Ever wanted to create your own custom markings? See my brand new tutorial. Tutorial covers how to make custom markings using S3PE, S3OC and Photoshop. Does not cover regional markings.

Common problems
There are no markings in s3oc
Open s3oc. Under the Settings menu, select Game folders. Make sure that EP5 (Pets) is enabled (there should be a check in the box next to it), and that it is linked to the correct install location. Unless you've messed with the default settings, it should link to C/Program Files/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3 Pets. If you have two Program Files folders, one called Program Files (x86), it will be under Program Files (x86). You can confirm by going to the location yourself in the Windows explorer, you should see the folder and it should clearly have files in it. Once you've made any changes needed in s3oc's Game Folders setting, press Close (not Revert). Then try loading CAS parts (you might need to use the Refresh option in the File menu first).

When asking for help, include your version number of whichever program you're having problems with!

Hello! I am very excited to work with your tutorial, I have a question, does your Photoshop just open the DDS file okay without any problems?
I have Photoshop Elements, and the DDS icon actually shows the PSE logo, as if saying that they are meant to be edited in it, but when I go Open > to file its saved in, a error says that its the wrong type of file.... am I supposed to do something before trying to edit it?

Thanks!

LellowLaby - Photoshop Elements, like Photoshop, cannot open DDS files without a plugin, no matter what the icon tells you. You need Nvidia Texture Tools. It should work with most versions of Elements. This guide gives you an overview of how to install PS plugins, the process is basically the same for PSE. After that, you should be able to open DDS images without problem.

Hope this helps.

Is there a way to change the assigned default colors of regional markings?

Thank you so much for the tutorial. It has opened Sims3 up to me for creating.

bluetexasbonnie - I am looking into your query, I suspect that the answer lies in the XML, and I believe I've found the values to change, but I'm having trouble figuring out the colour model, which I don't recognize.

My current hunch (can you tell how sure I am about this stuff? ) is that the codes are RGBA codes using arithmetic representation (using values between 0 and 1). Unfortunately, I can't find any program that will let me generate my own colours in this system. My only current reference about this system with colour codes is here. I'll hopefully get a chance to test this hunch out tomorrow, I'll update this post with the results either way.

Edit: I am still working on this. Changing the XML in the way I was thinking didn't work, I'm still doing some investigating.

Hey there, I'd LOVE to try out this tutorial, much thanks for providing it!

But, my S3OC does not show any files from the pets expansion(It's the only expansion pack I have)
They don't show in the list, searching for "marking" etc. brings no results, same with the list of types, it simply looks like I don't have the expansion pack. Do I have to install it to the S3OC somehow or did I just geniously miss the point? =/

Hi Anni1992! What version of S3OC do you have? To find out, open s3oc, and under the Help menu select About, the number listed under Front-end Distribution is the current version. Perhaps if you have a very outdated version, it may not load the Pets things correctly. I would try a reinstall, preferably of the latest stable version. If that's still not working, you would probably be better asking on s3oc's own help forums, I'm afraid I don't know enough about the program to troubleshoot it much.

It's version 12-0204-2341, I only installed it about a week ago. I'll still reinstall it now, thanks

Hmm, that is the exact same version as I have, and I've had no issues with it. I'd definitely ask on Simlogical.

I would really like some help.
I've been working at it so long my eyes burn, and I think I've pulled out a few strands (or locks, patches, however you want to look at it) of hair.

It clones fine and I've double checked what version of S3OC I'm using, so it isn't that, but when I open the cloned markings in s3pe, they don't have tags at all, and it seems I can't touch half of the resource files there. Ah.. I'm not very good at explaining. I could show someone on join.me if I could catch them, I suppose, but yeah. I suck at explanations.

._.

So, if you could help me out, I would greatly appreciate it. :D

EDIT: Uh. Well. I deleted and reinstalled, and now it works. ^_^ So, hehe, nevermind. Thanks for the awesome tutorial!! :D

It appears the Nvidia website has been hacked recently, and we cannot access downloads for Nvidia Tools via Nvidia's developer zone. And judging by their last update was about a week ago, it doesn't appear to be coming back up soon.

Does anyone happen to have a mirror site or a link for downloading the plug-in elsewhere, rather than directly through Nvidia?

Edit: I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS5, not GIMP.

For now, you can use this archive to access Nvidia's old download site, the download links still seem to work correctly. If that stops working, I have the most recent 64bit version which I can upload somewhere.

Hello,

I'm having the same problem Anni is having. I can't find it anywhere on the simlogical forums so I was wondering if there was a solution for the files not showing up?

Hi Iomai. I have never had that problem personally, but browsing the Simlogical forum I did find some people with a similar issue.

Firstly, make sure you have the most recent version of s3oc.

Secondly, open s3oc. Under the Settings menu, select Game folders. Make sure that EP5 (Pets) is enabled (there should be a check in the box next to it), and that it is linked to the correct install location. Unless you've messed with the default settings, it should link to C/Program Files/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3 Pets. If you have two Program Files folders, one called Program Files (x86), it will be under Program Files (x86). You can confirm by going to the location yourself in the Windows explorer, you should see the folder and it should clearly have files in it. Once you've made any changes needed in s3oc's Game Folders setting, press Close (not Revert). Then try loading CAS parts (you might need to use the Refresh option in the File menu first).

