omg, @Jules1111, I'm so happy to be home! I've spent days in bodyshop and finished some of my own custom content this weekend. I finished a really ugly shirt and it took me a few hours to copy and paste texture to my mesh, lol, it's ugly, I don't know why I picked that texture I just wanted to see if I could remember, lol. But it's mine! Yay! Ten years too late, lol. Having a Blast.
LOL welcome back! I have never tried to make CC, I don't know that I have the patience! Awesome you have something made, even if it didn't turn out exactly like you wanted. Now you know how and can make pretty things for your sims
I never had the patience to do it right like with Milkshape and SimPe. But I always thought TS2 didn't have enough long sleeve blouses and shirts in it and not enough top with collars, so I've been trying my hand at all that again, and with your help on bodyshop questions I had, I'm getting the hang of doing things much faster, thank you! Looking under those arm pits to make sure I covered them, lol.
Anyone can try this tutorial and it works for beginners. There are two free programs and Windows gives you one too, Paint. Or Paint.net has a few more filters etc. and Gimp 2, I prefer to use Windows paint to cut and past meshes I find it the easiest to use but but not to recolor. You need more filters if you want to recolor like in Gimp or Paintnet. Not a fan of Gimp's new save option which no longer saves in bmp files like the older versions. You have to do too many extra steps to export and save a bmp file.
Watch this video if you don't like the background music turn down the sound, a lot of great, simple by simple steps still on Youtube still works today!
Gave Body Shop a try yesterday, taking Seera1024's advice on where to find the launcher. Launched just fine, but the mannequin was a bluish shadow with arms out. The clothing items were strictly in outline form, complete with heads (oddest was one with Social Bunny head outline). Not very useful, even though I have a suspicion there were some outfits there not on my XP machine version. Hard to tell with just outlines. Anyhoo, ideas on what the cause is and how to get things back to normal?
Gave Body Shop a try yesterday, taking Seera1024's advice on where to find the launcher. Launched just fine, but the mannequin was a bluish shadow with arms out. The clothing items were strictly in outline form, complete with heads (oddest was one with Social Bunny head outline). Not very useful, even though I have a suspicion there were some outfits there not on my XP machine version. Hard to tell with just outlines. Anyhoo, ideas on what the cause is and how to get things back to normal?
Were you looking at the meshes or the actual outfits just in bodyshop? Had you even opened a mesh file or do you mean that's what you saw when you merely opened bodyshop? And are you playing in widescreen? (MTS has a fix for bodyshop for widescreen) since so many these days play on way bigger screens than back in 2004.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
That's what I saw when Body Shop opened. Didn't matter if in wide screen or not, tried both ways and same deal. Don't know if it's a Windows 10 issue, Ultimate collection issue, or something else. Tempted to try loading one of the odder profiles into game to try to see what it really is, but am concerned about possible file corruption.
That's what I saw when Body Shop opened. Didn't matter if in wide screen or not, tried both ways and same deal. Don't know if it's a Windows 10 issue, Ultimate collection issue, or something else. Tempted to try loading one of the odder profiles into game to try to see what it really is, but am concerned about possible file corruption.
I have Windows 7 Home Prem. and wide screen, so I don't know the clothes, hair etc. in Bodyshop should not be in black and white, it could be a Windows 10 issue, maybe. I have no idea, but getting the mod to fix wide screen can help when things are way too big, and looked streched out of shape in Bodyshop because it was never built for wide screen LCDs or TV screens.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
May need to try the support thing on this one. I fully agree with your sig on TS4 and terrain tools. Three years out, and it still doesn't have things TS2 did base game, let alone what came later by the time it was three years out. A sad state of affairs, one that am increasingly convinced lies in the game's ill-conceived online origins.
That's what I saw when Body Shop opened. Didn't matter if in wide screen or not, tried both ways and same deal. Don't know if it's a Windows 10 issue, Ultimate collection issue, or something else. Tempted to try loading one of the odder profiles into game to try to see what it really is, but am concerned about possible file corruption.
Ok I haven't been in body shop since getting my new PC (still working on my downloads folder) But, I use the Sims 2 UC, and have windows 10 now, so I jumped in just for a test. My bodyshop works just fine. Everything from the mannequin to the clothing was perfectly normal. So it is not a UC (which I already knew) or a Windows 10 issue. Something else is going wrong there.
