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Mad Poster
Original Poster
#1 Old 7th Aug 2015 at 10:24 PM
Default Figuring out which parts of alpha/recolor is what
Hey guys!

I'm working on modifying a dress alpha to remove the sleeves, and I'm driving myself crazy. I know how it works, white is texture visible and black is not. What's giving me trouble is the fact that where a texture is displayed on the mesh follows no rhyme or reason, and all of my tricks are just making me more confused. The texture itself is much too dark and uniform to give any clues, and placing colored lines on it (or blacking out parts of alpha) is not helping because the texture appears to stretch in weird ways, and I'd need too many colors and lines to actually figure this out.

I could have sworn I've read something once upon a time, on viewing how the alpha/texture covers the mesh, but I can't find it. There's got to be an easier way than the trial-and-error-color-lines I've been doing so far. Does anyone know a tutorial or thread somewhere that shows how to do that? Or have some helpful advice on how to proceed?

Creations can be found on my on tumblr.
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 8th Aug 2015 at 6:29 PM
You could look at the actual texture in SimPE, which is a PNG file with transparency (rather than the two BMP files that Body Shop separates the texture and alpha into). Then you might be able to better see where the texture begins and ends, especially if it's dark. (Basically, you just open up the recolour in SimPE and then look at the texture. You can export it from there if you want, as well.)

The other thing I would suggest is to look at the UV map. That will show you exactly where the texture is being place on the mesh... but it involves using SimPE and MilkShape (or another UV mapping program). Alternately, you could find some nice person to extract the UV map for you, so you could see where the texture should go. (If you're not familiar with UV maps, do a little research. They're quite helpful. There's even a thread here on MTS that contains all the UV maps for the base game clothing... but that probably won't help you much since I'm guessing you're working with a custom mesh. Have a look at it, anyway, here; it'll help give you an idea of what a UV map is and how it can help you with the placement of your textures.)
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#3 Old 8th Aug 2015 at 10:29 PM
Thank you I'm not too familiar with MilkShape, but I guess maybe it's time to get familiar. I did look at the actual texture, but the placement isn't following regular logic. It is indeed a custom mesh, but I'll go check it out and see if it's worth figuring out.

Creations can be found on my on tumblr.
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