Hi!

I want to re-texture the EA shop Mandarin Coat (which I bought) to sport a nice vicar's collar (I couldn't find a ready-made cassock anywhere to download, sadly)

So, uh, I'm absolutely not a modder, but usually pretty adept at figuring out new concepts; so I thought I could read my way through a few dozen forums and do that tweak myself ― Sadly I hit a dead end... I figured out how to re-texture base game clothes, but no matter what I try (with my limited knowledge), I can't get the Mandarin Coat to show up in TSRW nor CTU! If only I could do that, I'll likely be able to do the rest.

Does anyone have a solution to this? I already managed to convert a copy of the Mandarin file into a .package, but that doesn't seem to help my issue either

Thank you!

Store items and... CTU and TSRW don't go well together. It's because EA built them up differently compared to in-game clothing.

What you could try, is getting s3pe, and you'll see a few different IMG files (the textures) The gray one is the multiplier. This is the texture that will make it possible for the colours to 'overlay' properly. It's kinda like how layers would act in photoshop if you'd change the layer's setting (Like multiple, overlay, screen, etc). What you want to use in this case might be the 'overlay' texture. Now not all clothing use a overlay. It's a texture that has like all the buttons, zips... basically a texture that you can't recolour.

So make sure you export the right texture for it. I would have used the multiplier and if I can, tweak the mask texture (the texture that tells the game which parts should be recoloured). Make sure that when you save the image from s3pe, that you use 'save dds' and that when you're done editing, save it as a dds as well. for multipliers it's dxt5, for the mask dxt1, the overlay (if you want to use an overlay) dxt5. ^-^
Then, you want to go back to the package and use the 'replace' button. Make sure that S3PE isn't showing a list with texts in the preview window, but the actual texture. Then you're sure you did it right. ^-^

If your download is a sims3pack, I would recommend converting it to a package file with Delphy's Sims 3 Pack Multi-Extracter . ^-^

I can't answer for TSRW, but do you get an error when trying to open the outfit with CTU? Try cloning the outfit in S3OC, making sure to check the "renumber/rename it internally" option. I remember trying to retexture something in CTU and it refusing to open the .package for some reason, and cloning it worked. You won't have a default replacement of the Store outfit, though.

As a sidenote, and since you are already familiar with retexturing the clothes, I recommend importing your edited textures into the .package BEFORE opening/editing the file in CTU. Now I use CTU only to enable the 4th channel and edit the presets, the process is much smoother this way.

Edit: sniped, lol.

Thanks a lot that sounds promising! I'll try that as soon as I get back to my computer tomorrow!

Hope y'all will have happy New year festives tonight~

I use TSRW and the latest versions are good. If you can have the EA shop Mandarin Coat in a package file, you can add it to TSRW and extract its textures to modify them or use S3PE as others said above. You must know that the _IMG texture resources of a 3d model in sims 3 are files with the extention DDS (DirectDraw Surface) and that they are DXT5 (with interpolated Alpha). Don't panic. Google for paint.net ver 4.0 something to get this program. It's for free and it will help you a lot!
Happy New Year!