I have been digging around to find a way to create my own custom tattoo location. I am currently using Expanded Tattoo by Twallan. Upon asking him, he pointed to CmarNYC. CmarNYC's mod is a core mod (which conflicts with AwesomeMod), but still it does not offer the tattoo location I need.

I have been searching for tutorials but most search result came out with custom tattoo building (often with the old TS3 where tattoo were built as an accessories).

Any help would be appreciated. I think I came up with a cool idea for a mod to contribute to MTS, I just need this to get it to work.

I can briefly describe the process I used:

1. Tattoo locations are defined in a CAS Part file just like clothing or accessories or the tattoos themselves. You can extract them from Fullbuild0.package - for example, S3_034aeecb_00000000_0fdf67e5d36c7979_uuTattooBack.casp, S3_034aeecb_00000000_8d202e46cc28485a_uuTattooShoulderR.casp, etc., along with the corresponding xml file: S3_034aeecb_00000000_0fdf67e5d36c7979_uuTattooBack.xml, S3_034aeecb_00000000_8d202e46cc28485a_uuTattooShoulderR.xml, etc. (I suspect the xml files aren't necessary but I did them anyway.)

2. Make up a name for your new location. Using a hex editor for the CASP and a text editor for the xml, modify them to change the daeFileName and the location name at the end of the xml to your new name. Look for the first definitions of "Lower Right" and "Upper Left", and change them to the coordinates of your location. The coordinates map onto the sim the same way as skin textures - you can take any skin texture and find the coordinates, measured from the top left, with a graphics program that will show you the coordinates of your cursor. (GIMP works fine.)

If you use the location CASP as is, you will move the game location to your new location. If you want a brand-new location, you have a few more steps. (Heh.)

Use the new location name as a base for a new Instance ID for the location, first of all.

In order for the new location to show up as a button in CAS and actually do something when you click it, you need a core mod of UI.dll and some modding of the tattoo layout file - S3_025c95b6_00000000_f2d661e40c4a404b_CASTattoo.layout. You have to add code defining a new button in the layout and the core, add code defining the instance ID of the tattoo location file, add code linking the button click to the location ID, make an icon for the button, and (if you want to do it right) add code defining how to move the CAS camera when the button is clicked. If you're interested in doing that, I can provide more complete instructions.

Twallan took my core code (with permission, of course) and somehow magically made it non-core, I suspect by finding the methods and objects I had changed and dropping them into his modded UI. He uses my version of the layout and my other supporting files.

Long story short, unfortunately it's not a matter of just making a few files defining a new location, like making a new facial slider. I wish it was.

I noticed his locations are slightly different than yours. Can I bring your location files over (without the core mod) and get a new location?

Here is what I have in mind: seeing how tattoo works so good now (it goes with the skin in all clothing set including nude), I am thinking it is time to use use tattoo as ... pubic hair.

Ahem, I guess because I am Asian, we are grossed out at completely shaved hair, and also grossed out at "natural hair" (at least the trendy and fashion conscious girls do). So while waxing is popular in the western world, in the east, we like have ... hair styles.

I used to be able to edit any preferred skin file to have something I like. But with the prospect of having so many custom skin to choose from, it is really hard to edit each and every skin file. I thought of this a year ago, but back then we didn't have tattoo, and nobody knew how to access the "nude outfit". Now, it seems possible, since looking at Twallan's tattoo locations, I don't see why we cant have another location ... right there. I am able to produce the "tattoo" images, but I am not too sure about the actual location.

I am recently much inspired by Japanese anime, so my sims seem to have colorful hairs. I am trying to make their hair match.

I also had thought about using tattoos as pubic hair. It's kind of perfect - you can recolor and change opacity for whatever look you want. But you don't need a new location for this - use the full body tattoo that's already in my and Twallan's mods. (BTW, I'm not aware of his mod changing any locations. Possibly he's not using the same default sizes I am? I'll have to take a look when I get the chance.) Expanded to full size, the full body tattoo would cover the affected area plus you could use it for nipples, chest and body hair, etc.

