Very confused beginner seeking a little guidance.

[McArson]

SO, hi forum. Hopefully this post isn't a stupid idea!
Long story short, I want to try my hand at making one of my characters (http://i.imgur.com/UuCUo.png) in the Sims 3 for funsies, which would mean I'd have to make a new skin texture, and create a new mesh for his head. Problem is, making mods for Sims 3 is the most incredibly convoluted thing I've ever seen and I am absolutely at a loss.
I've been searching for and reading tutorials for the past three hours, and I still don't understand how I would even begin to do either of these things. I can't even find a decent tutorial on making a skin from scratch; it's all Sims 2 related.
I don't need help working on the textures, or sculpting the model, because I already know how to do those things by themselves just fine. It's the process of importing them into the game/making them work that's confusing.

Basically, what I'm looking for is someone who can give me a simple outline of the paths I should take to make this happen. Like provide links to the tutorials I should be looking at or whatnot. What I'd like to know is:

Can I model in Zbrush, and import to Blender so I can use that GEOM plugin? (I've been planning to learn Blender anyway, but it'd be so much easier if I could just do this.)
How would I apply a texture to the mesh? I'm assuming that's done through CAS or Workshop?
If I made the mesh of the character's head, should I make it an accessory, or hair?
How DO I made a skintone from scratch?


Any insight at all would be so much help to me! Thanks for your patience. <3 C:

[whiterider]

1. Yes. If you're making clothing, you will need to find a format which is supported by both Zbrush and Blender, and which supports bone assignments, as manually redoing the bone assignments for a clothing mesh after having them nuked in transit between programs would take longer than learning to use Blender outright (and that's saying something). For less complex items, such as accessories or shoes, or items which are going to need manual bone assignment anyway such as hairs, use any shared format - OBJ is a good common one.

2. Yes. I assume you know how UV mapping works, so I'll skip that - if not, yell - but essentially you open either CTU or TSRW, pick a game item to clone, import your new mesh, then import your new texture. Save as a package file, and you're done. If you need help with the interfaces of each program, any meshing tutorial will do - it doesn't matter what type of CAS stuff you're making, the programs work the same.

3. Either way, really - it's up to you. The game degrades the texture of accessories when a sim has more than one equipped, so on that front, you may want to do a hair.

4. Technical side: http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=390230 . Artistic side: Don't start from scratch. Use the EA skin, or a custom skin you like, as a base (be sure to check the creator's policy/ask permission if you plan to upload). At the least, that will give you the outline of what should be where, and you can use that as a guide to go to town on the shading, markings, etc etc. It's a lot of work, especially if you plan to do a matching skin for other ages/genders (so your sim can breed and pass on his looks), but, well, there's no way around that. :)

[McArson]

@whiterider
Thank you SO much for that input; you really simplified a lot of complicated information in just a few lines. I was doing more sniffing around while waiting for a reply, and was totally about to give up and just try it out in TS2 instead. 6__9

Another question though, how would I go about editing a preexisting skin? I wasn't able to find the option to do so in CTU or TSRW, unless I totally missed it.

[whiterider]

TSRW and CTU can't do skins: you'll need to use another program, Skininator. It's a very simple little thing, though, and you'll grasp it in no time. :) I believe missy harries posted the EA skin textures alongside the tutorial I linked to - for using custom skins, open the package file in S3PE (yes, more programs, sorry :p ), and look through the _IMG resources. Right-click -> Export to save the texture as a DDS file.

[Cheryl Mason]

I can't help with answering your questions, but is it really necessary to make a new mesh for the head? If you turn your sliders up to 4x or 5x you can make just about any face shape; here's a good example (http://www.modthesims.info/d/361458)...

[HystericalParoxysm]

Also, if you're using Zbrush, I believe there's controls to keep the poly count down - make sure ya keep it LOW, as TS3 is not designed to handle the zomg-so-many-polys meshes that Zbrush tends to output.

Currently, I don't think it's possible to do a fully animated face - at least not in a way that's going to look at all nice in-game. So you'd have to pick a single expresson and basically make a "mask" for him. Or, ideally, sculpt the heck out of the face till it's close enough using overslider hacks and just mesh the helmet/techie doodads on the sides of his head as an accessory.