WMS Hair Recolor Tutorial! - CUBERSIMS - Tumblr

I’ve gotten a couple of requests to do a tutorial on how i do my recolors, so here you go!!

Also, this is what i do when recoloring, you don’t have to do the exact same thing, everyone has their preferences!

And be prepared!! This is a VERY detailed tutorial!!

If you have any questions about the tutorial, or if there’s anything you don’t understand, pls send me a dm! :D

Press keep reading to see the tutorial! :D vv

You will need:

• Photoshop of any kind (you can get CS2 for free here!)
• Sims 4 Studio (S4S) (needs registration to download)
• A DDS plugin for PS! (it’s called texture tools)
• WMS recolring actions by @wildlyminiaturesandwich!
• WMS swatches thumbs! (same link ^)

Before recoloring you should read WMS’s post on her recolors! There are a lot info there you’ll need to use in this tutorial!!!

1. Install S4S, PS and the DDS plugin!

2. Find whatever hair you want to recolor and download it!

1. Make sure to put the downloaded file into the mods folder in S4S!! Which can be found in documents>sims 4 studio>mods

3. Open S4S and create your recolor file!

1. Go to the cas section and choose “Add CAS part swatch” it’s very important you choose that or else the swatches will not be a part of the orignial mesh, and you’ll make a standalone file!
2. Then click ‘CAS’, and it’ll bring you to a page with all the stuff EA has created, including the cc files you’ve put into the mods folder!
3. In the top right corner you can filter the files into only showing the mods/cc you’ve put in!
4. Find the hair you want to recolor, and ‘shift+click’ the file and press next in the bottom right corner!
5. A new window will pop up and this is where you will save your file! To start with i create a folder with the mesh artists url, then the hair name and in that folder i create one folder for each of the palettes!
6. Then i create the file, and name it after the palette i start with!

4. Now we’re going to prepare the file for recoloring!

1. First find the ‘EA white’ swatch and export the texture (make sure the file is a .dds file!!!!)!
2. Now delete all of the other swatches, so that there’s only one swatch remaining! It doesn’t have to be a specific swatch, it’s just important that you export the white texture before deleting the swatches :D
3. Now go to ‘warehouse’ which is in the top left corner and click on ‘CAS PART’ (there should only be one)
4. Go to the search bar on the right and type ‘sec’ and “SecondaryDisplayIndex” will pop up!
5. Click on the number and write either 200 (unnaturals), 400 (naturals) or 600 (neutrals) depending on what palette you’re using! This will make sure your recolors will stay in order, and not interfere with eachother! I highly suggest you read @neverloore‘s post about it right here!!
6. Now that you’ve exported the texture, and done the SecondaryDisplayIndex we can move on to the recoloring!

5. Open Photoshop and start recoloring!

1. Open up PS and open your ‘EA white base texture!
2. Go to the actions tab on your right, click on the little arrow in the top right corner, then ‘Load Actions’! Find the WMS actions and load them!
3. Now go to the palette/folder (in the actions menu) you would like to recolor with and click the arrow! Now a bunch of actions will appear, and these are all the individual colors for the palette!
4. Click on the first action and then click the little arrow down at the bottom of the action window! Now your file has been recolored!
5. Save the texture by pressing ‘ctrl+shift+s’ i find that this is the quickest way to do it!! You can do it manually by going to ‘file>save-as’ in the topbar menu!
6. A new window will pop up! Find the folder we created at the beginning, and go to the folder with the palette you’ve chosen, and type 1 (or whatever number you’ve reached)! I give all the swatches numbers according to the palettes colors, it’s easier to have it this way when we start putting the swatches into S4S! Press save!!
7. The NVIDIA DDS plugin will now pop up, and you wanna have the top row set to “DXT5 ARGB 8 BPP / interpolated alpha”! Click save, and do this to all the other swatches you wanna make! (Remember to go back into history and start with the base before doing another recolor)

6. Put the recolored files into S4S!

1. Go back into S4S and import the new recolors! (one at the time)
2. When you’ve imported all the recolors go to swatch thumbnails and import the WMS swatch thumbnails!
3. Right+click on the existing swatch (the one with the cross under) and then click on the swatch thumbnail we just imported! It should now change to the same color as the one in the imported thumbnail! Do this to all your swatches!!

7. You’re now done! Just remember to save and rename your file!!

8. If you’re going to recolor with more than one of the palettes, i suggest you make individual files for every palette (so 1, 2 or 3 files), and when you’re done you can merge all the files/packages together into one!

1. Go to tools in the topbar, then merge packages!
2. Add your recolors and then merge them all together, to create a new package with all files included!

Hope you guys liked the tutorial!! It looks rather complicated when you first look at it, but it’s quite easy once you get the hang of it!! When you get into ‘the rythm’ of recoloring you can do it very fast - it takes me about 40 min. to recolor one hair with all three of the palettes! :D