Sims2 WCIF: Letters for Business Signs

simPE and an image editor are all you need for recolors.

I have SimPE and Paint Shop Pro! I'll see what I can do. And thanky.

I also got a little frisky and interrupted my Googling to knock together some auto sales signs-to-be, one generic and three invoking Simmy automotive companies, with aesthetic attempts to hint at each company's prestige (Smoogo = cheap death traps, Yomoshoto = mid-range econocars, Hwang Motors = pricey supercars).









Do I suck or what?

Okay, the horror show begins to unfold.



So I fired up SimPe and opened one of the two packages that Catherine sent up (that being Mog6TShopSign_VvilleFurniture-CGT.package, the file for her Veronaville Furniture sign). The Resources List lists five files or data strings: a TXTR (whatever that is), two XTMT entries (one for the sign's Lit state and one for Unlit) and two MMAT entries (ditto). The Content Preview has nothing to say thus far, and nothing looks like any type of graphics file that I recognize.

Sure I'll learn all of that techno-sorcery in time. As far as the recoloring attempt, I assume that there's a coded graphics file somewhere in this .package; I haven't really edited any game resource graphics since recoloring body armors for Quake II (so I know how weird those images can look...disembodied heels and toes next to faces and chests and all that), but my money says that this .package's resource graphics are saved in the dependable and high-quality .png format somewhere in this mess. .tga is too difficult to work with (though roughly as dependable as .png), .mac is too niche, .jpg is digital leprosy, .pic is digital rabies and .bmp is digital bubonic plague.

Where would I go from here?


Edit: Oh, wait. Hold the phone. I found a video!

Wow...that simPE window is quite different than mine. I possibly had to set mine up to be the way it is once upon a time, but I don't remember. Also could be that you have a newer simPE version. Dunno. But for what it's worth, I was a bit lost for a minute looking at that too, lol. And I've been doing it for years

Well, I'm allowing for the possibility that my copy of SimPE is just plain garbagey somehow. For starters, it has these dark gray gradient text fields which make the text hard to read at times. It's already been two or three times that I've had to Print Screen my SimPE interface, Paste it in Paint Shop and increase the image's Brightness just to read the instructions.



But I'll work with whatever tools I have.

Another problem that I'm running into now: With apologies to Catherine, I opened the .package for the wordless grocery store sign in Mog's original upload, figuring that the blue squares would help me figure out what part of the image is what:




I Exported the image in the Object Workshop's Plugin View and this rolled out:




It's not difficult to figure things out, really. The purpose of that steely gray field baffles me, but that's it for the bad news.




But it appears that Mog's recolor (recolour?) template is flawed or not perfectly compatible with the image field which the .package itself uses. When I used only the black frame and its contents, I had gaps of buff color from the grocery sign peeking through. When I used the entire template, I ended up with overlaps.




So then I took measure of the field in which the sign's face goes: 183 pixels from top to bottom.



Considering that that field has to be split two ways, 183 is an odd number to work with, in more ways than one. The next lowest even number is, of course, 182; divide that by two and we see that each half of the sign — and therefore, the sign's face as a whole — must be 91 pixels tall, no more and no less. But there's still a latitude of 1 pixel in that field. Is that 1 pixel taken out of the dead-center median between those two sign halves? Is it taken out of the top, or out of the bottom? Or perhaps the two halves of the sign are supposed to overlap in the middle and share that middle line of pixels.

Mog's recolor template is 100 pixels tall, including the frame and the space outside of it. So somethng in that template has to be snipped in order for it to fit inside a 91-pixel vertical. But what?




So I used the Resize Frame option and told Paint Shop, "Eh...just take a little off the top and the bottom and we'll see how it goes." When in doubt, trial-and-error it.

Time to Import and Save this beast, then get in-game and see how it looks. I'll have a full report from the front lines soon!

I would use this version of Mog's sign by Pooklet, it's much easier to recolour http://pooklet.tumblr.com/post/871357383...n-may-28th

You need SimPE to be able to open the package files https://sims.ambertation.de/en/

You need simpe and you need to be on a PC (easiest).

https://sourceforge.net/projects/simpe/f...imPE%20QA/

Okay, so after taking a break to grab dinner at Arby's, fuel up my car and air up the tires for the hour-long drive back to prison tomorrow, I got around to keeping my word:


Jolene Lupina's my only Sim who owns a gym, so she got to help me try out my first Simmy item recolor ever.