You might want to back up your graphic rules, video card file, and if you removed securom, the .exe for the game. Then hit repair game in Origin. It is possible it didn't download correctly. You want to back that stuff up because repairing resets everything, and it is easier to plop your copies in, then redoing everything. I don't believe I have heard of this happening before, but if I can find any info I will let you know.
I thought repair game was only for TS4. My UC launches directly, no Origin involved. Backing up those files still a good idea though. Should that securom be removed since I have no disks involved?
I thought repair game was only for TS4. My UC launches directly, no Origin involved. Backing up those files still a good idea though. Should that securom be removed since I have no disks involved?
No you can repair game for Sims 2 also through Origin. You don't have to launch it through there (better not to) to use the repair feature. Ya backing up is always good. If you are on Windows 10 I would get rid of Securom. They tend not to play well together, who knows, if you didn't remove it, it could be the cause of the issue. I know it can cause other issues, never heard of this one, but a lot of people don't use body shop anyway.
So I would try a repair first and see if it works. Also remember to delete the Cigen.cache if you have one before going in to test again.
Have come to the conclusion that UC Body Shop is using controlled substances. Opened it up earlier today to see if I could get some more info on what the mess up is. Well, the bugger launched and everything was normal! Got a project set up and then shut it down. Launched it again a few hours later, and still normal. Even finished said project. Biggest problem was trying to use the newly updated MS Paint, everything is different, but there are some new capabilities. Even a 3D option.
Thanks for the info, and will follow through on it.
Have come to the conclusion that UC Body Shop is using controlled substances. Opened it up earlier today to see if I could get some more info on what the mess up is. Well, the bugger launched and everything was normal! Got a project set up and then shut it down. Launched it again a few hours later, and still normal. Even finished said project. Biggest problem was trying to use the newly updated MS Paint, everything is different, but there are some new capabilities. Even a 3D option.
Thanks for the info, and will follow through on it.
Well that is odd! Well at least you have it working! Yay! I think you are right, it is on something. Hopefully it keeps behaving.
@Oldeseadogge, you might want to dowload (free) GIMP 2.8 2.9 is not stable enough yet instead of using MS paint, so you can have more filters to color and add transparent layers etc etc. The one thing I don't like about the new GIMP from years ago is it no longer saves into a .bmp file when saving a texture or mesh, so you have to change the file extension every time, to .bmp and then export feature in GIMP where as before it just saved as whatever type file (.bmps) you had loaded. It is annoying to do that each time. They have a forum and many people hate they changed it like that.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
Never heard of it, but worth at least a look. Another nice thing about the forums is that you find out about what's good and what's junk from folks who have built up a track record of trust.
I just as of late re-learned body shop. (I showed signs of improvement illustrations program and PC meanwhile.) I've as of now recolored/reshaped a few things and aside from a little disarray with an alpha record, it went awesome! I made a custom dress for grown-up Daisy Greenman that is shrouded in grass stains.
I just as of late re-learned body shop. (I showed signs of improvement illustrations program and PC meanwhile.) I've as of now recolored/reshaped a few things and aside from a little disarray with an alpha record, it went awesome! I made a custom dress for grown-up Daisy Greenman that is shrouded in grass stains.
Yay! I'm still stuck on building Barnabas his hair mesh is driving me crazy. I really don't want to use Milkshape and SimPE to build the UV map etc. I have been altering some meshes to try to get them as close as possible. I did finish one, but his 'layers' stick out from his head around the ears (you can see underneath the layer of the actual head hair) if that all makes sense. I bet it don't because I don't speak modder lingo. lol (not much) I just say what I see, and that's the best way to explain it to myself.
ETA: Like my avitar see she has a layer that covers her ears, well in the meshes I have altered (Maxis) his hair sticks too far out from his ears so you can see underneath and I need them to come in closer to his head...and the only way I can do that with the mesh I'm using is to dump it, and build one for the UV map so I can have more room to do the work/mesh. I may settle and get on with it.
ETA: But I did finish one where I added more hair to a Maxis mesh that had too much of a receded hairline. Yay! I'm not that happy with the texture I did for it, and may clean it up a bit, but it turned out alright for my first mesh since I used to work with clothes and never hair. I think hair is much more difficult.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
You're messing with meshes in body shop? I thought that required sell your firstborn expensive specialized software.
