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 be suitable for the particular wallpaper(unless fill in the area around the boundries). 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 otherwise materials in the program were used. The variations within the border are endless so what I will do here is give you the boundries for the borders along with a few simple ideas to get you started.

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)

These tutorials may be of interest and are optional

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

Mod The Sims - Tutorials for creating patterns...these are not create a pattern tutorials but a more indepth tutorial using graphic and other programs.

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. The top 32 pixels across the top of the wall is the ceiling area. This does not show in CAP but when in the game it cuts those 32 pixels off.

Placement specification is important in borders and can be achieved my using the w,h,x and y entries as follows:

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

An imported sticker is 256 x256 (not mandatory). 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 maintain image quality in some cases. Create a Pattern will resize the image automatically and it is quite a nice feature if you don't want or need 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.

Pattern Recognition and Placement on Walls

Once you have completed your pattern you will want to be able to identify it. Heres how - first of all take a look at the four corners of the worksheet. Each corner is a different colour but they are all the same size.

I saved this as a pattern and this is the Create a Style sample in your catalogue:

Note the placement of the tiles...The tile on the bottom right is on the upper left!! But at least now we know were to look for a paticular pattern. You can put an identifier such as a small square of your main border in the lower right hand corner (62x62). Only do this if you are not using the border for anything else.

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 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 specifications 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 = 192

Sticker Placement x = 128 y = 160

And here is the finished product:

Border 1 - In both paint and wallpaper

Two stickers are used in this wallpaper because it keeps the image well in proportion. These are Windows wallpapers that the program automatically resized from 1024 x 768...amazing! An identifier on the bottom right would be helpfulon this one or you can fill in the surrounding area to make it look nice on other items.

Thank you to Leroysgirl for the specifications:

Sticker size:

w = 128 h = 96

Next: Border 2

Sticker placement:

x = 128 y = 145

2nd sticker:

x = 96 y = 145

And the finished product plus a another of the sunflower border: