Advanced Specular Mapping Techniques & Step by Step Guide
Jun 12, 2015 13:42:22 GMT -5
ViVie., elenainthesims, and 5 more like this
Post by samanthagump on Jun 12, 2015 13:42:22 GMT -5
Let's have some fun with spec maps! This tutorial will go step by step to create one funky skirt, and also elaborate on how specs work, and how to edit them. Specs are what controls shininess on your CC. This requires that you have basic knowledge of using a 2D editor (in this case I am using Paint Shop Pro), and how to open/close, and move files. I will elaborate on the tutorial written by Untraditional Nerd: Basic Guide to RLES Specular Editing. If you are completely new to specs, please read that tutorial first.
Needed for this tutorial:
2D Editor - I'm using Paint Shop Pro
S4S Version 2.5.0.7 Joy (or newer)
Step 1: Editing the Specular Overlay
1. Fire up S4S and select the skirt shown above. We're going to make it's stripes shine differently.
2. Open the "warehouse" tab and select the RLES Image. This will make 2 images appear on the right side of the S4S screen. I have marked them with a "1" and "2."
Side 1 is the specular overlay. This controls the type of shine you have. It also contributes to where the shine goes, and how strong it is.
Side 2 is the specular mask. This controls primarily where the shine is visible, and also contributes to its strength.
Please note, if you want a blank spec, you need to also clear the spec mask (that is, turn the entire thing black,) or your item may interfere with other items the Sim is wearing. For example, this mask as shown above, if anther CC item overlaps on the texture space with it, it will override that area and kill the shine from the other item (since this spec has no shine at all in the specular map area (area 1). If this specular map had any texture, that texture would then override the other CC. Therefore, while leaving the spec mask in place, and having no shine designated in the spec map, would effectively give you a blank spec (no shininess) for your particular item of CC, it may (and likely will) interfere with other CC and kill its shine in the area designated by the spec mask, as well.
3. Export the spec and name it whatever you want (to use Paint Shop Pro, I save anything I can as a .png- this option is available by clicking on the line that says .dds, scrolling down to .png, and selecting it.
4. Hop back to the "Studio" tab and export the texture of the skirt as well. We want to make sure the spec lines up with the texture, and are going to edit our stripe shininess here.
5. Open up the texture you just saved in your 2D editor.
Take a look at the information in this mini tut: sims4studio.com/thread/1728/information-on-cas-specular-rles. Note how the shine changes when using different color settings of for the specular overlay.
We are going to turn this texture into the specular overlay. In order to see how a variety of colors work, let's have some fun.
6. First let's change the texture to black and white. This makes changing the colors easier. Click on Adjust > Color > Channel Mixer. Click the box next to "Monochrome," and it should change the output channel to "Grey." I prefer it a bit darker than the whites it goes to, so let's lower the bar that says Constant (%) to -60. Click OK.
7. In order to change reflection type and intensity let's play with these stripes! First let's work on the first big strip near the top. Go to magic wand, mine is set at a tolerance of 2 (the lower the tolerance the more picky it is about selecting colors close to the particular one you click on.) Since it didn't get the whole stripe, change the selection to "Freehand Selection." Hold shift, and click and drag the rest of the stripe you want outlined. Next, hold ctrl and outline any part you don't want included (if you need to.)
8. Your selection should look similar to mine in the picture above. Now go to Adjust > Color> Red/Green/Blue.. (or click Shift + U). In the window that pops up set Red to -100, Green to 100, and Blue to -100. The green hue gives the reflection a more satin like appearance.
9. Using the same technique as described in step 7, select the next stripe down. Bring up the Channel Mixer window again (described in step 6.) It should have saved the last settings you used, and they work fine since we just want to make this stripe relatively black. Being black, this stripe will reflect very little. The darker your color, the less reflection. This also applies to shades of other colors, such green and red. We still have a bunch of stripes left though, so we can experiment some more.
10. For contrast, let's make the next stripe relatively white. Select it, and open the Channel Mixer window, slide the Constant (%) Bar right up to 60.
11. Make the next stripe red, using the same method you used to make the earlier one green. Instead of have Red -100, Green 100, and Blue -100, make the Red positive 100, and change the others to negative 100.
