#recolor tutorial

For starters: I do use Krita for all of my edits including the color swaps! There may be different techniques for different programs, so keep in mind you may have to use a slightly different method for your program!

First you’ll wanna open your sprites! I usually keep both my sprites in their own tabs but it won’t hurt to put the sprites together! I’ll be putting them together for this!

Now for the fun part! The recoloring! I use the color picker to chose the color I need, in this case, Kokichi’s hair color! I’ll do a new layer on top of Nagito’s sprite and rename it to what it’s gonna be so I won’t get confused later!

After that, I’ll apply a mode to the layer (Either color, multiply, soft light, etc, etc,)! For this part, Nagito’s hair is white while Kokichi’s is purply-black, So I’ll use Multiply!After you apply the mode, start coloring! I usually just straight up color it in like a coloring book, but if you know of an easier way then go ahead and try it!

(Let’s pretend that’s all colored in ;0) Now let’s do his eyes! Create a new layer for Nagito and rename it to your liking before making the layer mode Color! Then color pick Kokichi’s eyes for the color and color in Nagito’s eyes!

Hmmm Those are a bit bright compared to Kokichi’s actual eyes! Let’s darken them a bit! Right click on the layer and click “Duplicate” and set the new duplicated layer to the mode soft light! Then turn on Alpha lock (On Krita it is checkered square on the side of the layer), change your color to black, and draw over the eyes again!

Better! I normally do one sprite at a time, but for the sake of this tutorial, let’s move over to Kokichi to talk about other techniques! Whenever you shift focus to another sprite, hide the layers (Usually it’s the little eyeball!) that you used on the first sprite so you can color pick the colors you need!

Uh oh! Problem! We color picked Nagito’s hair color, and tried setting the layer mode to Color, but Kokichi’s hair is just turning black! Multiply doesn’t work either! Soft Light makes his hair lighter, but it’s still purple!There are a couple different ways that we can do this though!1. We can just redraw his hair and color/shade it in without having to use filters.2.We can color in using the Screen layer mode, being careful to avoid the lines in his hair (Screen mode will lighten the lines unlike the other modes, and if using a color close to white, will require the opacity being turned down so you can see the texture underneath).3. We can use a Color layer and a couple Soft Light layers to obtain close to the right shade.What you use here will be completely up to you, and again, you might find a whole nother way that’s easier than any of these! For this in particular I’m gonna go with the option that seems the most annoying! Using multiple color and soft lights! I use this one most of the time! But using the screen option is similar so I will talk about it as well.

The easiest way to do this method is to do your Color layer first, duplicating it, and changing that layer to Soft Light. (Tip! Make your Color layer fully black or white, even if your color picked color is almost white, it’ll look better and be easier to work with if the Color layer is a true black or white!)

Still not bright enough? Keep duplicating the layers until you get what you need! (Tip! You can also dupe your Color layer that’s a true white, make it into Soft Light, and it should make it easier! Just make sure it’s below the layers that are of your color picked color!) Sidenote: if you went with the screen option here, you would’ve needed to put a white Color layer under your Screen layer and then lower the opacity of the Screen layer, but it would’ve turned out to only two layers as opposed to four with this method. Also if you used the screen option, you will need to follow this next step aswell!

Ok! This is close enough! But now my lines are all wonky(Lighter if used Screen)! Well we can fix that!Make sure you’re on your top layer and switch to your erase tool! Make the brush size the size of your lines and erase where the lines are!

All better!

Now Nagito has a bit of brown on the bottom of his hair! How will we do that?Simple! We’ll use the gradient tool! I won’t be able to show you on sprites since I didn’t color that low, but using the tool is super easy I think you’ll be able to get it just with text!First color pick the brown color of Nagito’s hair and make sure you’re on the top layer and that it is alpha locked! Then drag from the bottom of the hair up to a little bit above Kokichi’s eyes with the gradient tool. When you let go of the mouse, a gradient will pop up there! Continue the steps until you get the amount of brown you want!

step 1. download sims 4 studio here. step 2. if you want to recolor cc from somebody, download the cc of course. put the package in the sims 4 studio mods folder. mine was at this pc>documents>sims 4 studio>mods. step 3. open sims 4 studio and fill in your creator name. step 4. click on CAS (yes click the blue thing) and you will see all the sims content you have.

step 5. for recoloring cc you go to content and click custom. the cc you placed in the sims 4 studio mod should be there! click on it and click on next. it’s the same for base game so i’m deciding to recolor this base game swimsuit. if there’s a white swatch click on that. if there’s not we can make a swatch white in photoshop.

step 6. a screen will pop up for giving your package a name. i decide on [myshuuno] BG swimsuit. click on save.