Yes, that's why you have it. No it doesn't take specialized software, just a good idea of where to add and erase. then how to paste that over a texture to create a new mesh then texture that, but it is time consuming to texture a new mesh if you use real pictures of real hair. I was never that good of an artist when it came to drawing with a stylist or mouse, I'm better with a pencil and brush on a canvas in rl not on computers.
ETA: Here's a really easy video on Youtube to show you how to remove some bangs, once you get the hang of stuff you learn to go bigger and better with new styles but true modders would suggest you use Milkshape and SimsPE, but for this project have some fun. You can always delete from bodyshop and projects what you created.
oops messed up link see below
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
Thanks! Looks similar to what I've been doing to make outfit changes, Not sure if it actually does anything with mesh or just governs visibility of the texture, but still handy to know. Will probably give it another view or two when I've actually some time. Any Simpe work will need to be on old XP machine as the version on W10 still likes to blow up neighborhood files, thus wasting all one's work. About half the time it insists on writing to a temp file that doesn't exist/'being used by another program'. Odd, as the only other program running is Windows. Kinda makes one wish for the old DOS days when you went right into it, no overlays.
I agree with you all, bodyshop is great. It made creating custom clothing accessible to me.
Only tip I have, create a shortcut to you desktop, right click on the shortcut and select "Properties." At the end of the line called "Target", add a space after the existing text and type "-r1024x768". Next time you open bodyshop, you get a bigger window. When choosing hairstyles or clothing you can see more items at once.
I love to use body shop to make things. Still trying to get it right for Sims 2 though. I'm finding that my clothing for sims 2 always makes the exposed bits of skin like the neck over bright and looks like two sims stitched together. Pretty sure there's something I don't have that I should or that I'm saving the files in the wrong size. (like maybe I'm saving in 32 bit and it should be 16 bit color?) I'll figure it out and my clothes will still be terrible but like someone above me in this post said, at least they'll be mine!
Loving yourself is the most simple and complicated thing you can do for you.
I love to use body shop to make things. Still trying to get it right for Sims 2 though. I'm finding that my clothing for sims 2 always makes the exposed bits of skin like the neck over bright and looks like two sims stitched together. Pretty sure there's something I don't have that I should or that I'm saving the files in the wrong size. (like maybe I'm saving in 32 bit and it should be 16 bit color?) I'll figure it out and my clothes will still be terrible but like someone above me in this post said, at least they'll be mine!
Yes, I figured out it's not very smart of me to try to recolor (retexture) some of Maxis sweaters. They have a transparent layer of sheen on them and when you change the blouse or shirt underneath the sweater, then your Sim wears it in the game they are glowing, lol. The avatar turns this weird color and it's due to that hidden, transparent sheen layer they put on most of the female clothes like the open button sweaters. I will need more practice and knowledge before I touch those again. (How to remove or replace the sheen of it).
ETA: No, you should be saving in 32bit, but make sure you are saving as .bmp. And try not to strech material swatches, those always turn out awful. You know when you copy and paste something sometimes you need just a hair thin strech of the material texture to fit perfectly, but if you do that it can throw everything off and look horrible in game. Try to use or resize swatches to 512x512. If any larger and you try to paste that over something that can mess up all your cc. Try to cut out what you want instead of just pasting over. I'm going to have to get Paint (shareware) if it's still around because I can't stand the new GIMP and how it is reorganized.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
Have discovered that vertical striping distorts on full body dresses, widening steadily as you go down, sort of like a trapezoid. That means trying a reverse one on the texture file, and since straight diagonals don't happen in pixels, one gets rather odd results. Otherwise, have been able to make all sorts of interesting things.
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LOL welcome back!
Anyone can try this tutorial and it works for beginners. There are two free programs and Windows gives you one too, Paint. Or Paint.net has a few more filters etc. and Gimp 2, I prefer to use Windows paint to cut and past meshes I find it the easiest to use but but not to recolor. You need more filters if you want to recolor like in Gimp or Paintnet. Not a fan of Gimp's new save option which no longer saves in bmp files like the older versions. You have to do too many extra steps to export and save a bmp file.
Watch this video if you don't like the background music turn down the sound, a lot of great, simple by simple steps still on Youtube still works today!
Were you looking at the meshes or the actual outfits just in bodyshop? Had you even opened a mesh file or do you mean that's what you saw when you merely opened bodyshop? And are you playing in widescreen? (MTS has a fix for bodyshop for widescreen) since so many these days play on way bigger screens than back in 2004.