Hmmmm. It looks like the right side of the sign needs to be adjusted. Note to self: Move it 1 pixel down and 1 pixel to the right...beyond the image frame if needs be. Maybe that'll fix it.

And on the letters...are those artifacts? On a .png? What the spork?!?


There shouldn't be any blotchiness at all, but it looks like one or two of Mog's recolors have it too.

I may have told a lie back there, with my Quake II experience. I have used Paint Shop to add new custom paintings to my Simmy easels (but let's just say that artistic nudes are still nudes, so I'm not showing them off here). And resizing the pics that go into your custom portraits works, as long as you keep the X/Y ratio intact. In fact, if the picture you make is bigger than the easel's canvas, the game does a pretty faithful job of shrinking it to fit the canvas, resulting in sharper details in the custom painting itself. Conversely, if your picture is smaller than the easel's canvas, then the game will expand the picture until it fits the canvas, which results in fuzzy, blocky-looking and blurry custom paintings. So when in doubt, go big if you can.

So I'm wondering if that same principle applies here. Export the image from the .package, resize it to double or triple its normal size, then work on that image and don't spare the detail work. If the game shrinks a larger image to fit the face of that sign, might that extra step eliminate the artifacts and blurriness?


(By the way, Catherine, it looks like your sign has a slight overlap down the middle of the "n" in "Veronaville", and it eats part of the "n" in "Furnishings" as well. But maybe it doesn't matter that much. Recoloring this sign is harder than it looks, isn't it? )



On a slightly related tangent, I just installed Navetsea's default skins for supernaturals earlier today. After getting home, cleaning five pet beds and teaching two of her dogs how to roll over, Jolene wolfed out at 8 PM, as usual. And sure enough, she has a new face. And it's beautiful...beautiful, but not beastly like werewolves are supposed to be.


But that's just her face. From the neck down, she's a curvy Wookiee. So I'm a bit torn on this skin. I'll have to check my vampires, zombies, plantsims and aliens to see how their face lifts look.

(And might I add that the movies need more female werewolves? Sure, they rule both of the Ginger Snaps movies (and even though she's not a werewolf, you'll really, really learn to hate Ghost by the end of the sequel), there's one in An American Werewolf in Paris (whose bones crack and make icky sounds while she's shapeshifting...eww), and Megan does a face-heel turn in Dog Soldiers (but it's a bit disappointing; she barely manages to whip out an amusing "It's that time of the month" double entendre before she stops a silver bullet with her forehead).)

(And I think that there's a small pack of them in Trick 'r Treat too. That's it. We need more girly werewolves, Hollywood! )

Anyway, back on the tracks.

(20-10-2018 11:36 PM)Karen Lorraine Wrote:  I would use this version of Mog's sign by Pooklet, it's much easier to recolour http://pooklet.tumblr.com/post/871357383...n-may-28th

Given the aforementioned quibbles with Mog's sign, I reckon it's worth a shot. Thanks.

(20-10-2018 11:36 PM)Karen Lorraine Wrote:  You need SimPE to be able to open the package files https://sims.ambertation.de/en/

I'm afraid you're late to the party there, Karen.

*points to his previous two or three posts, in which he demonstrates his astonishing mastery of SimPE at Justjones' behest*

(21-10-2018 04:17 AM)leefish Wrote:  You need simpe and you need to be on a PC (easiest).

Justjones beat you to the punch too! Don't tell me that you and Karen posted without reading Page 2 first!

Okay, off to bed with me. See you tomorrow!

I did link the latest simpe in case you didnt have that.... no idea re the gradient thing (maybe needs new glasses? )

Re the pixelation, you did use build dxt right?

Like Lee said ^^^ If you use a higher dxt (like 5) you get less artifacts. Choose the dxt from the drop-down menu when you import the artwork.
For a first try - I'd say you did a great job Yes, this sign's tricksy, but I really like it.
Thanks Karen - I didn't know there was an 'easier' version

...Buuuut - @Karen Lorraine - when I try to DL it, I get the Drop Box 404 error. Do you know if it's hosted anywhere else?