So I decided to take a stab at retexturing, and thought I'd try recreating a dress I saw while I was at work the other day.
Unfortunately, there were no existing meshes that matched what I wanted, so I had to use one that was close. (The floral sundress with buttons and straps)
I was able to successfully get the retexture done, but due to the mesh of the item, there are some outlines of the old dress, namely straps and buttons that are no longer used.

I was hoping someone a bit more skilled than me could assist with cleaning it up, if thats at all possible this early into the release.

I have attached pictures of the original dress, as well as how it looks on the sim in-game. If anyone can help I would appreciate it so much

Also, I have had no luck getting a custom swatch to work, so if anyone can also help with that, that would be awesome! Thanks to FifthAce2007 and CmarNYC for the help

Those are specular / normal / bumpmaps methinks. Right now I don't think there is a straightforward way to deal with them (S4PE doesn't recognise them correctly), but take a look at the "managed to crack specular files open" thread in this forum -- there's *some* progress on workarounds it seems.

Maybe someone more experienced with CAS parts can tell you more!

Thanks for that! Hopefully there is some more progress soon, and I can get this fixed up.

Hiya. The swatch is an easy one...I assume you used Colour Magic to clone your dress in the first place?

If so, this is how to add a custom image.

Clone your dress in CM, on the final page before saving, click "add" and you will see an icon appear with CM on it. You can ignore the three colour dropdowns. Save your package as normal and then open in S4PE. Right at the top you will see an item listed as _IMG. Right click on this and select "Export > To file". Give it a name that will make it easy to find, but just check it has the extension ".dds" at the end, if it doesn't, change it and save.

Now, if using Photoshop, (I assume it's similar in GIMP but not sure as I don't use it), open the file you just exported. Make what ever changes you want, I usually take a small cropped section of my texture for this, and then save as a .dds using the same options for saving the texture file, IE, DTX5 - Generate MIP's etc.

Now,back in S4PE right click on the file again and select "Replace", locate your new image and select it. (You may have to click the dropdown and select "All Files" before it will show.

You will see a bunch of random text in the preview window, ignore it, it will still read the image correctly.

Save in S4PE.


Thats it, the new swatch will show up in game. If you have already placed the item in your game and are updating it, it may not show up right away. There is a thread somewhere about deleting a cache file but I can't find it at present. Hope this helps, and makes sense


Look forward to seeing the finished dress...will be on my downloadlist

Glad to hear you're liking the dress so far

Unfortunately, I have previously followed steps similar to yours for the swatch, but I get an error in S4PE that prevents me from even seeing the swatch image, let alone replacing it :/

I did some research on it and apparently the problem occurs with some items that already have swatches to begin with like mine. In ColorMagic I have to remove then add the swatch to change it, but even if leave the original I get the same error (I have attached a screenshot showing it)

If you have any ideas on how to fix it, I'd love to know

Ignore that error; all it means is that s4pe can't (yet) display the image preview. You can still replace the image.

Thanks for your help guys, I had to fiddle a bit, but got it to work in the game

So that's one problem down, only one to go

Yeh that's the bunch of random text I was referring to, as cymar said it only affects the previewer in S4PE.