Actually I tried that already. I haven't been able to make up the image files yet, but I did a quick test by exploring all the tattoo locations and the scale/zoom feature. The full body tattoo seems promising, except ... it is not centered. I used the heart shape and one other shape to see if I can place a heart to make it like a "cute pubic tattoo". It was impossible for me to put it right in middle.

Just tested as I still have CAS opened: the center of the full body tattoo is to sim's left thigh, in fact it is beyond the hand (not on body). You can see this by trying to zoom the tattoo.

Update: another location is more promising, under "Chest" > "Lower Belly". Still, the heart shape zooms in to a point between the naval and the crotch, but at least it is symetrical. I suppose that can work, but I doubt it will come out too well because I have to stretch the tattoo pretty big so part of the tattoo will touch the crotch. If this is the real image file, it will no doubt be blurry. Pubic hair is actually rather hard to draw with very delicate thin lines, stretching like this can be a problem.

The full body tattoo is not centered on the crotch because tattoos are mapped the same way as skin textures. The full body tattoo covers the entire mapping and the crotch doesn't fall in the center. My idea was to use a skin texture as a guide for painting a pubic hair tattoo in the correct place. It would be worn at full size so you wouldn't get the resizing artifacts. If what you're trying to do is get a resizable pubic hair, then you'd need a new location that's set up to be centered on the crotch.

I didn't think of that. Let me start working on something.

Off topic: I am trying to convert some of the old skins using your latest version of Skinninator. I found old a lot of old skins are just IMG files with no tone, normal map, scalps, etc... so what is the bare minimum requirement for skin to be compatible with LN's muscle definition slider? Would my skin look better if I add all those normal maps and scalps in?

If there's nothing at all except image files, it's a default replacement. If there's a TONE file - not the tone ramp or icon which are .dds and .png but a .TONE or .skintone, it's a non-default.

A custom non-default skin only needs the textures that are modified from the current default skin. (Which could be custom also.) If a file isn't in the custom non-default, the game uses the default file. You could have only one image or just a tone ramp. Being compatible with LN's slider requires only that the TONE file be the new version format. Whether your skin would look better with everything depends on what you're trying to do - usually people don't modify normals and scalps so there's no need to include them.

Ah, simple enough explanation. I worked more on TS2's skin and I had hoped TS3 offered a bit more than a simple bitmap texture. Oh what I meant is ... since I see you include options for scalps and normal maps, I wonder if we should take advantage of them. To add extra texture on skin, or to even adjust the shine (reflective to environment). All skins we have out there just have painted texture, some looks so "flat" and "fake".

Although I think this may interfere with EA's muscle tone sliders, which essentially is a Normal Map slider.

Certainly you should modify the speculars and normals to alter shine and bumpmapping if that improves the look of your custom skin. Skininator includes all those options to give people complete flexibility but most modders stick to the basic skin image as you said. The LN muscle and cleavage sliders are separate normal maps, and you can modify those as well. A skin .tone or .skintone file is a collection of pointers to the entire array of Material (texture) files, speculars, normals, and overlays for all the ages and genders. What Skininator does is construct that file with pointers changed to the modified files loaded into it while the other pointers remain the default. Since the muscle and cleavage normal maps are separate and overlaid on all the other stuff, there's no interference. (Unless you put muscles on the texture or in the basic bumpmaps and end up with two sets of muscles!)

I tried to reply to your PM but your mailbox is full.

Sorry, I need to clear that out. You can reply here, I just dont want to do a double post so I had to private message you.

I really need to read more into how to create normal maps. I wasn't aware of a "cleavage slider" by EA? Or you mean the bust size slider? To mean, cleavage is "the crack" between two breasts (in which most women love to use anything they can to squeeze 2 breasts together for a deep cleavage look between two full looking breasts). The only cleavage slider I know is from Delphy, which essentially moves the breasts closer or apart from each other.

Anyway, back on topic, I am giving it a lot of thought on how I should approach my "tattoo". I think my best bet is to mimic male's facial hair. Not the full beard, but those closed shaved ones. What do you think?

Oh now I remember, when I mention "shine", I think of your avatar portrait, a sim with skin shinny as polished metal. Which type of files control that?

