Any tips on making Wallaper Murals, or is it pretty much a hit and miss till you get aligned righ? Please help...

tomasz25 - I like your set, especially the black and white squares. Good job!

obsessisim - Well, getting a seamless texture out of a non-seamless pic has vexed texture artists since the beginning of the pixel. One thing you can do with very soft pics (like clouds) is, in Photoshop, use Filter - Other - Offset and change the horizontal offset (for walls - for floors you would do both horizontal and vertical). This will immediately show you where the seam is, and then you can use a soft fuzzy brush to paint (or clone stamp) to fix the seam, then offset again to put it back (if you want - shouldn't really be necessary but I do it). I found a little tutorial, not specifically for Photoshop, but showing this technique here: http://www.highpoly3d.com/writer/tu...le/seamless.htm

A google search for "making seamless textures" or "making textures seamless" seems to bring up quite a bit of good info on it.

Unfortunately there's no one trick... plenty of programs that claim to do it but make ugly stuff, and a lot of skill and practice involved. Eventually, after working with textures for a while, you'll be able to glance at a pic and go, "Oh yeah, that could easily be made seamless" or "that's gonna be a total pain, nevermind, I'll choose something else."

Ebbe - I've done it in Photoshop with great success by using Guides. You'll need to get the pic set up so that the height and width are correct - the height should be 768, and the width should be a multiple of 256. You may need to crop or resize to stretch it a bit one way or the other. Then use View - New Guide to add guides to your pic. If you want three tiles across, then you'd add a vertical guide at 33% and 66%, to divide the image into thirds. Make sure Snap is on (View - Snap) and then use the rectangle select tool to select the left third - your selection will automatically snap to the guide so you get a perfect seam with no effort. Copy it, paste it into a new document, resize to 256x512 and save as your first wall piece. Go back to your big texture, select the right third, copy, paste into a new document, resize, and save that as your third wall piece. Then set your selection to additive and select both the left and right thirds, so you have everything but the middle selected, and Invert Selection to have just the middle piece selected. Again, copy, paste into a new document, save, and save as your second wall piece. Then make the three walls in Homecrafter.

If you notice a seam between the wall textures, try setting the background colour in your new documents for each piece to a colour that more closely matches the general colour of your textures - i.e. if your textures are mostly red and orange, choose a reddish-orange background colour instead of white.

HP thank you for your response. I finally had a eureka moment and realized the textures I was trying to use were just too, well, textured. So I used render-clouds, no pun intended. It worked, it wasn't exactly what I had been after originally of course, but it looks really pretty. I'm going to try the offset procedure next. Thanks again.

im also having the same problem as shell and alana,im usuing photoshop 7 although when i finish creating there is no option to save as a bmp, can anyone help me with this?

one suggestion i have is to save it as a .jpg and then opening your new .jpg file with microsoft photo editor, then pressing save as, and then selecting the bmp option

Very nice tutorial. I've never custom made anything for the game until now!

I have one question though. I made a specific wall for the outside of a shop I'm building. Problem is.. there is a sign that is about as wide as a wall. I don't know how I would make a sign individually at that width and all but, I figured that I could add it into the wall that I made. Problem is.. the sign shows up 3 times in the final product and I don't want that. Is there anyway I can incorporate a sign that says "The Dot Grill ect."or would I have to make that seperate from the wall itself?

Thanks again and great tut.

Jolene

If I hadn't read this, it would've taken me forever to figure out. Great tutorial! And its given me something new to do on sims! XD
Thanks!

thanx a lot

thanks for this tutorial, now i'm addicted to www.theinspirationgallery.com and am totally inspired by you. thanks! i'm trying this when i get home.... this friday! that's 4 days away!!!!!!

OMGISH! Thank you SO much for this. I just made my first recolour (*squeel*) And it looks... normal! Thank you once again, so much for this wonderful tutorial.

Thanks a lot, your tutorial is really good, and I'm actually beginning to understand the very basics.

But I have a problem with the wall. I put the size as you said, everything looks good, but when I opened it in the Homecrafter, I see the wall, and then two black spaces on the sides, as if the wall I just created was too narrow for the template.

I tried several times and with different sizes, such as 256 x 768 and 256 x 512, but they all look the same. I also exported one of the Maxis wall and opened it with Photoshop, so that I could compare mine with Maxis, and so far I can't notice any difference. I can't understand why I see those black spaces.
What do you think the problem is? I'm trying to google it, but so far I haven't come up with any solution.
Thanks again!

Melynna: Those black spaces are just gridlines. There is a grid option, and its defaulted to start with having them on, so just click on the off box

I did everything as you said, with saving the files, but it still fails to show on the New Content Window. When I looked at the files, I could see the Wall I just made has a photoshop logo next to it. So as a test run I cloned another wall that was already in the game to see if it had some different logo, and when I looked at it, it had the Microsoft Office Picture Manager logo next to it.
I became confused, and tryed to paste the wall I had just made to the cloned wall, and saved it. I had trouble getting it to save as the same template, but when I did get it to save correctly, it failed to show on the HomeCrafter. So I went into My Documents, and opened the photoshop file with Micosoft Office Picture, and it did the funniest thing. It showed up as the original cloned wall, and had none of the changes I made to it.
I'm lost as to what to try next to fix this problem. I don't have a mac, and the picture is the correct size... what's the problem?

