Am I right in assuming that once you get your new design in game, you should still be able to recolor the shirt behind the stencil? If so, I'm not able to do that for some reason. Any thoughts on what I might have screwed up? :}

Thanks in advanced!

How do you upload the new stencils to sims exchange? Every time I try the item cannot be found on the exchange itself.

lazywnch - Can you post a shot of your design and your alpha layer?

Nikao - I don't think the exchange allows uploads of custom clothing, mods, etc. Why don't you try uploading it here? At least here, your creation won't be snatched by some random person and lost forever.

Yeah, I was thinking about uploading it here. I will once i get some more stencils to the mesh.

I just wanted to share on the exchange too There are other creations on the exchange with logos and such. Like Star Wars, Adidas, etc. Even pictures of twilight and micheal jackson. But I don't know how they are doing it.

ah, I didn't know that seeing as I've never been to the exchange before. Have you thumbed around the exchanges FAQ pages?

Sure, sure. I was pretty sure I missed something or screwed something up when creating the Alpha channel. Thanks for taking a look; I appreciate it. :}



And here's my blankety-blank Alpha shot. ;P



|*|lazywnch|*|

You didn't make your alpha channel correctly. The game reads any white area as sort of an "open window", grey as "tinted glass", and black as "closed shutters".

So my reason for using bad metaphors is to say that the alpha should be completely black with the exception of where your stencil is located. The way you have yours set up is nothing but a big open window.

Reread how to set up the alpha channel. Remember you want all black, and only white where the stencil should go. Hope that made sense...
(Take a look at how my alpha channel is set up in the screen shot. Notice how it's all black except for where the chess piece is?)

EDIT: Before even fooling with the alpha channel make sure that shirt texture layer is hidden. And once you have successfully made the alpha channel, be sure to flatten the image before saving. Your resulting image should be an all white (or pink if you have your alpha channel visible) background with only your stencil showing.

It took some fiddling, but I got it. :} Thanks so much. Would never have been able to do something like this without your tutorial and help.

Hi Daluved1,
No I used the teen,female,top,shirt_cew.
Yes I used a new file,first I extracted the files..closed Delphy's unitool and then started new..added the logo and then saved the package that way.

Edit:- I restarted over again and finally got it to work..I changed the dss format to explicit from Interpolated and it worked...the file instantly changed to 1.34mb..showed up in game perfectly..the background was still pink but there was no problems changing the colour

I've added a picture of my end result..thank you again for the tutorial and for being so helpful with my little problems.

Lili

I have looked around the FAQs and stuff on the Sims exchange. Can't find anything.

I have a question about hats though. Is there a specific thing you have to do with hats in order to get the hair to show back up in the game? I put the stencil on the hat and the stencil shows up fine. The multiplier image even has hair on it and I'm not changing that at all. When I go into CAS everything works fine but the hair doesn't show.

I'm using the adult -> male -> baseballcap mesh.

Added a tip to Part III Step 2. A lot of people (myself included) tend to forget that the mesh wraps around the body.

that's a great tip! There's nothing more aggravating then having to resize once you get everything all finalized.

thank you

Nikao: Probably becuase hats aren't supported in the publically available CTU.

i agree, i dont use photoshop
i MUCH prefer fireworks 8

everyone tells me i should update it,
i did for a while use MX but it was missing so much


this is kind of unfair
i dont have photoshop either so i cant get photoshop plugins,

and i doubt photoshop plugins go into fireworks

Fireworks is a web graphics app, not a general-purpose graphics app. Still, it accepts some photoshop filters (least it did when I was using it for web development a few years ago), so it's possible it can do the .dds export. Check the documentation.

I used to use Fireworks and Dreamweaver a lot when I did web design and I absolutely fell in love with the both of them. And I know you'd hate to switch over but consider downloading GIMP or Paint.NET, they pretty much do the same as Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro sans the price tag
But still, if you don't want to use something else, you might want to reconsider updating Fireworks. I think you'll have a lot better luck finding a .dds plug-in for MX or MX 2004.

i'm having a hell of a bother trying to create a alpha channel in photoshop elements, the only thing i can see is this, i'm not to savvy when it comes to editing

Wow.....I have never actually seen/heard of phtoshop elements. Now, just from looking at your screenshot, I'm not seeing a Channels view at all...This may sound silly but do you know how to get to the Channel view at all? Once you get there, that'll make things much easier

EDIT: it seems that Photoshop elements doesn't allow for channel mixing/adding/etc. In fact, it doesn't do much at all. However! You can download a plugin for it that'll allow you to do all above

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2006/0...rs-and-masks-o/

that's a free one that I found that looks pretty useful, but you might want to some more google searching just in case.

new problem

Simple just delete the existing alpha layer, make a new one then hit ALT + Delete (make sure you keep your stencil pieces selected like you have them now)

this is what i ended up with

What do you have selected? Remember to hide the layer with the shirt texture. And DELETE the existing alpha layer and make a new one.

now i got this

Perfect! Now flatten the image and save it as a .dds with a new name