Making Control, Specular, and Diffuse Textures for Hair

[Bosie]

You will need a photo editing programme that supports layers, or something similar, plus the plug-ins for your particular programme of choice so that you may export .DDS files (See HP's hair tutorial for links.)

This tutorial does not cover halos nor bump maps. I simply wrote this up quickly because I think we could use some guidance on this, especially when it comes to control textures.

Because my focus is on conversions, I refer to textures that are extracted from TS2 hairs. However, your own or any others you decide to use will work just as well.

Pick a blonde recolour of the hair you're editing, as it is neither too dark nor too light. I like to extract the textures from SimPE (better quality), but it since the alpha is applied, it will be exported as a transparent png. I simply use the eyedropper, and sample a bit of colour from the hair itself, make a new layer, flood-fill, and move it below the actual textures to give me a solid image to work with (you need one, by the way.) Merge the layers (Ctrl+E), select all (Ctrl+A), and copy (Ctrl+C). Also, make sure to export the alpha channel only.

To avoid confusion, and to simplify things later, make a new document, with the same dimensions (1024X1024) and paste (Ctrl+V) your textures. This will become your diffuse layer. This is the actual hair texture, it also contains the alpha. But we'll get to the alpha later.

Copy your layer, desaturate. Copy your desaturated later, and set the mode to screen. Merge both of these layers.

Make a copy of your merged layer, and set the mode to screen again. (You could do this more quickly, but slowly increasing brightness like this will allow you more freedom). Change the opacity until very light, but the hair texture is still quite visible.

Sometimes the root are much darker than the rest of the hair, which will cause them to look very dark in spite of making them a light colour in CAS. To fix this, make a copy of this layer in Screen mode, apply a layer mask, go to Channels, and paste the hair texture in the layer mask.

Go back to the layers panel, select the mask icon next to the screen layer, and invert it (Ctrl+I). This will lighten the roots, and other dark portions. Use Levels (Ctrl+L) to increase constrast in the mask so that only the darkest regions will be affected.

Now that we're done with that, we have to decrease the contrast. This is also another step that will ensure your hair looks smoother. Go to Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast. If you have a newer version of Photoshop, make sure to tick the 'Use Legacy' option. I set mine to -18, but yours will vary depending on whether you'd like more visible highlights and lowlights.

We are now done with the actual texture. Flatten your image (Layer>Flatten Image) and now go to the Channels tab. Make a new channel (click the icon to the left of the bin) it will be completely black. Now open up your the original alpha, select all, copy, and paste it into your new channel.

Now export as a .DDS file. For diffuse and specular textures, you can use DXT3, I personally don't compress mine (I save mine as 8.8.8.8 ARGB Uncompressed.)

Now on to the specular. This is the easiest texture. Go back to the original textures with the solid background we made in the beginning. Copy, and paste them into a brand new document. Desaturate (Ctrl+Shift+U), make a copy on a new layer, bring up the Hue/Saturation dialogue (Ctrl+U) and decrease brightness until it's almost black but you can still see the textures.

Now bring up Levels, and tweak it until you you see more hightlights by dragging the white slider on the right.

Flatten your image. Now you're ready to export as a .DDS file (DXT3 or DXT5).


Now the control texture, which is the hardest part. Actually, not's that hard, but in comparison to the rest of the textures, this one requires a bit of effort. This is probably the most important part, at least I think it is, because with a bad control map, the hair will end up looking like someone coloured it with a crayon or similar to hay, with highlights and lowlights scattered all over the place. In order to avoid this and to stick with the original highlights and lowlights, we will use the texture as a reference.

Again, make a new document using the base, solid TS2 textures you exported from SimPE. Now go and make yourself a copy of the exported alpha, and paste that as a new layer over the hair textures. Change the layer mode to Multiply.

Now make yourself three new layers in between these two. Name them Roots, Highlights, and Tips. Now bring up the Swatches panel, and sample from the very first red swatch there.

Using the brush tool (B), select a small, soft-edged brush. Click on the Roots layer, and paint in around the roots, which should be the darkest areas around the top of the texture. Make it a little messy and jagged, but don't go all the way down to where the roots end.

Now go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur, set the angle to whatever direction your textures seem to be going (mine are vertical, so I chose 90.) Increase Distance until you see the texture is more or so blended.

Now do the same with the tips and highlights. Use the topmost green on the left in the Swatches panel for highlights, and the topmost, leftmost blue for tips. For highlights, try to keep only to the somwhere in the middle of the lighter regions, and for the tips, don't get too carried away in making them cover a lot of the texture.

Now that you've got all your areas mapped, you will need to refine them so that they conform to the textures and aren't just a mass of blurry coloured stuff over the hair. Select the entire base layer with the original TS2 textures, and copy it. Make layer masks for the three mapped areas. Go to the channels tab and paste the hair textures in all three alpha channels for the masks.

You will see now that your coloured maps look a little washed out. Make a new layer above the TS2 texture base layer, and fill it completely in black. For the red roots layer, invert the mask, and use Levels to bring out the red.

Repeat for Highlights and Tips, but don't invert those layers. Set the topmost Multiply layer with the original alpha to a lower opacity so that it doesn't intervene with the map so much (something less than 50%.) Remove the actual hair texture layer, and flatten your image.

Now export your Control texture as 8.8.8.8 ARGB Uncompressed.

If anyone needs further instructions or photos, go ahead and ask  .
 

[apollo]

Thanks for the tutorial Bosie. It never occurred to me to use the motion blur tool   I've been doing this the silly way and copy/pasting parts from original EA textures and warping/blending them. Doesn't really work as well as this  

[ZCTatom]

I've been doing your tutorial in GIMP, and as far as I can tell thus far everything's about the same. Some functions are in different locations (such as Brightness/Contrast), but they're easy enough to find.

However, I haven't finished, so I don't know if anything is different towards the end.

I just want to put it out there, though, that if you're using GIMP you can more or less follow this tutorial.

[v_ware]

Livesaver!! Thanks!

Question: Do you know how to edit a UV map in milkshape when you're doing a ts2 to ts3 conversion?

[Bosie]

Question: Do you know how to edit a UV map in milkshape when you're doing a ts2 to ts3 conversion?

You would modify it the same as you would for a TS2 hair (I'm assuming you've already fiddled around with UV maps for TS2 items), editing the maps of the individual groups before merging into a single group and keeping in mind that all the groups must be mapped on a single 1024x1024 texture file. I'm not entirely sure if this answers your question as you did not provide me with more details, so if it does not, do elaborate.

[v_ware]

Thanks!

[KingBooker]

Thank you so much for the tutorial, but I need to know one thing. Is it possible to use other game textures or other creators' textures in the hairstyles I convert myself?

[Bosie]

Of course, just make sure the texture is 1024x1024.

[sunhair]

Bosie  great tutorial really easy to follow thank you so much for writing it

[xizarx]

Thank you for the tuto, it was very useful.
I have one question. I converted a hair from female to male, just editing the mesh and using the same diffuse, control and specular included in the female version. But, while the original female looks ok in game, mine looks like this:



It makes me think it's a problem with the control file, but I'm not sure. It seems the base colour is always dark.

[Bosie]

Hmm, I remember getting that problem a lot when I first started converting hair. Alas, I don't think I even remember what the problem was and how I fixed it. I think one of two things fixed that for me. 1) try flipping the textures by 90 degrees. Look at the original textures and try to figure out whether the hair is mapped up and down or side to side. 2) Try using another base mesh to clone it from.

[xizarx]

Thank you, I will try using another hair as base, because I think the hair should be mapped right (it's the same Rose used for the female version, no changes made).