sorry if this has been asked before...

is there a way to recolor existing maxis wallpaper? or maybe change a part of it? thing is i really like those wallpapers with the wainscotting and beadboard and i wanna change the actual paper, not the wooden parts, how do i do that?

Yes, you can do that, summer_wine. Look at my reply to someone else previously here: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthre...975#post1245975

Thank you so much!! I've gotten really tired of the same old boring carpet and wall colors... Fantastic tutorial, very easy to follow!

do they have a toturial for it using gimps?..

No wall folder!
 

I don't have any "Walls folder", why?
The tutorial was great, but I can't follow it trough becouse there is no folder called "Walls", so when I am in HomeCrafter, there is nothing else to choose but the testwall with the yellow triangle on it.
What did go wrong?
I saved my wall and floor on the desktop, because I didn't know where else to save them.
Please help me if you can, and explain in simple english, because I'm from Sweden :P

Thank you so much HP! I have just made my first walls and floors - yes it took me a couple of days and I made some dumb mistakes, but I did it (and then I danced around like an idiot for a while, singing a happy song). Step by step you led me on the road to actually making something!

Thanks for the great tutorial! I've been wanting to take the dive into CC for a while now, but had no idea how or where to start.
I love the wall & floor that I created with your help, and can't wait to do more!

Thnx Hysterical!

U really help me, I've been like searching for hours and days to find the perfect black walls but I couldn't find it but now thnx to Photoshop and you I've got it!

Yay! Goth house here you come!

Peace,
Riiko

Make a folder.
My Documents>EA Games>Sims 2>Projects>HomeCrafter Plus.

IF YOU DON'T HAVE A FOLDER FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS BELOW:
Right click once you click on the HomeCrafter Plus folder.

Then go down and press 'New Folder' that makes a folder name it: 'Walls'

Hehe!

There ya go!

Just leave it like that.

PEACE
Riiko

Hi!

I'm having a problem with Homecrafter crashing. I probably shouldn't put this here but I can't find any info anywhere else so I'm hoping someone here can help.

I just downloaded it yesterday and was able to open it up twice. Those two times I didn't do anything except look around at how the program worked. So today I made some walls, the first time I opened it, it opened and I was able to go to the create content screen but nothing pulled up and then after a few seconds it crashed. So I tried to open it again with no success and then decided to uninstall and reinstall. I've reinstalled it three times with no luck. When I click on the icon, a little crash window pops up. Can anyone please help me?

Also, is there any way to use SimPE to do walls?

is there any toturial for gimp..for floors and paint making..pleace help

lilmonkeygray,
do you have reflective or transparent floors? Try moving your downloads folder to your desktop and running homecrafter, maybe you have some bad files in there.

Kathy's Creations - no. There is a great book online about learning how to use Gimp - if you can get skilled with general editing and *layers* you should be able to do everything in this tutorial following along, the programs have similar commands.
free: http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/

I have been searching high and low on MTS2 site but I can't find where to submit my newest wallset for sharing on the downloads forum. Can anyone give me a link to where to use the upload wizard that I read about in the creator guidlines?

Click on CREATE on the blue bar. Go to the lower right hand part of the screen. Check the creator guidelines first for stuff about good screenshots and anything else that might be needed. Then there's also an upload link for you.

Wow...now I feel really stupid...LOL...I was looking only on the left hand side of the screen. And there it is on the right. :D

My latest wall set was accepted for the download section! This set is a half brick/half siding set - 4 walls in all. Check it out! http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=234429

Tiggerypum: It's taken me a few days to get back because I accidently deleted all my files. I had around 12gb of custom content. I ended up downloading a program to restore them all and then spent the last week re-downloading files that were overwritten. I made the mistake of not backing up my files since Oct. right before OFB came out.

So, finally I'm back to fiddling with my own CC. I uninstalled my games and reinstalled them. Then installed HomeCrafter to see if I could get it working. I have no CC in my TheSims2 downloads. I opened HomeCrafter again and it let me pick out the wall and then brought me to the window for specifics; name, price, etc. In this window it doesn't show the wall in the preview box and if I click on the box or the grid options it crashes. I can put a name in and select a price or wall type without any problems but nothing else.

lilmonkeygray - did you try downloading and installing homecrafter again. I'm not sure what to suggest - that and maybe deleting/removing your 'projects' folder and seeing if the game will remake one - maybe that's corrupted. Otherwise, try in the 'game help' area on site for technical suggestions for getting it working.

