How to make blush! Works for male and female sims.
Jun 11, 2016 9:02:06 GMT -5
jwofles, MahoCreations, and 5 more like this
Post by laracroftfan1 on Jun 11, 2016 9:02:06 GMT -5
Hey guys its Lara again, with another tutorial for CAS and the Sims 4. This one was done by request, and is for making blush, and will cover a few of the issues you may come across along the way. (sorry its taken me so long.)
Now as usual we are going to need:
1. A 2d photo editor, preferably photoshop, but whatever you have will most likely work.
2. We need the male or female body textures. which can be found here.: Textures
Simple enough right?
Open your 2d editor, and S4S.
In S4S go to CAS-Create Standalone. Im going to choose a blush from the base game (not one that came with an expansion).
I have chosen this one! (It is a female blush, but through the warehouse later we can activate it to work for males too.)
We will now open the sim body texture in our 2d editor. Photoshop has a feature called a ruler which you can toggle on and off using Ctrl+R. once the rulers pop up at the edge of the window, you can click on the left side and drag the ruler to the center of the image. We are going to use this feature to mirror the texture later for absolute symmetry. Usually it will snap the ruler to the center automatically once you are near it but if it doesnt hold shift while dragging it to get it.
The Blue line is the ruler.
Ok! Here, is where the fun begins! 
Go to the alpha channel. Its located in the lower right quadron of the menu on the side.
Press Ctrl+A to select the whole canvas, then press M to select the marquee tool. Once the marquee tool is selected right click and go to Fill.
Fill it black so there is nothing.
Now it should be completely blacked out. Awesome. We are halfway there already!
Now we have that done, lets make the RGB channels visible. You can do this in the same place where you made the alpha visible. See the little eye thingy in the box next to where is says Alpha 1, and then the empty boxes next to the other channels? Click on the empty boxes to make them visible. You should now have it looking like this.
Now we start thinking about what we actually want to do with this blush.. Do you want it to be more like facepaint and make a design on it, or do you just want something to accentuate color in the cheeks, or maybe add contour?
For the purposes of this tutorial, and simplicity im going to make a basic color contour blush.
For this we edit the alpha first.
We have to change some brush settings to get the right shape.
Im going to use the paintbrush in combination with the pen tool.
Doing it this way ensures you get the shape an stroke that you want while messing with the brush features.
OK, so for a second make the alpha channel hidden again and press P to select the pen tool. We are going to make the stroke on the RGB layer, then we will copy and paste it to the alpha channel once we have the shape we want.
Using the pen tool i have made a line starting from the top going to the bottom. the direction you create the stroke in is important because it will tell the paintbrush which direction to stroke in once we use it. So make the pen path from top to bottom, like this.
Once you have that, click in the center of the path with the pen tool to add another point where we can move it around and make it a curve instead of just a straight line.
Then, while holding Ctrl, click on the points of the path that weve made and shape them to follow the shading of the cheekbone. Ive decided I want mine to go like this.
From what i can see from the stroke it looks like its in the proper place.
Now let me show you how to stroke it.
But first lets edit the hue or color of the sim texture so that it differs from that of the mannequin texture in S4S. You can make it any color you want for now, just as long as we can see where the blush will be on the mannequin.
Now let me show you how to stroke it.
But first lets edit the hue or color of the sim texture so that it differs from that of the mannequin texture in S4S. You can make it any color you want for now, just as long as we can see where the blush will be on the mannequin.
Im going to make it a Darker red color.
Awesome! Next step.
Select the brush tool either by clicking on it in the toolbar or by pressing B. First we need to adjust the hardness of the brush, im going to set it to 0. Right click on the canvas and the option to change it will pop up. You can mimic the brush size and hardness depending on what you want.
Ok next step is to add fade to the paintbrush. in the panel on the right side of the screen is where we can change this.
Once again, you may mimic these settings as you wish depending on what you will want. You can minimize this panel by pressing the little button that looks like a fast forward.
Once you have that you can minimize the panel and switch back to the pen tool. Press P.