Here's my reply to your PM:



Without seeing it I'm not 100% sure what you mean, but will try to answer. Probably the problem is that the alpha doesn't work the same way in tattoos as in other applications. It's not transparency, it's treated as a fourth color channel. Transparency is controlled by how close to black (value of 0) the color is. If you're doing solid red in the color channel and 50% (value of 128) in the alpha channel, you'll get solid red overlaid with whatever color the alpha is set to. There's no true transparency in a tattoo image; you have to fade the color to black at the edges.

While I haven't tried it, IMO using a tattoo for something as detailed as hair will be pretty tricky - you'd have to draw the hairs in the red channel with a solid black background, and do the fine shading in the alpha so it's overlaid. You could try taking your image which I assume is the hair in the red channel and run it through Tattooinator Convert, which will automatically convert the shading to the alpha, but if you're relying on transparency that may not help.

BTW you can edit just one color channel in GIMP - in the layers and channels panel click on the other channels until only the red channel has a blue bar. The tricky part is editing only the alpha.

If you'd consider posting the image or part of it long enough for me to grab it, I'd like to take a look and see if I have more ideas.

And back to this thread: 'Cleavage' is another normal in the LN-format skins, just like the muscle definition normal. It adds shadowing around the breasts on females, and I assume it's linked to the EA breast size slider although I've never noticed much of an effect.

Facial hair is the appearance you want, but the beard textures work a different way from tattoos; from what I can make out they're basically transparency maps on the sim's hair color.

The shiny sim in my avatar uses a skin with the specular maxed out to white and all the lighting/shine controls in the TONE file maxed out. (You have to use the Skininator TONE file editor or a hex editor to adjust the controls.) The image is tweaked for more contrast, so I cheated a little. I've been working on and off to get an uploadable version of those 'metallic' skins.

IMO you should ask the mods to move this thread to the CAS parts forum - it really doesn't belong in the modding section and you'd get more help and ideas there. I think you can just change the header to request a move?

Agree, this discussion is more appropriate to CAS parts. Moved. =)

CMar,

thanks for your ongoing creations.

Using your instructions, I tried to alter one of "your" tattoo locations (uuTattooBreastUL from the XCAS mod locations file) by changing the Values (UpperLeft) 0.3530/0.0580 (LowerRight) 0.4190/0.1920 to (UL) 0.3530/1.280 and (LR) 0.4190/2620 - as far as i understand it should displace the tatt by 70pix downward relative to the body texture.

I also removed all other CC but the NRaas No-CD and deleted the 4 cache files in the "Documents" subfolder, and started a new sim in CAS.

Unfortunately, the Tattoo seems not to have moved at all, though it should partially overlap the "rib" location.

Changing other locations was equally unsuccessfull.

Do I have to change other coordinates as well (e.g. Layer1 upLeft/LowRight)?

Thanks
Torsten

It should have, yes, and you shouldn't have to change the layer coordinates. Did you change the coordinates in both the .caspart and the .xml? (I do both although the .caspart is probably the only one that makes a difference.) Did you replace the .caspart and .xml in the locations package - in other words, are sure you don't have both in the game? Did you delete your cache files?

Thanks CmarNYC, you are so helpful.

I am struggling a lot IRL (temp job, job searching/interview for a real job, school, playing TS3, modding TS3) so I can't always come back with a good result within reasonable amount of time after you offered me advices. Just so you know.

I have been using TSR Workshop to extract a base "beard moustache with thin stubble" for studying. TSR workshop shows 5 different texture files, assuming to be considered as channels, and to be overlaid. I am trying to get this texture to somehow appear as tattoo. Haven't got that far yet. Are you saying even using facial hair texture for tattoo is not going to cut it either?

Oh, so the "cleavage" you talk about is of LN feature. I don't think it is a slider, right? I notice the "shadow" under breasts and always think it is part of the skin texture. But since you mentioned it, it may link to the "breast slider" as the only way for EA to measure how thick the shadow should be. Don't I learn everything new everyday?

Anyway, I will see if I can attempt this "shinny skin" as you said. Your download of skinninator includes all the materials I need to work with right? I downloaded them all but haven't really looked at them yet, as it doesn't always make sense just looking at them. It would be nice to make a custom skin silver and shinny, we can come out with a cyborg race.