Thank for the tutorial but... I think the size you wrote downis wrong because I did that and the image was too big shouldn't it be "265x512"

*** Edit: New information discovered June '06! You must first resize your walls to 256x512 before saving as a .bmp. Walls at 256x768 (or ANY other sizing except 256x512) will show as grey for Mac users, though they'll work fine for PC users. Please resize before saving so your walls work correctly for everyone.

An excellent tutorial! Really understandable. Thanks a lot

ok. but. Where I can download homecrafter plus program?

The tutorial is excellent.

It's linked in the first post.

Gee thanks lots
 

Hey thanks so much for the wonderful tutorial. i have read many tutorials before and this is the onle one i could understand fully. very specific. Keep up the good works. i shall look for your tutorials. it is really good thanks! :lovestruc

thank u sooo much hystericalparoxysm 4 teaching my dumb@#$ how 2 make floors and walls!!!!! i've always wanted 2 that i just could never understand how! i'll give props 2 u when i share my floors and walls 2 every1.

Thank you so much, I have made some walls and floors for my very first time. I'm very happy for that.

thanks!
 

thanks so much for this tutorial! unlike many others i have tried, i didn't find one single thing that was confusing. i'm not sure if you have any other tutorials but if you do (especially ones for meshes) i will definitely try them 1st. thanks again, this really is a great tutorial!

These are more paint.NET questions, but I can't find anything on the paint.NET website. First, how do I make my projects show up in different windows, so that I can match and compare the colors for the wall/border? Second, how do I set the brush settings so they match what is in the tutorial? I have v. 3.08, just downloaded yesterday. If this is the wrong place for this question, can you let me know where I should be looking? As has been said before, awesome tutorial - these were the only points of confusion for me. Thank you so much!

I have the same problem. I couldn't open Paint.net in two windows at the same time. Therefore, I was unable to easily match my wall and floor colours. Also, I think the eraser is different in v. 3.08 because my tool bar didn't look the same as the tutorial. I just couldn't get the eraser to work as described in the tutorial so the moss colour doesn't show through.

Can anyone help? ps. excellent tutorial. Many thanks.

I don't know enough about paint.net right now, but it does use layers

When I need to match something in photoshop, I don't use 2 windows. I actually grab a sample - big enough so I get enough of the color, but not enough to hide what I'm trying to match - and cut and paste it into the same window (on a new layer) as the thing I'm trying to match. Then I do my thing with the rest of the graphic... and when I'm done I delete the sample (or hide that layer)

paint.NET
 

tiggerypum, that helps, i didn't even think of trying that. thanks!

I have a bit of a problem. I use Paint Shop Pro 7 and I do everything it says in the tutorial. Ive been told that both PSP and Photoshop are almost the same so I followed the Photoshop tutorial part. My problem comes when I transfer the save .bmp file to HCP (Home Crafter Plus) when I run the program and I get to the part where I make the wall it looks like too much light is hitting it and makes it look really bad. I went back to the tutorial and tried doing the Effect-Sharpen thing that says in the other part of the tutorial, just in case PSP is different there but it does nothing. (Yes I copied and pasted the new ones to HCP)

Can anyone tell me how to fix it? So it isnt too bright?

Kiraditz -
I'm not sure what the difference in with psp or anything like that, but this is the first thing I'd try: try simply darkening your graphic. The game has lighting in it, which shines on everything. White should be light gray - black should actually be dark gray (pure black tends to make a dark flat black-hole sort of appearance in game).

If you look, you can see HP's graphics and how it looks in game are slightly different. Seasons if you have that, adds even more variation to the game lighting.

Sharpen is only going to change how crisp the edges in the graphic appear.

Thank You. I tried HomeCrafter Plus once I think I only had the base, no expansions or stuff packs, and it didnt look so bright, maybe its what you said every expansion adds more brightness.

Here is a picture of the work when in HCP and one in the game after defragmenting my computer. Before I defragmented my computer the ingame picture looked like the one in the HCP, but Im still worried about how it looks there. If any wall gives me problems I'll try changing the brightness, I didnt thought of that one

Well thank you for the help.

awesome but i want to use paint the way i do with my clothes can you do that? ps:i havent uploaded the clothes because they suck.

kingdomheartsgirl111 - Err, read... the first part of the first post? It explains what you can and can't use and has links to programs and info and stuff - and mentions Paint too.