Thank you for taking the time to post this tutoirial.. it was a great help and helped me create my first wallpaper

I'm having troubles.. I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9, I made a wallpaper and saved it as a .bmp. I did it twice, once using Paint Shop, and another time with MS Paint. (both different filenames, both ending with .bmp) and when I open them on HomeCrafter, I see it on the right, but not on the left. (Check the screenshot) This happens for both of the files. What can I do?

Ok, I've been making walls and floors since I first got my hands on homecrafter so I'm not unfamiliar with the process. What I am unfamiliar with is the photo editing software. While I wait for a new Photoshop disk (discovered a 1" crack in mine this morning ) I'm using Paint Shop Pro X. What I want to do is change the color of the Maxis siding Applause! All Natural Clapboard to a variety of colors to upload here for builders to use to cover up wonky walls. I have a set, but the creator doesn't allow her recolors to be uploaded with lots anywhere other than the site I got them from. So, now that I've removed hers from my game I need to make a set of my own!

I've been using bucketfill on the background layer with opacity at 50% and I don't like the results I'm getting. It looks a bit "washed out" for lack of a better term. And when I adjust the opacity I'm not getting a dark enough result. This is the only method I've found through my own research including two books I bought. (other than just adjusting the hue and saturation which doesn't give me as much control as I'm looking for... I have the values for some specific colors I want to use but I can't figure out where to plug them in to adjust it without completely losing the texture of the original wall ie I'm just getting a big rectangle of color rather than a recolored maxis wall texture) Clearly I'm not looking in the right places or using the proper terminology when I'm searching the net. Is there another technique I should be using? Gee, I never imagined I'd be asking this question for walls when it's also the only thing preventing me from recoloring objects as well.

Please give me a kick or shove in the right direction if this isn't the place to ask. I'll gladly take my questions to the appropriate place and still share my results here.

Thank you

JLonier: um...i hope i understood u correctly JLonier. fistly, create another layer that is just one solid colour, or pattern that u want the wall to end up looking like. then, set the layer with you're textured wall above the sold colour one, and then set the textured layer to luminosity. I have photoshop, so im not sure if with Paint Shop Pro, the thing is called luminocity, but what it basically does is that by setting it to luminosity, it takes on the colour of the layer behind it, thus changing it to the colour u want without distorting your texture. hope this helps....

CrimsonWish: if you see a photoshop logo, that means your picture file is set as a .psd or whatever the photoshop file name is. in photoshop, u have to save as a .bmp or if by some chance it doesn't let you (it may not for some people with low ram, etc) save it as a .jpg after you do this, open your new.jpg file with microsoft photo editor, then press save as, and then selecting the bmp option. hope this helps...

tomasz25, thank you for responding. I tried as you suggested (it's called luminance in paint shop) and after fudgeting around a bit it worked! However, the color I've ended up with doesn't match the values I've got it at. I'm not understanding, but I'm further on my way than I was earlier this evening. I'll keep at it. Thanks again.

I've messed about a bit more and am not understanding why it's coming out so bright. I'm not sure if you can tell from the screenshot, but the color I want is a nice, rich, deep, dark, victorian red. The color I'm getting (putting my texture on top and setting it to luminance) is more of a neon circus color even though you can plainly see the layer below it isn't that color. Can you tell what I'm doing wrong? At this point I probably need to put it away for the night and pick it up again tomorrow. Now that you've given me another way to try I will do some more searching in the morning and we'll see. Learning like this can be so frustrating! But you also never forget it.

okay, well i don't think this will get you exactly what you want, but get it a bit better. on your textured layer, turn saturation all the way down. Turn lightness, or brightness, or whatever paint shop calls it down just a touch. also, change your red layer slightly darker.

I guess nobody could help me with my problem...?

katatem17: i really don't know why that's happening, sorry

its alright... I'll try to think of something...

thanks anyway, tomasz25... I wonder if it'll show up on the game if I just import it without looking at it that way... I think I'll try that.

tomasz25, Nah that didn't do it. However! I played around a bit more this morning and got close enough to the values I want that I will be submitting my wall recolors some time today. There must be a way to recolor using exactly the color you want. Maybe it's just not possible in paintshop? I dunno. Since my PSE disk was ruined I decided to upgrade to PSE 5 (reasonably enough my hubby won't let me get the full version until I'm experienced enough with the software to mesh) which will be here (according to Amazon) on Tuesday. I think I know where to go in PSE to do what I've been trying to in paintshop.

Anyway, thank you for your help.

Can't you save it directly in the mydocuments/EA games/projects/HomeCrafter Plus/walls or w/e. instead of copying and pasting from your folder into it?

It would be easier + when you modify if (IF you modify it) then when you clicked save it'd save and you could press refresh before uploading it to the game.

HP, thanks alot for taking the time to write this tutorial. It is a huge help for us beginners. I really appreciate all the hard work you put into this. It has been a huge help.