markings For Your Pets

This tutorial is presented by me, Tachyglossus, but a lot of the information was discovered by CmarNYC.

This tutorial expects that you already have some understanding of making custom content. The instructions are in a list format with straightforward instructions. This tutorial will instruct you on how to create custom regional markings. It will not teach you how to make a pet in CASP, how to draw, how to use art programs, or really, even how to use any of the other necessary programs to their full potential. This tutorial focuses on a very narrow scope.

What you will need:
S30C (http://dino.drealm.info/den/denforum/index.php?topic=190.0)
S3PE (http://dino.drealm.info/den/denforum/index.php?topic=190.0)
One of these image editing programs with a DDS plug-in
Photoshop with Nvidia Texture plug-in (http://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop)
GIMP with GIMP DDS plug-in. (http://code.google.com/p/gimp-dds)
Patience. Wait, that's a virtue, not a tool.


ATTENTION: If Neither of the links for s3pe or s30c work, try looking here. (http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=470446)

For best results, and thus reduced frustration, make sure you have the most current version of these programs installed.

Now then, these are the steps to making regional markings. If you want to make a moveable, generic marking, refer to PharaohHound's Custom Pet Marking Tutorial (http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Tutorial:_Custom_Pet_Markings). It is highly recommended you read this tutorial as well. Highly recommended.

And now for the featured event.


Copy the file C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Pets\GameData\Shared\Packages\FullBuild0_p10 into a work folder. You don't want to accidentally mess up the original file. That could be bad.
If you downloaded the Pets EP through Origin Games, the directory is C:\Program Files\Origin Games\The Sims 3 Pets\GameData\Shared\Packages\FullBuild0_p10 )
Open FullBuild0_p10 in s3oc and search for a CASP package to clone.

Look for CASP tagged files that start with ac (cat), ad (dog) or ah (horse)
Look at the rest of the file name for a description. IE acRegionFull* would be a full body regional marking for a cat.
With the desired package selected, click clone or fix. Click the box that says Create Clone package as well as the box that says Renumber/rename internally. Be sure you rename it with something unique and descriptive.

If you want to know about making custom thumbnails, I'm sure another tutorial can help you. In general, I click include thumbnail, and then the game generates its own thumbnail upon loading the custom content into the game.
Open the newly cloned package in s3pe and find the _IMG file. Right click and export the .dds to a working folder and edit it in the program of your choice.
Once you are done editing the .dds image, save it. I suggest you save it as a new filename, rather than overwrite the original.
Now open the package again, highlight the IMG, right click and replace the IMG with your edited image.

ATTENTION: If you do NOT have the most recent version of s3oc, follow these steps. If you do, skip to step 10. Although it wouldn't hurt to look over these steps to make sure everything matches up.


Select the file with the CASP tag and then hit the grid button found at the bottom.
Expand the Age/Gender category and set the species to desired animal: 0x002 Horse, 0x003 Cat, or 0x004 dog (0x005 is little dog, but as far as I can tell, a regional marking set for a dog will show up for little dogs and vice versa)
Now expand the clothing categories and set the appropriate Unknown variables true. Refer to the following list for the correct combinations for each region of the body.

Head: Unknown19
Chest: Unknown1A
Belly: Unknown19 + Unknown1A
Back: Unknown1B
Tail: Unknown19 + Unknown1B
Left Foreleg (LegFL): Unknown1A + Unknown1B
Right Foreleg (LegFR): Unknown19 + Unknown1A + Unknown1B
Left Rear Leg (LegRL): Unknown1C
Right Rear Leg (LegRR): Unknown19 + Unknown1C
All (full body): Unknown1A + Unknown1C

(List provided by CmarNYC)


Save your package. Make sure it, or a copy of it, is placed into the appropriate mods\packages folder so that it will show up in your game. Load your game, take a look, and if it looks the way you like it, bravo (or brava), you have made a custom marking. If not, you have some more image editing to do.


Naturally, getting a marking to look right can be time consuming and frustrating. The way that the textures wrap around the meshes can be confusing at times. It is suggested that you spend some time studying the IMG files for EA default regional markings, whether via preview in a program like S3PE or by exporting the files and loading them into your art program of choice. This should give you an idea of how everything fits together.

For further questions, you may ask Tachyglossus, but do not expect profound or insightful answers. Tachyglossus is a complete 'noob'. Tachyglossus also prefers to write tutorials in the third person for some unexplained reason.

[CmarNYC]

Very good job - very clear, informative, and useful! A lot of people will appreciate this.

