Why do overlays only work sometimes?

[capitansquid]

So I've noticed that wildguys' vagina overlays will work on some skins but not others. I'm still learning about CC and such, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why it works on some and not all.
They're not taking the same slot (both options are active), so dont' think it's that.

Anyone able to suggest a reason? This is just for my own knowledge, just trying to learn.

[Captain Rondo]

21 minutes ago, capitansquid said:

So I've noticed that wildguys' vagina overlays will work on some skins but not others. I'm still learning about CC and such, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why it works on some and not all.
They're not taking the same slot (both options are active), so dont' think it's that.

Anyone able to suggest a reason? This is just for my own knowledge, just trying to learn.

 

When you talk about "skins" , do you mean the skintones you can choose or skin overlays too ?

 

It happens in the case of skin overlays that they are sometimes over some body details or tattoos .

[capitansquid]

I'm an idiot.... *sigh*.... Wasn't paying attention and I mixed up the overlays with the photorealistic skins. (I don't know actual names. The "skins" look like actual photos mapped over the characters, full color. The overlays are the ghost-like, gray toned images that overlay the preset skintones).

 

I just answered my own question. The full color skins cover the whole body. So it seems to prevent things like tatoos and vaginas (though not nipples and pubes).

[mcromance]

If I'm not wrong it's related to Composition Method the full colour CC skins use vs the ones for other skin details.

 

Full color skins, (some) nipples and hair 'tattoos' have Composition Method set to 0 so they can show up in game okay on the very top layer of everything, while the details types of overlays (like Wild Guy's Dimples of Venus or like wrinkles, cleavages, etc) have Composition Method set to 3, so they can blend well with skintones (from Sims 4 itself) or default replacement skintones.

 

What I usually do if I like full colour skin, but want it to work with other skin details is exporting the texture with S4Studio, edit the texture image in Photoshop (make it grayscale, lighten it to desired level and set opacity to 80-90%), then I import edited texture image into S4Studio, change the Composition Method in Warehouse to 3 and save as new file (if you leave the Composition Method set to 0 it will result in game with overlay being grey on the sim).

Then I copy-paste it to mods folder and check if it's looking good in game.

[thellama99]

On 11/15/2022 at 7:00 PM, capitansquid said:

I'm an idiot.... *sigh*.... Wasn't paying attention and I mixed up the overlays with the photorealistic skins. (I don't know actual names. The "skins" look like actual photos mapped over the characters, full color. The overlays are the ghost-like, gray toned images that overlay the preset skintones).

 

I just answered my own question. The full color skins cover the whole body. So it seems to prevent things like tatoos and vaginas (though not nipples and pubes).

I struggled with this for a long time.

 

Basically, everything has a "layer," and an order it gets added on to a sim. 

Let's say Overlays are layer 1000, tattoos are 1100, Makeup is 1200, so they appear over the Overlay - but "Skins" are like level 1400, thus cancelling out everything below it - which is why they remove a lot of scars/tattoos/etc.

 

BUT There are tutorials out there on how to edit tattoos, etc, so they appear on skins. Once upon a time I went through and did it for my favorite tattoos. There's a program out there that makes editing the tattoos easy (I think it's by Cmar? He makes a lot of editing apps)

 

For the most part I try to stick to Overlays these days - because they generally show all tattoos. All the tattoos I updated ended up getting lost and I couldn't be bothered to edit them all again - even though it probably only took about an hour to do 20-30 of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[capitansquid]

On 11/16/2022 at 8:14 AM, mcromance said:

import edited texture image into S4Studio, change the Composition Method in Warehouse to 3 and save as new file (if you leave the Composition Method set to 0 it will result in game with overlay being grey on the sim).

You just answered ANOTHER question I was trying to figure out. ?
Was wondering why it kept appearing grey.

[mcromance]

1 hour ago, capitansquid said:

You just answered ANOTHER question I was trying to figure out. ?
Was wondering why it kept appearing grey.

 

Happy to help ?

And yes, it took me a bit of googling and looking around S4Studio tutorials and help topics to find the answer, when I found overlay I liked, that for some reason appeared grey on a sim. It was actual CC creator's mistake then, with setting wrong composition method for it.