Create a Pattern - Wallpaper Borders

Level - Beginners/Intermediate/ Expert

The purpose of this tutorial is to create picturesque borders for your Sims wallpapers with the Create a Pattern program from Electronic Arts (CAP). It will give you a more in depth knowledge on how the placement of the "stickers" work. Most of the patterns/pictures will look great on other Sims items as well..some will only be suitable for the particular wall paper. In this tutorial a pattern will be created for border types of wallpaper in Sims 3. Most of the materials used were images downloaded from the internet. Some needed to be worked into a seamless texture. Otherwise materials in the program were used. The variations within the border are endless so what I am attempting to do here is give you the boundries for the borders along with a few ideas to get you started. One note is that your pattern in the game may not show up...you will have only the background colour/texture or partial pattern to identify it by.

So let's begin and I hope you have fun.

Requirements:

Create a Pattern [1] Available free for registered Sims 3 game owners. The basic interface is explained in the help documentation found in the upper left hand corner under the "?"

A Graphics program

Adobe Photo Shop (pay) Paint Net [2] (free) Gimp [3] (free)

Tutorial(s)

Mod The Sims - Seamless Textures[4] (optional)

These may be of interest for more complex patterns.

Mod The Sims - Sims 3 - Create - Tutorials-Create Patterns (Sorry I can't put in a direct link because a cross-scripting error) (optional)

The Workspace and Measurements

The inner middle square is your work area and measures 256 X 256 pixels. The wall repeat area depends on your pattern and its placement on the work area. The sticker sizes are 58 X 58 pixels and can be resized from the smallest 1 x 1 to 256 X 256. Placement is important in borders and can be achieved successfully by using the coordinate’s buttons:

w = width of the sticker h = height of the sticker

x = horizontal placement of the sticker on the worksheet y = vertical placement of the sticker on the worksheet

You can use a photo, graphic, clipart, windows wallpaper, actual wallpaper border images or any other type of image you have. You will need to down size( to maintin image quality) some images to required size of 256 x 256 pixels in your graphic imaging program. Create a Pattern will resize the image automatically and is quite a nice feature if you don't want to make any changes to the image.

Always test your patterns to make sure they are seamless. This is easily seen in the preview panel of CAP...zoom right into the wall to get a good close look.

The Wallpaper

These are the wallpapers we will be working with. The full flat wall has be included in order to show the pattern repeat on the full wall. You cannot make a one pattern that will fill the whole wall. Lengthwise the 256 square pattern you create is repeated three times but is the cutoff on the ceiling. Width wise there is a way to create a pattern that goes 1 & 1/2 times the width of the panel. There are other possibilities and if you have any additions to add please do...the more info the better.

Patterns

Paint and Wallpaper - Flat Wall with Dado

This one is good for a photo, painting or single image. It is one complete square so you will need a good seamless background. To create the effect I used you will need a background colour or sticker. For this one I used an image search of a square frame and of a swan. If you are using a sticker resize it to fill the entire middle square:

Sticker Size:

w = 256 h = 256

Sticker Placement

x = 128 y = 128

Center your picture sticker on the first sticker or background colour using the next layer:

Sticker Size

w = 128 h = 128

Sticker Placement x = 128 y = 128

Here is the finished pattern and a second one using just a background colour:

Paint: Wall with Dado,Border,Chair Rail & Baseboard Moulding Wallpaper: Wall with Dado,Chair Rail,Trim & Baseboard moulding.

Here is a good demonstration of the measurements and the sticker placement. The pattern used here is a actually an image of a quilt pattern. In photoshop I added a line at the top and on the bottom, resized it to 256 x 256.

In order to get the exact placement of the stickers start with the first sticker in the upper left hand corner. The coordinates are:

Sticker size w = 64 h = 64

Sticker Placement x = 32 y = 32

To place the next stickers perfectly:

Sticker #2: add 32 to x = 64 and y remains 32. Sticker #3: add 32 to x to equal 96 and y remains the same. Sticker #4: add 32 to equal 128 and y remains the same.

The next row the y changes to 64 and so on.

Once complete your pattern is like this and fits perfectly within the constraints of the wall:

Border Frieze

A full picture is used again in this one but it is sized with the program to be smaller to fit within the border. Distortion is the watchword here. There are plenty of images or patterns that will look quite nice. Three stripes in separate layers were done to fill in the part of the pattern that does not show up on the wall. I don't know why I did that...maybe it will look nice on another item in the game.

Sticker Size:

w = 256 h = 10

Sticker Placement x = 128 y = 12

And here is the finished product: