First try at reskining

[Kali]

I tend to make an alpha channel by cloning one of the colour channels ( drag one onto the small icon at the foot of the layers pallette ) - usually the darkest one - and then adjusting it from there.

The brighter the alpha channel is, the more ambient light colour gets added to the texture colour, so the darker you need to make the texture. Don't try using real colours, they will nearly always turn out too bright; as harry said, taking 25% off the brightness is a good rule of thumb. If you do it as an adjustment layer on top of everything that will make your white text a bit grey ( which is sometimes what you want anyway ), so usually I adjust the texture colours or use an adjustment layer as a clipping mask if I can.

[PapaXpress]

Few things.

Thanks for all your support on this. The information here is probably invaluable to all first timers like me. The PPRR Tuscan Red is much closer to what I needed. The brightness reduction also worked, but I had to back it out since I also had to include a b/w layer that had many of the rib detailing for the ends. Finally, I discover that PSE 6/7/8 does not expose the Alpha (or even color) channel. I did try a few hacks I found online, but none of them worked. I will either need to call up Adobe and demand they unlock my key for another install, upgrade my PSE to 9 or greater since it seems that it does support color channels, or move over to Gimp.

I now have a question about auto numbering. Is there a way you can have it choose a number within a series of numbers?

[Kali]

Meh, so it doesn't, that's a major pain. Well it supports alpha channels but you can't edit them. GIMP definitely has an editable primary alpha channel, but it likes it to contain transparency info and I've not seen how to unhook it from that yet ( not that I've tried hard ). You could just put up with that but it'd need some interesting mental agility to keep track of what the image is really doing.

As far as I know autonumbers just picks one at random from the autonumber dcsv - that's specified in the blueprint.

[PapaXpress]

Interesting...
http://forums.thesimsresource.com/showt ... p?t=378903

Gonna try this when the kids are sleeping.

[Kali]

Generally for saving specular information you don't need a detailed alpha channel; large patches of body are all the same shine more or less, so you can just do big blocks of grey. I would do that as a new layer on top of your texture so you can use the paint layers as a guide, and at the end select all, save it as a selection and then disable the layer, and export. Worth a try, anyway.

[PapaXpress]

Almost there...

SP_Gondola.jpg

The wife compared it to my SP equipment book, and mentioned that it could be a little more brown. I'll tinker some more.

Now what is the best way to packaging it? I have already removed some files so there is a dependency on the original, but I suspect I could remove more.

And then I will email Michael for permission to redistribute it.

[Kali]

There's no rules, it would be up to Michael how much you have to remove, but the usual rule of thumb is to take the geo files out. Make a RWP of the bits you want to keep, list all the files you need to copy and make a batch file to copy them.

[arizonachris]

Very nice, Papa. I think the color is fine (but of course, the wife is the expert, always! )