I have Windows 7 Home Prem. and wide screen, so I don't know the clothes, hair etc. in Bodyshop should not be in black and white, it could be a Windows 10 issue, maybe. I have no idea, but getting the mod to fix wide screen can help when things are way too big, and looked streched out of shape in Bodyshop because it was never built for wide screen LCDs or TV screens.
Ok I haven't been in body shop since getting my new PC (still working on my downloads folder) But, I use the Sims 2 UC, and have windows 10 now, so I jumped in just for a test. My bodyshop works just fine. Everything from the mannequin to the clothing was perfectly normal. So it is not a UC (which I already knew) or a Windows 10 issue. Something else is going wrong there.
You might want to back up your graphic rules, video card file, and if you removed securom, the .exe for the game. Then hit repair game in Origin. It is possible it didn't download correctly. You want to back that stuff up because repairing resets everything, and it is easier to plop your copies in, then redoing everything. I don't believe I have heard of this happening before, but if I can find any info I will let you know.
No you can repair game for Sims 2 also through Origin. You don't have to launch it through there (better not to) to use the repair feature. Ya backing up is always good. If you are on Windows 10 I would get rid of Securom. They tend not to play well together, who knows, if you didn't remove it, it could be the cause of the issue. I know it can cause other issues, never heard of this one, but a lot of people don't use body shop anyway.
So I would try a repair first and see if it works. Also remember to delete the Cigen.cache if you have one before going in to test again.
Have come to the conclusion that UC Body Shop is using controlled substances. Opened it up earlier today to see if I could get some more info on what the mess up is. Well, the bugger launched and everything was normal!
Thanks for the info, and will follow through on it.
Yay! I'm still stuck on building Barnabas his hair mesh is driving me crazy. I really don't want to use Milkshape and SimPE to build the UV map etc. I have been altering some meshes to try to get them as close as possible. I did finish one, but his 'layers' stick out from his head around the ears (you can see underneath the layer of the actual head hair) if that all makes sense. I bet it don't because I don't speak modder lingo. lol (not much) I just say what I see, and that's the best way to explain it to myself.
ETA: Like my avitar see she has a layer that covers her ears, well in the meshes I have altered (Maxis) his hair sticks too far out from his ears so you can see underneath and I need them to come in closer to his head...and the only way I can do that with the mesh I'm using is to dump it, and build one for the UV map so I can have more room to do the work/mesh. I may settle and get on with it.
ETA: But I did finish one where I added more hair to a Maxis mesh that had too much of a receded hairline. Yay! I'm not that happy with the texture I did for it, and may clean it up a bit, but it turned out alright for my first mesh since I used to work with clothes and never hair. I think hair is much more difficult.
Yes, that's why you have it. No it doesn't take specialized software, just a good idea of where to add and erase.
ETA: Here's a really easy video on Youtube to show you how to remove some bangs, once you get the hang of stuff you learn to go bigger and better with new styles but true modders would suggest you use Milkshape and SimsPE, but for this project have some fun. You can always delete from bodyshop and projects what you created.
oops messed up link see below
Hope this easy video explains it better than I can it's an oldy but goody.
Only tip I have, create a shortcut to you desktop, right click on the shortcut and select "Properties." At the end of the line called "Target", add a space after the existing text and type "-r1024x768".
Next time you open bodyshop, you get a bigger window. When choosing hairstyles or clothing you can see more items at once.
Yes, I figured out it's not very smart of me to try to recolor (retexture) some of Maxis sweaters. They have a transparent layer of sheen on them and when you change the blouse or shirt underneath the sweater, then your Sim wears it in the game they are glowing, lol. The avatar turns this weird color and it's due to that hidden, transparent sheen layer they put on most of the female clothes like the open button sweaters. I will need more practice and knowledge before I touch those again. (How to remove or replace the sheen of it).
ETA: No, you should be saving in 32bit, but make sure you are saving as .bmp. And try not to strech material swatches, those always turn out awful. You know when you copy and paste something sometimes you need just a hair thin strech of the material texture to fit perfectly, but if you do that it can throw everything off and look horrible in game. Try to use or resize swatches to 512x512. If any larger and you try to paste that over something that can mess up all your cc. Try to cut out what you want instead of just pasting over. I'm going to have to get Paint (shareware) if it's still around because I can't stand the new GIMP and how it is reorganized.