12. Let's make a new layer for the next part. Click Layers > New Rasta Layer... The window you get should look like mine. Click OK.
13. Your new layer should be selected, you can see your layers on the right part of the screen. Select the Paintbrush (1), then look at its settings (2). You want the shape a square, the size 16, Hardness: 100, Step 1, Density: 100, Thickness: 100, Rotation: 0, and Opacity: 100. This basically gives you a square to stamp on. Change the primary color to white (3). To do so just left click white in the palette. Then make a little square pattern like I did above on the stripe beneath the red one. This will make an interesting shine pattern.
14. Let's make the next big stripe blue. First make sure you are back to your first layer for editing. It is the bottom layer on the right, I circled it above. Just click on it to select it. Then select that stripe the same way we did the others, open the Red/Blue/Green window again, and make Green positive 100, and the other colors -100.
15. We're going to make the next big line transparent. Transparency also affects the strength of the shine. You can combine this with any of the other things we've done as well. First select the next big stripe. Make sure you have the bottom layer selected (1). Once you have the stripe highlighted, click Selections > Promote Selection to Layer (ctrl + shift + p) (2). Your stripe is now its own layer, making it easier to change transparency, but it is essentially a clone of the stripe in your bottom layer, so we need to delete that stripe, or changing transparency on your new one will make no visible difference. While keep the stripe highlighted, exactly as it is from when you promoted the layer, simply select the bottom layer on the right (3) and then press "delete." This will completely wipe the bottom layer stripe, and since it is exactly below the new layer stripe, editing that 1 will now change the transparency exactly in that stripe's place. Select the new layer stripe (4) and pull the transparency bar (5) down to about 55. Let's get rid of any selection. Click Selections > Select None.
16. The pattern you made in Step 13 is also it's own layer, so you can alter it's transparency the same way you did the stripe in the previous step. This is optional, and I'm actually leaving mine as is, but feel free to experiment with it, if you so wish.
17. Let's click on our bottom layer again, and highlight that big square next to the skirt texture. This is the texture for the bottom of the skirt, and frankly, it does not need shine. Using the selection tool, select it, and press "delete." Then select none.
18. Speculars are half the size of texture files. Go to Image > Resize (or click shift + s). In the Pixel Dimension area change the Width to 512, and the height to 1024. Click OK.
19. Now save this out to replace your original spec. Please note, when you extract a spec it saves a spec overlay, and a spec mask. We just edited the overlay. Save this image as whatever you called the overlay. This is the original file you extracted and named from the spec. Make sure it's saved as .png, or whatever you extracted the original as. Paint Shop will prompt you and tell you the layers will be merged basically, if you save as .png, and this is fine.
Step 2: Editing the Specular Mask
The Specular Mask determines where on the texture template your spec overlay shows. Your spec mask must be the same size and shape as your spec overlay. If it is smaller, it will get saved with white pixellization in the areas where the spec overlay is bigger. That means, those areas will shine super bright on the CC. If you make the mask too big, it will pull whatever you had on the overlay in those areas of the texture template and reflect that shine. You have a little wiggle room though, and if you see white pixels around the mask after saving it in S4S, try blurring the edges on the mask, sometimes this helps.
1. You should still have your spec overlay open, which is good, we are going to use it in this. Right click on your 2 upper layers and select "Merge Down," until you have just 1 layer left. Do not use "Merge All: Flatten," as this will kill the transparency and turn it white.
2. Create a new layer, as described in the previous part of this tutorial.
3. With the new layer selected, select the flood fill tool (1.) Make sure its opacity is set to 100 (2.) Select black as the primary color on your palette (3.) Click anywhere on the image and the entire layer should turn black. Black on a spec mask is the area which will have no shininess.
4. We want our bottom layer to become our top layer, and therefor have the texture over the black layer. Left click and hold on the bottom layer (probably called Raster 1.) Drag it above Raster 2, and you will now see your spec overlay above the black background.
5. With the top layer selected open the channel mixer. Adjust > Color > Channel Mixer. It should still have your previous settings. Slide the constant over to 28. This gives us a fairly strong brightness.
6. Select the paintbrush again, let's make those now grey squares in the pattern we did, black, so they will have no shine. You halved the size of the original image, so change the size of the brush to 8 (underlined in above image.)