Ummm, I'm sad I didn't think of it sooner and maybe save you a lot of time and frustration, but the animal skin textures can also be used as a guide for placement of the markings. These are the images that get wrapped around the animal mesh under the various colors and markings to give it contouring. You can try opening the skin texture in PhotoShop or GIMP and paint your markings as a separate semitransparent layer on top, then delete the skin texture layer when you're done. I've attached a zip of the adult cat, dog, and horse textures.

Again, sorry I didn't think of this before! :(

[tachyglossus]

That's a very good tip, CMar, but one I actually had been doing. I haven't been doing it all along, but somewhere along the way, figured it out. I guess it would have been helpful for me to add that to the tutorial as well. I would open a regions marking, put it over the texture map of the animal to see how it matches up, and then with a new layer I would make my mark.

[CmarNYC]

Good - and good thinking!

[PharaohHound]

Oh, that's a super helpful idea for using the skin textures as a guide. I'll definitely try that next time I'm doing regionals. :) Thanks!

[Xiove]

Thank you for this tutorial, it helped me create my very first cc for TS3!

I have a question though. If I want to make several varieties of a marking, do I need to clone the base package in s3oc for each and every one? If not, how do I go about making "copies" the right way? Select all in s3pe and export as package?

[tachyglossus]

Are you asking about making several varieties of the same marking, or making a variation of several in a batch?

If you want to make several varieties of the same marking I would strongly encourage multiple different clones of the same marking, since when I did 'save as' in s3PE for my cat eyeliner, for some reason when I imported the new DDS it wouldn't work. I'd load the game, select the other CC regional marking, but instead of being the shape defined in the IMG, it would just cover the entire body with a colour. I never tracked down the cause of this so I cannot say for sure that it was because I did a 'save as'.

I hope the above makes sense.

[Xiove]

Several of the same was what I was thinking of.

I too tried the 'save as', but my extra one didn't even show up in CAP when I loaded the game (I checked all tabs just in case), which I was thinking perhaps was because it might not have been given a unique ID that way or something? I'm guessing the package file names are not what the game actually uses.

Thank you for the help, I will continue to make a clone for each from now on,

[CmarNYC]

Most likely you're right, Xiove. You need the clone function to give your marking a unique ID for the game, otherwise the different versions will conflict with each other.

[Xiove]

That's logical, I guess. Thanks for the confirmation!

[Lorion]

This is great tutorial! Even I learned to make custom regional markings! :) However, I thought I should mention that the free program Paint.NET works too instead if Gimp or Photoshop, and I didnt have to install any separate plug-ins to be able to work with dds-files.

[Boy_Wonder]

I have a question of my own - I'm playing with the most recent S3PE and well it doesn't let me select the grid button,

[Senyazza]

-snip- but instead of being the shape defined in the IMG, it would just cover the entire body with a colour. -snip-

I keep getting this. I'm not using 'save as'... I'm stumped. Has anyone found other causes for this?

[kaisoleil]

This was so helpful. I'm useless with technology, but thanks to your guide, I've been tweaking a horse's facial marking I had requested from someone on another website. The actual changes I made to the shape of the marking showed up in CAS, but I also had tried to make it smaller...
It was a blaze that extended from the horse's muzzle almost up to its poll. I'm using gimp (first time) and had scaled and moved it so that when I added the pet skin texture posted by CmarNYC as a new layer, the marking started a bit higher on the muzzle and ended a bit above the eyes. In CAS, it was the same size as before I edited it. Anyone here have any idea what I may have done wrong? :faceslap:
Thanks in advance!

[CmarNYC]

When you say you scaled the marking, did you scale only the marking shape or the whole image? If you made the whole image smaller, the game will just scale it up again.

[kaisoleil]

When you say you scaled the marking, did you scale only the marking shape or the whole image? If you made the whole image smaller, the game will just scale it up again.

I used the boxy select tool to scale it... Should that have worked or should I have used one of the tools that select by color or shape? Thanks for your help, I'm new to both photo editing and cc so I really appreciate it :)

[CmarNYC]

The select tool should have scaled the marking without resizing the whole image - but you can check the dimensions of the image to make sure. I think they should be 1024x1024. You can get the image dimensions by hovering your mouse over the image file (in Windows 7 anyway) or open it and in GIMP it's in the title bar at the top of the edit window. I'm sure Photoshop displays it too.

[kaisoleil]

That was the problem! I must have resized the whole thing at some point when I was trying to figure out what I was doing. It's perfect now, thank you so much :) Can't wait to make an accurate sim version of my old horse.

[CmarNYC]

Glad it's working! :)

[Inge Jones]

Not sure why we're opening a fullbuild in s3oc? Am I missing the point? Lol I just found this cos someone reported a "bug" following this tutorial. :D