Is there something that I am missing I am unable to open more than 1 instance of paint.net

Ok after doing some reading about paint.net I found out that the version 3 that I downloaded does allow you to have more than one thing open in the program at once.

lowcamifo - message #130 has a work around

amd what happens if you don't have a projects folder? please reply?

Homecrafter will create a Projects folder when you go to create a new project if you don't already have one.

I'm having a problem....I have the floors in-game, and I got happier a little inside when I finally found them free after months of searching. I died a little on the inside when I found that they're not working properly (((( They show up, but when I put them on my floor, they show up black *Cries* Can anyone help me?????

Simpenguinz, this tutorial is about -making- walls and floors. If you're having trouble with something in your game, try the Game Help section.

hellup
 

i have a big big problem when i look under images i can't see image size
so i can't change the sise of my image who can help!!!!

Thank you for this. I am a very artistic person tha never thought I could do anything like this. I am so happy. Thanks again.

I couldn't find a 49.1MB download on there.

Fall_Out - make sure you are installing Framework, whichever way in which it currently presented on Paint.Net's site. There's 2 parts - the paint.net application, and the system used to run it, framework.

Thanks i don't have paint.net or photoshop but i figured it out.

Oh, Ok thank you. I found the problem, though. The Reflection was off in the Game Preformance Section I feel really dumb....

Thanks for writing such an easy-to-follow tut. *eyes HomeCrafter manically*

Thanks for a great tutorial! Very easy to understand and follow. I was even able to follow using a different graphics program which was great and made a great set!!!

Incredibly awesome and simple to follow tutorial!!!!!!

Thanx a lot for your time and for sharing your knowledge

Awesome tutorial but I'm a but stoopid!
 

Hey HystericalParoxysm, thanks so much for this tutorial, its awesome and especially good as I really want to delve into the creating pot with full vigour! But, I've managed to hit a brick wall at great speed; no matter how many times I try, after I've gone through the part in Homecrafter when you write a description etc and confirm that you want to import it into your game, I can never find the finished project in any section nor in my game itself, 'tis quite frustrating you see. Its sort of snubbed my desire to create seeing as I can't even get a wall to work If anyone has any ideas I would be so grateful, I'm certain that I've followed all the points down to every last detail but nothing is working as of yet.

littleminnie1000

[EDIT!!] I'm officially the biggest fracking idiot ever, please disregard the above post, I've got it sorted. Again, thanks for the uberly cool tutorial!

Wow!!! Such great tutorial you've got there, and so easy to follow.
Looking forward to doing more tuts here at MTS2...

Hope I'd be able to upload my works here... someday! >.<

Thanks so much!!!

This was very easy to follow, thank you!

Uhm.........
 

Uhm.... Is homecrafter ONLY for windows a.k.a. pc? 'Cause I have a mac os 9.

check on the ea site....that's where you find homecrafter... they MUST have a mac compatable version

This is a great tutorial. Except that I made my template thing but i don't understand how to get it into Homecrafter. I have it downloaded and everything I know you're supposed to create new wall coverings-add (+) i don't have a subfolder Home Crafter Plus in my projects folder. Do I create one or did i install it wrong?

I just looked through all these posts to make sure this hasn't already been answered and i want to check something. Since walls have to be resized to be used for mac users also. Can't we just start it at that size? Or does it have to be made in the original size and then saved at the different height when it's completed?

Much thanks HP ^^.

starwyn - the reason for the sizing issues and the recommendation to do it one size and then scale it down - is scaling. If you design the wallpaper at the shorter size - then it will be 'stretched' when it goes on the walls - it might not matter for some designs, but for others it definitely will look stretched.