7. For one last bit of fun, let's add a gradient to the bottom 2 rows of stripes. This black/white gradient will make them reflect more near the bottom, and less near the top. This gradient should be on it's own layer so we can adjust the transparency and retain some of the nice shading from the overlay. Click Layers > New Raster Layer... as you did in the steps earlier.
8. Make sure your new layer is selected in the right bar. Select/highlight the stripes like I did, then on the top right corner, by your palette, where the black square is, click the little circle under it, on the left, and select "Gradient."
9. Select the paintbrush, change its size to 32. Use it to draw a horizontal line in the highlighted area. It should fade from white at the top, to black on the bottom. Now go to the transparency bar on the right side, and pull it down to about 71.
10. Let's make this thing pop a bit more. Click Selection > Select None. Then select the 2nd layer (your overlay.) Now go to Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Brightness/Contrast. Leave the brightness at 0, but move the Contrast bar up to 30.
11. Your mask is done! Click on save as, and save it over the original Spec.Mask. Make sure it is saved to the .mask, and not your first spec overlay. These are 2 separate files, and both are needed!
12. Go back to S4S and Import your spec overlay. This will automatically pull the mask, but note they have to be in the same folder and have the same name (besides the .mask ending). Now, oh noes! See the white pixels on my pattern, where it's supposed to be black? This is what I was talking about earlier in the tutorial, the mask and overlay matching perfectly. I am leaving this in the tutorial and showing you how to fix it, because this type of thing happens, and it's best you know how to troubleshoot.
13. Open up the spec mask again, or if it was still open, go back to it. Select the paintbrush tool again, on size 8, and square shape. Click on the palette on the top right and change the gradient setting back to color. Now, select a new color, I underlined what I chose, you want a very dark shade, but not completely black. It shouldn't reflect much, but the game will still recognize it as not total black and therefore not white it out. Redo the pattern with the new color over the black. It's a few clicks but goes pretty fast. Just basically restamp all the black squares with the now almost-black color. Save.
14. Now reimport the spec overlay in S4S. Yes, the spec overlay, not the spec mask. Importing the spec overlay will bring in the new mask. Click Save.
Now it's time to see this weird reflective skirt in game. Put your package in your mods folder, and let's start TS4.
Ta da! You'll notice the bottom is fairly subtle. You can take this spec and add it to a solid colored skirt as well to see the contrasts a bit better. Playing with "emboss" on a textured print can be fun as well. Experiment with it, and enjoy, specs add an amazing new level of quality to TS4 clothes.
Needed for this tutorial:
2D Editor - I'm using Paint Shop Pro
S4S Version 2.5.0.7 Joy (or newer)
Step 1: Editing the Specular Overlay
1. Fire up S4S and select the skirt shown above. We're going to make it's stripes shine differently.
2. Open the "warehouse" tab and select the RLES Image. This will make 2 images appear on the right side of the S4S screen. I have marked them with a "1" and "2."
Side 1 is the specular overlay. This controls the type of shine you have. It also contributes to where the shine goes, and how strong it is.
Side 2 is the specular mask. This controls primarily where the shine is visible, and also contributes to its strength.
Please note, if you want a blank spec, you need to also clear the spec mask (that is, turn the entire thing black,) or your item may interfere with other items the Sim is wearing. For example, this mask as shown above, if anther CC item overlaps on the texture space with it, it will override that area and kill the shine from the other item (since this spec has no shine at all in the specular map area (area 1). If this specular map had any texture, that texture would then override the other CC. Therefore, while leaving the spec mask in place, and having no shine designated in the spec map, would effectively give you a blank spec (no shininess) for your particular item of CC, it may (and likely will) interfere with other CC and kill its shine in the area designated by the spec mask, as well.
3. Export the spec and name it whatever you want (to use Paint Shop Pro, I save anything I can as a .png- this option is available by clicking on the line that says .dds, scrolling down to .png, and selecting it.
4. Hop back to the "Studio" tab and export the texture of the skirt as well. We want to make sure the spec lines up with the texture, and are going to edit our stripe shininess here.
5. Open up the texture you just saved in your 2D editor.
Take a look at the information in this mini tut: sims4studio.com/thread/1728/information-on-cas-specular-rles. Note how the shine changes when using different color settings of for the specular overlay.