After you have the pen tool "in hand" right click and press stroke path. Then select the brush from the drop menu.
After we select the brush it will make a line looking like this.
Oops! looks like its upside-down! No problem, this is relatively easy to fix.
Before we do anything else we need to undo the stroke we just made, either by pressing Ctrl+Z on the keyboard, or manually undoing it. the undo feature is right in the top right corner of the toolbar. Just go one step back.
Once you did that all we have to do is go back to the pen tool (P) press and hold Ctrl while dragging over the path to select the entire thing, then right click, and select free transform path. Then right click and press flip vertical, then right click again, flip horizontal. We have relatively the same shape but you may need to tweak it a little bit to line up, for me i only had to move the end just a little bit. Stroke the path again with the brush. Now, depending what you want you can switch back to the brush tool and tweak the settings some more if you wish, but this looks fine to me.
Once we have that, save the image and import to S4S to test it.
I think its too high, so im going to use the marquee tool to make it lower. (M)
Remember to change the background pallet color before you move it so you dont end up with a big white box. when you click on it it will bring up the color picker, just choose black. The picture below shows where i moved mine in comparison to the original stroke, and also shows you where the color pallet is. Its in the bottom left.
After that you can save and import to see if you are satisfied with the position it is, if you like it lets continue to the next step.
Now we are going to blur it for smooth transition. I like to use the Gaussian Blur filter for things like this, because sometimes sitting there running the blur blush over it again and again can be tedious.
Now it should look like this. Make the RGB channel hiden so you can see what it actually looks like.
Import and test.
Looks mostly good to me but I want it to go over the cheekbone a bit more so I'm going to use the smudge tool at an upward diagnal angle to do so. It is located here.
Now mine looks like this.
As you can see there are some somewhat sharp lines going through it. You can either go over it with the blur brush, or use Gaussian blur again, but blur it just enough that the lines disappear. I set mine to blur only 3px. Now it looks like this.
Seems good to me. Lets import and test again.
Wow. That really made a difference! You can fiddle with the colors to get it just the way you want it, which I will explain next.
I want to see if maybe a lighter color will make a difference. But before I do that (this is where that ruler we put in place earlier comes in handy!)
use the marquee tool again (M) and select the half of the canvas you drew your blush on.
Once its selected, press Ctrl+C to copy it. Then right click and press select inverse. The marquee will switch over to the other side. Then press Ctrl+V to paste it.
Right click again and choose free transform.
Then right click again and select flip horizontally.
Once you've done that it should look like this.
Now save and import to take a look.
Awesome!
Now to get to the color. I will save this swatch, because this color may look good on a darker complexion, so we will save it for in-game testing, and add a new swatch.
This next step you can repeat for any color you want.
Select the RGB layers again, and hide the alpha layer for now. We will be editing these layers.
In the bar menu go to Image- adjustments-desaturate. your image should be black and white now.
Then go to image-adjustments-brightness/contrast, and make the image just a bit brighter. We still want it to have a grayish color to it so the color we decide to overlay sticks. I was able to max mine out and have it still be gray, this is good. .
Now. go to the layer panel, and press the little paper button, its in the bottom right corner of the screen, and add a new layer.
Now after you've done this step, you can fill the layer in with the color you want for every swatch, and edit the brightness or contrast of the base layer lighter or darker to get variations of it. Don't forget to change the layer type to multiply, or overlay, you can find it here in the drop menu.
For this swatch im going to use a peach pink color.
Press M for the marquee again and then Ctrl A to select the whole canvas. Right click, and select fill. Then a little menu will pop up prompting you to choose what you want to fill it with. In the drop-down menu select Color, then the color picker will come up again, and you can mess with it until you find the color you want.
Fill it in whatever color you want. mine turned out like this.
I did a few colors. Heress what they look like in-game!
I think they turned out well!
If there is anything I missed feel free to ask below, and I'd be happy to elaborate!
Once again, you may mimic these settings as you wish depending on what you will want. You can minimize this panel by pressing the little button that looks like a fast forward.