step 7. another screen will pop up. click on diffuse and export the diffuse map. i just named it bg swimsuit *insert color name* and save it as a png. (okay never choose the black swatch that was a mistake)

step 8. open photoshop and open your diffuse map aka your png. step 9. if there’s not a white swatch you can change it in photoshop. like i said open your png. i went with the red swatch since it was easier than black. open the adjustment black and white. since the swatch is red change the reds. i changed it to 95. next open up the adjustment levels. basically what i do is move those little arrows underneath until i’m happy with it. now the swatch is white and you can save it as a png. !if you can always choose the white swatch!

step 10. okay back to easy recoloring. you have your white swatch. make a new layer also known as layer 1. fill layer 1 in with the color you want with the paint bucket. right click layer 1 and create clipping mask. change the layer style from normal to multiply. you can also experiment with the other ones but i see multiply mostly being used. now you save it as a png!

step 11. now you go back to sims 4 studio and import your png. now you can import all your recolors (every swatch is a different color). you can change the swatch thumbnail to the matching color and create a catalog thumbnail (the size is 104x148). if you’re done save it! now you can put your recolor in your mods folder (if you recolor cc you also need the mesh in your mods folder!) and you’re done!

step 1. if you don’t know how to recolor with just colors i highly recommend reading @ridgeport’s recolor tutorial before using this tutorial. step 2. okay first you have to find some patterns you like. i got my patterns from pixelbuddha here. step 3. open photoshop and open your pattern. these were jpgs so i had to define them as patterns. go to “edit” and click define pattern. you can give it a name but i don’t really care so just click ok.

step 4. open the cc you want to recolor with the white swatch.

step 5. make a new layer and make sure it’s above your first layer aka layer 0. click the paint bucket and make the new layer white. right click layer 1 and create a clipping mask. change layer 1 from “normal” to “multiply”. it should look like this.

step 6. right click layer 1 and go to “blending options”. click “pattern overlay” and you’ll see this screen. click on the pattern and your saved patterns should be there! click the one you want and set the scale to what you think look good. for this one i had it set to 5. click ok and you should be done!

2. I generally like to then set up the package in S4S before starting with my recoloring, I also generally do step 6 before I set it up fully, but I want this tutorial thing to be streamlined as possible and not jump around too much. So just know there’s a little wiggle room here in terms of order. 

First, delete any swatches you have except for one. Which one it is doesn’t really matter. Then, go to the ‘Warehouse’ Tab on the top left and scroll down on the right until you find a section that says ‘Secondary Display Index’. This is what makes the swatches appear in the correct order, and not all over the place. You need to change this number to either 200, 400, or 600 depending on the palette you’re recoloring. 

Next, you’ll want to import the color palette of your choice by using S4S’s nifty and wonderful ‘color palette’ tool. This saves so much time. First you’ll need to make the palette to import though, as I don’t believe that anyone has their palette publicly available. Please correct me if I’m wrong! Skip this if you already have a palette. And don’t worry, you’ll only need to create your palette once, after that you just get to export it into each package! 

-HOW TO MAKE PALLETTE ASIDE- 

To create a palette to save and use later, first make sure you have the WMS Thumbs downloaded from WMS Here. Then, use them to create a your palette like it’s Ye Olde Days of recoloring. Cubersims’s tutorial goes into this a little more in depth, but import the Thumb, then right click the swatch thumbnail to bring up an eyedropper, then left click the imported swatch to match the colors. Add a new swatch and repeat.  

Once you have your palette done, open the color palette tool. Then Add a new palette, import your palette, name it, and hit save. 

Now you’re all done and ready to move on with the recolor! 

-END OF PALETTE MAKING ASIDE-

If you already have a palette, simply select it and press ‘Apply Palette to Package’. Generally a notification then pops up asking if you want to keep the existing swatch. Make sure to click ‘yes’ to keep it so that the secondary display index is correct. 

3. Now that you have your palette imported, make sure the secondary display index is correct to save yourself grief later. Then, delete your extra swatch back in the ‘Studio’ Tab. Now you’re ready to move onto Photoshop and recolor the hair! 

4. Open your base texture in Photoshop. Be sure you exported it as a dds file. Make sure your Photoshop is set up so you have the history window and the actions window open and available. Find the action you wish to preform and click on the play button. Easy as that! 

5. Here is where knowing what to do and running on autopilot can save you the most time. The trick is to move the mouse and click as little as possible. Get into a groove and you can finish all the recolors in as little as ~15 minutes, total. After you’ve run your action hit ‘Ctrl+Shift+S’ to save. Rename your hair, I generally just name them numerically (1, 2, 3,…). Hit Enter to save, don’t click. Make sure your NVIDIA settings are set to “DXT5 ARGB 8 BPP / interpolated alpha, 2D Texture, generate mipmaps”. After you’ve set that up once you won’t have to check again. Hit enter again. click back to your base using the history menu, click on the next color action, hit play, and repeat. 

6. Generally, I do about 3 swatches before going into S4S and checking to make sure my recolor is ok. It would suck to do all of them only to learn that your base was no good! So I generally check a few swatches before really getting into my Zen button clicking groove. Often I do this before I import the color palette, so it’s easier to go back and get a new base if I need to. 