We are going to turn this texture into the specular overlay. In order to see how a variety of colors work, let's have some fun.
6. First let's change the texture to black and white. This makes changing the colors easier. Click on Adjust > Color > Channel Mixer. Click the box next to "Monochrome," and it should change the output channel to "Grey." I prefer it a bit darker than the whites it goes to, so let's lower the bar that says Constant (%) to -60. Click OK.
7. In order to change reflection type and intensity let's play with these stripes! First let's work on the first big strip near the top. Go to magic wand, mine is set at a tolerance of 2 (the lower the tolerance the more picky it is about selecting colors close to the particular one you click on.) Since it didn't get the whole stripe, change the selection to "Freehand Selection." Hold shift, and click and drag the rest of the stripe you want outlined. Next, hold ctrl and outline any part you don't want included (if you need to.)
8. Your selection should look similar to mine in the picture above. Now go to Adjust > Color> Red/Green/Blue.. (or click Shift + U). In the window that pops up set Red to -100, Green to 100, and Blue to -100. The green hue gives the reflection a more satin like appearance.
9. Using the same technique as described in step 7, select the next stripe down. Bring up the Channel Mixer window again (described in step 6.) It should have saved the last settings you used, and they work fine since we just want to make this stripe relatively black. Being black, this stripe will reflect very little. The darker your color, the less reflection. This also applies to shades of other colors, such green and red. We still have a bunch of stripes left though, so we can experiment some more.
10. For contrast, let's make the next stripe relatively white. Select it, and open the Channel Mixer window, slide the Constant (%) Bar right up to 60.
11. Make the next stripe red, using the same method you used to make the earlier one green. Instead of have Red -100, Green 100, and Blue -100, make the Red positive 100, and change the others to negative 100.
12. Let's make a new layer for the next part. Click Layers > New Rasta Layer... The window you get should look like mine. Click OK.
13. Your new layer should be selected, you can see your layers on the right part of the screen. Select the Paintbrush (1), then look at its settings (2). You want the shape a square, the size 16, Hardness: 100, Step 1, Density: 100, Thickness: 100, Rotation: 0, and Opacity: 100. This basically gives you a square to stamp on. Change the primary color to white (3). To do so just left click white in the palette. Then make a little square pattern like I did above on the stripe beneath the red one. This will make an interesting shine pattern.
14. Let's make the next big stripe blue. First make sure you are back to your first layer for editing. It is the bottom layer on the right, I circled it above. Just click on it to select it. Then select that stripe the same way we did the others, open the Red/Blue/Green window again, and make Green positive 100, and the other colors -100.
15. We're going to make the next big line transparent. Transparency also affects the strength of the shine. You can combine this with any of the other things we've done as well. First select the next big stripe. Make sure you have the bottom layer selected (1). Once you have the stripe highlighted, click Selections > Promote Selection to Layer (ctrl + shift + p) (2). Your stripe is now its own layer, making it easier to change transparency, but it is essentially a clone of the stripe in your bottom layer, so we need to delete that stripe, or changing transparency on your new one will make no visible difference. While keep the stripe highlighted, exactly as it is from when you promoted the layer, simply select the bottom layer on the right (3) and then press "delete." This will completely wipe the bottom layer stripe, and since it is exactly below the new layer stripe, editing that 1 will now change the transparency exactly in that stripe's place. Select the new layer stripe (4) and pull the transparency bar (5) down to about 55. Let's get rid of any selection. Click Selections > Select None.
16. The pattern you made in Step 13 is also it's own layer, so you can alter it's transparency the same way you did the stripe in the previous step. This is optional, and I'm actually leaving mine as is, but feel free to experiment with it, if you so wish.
17. Let's click on our bottom layer again, and highlight that big square next to the skirt texture. This is the texture for the bottom of the skirt, and frankly, it does not need shine. Using the selection tool, select it, and press "delete." Then select none.
18. Speculars are half the size of texture files. Go to Image > Resize (or click shift + s). In the Pixel Dimension area change the Width to 512, and the height to 1024. Click OK.
19. Now save this out to replace your original spec. Please note, when you extract a spec it saves a spec overlay, and a spec mask. We just edited the overlay. Save this image as whatever you called the overlay. This is the original file you extracted and named from the spec. Make sure it's saved as .png, or whatever you extracted the original as. Paint Shop will prompt you and tell you the layers will be merged basically, if you save as .png, and this is fine.
