[Mod Creation] Straight forward beginners guide to creating your own recolors and stand-alone mods.

[Dwjliel]

Fucking hard to find the info in a concise manner, so let us hope this helps at least 1 person.

You will need to Install Sims 4 Studio(S4S) and any image editing program.

 

(1) Recolor (new swatch)

• Open a .package in S4S

1. Ensure you are in the studio tab.
2. Click Add swatch
3. Export the diffuse (this is the main texture)
   3b. Perform editing/recoloring in your image editor, save image.
4. Ensure you are on your new swatch (click it)
   4b. Optionally recolour the thumbnail for easy CAS identification.
5. Import your diffuse that you saved in section 3b.
6. Save Done.

Spoiler

 

(2) Recolor MOD (create a package)

Create a recolour/new swatches in a fresh separate .package you could share to other users of the original file.

1. Right-click the .package file you wish to make a mod of, and select copy.
2. Paste it into C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\Sims 4 Studio\Mods
   You may need to create the mods folder yourself within C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\Sims 4 Studio\
3. In S4S, click the House icon in top left corner.
   
4. Ensure Create CAS Standalone radio button is selected and
   4b click the big CAS button located in the lower left corner
   Spoiler

   

5. Click the Content button, select Custom from the drop-down menu
   Spoiler

   

    

6. Click the thumbnail of the mod that you are wanting to recolour
   Shift+Clicking will select every swatch to be copied into your new mod.
   Spoiler

   

    

7. Click Next in the bottom right
8. A save window pops up, for now save it in C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\Sims 4 Studio\Mods
9. You can now edit this packages swatches  as covered above in the section:  Recolour (new swatch)
10. (A) Export a Catalog Thumbnail(fine that it's empty), edit in your image editor to something recognisable in CAS. Save
11. (B) Import your newly saved Catalog Thumbnail
    Spoiler

    

     

12. After saving changes, copy this new mod.package to your sims4 mods folder. DONE!

 

(3) New MOD (make a standalone package)

Make the mod entirely stand-alone so it doesn't require the original mod.

• In C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\Sims 4 Studio\Mods, you should STILL HAVE two mod.packages.
  The Original Mod.package and Your Recolor.package you created in section 2 of this guide Recolour MOD (create a package).

1. Open your recolor.package from within C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\Sims 4 Studio\Mods
2. Click "Tools" from the menu bar at the top of the window  --- File | Settings | Tools
3. Hover over "Modding" and select "Embed all externally referenced resources (CAS)
4. Wait. It can take a minute. If it errors out, check you have the original mod still in Documents\Sims 4 Studio\Mods.
5. Click Done and Save.

 

Congrats, all done. You can now move the newly saved mod.package file to your sims4 mods folder and it will work stand-alone by itself without the original mod.

Don't forget to clean out C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\Sims 4 Studio\Mods, the .packages in there are no longer needed.