It takes some practice to know if a recolor looks good while you’re in S4S. Generally speaking you want it to not have ugly dark patches, not be blindingly bright, and look like the color on the swatch. If you don’t think it looks right find a new base using the method I detailed in step one and try again! 

7. If your recolor is good then go back to step 5 and finish your palette! Import all the textures into S4S. Save. Next, you can copy your package into your mods folder and go into CAS if you feel unsure about how the colors looked in S4S. When you’re experienced enough with checking in S4S you’ll probably want to do this less, as waiting for the game to load is a big time sink. And as doing the next two palettes doesn’t take much time anyway, you may just want to skip this step altogether and do your check when you have all 3 color palettes ready. 

8. Do the other WMS palettes following the steps listed above, starting with 2 as you already have your base. Merge the packages if you’d like and do a final check in CAS and take your preview pictures. Now all that’s left is to take at least twice the amount of time it took recoloring to make a preview, then share your creation with the world! 

9. A Few Extra Small hints: 

After you’ve saved you don’t need to wait for the ‘loading’ wheel of your mouse to be done before you click back to your base using the history window, and you can also click on your next action after while the mouse button is still ‘loading’ 

-Make sure you don’t hit Ctrl+Shift+S prematurely! It’ll save as a PSD when not flattened and it’s super annoying. 

When moving on to your next palette either move your old textures into a folder if you’ll use them again (for a child hair or a hair that has the same texture) or just delete them so you can name your next textures numerically again starting with 1. 

Listening to music is the best way to achieve button pressing Zen and move as quickly as possible. 

There we are! I hope that wasn’t super confusing and will help you and others! Send me an ask if you’re confused with anything, or go to the WMS Recolorists Discord to ask for advise!

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!

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!

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!

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!

In the top right corner you can filter the files into only showing the mods/cc you’ve put in!

Find the hair you want to recolor, and ‘shift+click’ the file and press next in the bottom right corner!

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!

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!

First find the ‘EA white’ swatch and export the texture (make sure the file is a .dds file!!!!)!

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

Now go to ‘warehouse’ which is in the top left corner and click on ‘CAS PART’ (there should only be one)

Go to the search bar on the right and type ‘sec’ and “SecondaryDisplayIndex” will pop up!

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!!

Now that you’ve exported the texture, and done the SecondaryDisplayIndex we can move on to the recoloring!

5. Open Photoshop and start recoloring!

Open up PS and open your ‘EA white base texture!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!!

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!

Go back into S4S and import the new recolors! (one at the time)

When you’ve imported all the recolors go to swatch thumbnails and import the WMS swatch thumbnails!

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!

Go to tools in the topbar, then merge packages!

Add your recolors and then merge them all together, to create a new package with all files included!

Step 1. Start out with a white piece of clothing, learn how to get a white base for recoloring here. You will also need to create a palette to get the colors you want for your template (tutorial here). I am using the Mile High Palette for this tutorial.

Step 2. My Layer preview is a little large so I am going to click the little grey arrow and change the preview size to small.

Step 3. Now create a new Folder and name it to whatever palette you are using.

Step 4. Next create a new transparent layer and duplicate as many times as you need to get the same amount of layers as colors. For example, for 18 colors you need to duplicate 17 times to get 18 layers.

Step 5. Now double click the thumbnail next to your palette to bring up the palette colors. Grab the Edit Palette Tab and drag it down to the lower section. 

Step 6. You should be able to see your layers and the color palette now. Before we start doing colors, change the Folder (Mile High Palette) you created to Multiply. All of the layers inside should still be on normal.

Step 7. Next take the Bucket Fill Tool and click on a color from your palette to fill in your first layer in the folder. Do not fill in the folder, only the layers inside, the color will automatically change as you fill in the layers. Change the names of the layers as you go through the colors.

Step 8. Now go through and click on the little eyeballs (visibility) next to all of the layers except for the top folder (Mile High Palette) and one color of your choice. I chose to leave the visibility on the teal color (Elway), now we can see my clothing automatically changed to that color. When you want to change it to another color, click the eyeball to hide the current color, and click the eyeball next to another color. 

To save each color, go to File>Export As.. and I chose to save as a .png file.

Step 9. Let’s say you want to import a different piece of clothing now. Open the new piece of clothing it in GIMP and go to Select>>All. Then go to Edit>>Copy.

Step 10. Now go back to your image with all of the layers. Click the bottom layer with your old piece of clothing. Then go to Paste as>>New Layer. This will paste your new piece of clothing above the old piece of clothing. You can delete the old piece of clothing by clicking that layer and then clicking the trash icon.

Once again you can go through and change the colors of this new piece of clothing.

Step 11. To save this template for LATER USE, go to File>>Save as.. and make sure you are saving it as a .xcf file.