Step 2: Editing the Specular Mask
The Specular Mask determines where on the texture template your spec overlay shows. Your spec mask must be the same size and shape as your spec overlay. If it is smaller, it will get saved with white pixellization in the areas where the spec overlay is bigger. That means, those areas will shine super bright on the CC. If you make the mask too big, it will pull whatever you had on the overlay in those areas of the texture template and reflect that shine. You have a little wiggle room though, and if you see white pixels around the mask after saving it in S4S, try blurring the edges on the mask, sometimes this helps.
1. You should still have your spec overlay open, which is good, we are going to use it in this. Right click on your 2 upper layers and select "Merge Down," until you have just 1 layer left. Do not use "Merge All: Flatten," as this will kill the transparency and turn it white.
2. Create a new layer, as described in the previous part of this tutorial.
3. With the new layer selected, select the flood fill tool (1.) Make sure its opacity is set to 100 (2.) Select black as the primary color on your palette (3.) Click anywhere on the image and the entire layer should turn black. Black on a spec mask is the area which will have no shininess.
4. We want our bottom layer to become our top layer, and therefor have the texture over the black layer. Left click and hold on the bottom layer (probably called Raster 1.) Drag it above Raster 2, and you will now see your spec overlay above the black background.
5. With the top layer selected open the channel mixer. Adjust > Color > Channel Mixer. It should still have your previous settings. Slide the constant over to 28. This gives us a fairly strong brightness.
6. Select the paintbrush again, let's make those now grey squares in the pattern we did, black, so they will have no shine. You halved the size of the original image, so change the size of the brush to 8 (underlined in above image.)
7. For one last bit of fun, let's add a gradient to the bottom 2 rows of stripes. This black/white gradient will make them reflect more near the bottom, and less near the top. This gradient should be on it's own layer so we can adjust the transparency and retain some of the nice shading from the overlay. Click Layers > New Raster Layer... as you did in the steps earlier.
8. Make sure your new layer is selected in the right bar. Select/highlight the stripes like I did, then on the top right corner, by your palette, where the black square is, click the little circle under it, on the left, and select "Gradient."
9. Select the paintbrush, change its size to 32. Use it to draw a horizontal line in the highlighted area. It should fade from white at the top, to black on the bottom. Now go to the transparency bar on the right side, and pull it down to about 71.
10. Let's make this thing pop a bit more. Click Selection > Select None. Then select the 2nd layer (your overlay.) Now go to Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Brightness/Contrast. Leave the brightness at 0, but move the Contrast bar up to 30.
11. Your mask is done! Click on save as, and save it over the original Spec.Mask. Make sure it is saved to the .mask, and not your first spec overlay. These are 2 separate files, and both are needed!
12. Go back to S4S and Import your spec overlay. This will automatically pull the mask, but note they have to be in the same folder and have the same name (besides the .mask ending). Now, oh noes! See the white pixels on my pattern, where it's supposed to be black? This is what I was talking about earlier in the tutorial, the mask and overlay matching perfectly. I am leaving this in the tutorial and showing you how to fix it, because this type of thing happens, and it's best you know how to troubleshoot.
13. Open up the spec mask again, or if it was still open, go back to it. Select the paintbrush tool again, on size 8, and square shape. Click on the palette on the top right and change the gradient setting back to color. Now, select a new color, I underlined what I chose, you want a very dark shade, but not completely black. It shouldn't reflect much, but the game will still recognize it as not total black and therefore not white it out. Redo the pattern with the new color over the black. It's a few clicks but goes pretty fast. Just basically restamp all the black squares with the now almost-black color. Save.
14. Now reimport the spec overlay in S4S. Yes, the spec overlay, not the spec mask. Importing the spec overlay will bring in the new mask. Click Save.
Now it's time to see this weird reflective skirt in game. Put your package in your mods folder, and let's start TS4.
Ta da! You'll notice the bottom is fairly subtle. You can take this spec and add it to a solid colored skirt as well to see the contrasts a bit better. Playing with "emboss" on a textured print can be fun as well. Experiment with it, and enjoy, specs add an amazing new level of quality to TS4 clothes.