Once you have that you can minimize the panel and switch back to the pen tool. Press P.
After you have the pen tool "in hand" right click and press stroke path. Then select the brush from the drop menu.
After we select the brush it will make a line looking like this.
Oops! looks like its upside-down! No problem, this is relatively easy to fix.
Before we do anything else we need to undo the stroke we just made, either by pressing Ctrl+Z on the keyboard, or manually undoing it. the undo feature is right in the top right corner of the toolbar. Just go one step back.
Once you did that all we have to do is go back to the pen tool (P) press and hold Ctrl while dragging over the path to select the entire thing, then right click, and select free transform path. Then right click and press flip vertical, then right click again, flip horizontal. We have relatively the same shape but you may need to tweak it a little bit to line up, for me i only had to move the end just a little bit. Stroke the path again with the brush. Now, depending what you want you can switch back to the brush tool and tweak the settings some more if you wish, but this looks fine to me.
Once we have that, save the image and import to S4S to test it.
I think its too high, so im going to use the marquee tool to make it lower. (M)
Remember to change the background pallet color before you move it so you dont end up with a big white box. when you click on it it will bring up the color picker, just choose black. The picture below shows where i moved mine in comparison to the original stroke, and also shows you where the color pallet is. Its in the bottom left.
After that you can save and import to see if you are satisfied with the position it is, if you like it lets continue to the next step.
Now we are going to blur it for smooth transition. I like to use the Gaussian Blur filter for things like this, because sometimes sitting there running the blur blush over it again and again can be tedious.
Now it should look like this. Make the RGB channel hiden so you can see what it actually looks like.
Import and test.
Looks mostly good to me but I want it to go over the cheekbone a bit more so I'm going to use the smudge tool at an upward diagnal angle to do so. It is located here.
Now mine looks like this.
As you can see there are some somewhat sharp lines going through it. You can either go over it with the blur brush, or use Gaussian blur again, but blur it just enough that the lines disappear. I set mine to blur only 3px. Now it looks like this.
Seems good to me. Lets import and test again.
Wow. That really made a difference! You can fiddle with the colors to get it just the way you want it, which I will explain next.
I want to see if maybe a lighter color will make a difference. But before I do that (this is where that ruler we put in place earlier comes in handy!)
use the marquee tool again (M) and select the half of the canvas you drew your blush on.
Once its selected, press Ctrl+C to copy it. Then right click and press select inverse. The marquee will switch over to the other side. Then press Ctrl+V to paste it.
Right click again and choose free transform.
Then right click again and select flip horizontally.
Once you've done that it should look like this.
Now save and import to take a look.
Awesome!
Now to get to the color. I will save this swatch, because this color may look good on a darker complexion, so we will save it for in-game testing, and add a new swatch.
This next step you can repeat for any color you want.
Select the RGB layers again, and hide the alpha layer for now. We will be editing these layers.
In the bar menu go to Image- adjustments-desaturate. your image should be black and white now.
Then go to image-adjustments-brightness/contrast, and make the image just a bit brighter. We still want it to have a grayish color to it so the color we decide to overlay sticks. I was able to max mine out and have it still be gray, this is good. .
Now. go to the layer panel, and press the little paper button, its in the bottom right corner of the screen, and add a new layer.
Now after you've done this step, you can fill the layer in with the color you want for every swatch, and edit the brightness or contrast of the base layer lighter or darker to get variations of it. Don't forget to change the layer type to multiply, or overlay, you can find it here in the drop menu.
For this swatch im going to use a peach pink color.
Press M for the marquee again and then Ctrl A to select the whole canvas. Right click, and select fill. Then a little menu will pop up prompting you to choose what you want to fill it with. In the drop-down menu select Color, then the color picker will come up again, and you can mess with it until you find the color you want.
Fill it in whatever color you want. mine turned out like this.
I did a few colors. Heress what they look like in-game!
I think they turned out well!
If there is anything I missed feel free to ask below, and I'd be happy to elaborate!
