I've started learning to do my own pooklet recolors of hair. I'm using the base textures supplied by pooklet herself, and the curves made for Gimp. Dark/bright areas are in the same places as they were on the original recolor. I used the original texture and covered it with pooklet base textures (I believe this one is base 3. I also tried 1 and it looked pretty much the same), so I made sure to copy the "layout" of the original recolor.

While I think the recolor itself is nice, it doesn't look pooklet to me. I had a look at the hairs I have that are pooklet, and my colors are not quite the same. But then those don't look pooklet to me either. Apparently the hairs I define as pooklet are not, according to how I've sorted them. So now I'm all confused, and would appreciate input from others who use pooklet.

I only use 10 of the pooklet textures, so I've only done those. Pictures are named after color. I forgot to include time bomb and mail bomb, but those look fine in my opinion so I'll skip them for now.

It's hard to explain, but I think what "bugs" me is that it's not as shiny as I think pooklet should be. It feels like it's a few steps too far towards Maxis. I also feel the difference between volatile and incendiary is weirdly small. And depth charge doesn't have the shade of brown that I think it should, the colored areas are brighter and the dark areas are very dark.

What do you guys think? Does it look pooklet to you?

I'm still new to hair retexturing, and while I use a different texture, I like some of Pooklet's colors. The colors may be a bit off, but that could be the way GIMP curves work vs. Photoshop actions. After all, Pooklet created her own actions, whereas someone else created the curves. I am using PS, and sometimes when the color looks off, I adjust the brightness/contrast and/or hue/saturation.

I think, though, that there may be a related issue with the texture scale. You shouldn't stretch out a texture for width very much, because it will give you less detail and shine. So if the alpha has a very wide section of hair, you should take several texture swatches to cover it to keep the scale small, instead of stretching your texture out to fit it. Does that make sense, or will a picture help?

[I give you props for using GIMP. I tried very hard to make that work for me, and ended up buckling down and paying for PS. Which is a beast, but I was able to find a lot more resources/tutorials out there to help me in all my noobishness.]

I know the textures look different if stretched in any direction, that's how I made the peggy recolor I have uploaded here. I didn't alter the base textures in any way. All I did was copy paste, and puzzle it together so that it matched the original. I guess curves vs actions could explain part of it, but that should only matter in terms of color. It wouldn't explain the shine. Or would it?

I was thinking that the texture size might be what's making them look maxis-match to you, as well. Have you tried increasing the texture size, then applying the same size pooklet texture onto the new texture, so the strands are smaller relative to the whole image?

Rather than focus on what I think it looks like, what does it look like to you? Would you say that is pooklet?

Interesting technique Nysha. I'll have to try that. But I wonder, I would have to shrink it back to original size before using it, right? I'm also not sure how I would actually recolor it. Width is not a problem, since one can just use several textures in a row. But height is more problematic, since dark/bright areas need to end up in the same place. Does stretching it height-wise not affect it in the same way as width?

I tried to resize the texture, but only the width. I first tried 1024->1824, but didn't feel it made much difference. So I tried 1024->3024, and this time I notice more difference between the different textures. But I don't know how much difference it made to the MM-feel.

Volatile


Depth Charge


EDIT: I realize I wasn't very clear. I made the alpha wider, filled it with texture, and then shrunk it back to original size.

That looks nice. I only just now noticed your post.

Pretty, really pretty, that is what I think

Thanks for the input. After fiddling around with different widths and stuff, I actually like the original, so I think I'm going to leave it be and upload it as it is, at some point