I will upload something for you to look at whenever I have it. Thanks in advance

@tomomi1922: Believe me, I understand about RL time demands! That's why I tend not to do any substantial modding during the work week. As for the beard textures - they certainly can't be directly used as a tattoo. Probably there's some way to convert them but I don't know how. And I have a shiny silver skin myself already, along with copper, gold, etc. - just have to get it together to take more pics and upload a submission. You may want to do your own version, of course - for example mine uses the default materials textures so a completely colorless silver skin would use desaturated base textures.

@meyomey: Sorry, I missed where you said in your first post that you deleted your cache files. The casp and xml you uploaded look fine to me - when I get home tonight I can try them in my game.

Cmar,

Success!!! After deleting the XMLs (leaving only the CASPs in the loc file), altering the CASPs with a Hex Editor works like a charm and I can move around the tattoos.

Thanks for your help!

Good, glad it's working!

Hello again, I have been trying to home in the custom tattoo to exact location by creating my tattoo on the platform of a skin file and have the tattoo where exactly I want it (the crotch area). But upon using this tattoo with "full body" tattoo location, it doesn't home in exactly the crotch no matter how much I try to scale it. I wonder if you know how to create a tattoo that will home right into the crotch when placing it, using either "Full Body" or "Lower Stomach" tattoo locations?

Regard my last private message to you, I somehow unable to find the post again. I think that tutorial was not made by you but by someone else using your program. Can you create a simple tattoo file, even .png is fine, ready to be imported to Tattooninator. And in this .png file can 2-3 different colors with different alpha settings. Like setting red to 100%, blue to 75% and green to 50%. So when I recolor these channels, whatever goes to red channel will display its true color, while blue gets 75% of the color mix with 25% skin color, and green 50-50 mix of color + skin.

I keep on trying but the alpha never came out right. So I assume I did something wrong with the alpha editing.

I don't know if the Lower Stomach location covers the crotch area - will have to look when I get home tonight.

For Full Body, you should be able to get it in the right spot by using the skin file as a template to locate the tattoo. In-game you'll probably have to scale it to full size - even with the default set to 100% I find I always have to scale up a little. Can you upload your tattoo image so I can take a look?

Tattooinator will only convert .dds files. You should be able to convert a .png to .dds with GIMP or Photoshop. Then Tattooinator automatically does what you're talking about - tones down the green and blue to try to duplicate the original color balance in your image. It's not perfect, though. There's always a dimming effect on blended colors.

Sorry for the double post, but I've gotten more interest in a custom tattoo location for the crotch, and maybe for nipples. I've decided to look into it this weekend, and possibly include them for the next version of the tattoos core mod. If I go ahead, I'll also contact Twallan and ask him to update the tattoo extension for Master Controller as well. A lot depends on whether I can hide the locations for those who don't want them in their game, since I really don't want to maintain two versions of the mod.

Sorry, I really meant to say .dds file instead of .png. I don't really mind if it is not perfectly 50% or 75% alpha, I just wanted alpha to work right, which doesn't in my work.

Yep, I have a Star located right in a would be crotch area in a huge 1024x1024 .dds file corresponding to the size of the skin template. However, using Full Body, the Star doesn't fall right into where I want it. But it falls somewhere below the belly button. And scaling it will cause the Star to move diagonally from top left to bottom right, very frustrating.

I think I am going to have to move the Star (which I use as a tattoo placeholder for testing purpose) lower in the template until I get the right spot.

I am glad you are going to look into custom location, this should make life much easier for me.

One other thing, can your core mod that expands the tattoo area be used in conjunction with Error Trap and AwesomeMod? They are both core mods, but the work together.

My tattoo core mod does not override the same core file as Error Trap and should be compatible. It is definitely NOT compatible with AwesomeMod. If you wan to use Awesome with the extra tattoos, use Twallan's Master Controller with his Tattoo Extension, which is based on my core mod.

The reason I asked is .... I am using Twallan's Tattoo Extension. If you are creating new tattoo locations, I am not sure if I can make it work with Twallan's version.