Sims 3:CTU Guide Designing
This page is under construction :) - daluved1
Contents |
Commitment
Preliminary
Find a CAS Part
Before adding any designs to your CAS part, you have to chose which mesh you wish to use.
- Parameters - Use the age, gender and type parameters to dial up a mesh category. Then select the mesh you want to use from the drop down list. The thumbnail to the right of the screen allows you to preview the mesh.
- Quick Find - Once you dial up the age, gender and type, Quick Find allows you to scroll through thumbnails to pick which mesh you wish to use.
Part Details
Part Details is for information purposes only. More advanced users can use this list to help locate specific files and details of the package.
Part Category
The Part Category tab allows you to change the categorization of the CAS part. Most of these are pretty self-explanatory.
Changing the age and/or gender of a CAS part can cause some pretty wacky results. So don't be shocked if you get something weird.
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Extended Category
| Valid for Maternity | Check if you want to allow pregnant sims to wear the CAS part. |
| Valid for Random | Check if you want townies to be able to wear the CAS part. |
| Is Hat | Check if the CAS part to be considered a hat. |
| Is Revealing | Check if the CAS part is considered to be revealing. |
| Hidden In CAS | Check if you want the CAS part to be hidden in Create-A-Sim. |
- Other
| Left Handed | ???? |
| Right Handed | ???? |
| Human | ???? |
Design
Designs are a collection of stencils, textures, and other pattern information grouped together. Each design appears as a new thumbnail in a row in Create-A-Sim. Adding multiple designs will put them all in the same row (scroll-box).
The following is simply a list and descriptions of what each file/texture does to the CAS part. To learn how to add/replace the file, follow the provided link.
Adding New Designs
By default a new design (Design #1) has already been started. To add another one, simply click Add New Design, and Delete Design to delete one. Remember to click the almighty Commit button before starting a new design.
Stencils
A stencil is a design that appears on top of the base texture of the CAS part. The stencil itself is not recolorable in Create-A-Sim.
Stencil Pool
The stencil pool is where you import any stencils you may have created.
- For more information on how to add a stencil see: Applying Stencils
Patterns
Patterns are the recolorable regions in Create-A-Sim. Here you can set the colors/patterns you want displayed on your CAS part by default.
- Enabled/Linked
| Enabled | Tick this to allow the different regions (defined with the mask) to be recolored. |
| Linked | ???? |
- Type
Sets the type of color or pattern you want to use. To change the color, click the little colored squares at the bottom of the screen.
| Solid | A solid color. |
| Pattern (Coloured) | ????. |
| Pattern (HSV) | ????
|
- Pattern Browser
You can use the Pattern Browser to browse through the in-game patterns.
Use the Import Custom Pattern button to add a custom pattern to the pattern pool. To view custom patterns you have to pick the "*" from the drop-down Category list.
- Tiling
Tiling allow you to change the number of patterns required to fill your CAS part. The default size is 4.0000,4.0000 which gives you 4 columns of 4 patterns each to fill your main texture (1024x1024 pixels).
- RGB Mask
The RGB mask under the patterns tab is used to build a pattern from scratch, that is only used for that specific design and will not show as a usable pattern in Create-A-Sim/Style.
- Specular
The pattern specular is used to give the pattern shiny/reflected effect. Only use this if you're using a custom RGB.
Logo
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Textures
| Base Texture | The base texture--sometimes called the multiplier---maps out what parts of the mesh are used (via the alpha layer) and it adds texture (wrinkles and folds) to the CAS part. |
| Clothing Ambient | The clothing ambient indicates lighting intensity of the CAS part. This is rarely used, even by EA, so most are left pure white. |
| Clothing Specular | The specular indicates the shininess or reflectivity of the CAS part. |
| Mask | The mask uses the Red, Green, Blue and Alpha channels to define the different regions (patterns) that are recolorable using the Create-A-Sim tool. |
| Overlay | An overlay is similar to a stencil except it can be placed anywhere, whereas a stencil is confined to the perimeter of the mesh. Necklaces that are attached to a clothing item are usually overlays. |
| Part Mask | ???? |
| Skin Ambient | The skin ambient is similar to the clothing ambient, except it indicates the lighting intensity on the skin itself. For the most part all default ambients are the same, so there's really no need to change it. |
| Skin Specular | Skin speculars are like clothing speculars, except they indicate the reflectivity/shininess of the skin itself. |
- For more information on how to replace a texture, see: Replacing Textures
Other Details
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Thumbnail
If you want your own custom thumbnail to display in Create-A-Sim, then import it here. It must be in .png format and 256x256 in width and height.
Meshes
(coming soon)
3-D Preview
(coming soon)
