Senedana Posted January 28, 2019 Posted January 28, 2019 Today, I tried my hand at making a set of custom paintings via recoloring in Sim Studio and using screenshots as test images. It works but due to the shots, the images don't look great in-game. Does anyone have tips for making very good recolors of paintings? Is there a certain resolution images should be at for them to appear crisp in-game when recolored paintings are hung (and made larger than normal size)? Any help is appreciated, because I'd like to add art to the game and share it (including naughty art)!
raeleesv Posted January 31, 2019 Posted January 31, 2019 Hi there. Are you talking custom paintings that they actually paint or that they buy and hang? I make recolors (as in posters etc), so can only tell you what I do. Try increasing the size of the image that you exported before you add your own recolors. That worked for me. I can't say if there's a set resolution personally but as a general rule of thumb, I double the original export texture. So if it's 128x128, I resize to 512x512. It definitely seems to help make the images clearer. Try that and see how you go. Good luck
Senedana Posted February 4, 2019 Author Posted February 4, 2019 On 1/31/2019 at 2:26 AM, raeleesv said: Hi there. Are you talking custom paintings that they actually paint or that they buy and hang? I make recolors (as in posters etc), so can only tell you what I do. Try increasing the size of the image that you exported before you add your own recolors. That worked for me. I can't say if there's a set resolution personally but as a general rule of thumb, I double the original export texture. So if it's 128x128, I resize to 512x512. It definitely seems to help make the images clearer. Try that and see how you go. Good luck I was talking about recoloring paintings to buy and hang. Sorry, I'm still learning the lingo of making CC. When you say increase the size of the exported image - do you mean the export of the frame you place your recolor in? Thank you for your tips!
raeleesv Posted February 5, 2019 Posted February 5, 2019 12 hours ago, Senedana said: I was talking about recoloring paintings to buy and hang. Sorry, I'm still learning the lingo of making CC. When you say increase the size of the exported image - do you mean the export of the frame you place your recolor in? Thank you for your tips! No problems, and yes, I think we're on the same page. But I uploaded an image (or two) for reference. I'm referring to the base image that you're exporting (red arrow). In my example I did a recolor of the 'Llamacorn Team photo'. The original image (orange arrow) size was 124x256 pixels. I opened that in MS Paint and resized it to 256x512 pixels (I generally just double the original size, it seems to work). Then I saved it. After that I opened the (resized) image in Gimp, recoloured it how I wanted (in my case, replaced the sports team with an ultrasound picture), saved it, then went back into S4S and imported the image to test. In my personal experience that works and will make your images much clearer (see second picture for example). I know picture placement isn't exact in the second picture but quickly made up an example to show clarity difference. Anyway, hope that helps. If not, let me know. I'm no expert but will certainly help if I can. Good luck!
Senedana Posted February 6, 2019 Author Posted February 6, 2019 Thank you SO MUCH! I am going to try this the moment I have the time to do it right!
raeleesv Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 1 hour ago, Senedana said: Thank you SO MUCH! I am going to try this the moment I have the time to do it right! You're most welcome! Hopefully it helps. Good luck :)
Senedana Posted February 7, 2019 Author Posted February 7, 2019 On 2/5/2019 at 5:14 PM, raeleesv said: You're most welcome! Hopefully it helps. Good luck OMG your tip made everything look so good in-game! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I'm wondering if I can ask your help in one more respect (screenshot below to illustrate): I can't seem to figure out how to make custom thumbnails that show the image and frame the way it is in the big image on the left (and the way it looks in the game - with a wide frame, not square, like the image in the bottom right). I would love to be able to get this right, since the recolor I'm working on now are images are of my hometown, and they'll be used in a historic building I'm recreating. I've been following tutorials I found and the package works, but I haven't figured out how to get the thumbnails right. Any thoughts on what I'm doing wrong?
raeleesv Posted February 8, 2019 Posted February 8, 2019 Senedana, your pictures look great! And again you're most welcome Thumbnails are a little trickier. Reading your post above reminded me I really needed to stop being so lazy and to create some custom thumbnails for my recolours, which thanks to you I just did... well, I started anyway. This is the tutorial I personally use from S4S. It's explained there better than I ever could. But this is the really condensed version: * Put your .package file in your game. * Look at every swatch entry for your object. This will automatically generate thumbnails in S4S. You're not placing the object in world, you're just looking at each recolour from the buy catalog. (Don't buy it and place it in-world, and then try to change the colours that way. This won't generate thumbnails). That's it. Then close your game. * Open your .package file in S4S. * Click each numbered swatch to see the newly generated thumbnails (they will appear under the Catalog Thumbnail box). * Export thumbnail #1 and save to desktop. * Open thumbnail #1 in Gimp (or other picture editing software). * Add a new layer. Create text in this new layer - anything to identify it as "yours" (This will show up over the top of your thumbnails in the buy catalog). * Hide or delete the original thumbnail image so only text (or your identifying mark) is showing. * Save (or use the option 'Export As' if you're using Gimp) as a .png. Close Gimp. * Return to S4S. Click on the Tools tab > Modding > Catalog Thumbnail Overlay. * Navigate to your .png and select it. * You should then see your .png image over the top of all your custom thumbnails for each swatch. * Save .package and return to Mods folder. If this DOES generate your swatches (meaning they no longer appear transparent in S4S), then import textures for each as usual. If your swatch Thumbnails are still transparent: you could try clearing your Thumbnail Cache - this will force the game to generate new ones. Go into S4S > Tools > Clear Thumbnail Cache, or try deleting the file localthumbs.cache from your Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4 folder (both methods do the same thing, just a different way of doing it) and restart your game. Repeat the steps listed above to look at each recolour swatch from the buy catalog. Then go back into S4S and see if they show up. If they do, repeat the steps above to create custom thumbnails. If they don't, make sure S4S is looking in the right place. Open S4S > Settings and next to where it says Sims 4 Documents, make sure the path that follows reads Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4 and NOT Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4 folder\Mods. If that doesn't work I'm not sure. Try this method from S4S as a last resort? But see if that works first and we'll go from there. I've only just started creating recolours myself a few weeks ago, so I'm far from an expert, but if I can help I'll try. Maybe someone with a lot more practice can help maybe? Good luck as always.
Josua1970 Posted February 9, 2019 Posted February 9, 2019 Good, what editing program do you use? I for my paintings, tattoos, etc, I use photoshop, it can seem a nuisance, in case of not wanting to use the photoshop I recommend Photoshop Elements, it's the little brother. What I do is that I keep the images in PSD, which is the Photoshop format while I work with them, once I have already used the PNG format, it occupies more than the DDS, but it gives me better quality, also something else that I do, is that if the real image of the game is 1024 x 768 in size, I double it, that is, my image has 2048x1536, with what I get it to be sharper, you also have to notice it is in the pixels the minimum I use is 72 pixels, the higher the number of pixels, the better quality, but also the image will occupy more when saving it. This is an example of a graffiti that happens to me in the game, so you can see how it looks.
Senedana Posted February 9, 2019 Author Posted February 9, 2019 Thank you both for your knowledge! I'll see what I can do about fixing the thumbnails on the first package I made, but for now, I actually want time to play the game, you know?
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