[Quote]You must first resize your walls to 256x512 before saving as a .bmp. Walls at 256x768 (or ANY other sizing except 256x512) will show as grey for Mac users, though they'll work fine for PC users. Please resize before saving so your walls work correctly for everyone.[Quote]

What i mean is can we make the wall at 256x512 or do we have to make it at 256x768 and then resize it? Wouldn't it make the wall look squashed if we resize it to 512 after the wall is made? I'm a bit confused.

starwyn - The actual aspect ratio of the wall used in game is 256x768 so you should build your walls at that size so your graphics look correct. However, the actual texture size used by the game is 256x512 and if you don't resize to that size before importing, your walls will just look grey for Mac users. The game stretches that 256x512 graphic over the whole wall though - so though you lose a little detail in resizing, your actual textures will show up in the right place and won't look stretched.

umm im trying to download paint.NET and you said to download the 49.1 versions because it includes .NET 2.0 but i cant find it under downloads just 3.10 and 3.20 please tell me how to get 49.1 please!

redautumn - we cannot be responsible for the regular changes over at paint.net. Go find a current version and follow whatever directions are on site to make sure you can run it. You might have to download .NET 2.0 also.

Very nice tutorial!
I have a quick question - can this tutorial and other endeavors such as recolouring clothing, skinning, and object recolours be done in Adobe Photoshop Elements (the lastest edition)? I'm not familiar enough with that program to know whether it has the required tools. I don't have it yet, but I might be getting it. Thanks!

bbear - no idea. If photoshop elements supports 'layers' then you ought to be able to do many of the things most of the tutorials go through (with your own learning of the program)

creating flooring tile
 

How would you make your flooring tile shinny? I would love to have shinny wood flooring.

Stonekeeper

That's a special... hacked object - a shiny floor. You lay it over the flooring you have

shiny floors
 

Where would I find it at ? and what is it called ? I loved these floors when I saw them. I forgot if it was on here or a site. Thank you for you imformation on this.

Stonekeeper

It seems as though Homecrafter doesn't load every Maxis wall; why is that?

I'm specifically looking for a particular Maxis brick wall, and it (as well as many other Maxis walls) is not showing up in Homecrafter.

Any ideas?

when i get up to resizing for the sencond time i can't find how, i use GIMP as the graphics design thing :\

can anyone help?

milka - Gimp book - online - free -- it's for an older version of gimp, but if that doesn't help, try looking on the web for general gimp tutorials.

http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/

Thank you so much for this tutorial! I've been wanting to make some new walls and this is great.

ty so much :]

Paint.net will not let me open 2 at once. I open it then click on the shortcut again and my old window came up. Any way you know how to fix this problem???

thanks for this! hugs and kisses on their way to you!

Hey, that's a great tute. thanx a lot. i kinda knew how to do it but i had forgotten how to get my wall back into the Homecrafter - its the little things that stump me - but scanning thru your tute to find out how i read thru some of it. its really good. even i can follow it! and your wall is beautiful.

Problem loading into homecrafter
 

in my homecrafter when i tried to upload my creations into the program, (around step 5 or 6) I was naming it and giving it a price, but the part to the left where it shows the wallpaper looked blank. Is there a reason for this? i used the same starting pictures as you so i figured it would look the same as yours. i was using photoshop cs3... so idk if that has something to do with it. the same thing also happened when i tried to do my floor so i figured i might have messed something up.

any ideas?

I have a doubt.
What can i do to fix the problem with floors, when i make
a set, floors looks different than walls, and sometimes this
doesnt looks fine...
Any ideas?

Ima -- is your graphic a .bmp type file? Photoshop tends to put things in .psd format unless you specifically tell it otherwise.

Rahela -- As a builder, I find it extremely rare that exactly matching wallpapers and floors look good ... so rare I can't even remember a case.

My first guess is that you are not taking into account the aspect ratio of each. You can not use exactly the same graphic for walls and floors and have them come out looking the same because they have different 'shapes'. Homecrafter will stretch the graphic to fit the shape.

I've never tried to do this, but here is what I would try first, and then adapt depending upon how it looked ....

Start with the wall graphic. Make it 'just right' at 768 x 256. Save as a new file name and crop to 256 x 256 --- it has to be crop, not resize! You want to use only the bottom square of the wall graphic. Save as .bmp for your floor. (And your floor will need to be the 1x1 tile - the multiple ones will require additional figuring.)

Now go back to your wall file and resize to 512 x 256. Here it has to be resizing -- you want all of your wall scrunched into the 512x256 format. Save as .bmp.

Put them thru homecrafter and see how it comes out. Good luck!

