Hey. After a while, I'm taking another swing at this retexturing thing, taking something that I'd thought would be simple but, in the end, wasn't.

Two problems that I have been unable to resolve on my own:

1. 4th mask channel. I used the tutorial http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php...ic_Mask_Editing. However, when I saved the result as an DXT1 Alpha 1 file, the fourth channel simply covers all the other channels. It's only when I save it as a regular DXT5 file that the alphas come back, while completely ignoring the fourth mask. The file I have uploaded has the DXT1 alpha 1 file, just so you can see it being borked. There was a thread on this in the forums where this was addressed, but the problem was never resolved.

2. In both pictures, you can see the bane of my life right now: THE BUTTONS ON THE RIGHT SIDE. I cannot, for the life of me, edit those things out. The only place I can see where they might be hiding is the Diffuse and Specular Maps on the Meshes tab, which... I have no clue how to edit (unlike the normal map), and I was having trouble finding a specific post that wasn't going into meshing itself.

I am sorry if it turns out I missed a critical step someplace it getting these to work- even with all the frantic forum searching I did, I could have easily missed something very simple.

Maybe its time to read a few tutorials on how to create a package, this one isn't working.
It has no meshes.

Another thing, that top doesn't have buttons on the right in the first place so not sure wat your trying to adchieve here.

a 3 recolor outfit uses DXT1withoutalpha while a 4 color outfit uses DXT5withinterpolatedalpha.

At first I was weirded out about how the meshes didn't carry over, but there seems to be a weird bug that happens when I save a copy elsewhere using CTU. It was only when I made a direct copy of the file that worked outside of CTU and placed it elsewhere that everything ported over. Everything seems to be working now; not sure why that happened in the first place. I'll just blame it on having a x64 system and be done with it. Thanks for pointing that out.

As for the alphas, that explains it! The tutorial should be changed to say that- not sure who is able to do that, however. It turns out that when I saved it as a DXT5, I didn't realize it was working because the mask was on a part that was hard to see. I had it solved the entire time! The new file has it in an obvious place- I'll be fiddling with the positions later. Thanks for your help!

The buttons are the last thing I can't figure out. Maybe with the first two problems taken care of this will become easier. I've included a picture to better illustrate what's going on. The EA buttons are the ones that refuse to go away and/or be colored- there's ones on the cuffs as well.

I may have missed something in trying to rebuild this back up, so thank you for being patient with me.

The EA buttons are on the Overlay texture, replace them with your buttons if you want them to be not-recolourable too. Also change the position on the Alpha layer.
If you want them recolourable you have to put them on your mask.

Thank you so much! That fixed it! While I have edited the overlay in the past, I never thought to check the overlay's alpha. Everything's right as rain now.

And to make your search complete, you can not use save as on a package that is linked to custom meshes, you will lose the links to them.
Use save when updating your package.

*Thank you*. That explains it all perfectly.