Second tutorial on how to create custom make-up for your Sims.

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Introduction

This is the second tutorial of“elmazzz Beauty School” and will basically show you how to create your own custom blush for your Sims. As I mentioned in my last tutorial, I will in each tutorial sharesome of my creating-secrets as well as some of my texture sources. This will bea good way to start if you are interested in creating makeup. The biggest secret in creating anything of goodquality is as I said earlier, simply creating as much as you can. The more youcreate, the better you hopefully get at it.

This tutorial includes a step-by-step walkthrough of theactual creating of the blush. I will also give you my own creating secrets andpersonal tips on how to improve as a creator. You will get another great linkto a site where you can find good make-up pictures which you can use astextures for your make-up. But you actually won’t need a source picture tocreate a blush for your Sims! Creating blush for your Sims is easier than youmight think. But I will still assume that you have tried using Body Shop beforeand that you are somewhat familiar with your graphic program.

What you will need

-A graphic program. Any graphic program would actually do, but personally I recommend that you usea somewhat complex program simply because it will have more functions. Thereare a couple of good programs that are suitable for this, personally I prefer AdobePhotoshop CS2, but you can use Jasc Paint Shop Pro or GIMP ifyou’re more familiar with those. In thistutorial I will show you how to use the functions in Adobe Photoshop CS2.

-The Sims 2 Body Shop I assumeyou already got it.

Step 1. Run your Body Shop

I have already tipped you on downloading “BodyshopMechanic” and “Wes Howe's Enhanced Bodyshop Lighting”. The reasonbeing, that the lightning in Body Shop isn’t good at all. Not to mention thatit is hard to see details, even when your Sims model is zoomed. To make iteasier for you whenever creating something in Body Shop, always run yourBodyshop through “Bodyshop Mechanic”. If you still haven’t gotten it,

You can find it here:

“Bodyshop Mechanic” -- > http://theblarneystone.org/S2-Programs.htm

 “Wes Howe's Enhanced Bodyshop Lighting” -- > http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=220884

When you have gotten these small applications, you areready to run your BodyShop. Do that through “Bodyshop Mechanic”. The program isvery easy to use and does not have many functions. You can adjust it in 2simple steps before entering BodyShop. I’ll show the steps below in thepicture.

Step 2. Export a skin tone

Now I will share a tip which will make it super-easy for youto create a beautiful blush for your Sims. When creating a custom brush, theonly thing you have to do really, is playing with the alpha picture. The onlyother thing you have to do is simply choosing a color for your blush. It reallyis as easy as it sounds, but you have to start by doing something that mightseem unexpected.

Instead of going directly in to the makeup section inBodyshop, you will have to start by exporting a skin tone. Which one you choosedoesn’t matter at all. So follow the pictures below to export your skin tone.You will find your exported skin tone in your usual Projects folder. If youhave forgotten the path to the Projects folder, you can find it under:

“C:\Documents andSettings\”AccountName”\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Projects”

 

When exporting the skin tone, name itblush_skintone or something like that, so you can easily locate it in yourProjects folder. The name doesn’t really matter, as long as you can find it.When you are done exporting the skin tone, open that particular folder in theProjects folder and open the adult female face picture in your graphic program.The picture should look something like this:

If you still can’t find it, the exact name for the fileis:

“afface~face~stdMatBaseTextureName.bmp”

It’s usually the first file in the folder.

 

Now youare ready to create your blush, but as always you start by exporting a blushfrom your Bodyshop,

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 4.  Creating the actual blush

Your selected textures are now exported in to your Projectsfolder. The folder can be found under: C:\Documents and Settings\”AccountName”\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims2\Projects

Locate your projects folder and open your texture file,your alpha file and your swatch file in Photoshop.

Bring up your skin tone picture and your alpha picture.While having the skin tone picture as a current window,

Press the CTRL + A keys on your keyboard, to select thewhole picture, then press CTRL + C, and copy it.

Paste it in a new layer on your alpha picture. The next thingyou want to do is to change the opacity on your skin tone picture so that youcan see the alpha picture through it. This is how that is done:

Now you are ready to play around with your alpha picture.Make sure the alpha picture layer is selected before you do anything else.Otherwise you will be drawing on the skin tone picture!

Step 5.  Changing your alpha picture

You can start by painting your alpha picture completely black. Thisis because we want to make our own blush and not use the one Maxis has created.After painting it completely black, choose the color “white” and an appropriatebrush. The one I recommend is:

Nowyou have to create a new layer. In case you don’t know how to do that, I’ll adda small picture that shows you how to do it.

The layer should be placed over the alpha file, to changethe layer order, just grab the layer you want to move and release it over thelayer you want it to be over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now you are ready to paint your blush. After selectingthe brush, you also want to set these modes in your photoshop:

Changethe opacity of your whole new layer too, to about 35%. I showed you how to dothis in the previous page in this tutorial. Now you are finally ready to drawthe blush on the alpha. You have the Sim face picture as a guide to where thecheeks are and therefor it will be much easier to know where to draw the blush.After you are done you can test your new blush on your Bodyshop model by savingthe new alpha picture. But first you have to hide the face picture layer sothat it won’t show in your alpha picture. Hiding layers are done this way.

Just click on the eye to the left of the layer, the eyewill disappear and the layer will then be hidden. To bring back the layer, youdo the same thing. Click on the empty box, and the eye and the layer willappear again.

       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yournew alpha picture that you will overwrite the old one should look somethinglike this. If you want a stronger color just go back and make the white in thealpha picture stronger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another tip is that you don’t just have to paint theblush on the cheek area, but can paint on the chin, forehead etc. You can alsochange the color for those areas on the color picture. I’ll show you below.

 

Final Result!

If you think the result is OK, you can start makingrecolor’s, and perhaps even decide to share them with others by uploading themto TSR. J

Resources

There are tons of resources out there, but I decided toshare some of my favorite links to sites where you can find really good make-uppictures. A good picture is 50% of the final result since you will use it as abase. In each tutorial you will get one link where you can find lots of goodmakeup pictures. 

This tutorials special link tip is: Makeuptalk  -   http://www.makeuptalk.com/forums/gallery/browseimages.php?c=29

At this site you can find tons of beautiful makeuppictures that makeup artists etc. has uploaded to the site!