#100DaysofSim - Day 1/100

 First day of my new own 'challenge' (and it's going to be one as soon as my work turns me into a vegetable after a long day)! Kinda exciting actually. This is based on MisterS' tutorial: making a tattoo.

I decided to remake my old TS3 Tribal Dragon tattoo for the TS4. Since I had kept the file it was not that much of a problem. I believe it was one of my earliest creations for The Sims 3 back in 2011, still available on TSR and now on Sim File Share for instant download.

I tried creating it yesterday and it ended up turning my sim white in game when her skin has a much warmer tone, it was a huge difference. While it was somewhat pretty, I was not trying to make a default skin. So I am going back to the beginning!

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I should have saved it after I edited it originally, it is my third time now, but it's not that much of a problem. Some parts are really small, but the Magic Wand Tool does a good work out of that one.

I am working using CS5.

Unlike the tutorial, I chose to clone a back tattoo that was covering a lot of the back area, like mine does. Yesterday when I checked mine in game, it was going up towards the neck and covering some of the shoulders too (see above in game picture). 

The wings are visible under even without changing the opacity. The placement seems good to me, I will have to check in game but for now it will do.

"On both the image layer and the alpha layer get white and black paint respectively and paint over both the images to make a blank canvas to start with." Since it is commenting a picture where the cloned tattoo is still showing, it kinda threw me off a bit. 

But if I just delete the original and make a new layer that I fill with white and ...

... in the channels make a new one, which creates an alpha. Then we get our 'blank canva', right?

Okay, moving on.

"Now for the alpha layer: 

Either drag layer 2 onto the new layer tab, or right click on it and duplicate layer so you have layer 2 copy as shown. Make sure you are on layer 2 copy and click the fx tab. In the pop up window click on color overlay. The layer style window will pop up. select white by clicking on the little box next to blend mode then click OK."

So I right clicked my layer to duplicate it, then  I used the Blending Options (fx) to get the color overlay and make it white. So far so good.

"At this stage your tattoo will disappear (or nearly), don't worry its meant to, it will back in a minute. Click back on layer 2 and click on create new layer. Click on layer 3 that you just made and bucket fill it black."

"Click on the layer 2 copy effects layer. Select all (ctrl a) then edit copy merged (or shift ctrl c). Then click on the alpha layer and edit paste (or ctrl v). And there is a perfectly placed alpha layer."

Okay I have a problem with that one, but since the shortcuts don't work I will assume we do not have the same version of Photoshop and do it my way.

So after making sure that the layer with my tattoo with the transparent background is hidden I merge the black layer with the tattoo colored in white.

Then I copy that layer and paste it in the alpha channel before deleting the layer. I now have my tattoo with the alpha channel.

"Go back to the layers tab and delete or hide the top two layers and we are good to go for now. Go to layer and flatten image, save it as a dds and import it back into s4s."

I believe it is where I got my problem from. On his picture the white background is still there and I did question it since the original tattoo had a transparent one, so I left it. Hence the white sim. So now if I delete that white layer and only keep the tattoo it should work. Flattening brings back the white background for some reason so I will just save the file as it is.

Sims4Studio camera and I had a bit of a struggle but I won in the end. The position and tattoo itself seem alright to me. 

Changes:

• I have enabled it for male too, since the original was only for female. 
• Added retail uniform, witches and Batuu.
• Disabled for random.

Now to test it in game!

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No more white skin! Ravness had a little temporary 'makeover', I will need at some point to get some of my sims back with short hair like Melissa maybe...

Anyway, it worked perfectly!

I tried a koi tattoo at the same time, and there again I am quite pleased with the result. There is a third tattoo that I used for myself only for a sim called Asami, I am going to see if I can get it to work as the original did as it was on her upper arm, not on her back.

Okay girl, thank you, time to put some clothes back on. Love you Ravness! ♥

The dragon on the arm is probably a little too bright, but maybe somebody else beside me will want to use it so I am sharing it. If  it bothers me too much in game I will try and modify it.

As a note, the tribal dragon tattoo has a lot of white lines when used on a dark skin. I tried scaling the alpha down but since the lines are so thin, half of it was deleted. I actually like it like this, it looks like an entirely new design!

This is how we are supposed to fix that problem:

If when you test in the game there is a white line surrounding the tattoo, just go back to your alpha layer to select the white part of the tattoo. Using the magic wand would be a challenge on that one but easy enough with one more compact like the Koi one. 

Select > Color Range > Click on the white part to select the color

Select > Modify > Contract > 1 pixels

Select > Inverse > Use brush with black color to go over the edges and change those white lines to black.

Here is the post for the tattoos!