It's also worth bearing in mind (beyond bluetexasbonnie's very useful tips) that walls and floors will just simply look slightly different, even if you use the exact same colours for both. There's something about the settings for them or something... you can see it in my examples too: http://www.***/images/t...utorialwn02.jpg

"I was actually a little surprised when I saw these together... the background of the walls seems a lot warmer than the more yellow border and floor, but after looking at it for a minute, I kinda liked it better than if I'd done it the uniform yellowish-beige I'd intended the whole thing to be, and eyeballed in the graphics programs I'd built it in. The background being warmer is a little more interesting."

Best, then, to -not- use identical images to start your floor and walls as they aren't going to match exactly anyway, and just intend them to roughly coordinate.

Just an addition to bluetexasbonnie's tips - if you do crop the bottom of the wall graphic, you need to make sure that what you crop is seamless - if it doesn't tile properly over multiple tiles, you may have to adjust things till it does - either by cropping at a different spot, or working to make it seamless, or choosing a different texture for your floor.

Well thanks both, i think i will have to
work harder in order to creat something
that looks fine.
Here is my example for you to see it


It really looks like Arrgghh!
But in ps looks fine...i think i will have to choose
different textures just to fit them.
Right?

Thank you so much for answers!

Yes, those two look bad together. You might try taking your flower graphic, shrinking it and turning it into tiles. Alternately, select one of the medium colors from the floral trim to make a modereately uniform carpet look.

The main wall coloring could use a little more work to make it truely seamless and more uniform, without being boring. (That is exceedingly hard! A solid color with a light application of a B&W texture pattern in the multiply mode often works nicely.)

Yeah as i told you i will have to work harder XD

Thanks!!

Great guide.I have Paint Shop Pro 7. Will that work?

I've never used Paint Shop, but there are a lot of wall/floor builders who do, and they make gorgeous things. Since the functions I'm talking about are fairly basic graphic functions, I would expect Paint Shop to have them.

hey, is there anyway you could send me the version you have there? i can't seem to do anything i want to with the one i have. it doesn't listen to me.

nvm i got the experimental version. it's screwed up

i praise you
 

Thank you very much! You are the best tutorial person ever! Now i am making my own custom textues so far i have 2 walls. i didn't download any of the textures or anything. I hate it how when you're making walls in paint.net it loooks crappy so you keep fixing it but when you look at in in homecrafter it looks so nice :D

Thank you so much for taking the time to put this tutorial in for us. I'm a newbie and I started playing Sims2 about a year ago and I had no idea you could make custom content for it until a week ago and I have been on this site every day since. I decided I wanted to start making my own custom content and share it with everyone when I get better at it but I had no idea where to start. This tutorial is very well laid out and is understandable and you did a wonderful job!

Augustsim

thanks HP

can we make different colors of that one wall and floor?

Thanks so much for this. I just got the game recently and I've been going through the site and learning so much, just created my first wall/floor.

OHJ - Of course you can. You'd just want to make a new project and replace the .bmp it makes for it with one from your layer separated documents. I wouldn't suggest cloning the existing project and recolouring that, as that will degrade your textures, but recolours are easy.

is it just like recoloring objects? how do we package them all together as a set of walls or floors of different textures , because I saw that it's not a zip or rar file it's the package installer type

Hi HP.
I did a wood wall with bottom border, I like how it looks except for the seam where the two tiles meet. How can I fix it?

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/9144/image1ic3.jpg

Look at it in game before you actually decide whether it needs fixing or not. The view on the left in homecrafter currently has "grid" on. That dark line is not actually part of the file and will not be in the ingame view. Even if you turn it off, you still need to look at it in game. Some can look bad here and look okay ... though more often they look okay here and look disgusting when you fill a room with them.

You really need to judge ingame.

Bonnie is right,turn the grid off and the lines disappear.
To get a seamless wall,in your graphics program go to Effects/Image Effect/Seamless Tiling.
Your walls will be seamless,that applies to floors as well.
it's always good to check in game first.
You package each wall and floor seperate in Homecrafter,then do a folder,give it a name
of your set.
Put them all together in that folder and just .rar or .zip it.
Sorry,turn it into a rar or zip file.

it looks seamless in game, appreciate your help thanks again

Hi- I've tried searching extensively but couldn't find the information I need. I am working in Photoshop CS3, and am having trouble making my moldings uniformly white without losing a lot of detail. All the methods I use take an inordinate amount of time, are not that accurate (dodging, for instance) and very time consuming (using the raster lines to correct line by line.) any suggestions? I just want my moldings a nice even white so they'll be seamless.