

Here is where you'll set up the age and gender you want your tattoo to use. Select Categories: Click on the third tab, Part Category. Now that you've got your design cut out from the background, you need to place it properly so it can work as a tattoo texture. Once the background is removed and the black is adjusted, the design is ready to be placed as a texture. Exactly how much you move it depends on your original image, but dragging it 1/5 to 1/4 of the way is probably about right. You'll see the dark areas of the image lighten somewhat. Image > Adjustments > Levels, and drag the black arrow under Output Levels over toward the right somewhat, as shown. To fix this, you need to adjust it so the black and near-black parts of the image are a dark grey. All of them take on a bit of the skin colour, and most "black" tattoos end up looking like a very dark grey. Note that not a single one of them have a flat, truly black tattoo.

Black tattoos are NOT BLACK!! Even tattoos that are black inked, like tribal tattoos, are not pure black! Do a Google Image Search for "tribal tattoo" and you'll find plenty of pictures of people wearing tribal tattoos. Here are the two designs that will be demonstrated in this tutorial:Īdjust Black: This part is VERY important. Make it easy on yourself, and choose a flash design. If you -do- use a pic from a body, you'll probably have to do a lot more work to get it to look nice, and I'm not going into that here. It's much easier to separate the parts of the image that way.

That is, a drawing of one, not a picture of someone's tattoo on their body. This is -much- easier if you use a "flash" tattoo design as your base. Okay, let's get started! Please note that all images below may be clicked for larger versions and are not shown full-size on this page!įirst, you need to have an idea of what type of tattoo you want to make. You will, of course, already need whatever graphics program too.Įasy to Medium - This probably shouldn't be your absolute first project, but is relatively easy to do once you get the hang of the basics of DDS files, textures, CTU, etc. Instructions are given for Photoshop CS3 - you may have to do some Googling for tutorials and tips on making it work in your program of choice. DDS Plugins for Photoshop, GIMP, Paint Shop Pro, or whichever program you use to edit graphics - For creating and editing the textures you will need to make.Body Textures and UV Maps - To use in scaling and aligning your textures.CTU - To grab one of the game's meshes to import so you have a basic skeleton, and to look at the game's original textures.Want your sims to get some nice ink? Here's the basic steps to create a nice tattoo that works well in the game and looks good.
