This tutorial is for users, who have already gathered experience in making new textures for Sims 2 meshes. To make it easier, it's good to have a preview of your retextures, to see how they will look on the mesh in game. One way is checking the retexture in SimPE by selecting the MMAT (Material Override) and click on Preview. However, this doesn't work for all meshes and the preview picture is small. A better way is using UV Mapper Pro.
1. Create a new folder on the desktop or somewhere else. Put a copy of the package file you want to retexture in it. Open the package by double click, or by opening it in SimPE (not with Object Workshop!).
This is how my customized SimPE looks like, so don't worry if yours looks different:
2. Choose "Plugin View" and select "Geometric Data Container (GMDC)". In "Resource List" select the line.
3. When you click on "Preview" you get to see the mesh with its original textures. Select the parts you want to see by ticking or unticking them. The package we have here has two groups: the groundshadow and the model. Sometimes the model has two texture groups (subsets) and you have to retexture them separately (e.g. the wood of a chair and the cushion) which is meant for mix & match options, or for different material quality (opaque and transparent, shiny and dull).
You're not going to retexture the shadow, therefore untick it. We're going to export now, so tick the model part you want to retexture and click "Export" (if there are subsets, you must do this step for each part).
4. A window pops up with a file name. Save it to your folder (it's an .obj file, which can also be imported to a 3D modelling program). You might need the original texture image(s), so go to "Resource Tree" and select "Texture Image (TXTR)". In "Resource List" select the line(s) and export the image(s) the same way you do when retexturing.
5. Now close SimPE and open UV Mapper Pro. Go to "File", select "Open Model" and open your exported .obj file. A window will pop up called "Statistics". It gives you some infomation about the model (or model part), e.g. facets = polycount. Click OK.
6. To the right you see the untextured model and to the left its mapping, called texture template. If the model has two subsets, you can only see one part at a time. You can't see both parts together, which is a minus. (Well, actually you
can see both parts if you exported both subsets in SimPE ticked the same time, but then both texture maps will be seen together in preview.)
Go to "Texture" tab and choose "Load". Open the texture you exported in SimPE or the new retexture you already made. Now you get to see the textured model and template.
7. You might know the problem of not knowing what is what. You see a map with textured squares, rectangles or other shapes, but sometimes you have no idea how to retexture each part. It's all trial and error and time consuming. Here you can select each area and see it's corresponding part.
Select "Rectangular Marquee Tool" and use it on the map. This is just for testing purposes, so make sure you don't change anything with the mapping, because you will export the original map later (or do it now!). If you happen to make a mistake, you can always undo it under Edit tab.
With the tool you can select each part of the object and find out what is what.
8. To load new or edited textures, you click "Texture" tab and select "Load"; to clear the map and model from textures, select "Clear".
9. Sometimes it might be useful to have the original texture template, especially if you want to add shading with Photoshop (or any other image editing program). To export it, click "File" tab and select "Save Template". In the pop-up window you can choose the size (default is 1024 x 1024). It's best to choose the same size as the mesh texture, but with retexturing you're also free to change the texture size, so it doesn't matter. You can do them 1024x1024, or 512x512, or 256x256, or 128x128, or 64x64, or 32x32, but also 1024x512, or 512x1024, or 512x256, or .... you get the idea.
So, type in a size and click OK. The template will be saved in .bmp format. Open it in your image editor and apply textures (of course, you can also take the original package texture image for this). If you leave UV Mapper open, you can now quickly check each step.
Proceed with making the retexture package as you are accustomed to, once you're happy with the result.
Now that you have acquired UV Mapper Pro, maybe your next big step is learning how to mesh?
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