Object Texturing for both brainy and bewildered

We have today released an epic two-part Object Creation series for you.  The first part, written by riccinumbers is the eagerly-awaited Beginner's Guide to Object Meshing, and the following part is a less eagerly-awaited Object Textures, written by yours truly (yes, me)!

Object texturing - who's it for?

I will resist answering "for makeup artists" because I'm stiill under some BE NICE rule (which is getting real old after all these years).  So, this second part of the series is for beginners and experienced alike.  Beginners will be shown, step by step, how to make the standard images of an object (no experience necessary), import them into Workshop and finish off the object they started in the Beginner's Guide to meshing tutorial.  More experienced people will secretly be reading how to use the specular properly (you all know who you are) and how not to make images the size of table cloths!  Oh, and all that clever transparency and wall-mask stuff too.

What's covered?

• Image sizes (and how to map EA-style)
• Multipliers
• Speculars (including coloured speculars)
  
• RGB/RGBA Masks
• Overlays
• Stencils
• Dirty-state overlays
• Non-recolourable textures
• Wall masks (and the automatic wallmask generator)
• Sheers and transparency
• Importing textures into Workshop
• Defining patterns
• Making texture variations
• Using useful EA textures
• Outputting a complate for Sims 2 conversions
• Working with alpha channels

Does it work?

Oh ye of little faith!  We beta tested both guides with a small group of absolute beginners and we have seen some stunning results for first meshes already.  These testers are still making new meshes, and one of our newest testers, Illiana of lot-building fame, has already uploaded an incredible first set here.  There are other beautiful examples by our testers too, only they're still creating rather than uploading right now (we hope to see some new creations popping up on TSR soon)!

Who wrote it really?

I can't believe you even asked that.