Sim-Antics Skins Tutorial

So you want to create your own skins and clothes huh? Well Electrinic Arts has created and supplied the tools for you. However they left out one small thing, the instructions. So without further ado, here is a brief tutorial created by Sim-Antics creator Jlui to help you get started.

First you need to start up the Sims 2 Body Shop tool. If you downloaded a copy of this tool prior to the The Sims 2 coming out, it is replaced with a newer version when you install The Sims 2. If you do not have a The Sims 2 Body Shop shortcut on your desktop then locate it from your Start menu.

For example:
In Windows XP click: Start > All Programs > EA Games > The Sims 2 > The Sims 2 Body Shop

From here you have two choices; Build Sims or Create Parts. Build Sims allows you to create new Sims and package them to use in the game just as you do when you create a new family within the game. For our purpose, we are going to create (or alter) the actual skins that can be chosen in the Build Sims mode.

NOTE: for the most part, creating a skin and creating clothing, hair, and makeup are the same process. Once you understand creating a skin, you can also create clothes and vice versa. There are several differences that need to be explained so a seperate tutorial is needed. Click here to learn how to create clothes.

Okay, so we chose to Create Parts. And now are given a choice of starting a new project or loading a saved project. Choose Start New Project.

You are next faced with what type of project you wish to create. Create Genetics allows you to create skins. For our tutorial this is what we will do.

Within Genetics, you can choose to create skin tone, eye color, or hair. We want to choose Skin Tone.

Thumbnails representing the skin tones you have in your game appear. The defaults are the four light to dark skin tones that come with the game. If you have created new skins or have downloaded any into your game they will also be listed. Custom skins will have the familar Sims asterisk in the upper right corner.

To the left of thumbnails you will see that some of your controls are now available for you to use such as gender and age. Click on the lightest skin tone then on the darkest and see the result on your test Sim. Lets get to the good stuff, choose the second to the darkest skin as I did above.

Once you have made a choice you then have the aiblity to export the textures to an image editor. What this means is that the program creates a directory and builds editable image files that you can open in most image editors. Go ahead and select the Export Selected Textures button.

A dialog box appears where you will want to give your new directory a name so that you can locate it with your image editor software. You will want to be specific here to make it easy to find in case you have hundreds of files to look through. As you can see I was not that creative :)

After you give it a name, click the check and it will create your new directory and export your new files into it.

VERY IMPORTANT!!! Do not close The Sims 2 Body Shop at this time. Leave it running and continue with the next steps. You'll learn why later.

So far this isnt hard at all. You now have a new directory (in my example, tan-nude) located in your documents. This tutorial will assume you have never been here before and get you there. Open up: My Documents > EA Games > The Sims 2 > Projects and you will see any new projects you have started including the new project we just created.

Double click the new project folder we created and you will see a mess of files. The names of these files are very long but meaningful and once you get used to them will be able to get to exactly which ones you need. To make things easier, choose the thumbnail view in (Windows XP) to see what you are working with. Here is a chart I worked up that brings meaning to the filenames:

Example: afbodycut~top~tdMatBaseTextureName.bmp

All you need to know right now is what this means: afbodycut

The first letter is the age:
a = adult
b = baby
c = child
e = elder
p = unsure
t = teen

The next letter is the sex:
f = female
m = male
(babies and children use the male body type)

The next word is the part:
body
face
hair

There are three body types for each sex in the adult, edler and teen ages:
cut = muscular
normal = normal muscle tone
soft = no real muscle tone

The normal body type for each sex is the default. So for our tutorial we are going to edit the afbodynormal~blah~blah~blah.bmp file. Right click on this file and then choose Open With and select your image editor of choice. If you do not have a third party image editor such as Photoshop, Fireworks, Paint Shop, etc. don't worry, if you use Windows (any version) you can edit images using the abicus of paint programs, MS Paint.

NOTE: Theoretically you can edit each of the different body types for each sex and each age for each skin tone, depending on what you are doing with the skin that could be an aweful lot of work.

The image below is reduced by 60% and is a screen print of the afbodycut~top~tdMatBaseTextureName.bmp image loaded in MS Paint. From here you can edit the image as you wish. If you are familar with image editing software and patient, through trial and error you will learn how to best create realistic skins.

Using a special font (simular to Wingdings) I created a tatoo effect just to illustrate this tutorial. You can however use airbrush tools to create shading effects, cut and paste parts of real images and blend them into these images, etc. A advanced tutorial will cover these techniques later.

NOTE: As of this writting, there is no way of editing the 3D files (a.k.a. mesh files) so it is not possible to give women for example larger/smaller brests, pertruding nipples, or males three dimisional genetalia of any sort.

When you make a change and want to see what it will look like, save your progress but do not close your editor.

Here is why it was important for you not to close The Sims 2 Body Shop before (you did not close it right?) You can go between the two programs, Body Shop and your image editor while you are working and check your progress. After you save your work, bring Body Shop up and click the Refresh Preview Sim button and it will refresh the Sims preview with your change.

As you can see, my tatoo now appears on my Sim (i moved the image up toward her navel because her bikini was hiding it in case you are wondering)

When you are satisfied with your skin you can import it into your game or share it with others. Simply click the Import to Game button and watch it convert your newly created files into The Sims 2 usable files.

If you want to share your new skin with others you will find the package file under: My Documents > EA Games > The Sims 2 > SavedSims. You will have to seach a little more this time because the program added a bunch of characters to the beginning of your file. You will find your new .package file with the name you gave it before. My example looks like this: 16ceb8a5_tan-nude.package.

Anybody could put this .package file in their My Documents > EA Games > The Sims 2 > Downloads folder and play with the skin you created.

And there you have it.