If that doesn't work, reinstall S3OC using a new downloaded file. Make sure to download the most recent version.

If all of this fails, ask about it on Simlogical. Let me know if and how you get your problem sorted.

Ah it works now. I checked it off and then back on. I also redirected LN,AMB, and WA EP's to where I installed them and everything works great. Thanks ^-^

When i click on the link for S3PE and S3OC in Custom Pet Markings by PharaohHound, a page comes up saying the webpage cannot be found

Ah, thanks for letting me know. Simlogical changed their url structure since I made the tutorial. Links are updated, should work fine now.

ETA: Updated the Nvidia link while I was there.

Thank you PharaohHound for this great tutorial. I have successfully made my pet markings for My Little Pony. Everything went like clockwork, and in CAP, the markings are nice and crisp.

However, in game, when you get close up to the pet markings, the markings, especially at the border edges, are pixelated. I went back into the file in photoshop, feathered the edges, manually smoothed them with my finger tool even, blurred some parts, ect. Again, in CAP the markings looked great but in game still pixelated.

Then I tried adding a 80% transparency 1pt stroke to the outside edge of the design and ended with crisp in CAP and same pixelated in game. At my wits end now :/

Im not sure why, I checked my settings in gameplay and its on high quality. Any suggestion on the pixelated issue? Whether its a game thing itself or something with the texture im somehow doing wrong?

Im interested to share the markings, so any advice would be appreciated. I planned to make the "cartoon style" and also a more natural (as natural as it gets anyway, hehe) pony symbol with lightly fur textured edges. But after seeing how pixelated they look in my actual game (but not in CAP) , I dont think the natural ones will look right. blarrg!

Could you post pics of both CAP and in-game appearance, at roughly the same zoom level, kittyvibe? I haven't run into this issue before, though tbh all textures will be at least a bit pixelated when you zoom in close.

Hi, thanks for reply. After my post, I tried fiddling with my nvidia settings and then the game settings for quality. Didnt seem to make a huge difference, it was slight improvement, but I cant keep the game at those settings, my pc was not liking it, hehe.

I took pics of the default size when first selecting the marking in CAP and then made another layer and shrunk it down in CAP to mimic the size of how it should look based on the My Little Pony.

Both looked great in CAP and in game the "default" size looked pretty good even close up, slightly pixelated but not bad; The smaller one was pixelated upon closeup in game, same as before.

Default size;




Ensmallened like it needs to be;

PharaohHound do you use custom brushes or default ones to make your markings?

kittyvibe - Ah, I see the problem now. Unfortunately, it is a function of the way TS3 renders textures, and is not fixable. It's called aliasing, and it's caused by trying to downsize images with sharp diagonal edges. Think of it this way, the image is based on square pixels. Square pixels don't naturally "play well" with diagonal lines, there's no proper way to represent them, so they will look jagged. Think of trying to make a sphere with lego blocks, it's the same idea. What photoshop does when you're creating your diagonal lines for your texture, is blurring the lines a bit so they look smoother. That's why your marking looks fine at default size, TS3 has not had to mess with the smoothing already applied by photoshop. This smoothing is called anti-aliasing. See this and this for examples.

Unfortunately, the instant you make the marking smaller in-game (larger won't do this), you screw up photoshop's carefully done anti-aliasing. However, TS3 is incapable redoing the anti-aliasing, for several good reasons, so you're left with jagged, aliased textures. In short (sorry for the long-winded explanation!), the only way you can fix this would be to create markings for all the different sizes you wanted - I would suggest doing these as regional markings instead, if the placement will remain constant. You could also make the marking in the texture as small as the smallest size, then just let the game upsize them when needed (you shouldn't have aliasing issues with upsizing), but you would lose some image quality whenever you upsized them.

Tekiiko - I made my own custom brushes. Unfortunately since I switched laptops last year I lost those brushes, but they were dead easy to make.

Thanks for the tip, Ill try doing them as regional. Dont know why I didnt think to do them that way to begin with /doh! hehe. I know what anti-aliasing is, but its good to show those who may read this after and wonder what you meant. I figured it had to be something about scaling down the image and losing the edges, the large "default" marking looks fine, thats why I thought that.

But your totally right, if its not meant to be anywhere but the booty spot, I might as well make them regional. Which is totally easy to pop off thanks to your great tut. Thanks again!

Hi hope someone can respond, if not it's ok
I tried making some custom markings but the files keep overwriting each other, basically only one will show up
I have other downloaded markings in game that work so I don't think it's my game
I'm not sure what I have done wrong but if it's easy to fix I would really appreciate an answer thank you x

You're probably not doing the cloning in S3OC correctly so that each marking gets a unique ID. Make sure you have "Renumber/rename internally" checked, and that you enter a different descriptive name for each marking in "Unique name" and "Unknown1".