haha Goodluck guys!!!....Making shoes is difficult even with a tutorial...in my experience the best way to go about it is practicing on one of CHNxiaoju's or choi 2k's shoes in photoshop. I've already previously posted how to add alpha layers to shoes...all you need to do is follow the same guidelines as far as replacing existing shoes with custom shoes..(i.e sh001 and sh001r) in the sgsm folder. Anyway I'll try and help. All my expiremental shoes were made the following way....
1. click on the custom shoe images (like the kobe team shoe) in this forum and click "view image" and then click save. (save as bmp if possible it's makes shoe making a bit easier)
2.) Open the custom shoe image with Adobe photoshop.
3.) Look at the shoe image. Rotate it if you can. Really study how the shoe is fitted into the format. You will notice a few things, like how the right and left end of the shoe includes the back of the shoe, because they wrap around the back of the foot ingame. You will also notice, that you will need pictures of the front, back, sides, top and bottom of the shoe you want to create. CHNxiaoju's main concern with shoe making when people ask for him to make their shoe is he doesn't have enough pictures to make what they request.....You really need all angles to make a good shoe patch, and rare shoes don't usually have alot of pictures.
4. ) once you have all angles of your shoe, you will want to use the tools in photoshop to go about cutting and fitting them onto the custom shoe picture. I usually use the magnetic lasso tool and cut out all the pieces needed. Here's how I do the pieces....
Sides : This is probably the easiest part, because lots of shoes out there have side views of themselves, so its all about cutting and pairing up with the original shoe position. What I do is use the "Magnetic Lasso tool"(which looks like a lasso on the photoshop toolbar), and highlight all around the side of the shoe. Click copy, then go to your custom shoe canvas and click paste. Once you paste it you will need to reposition and reshape the shoe. You can do that by going up to "Edit" on the top of photoshop and going to the "Free Transform" option. This will allow you to edit the side you just pasted. Play around with the free transform menu. You can right click the image and rotate, skew, distort ect...
Front : From here on it gets hard. If you notice CHNxiaoju's work, it is close to flawless. The shoe wraps around and looks great ingame, and yet there really are no images online that show a shoe from it's top position. I took a shot at doing this and honestly you will have to experiment too. Try making it look real with Clone stamp tools, Blending tools, and Healing brushes at your disposal. My previous work is far from perfect, but in-game it doesn't look too bad, especially shoes with white toes
Back: CHNxiaoju and choi2k do this very well, and it involves combining the way the shoe looks in the back with the side. It wraps around the foot ingame, remember? I don't do this very well, if you have noticed from my Kobe Team Shoe work. I have seen CHNxiaoju's kobe 3's though and the Nike check is completely perfect on the back of the shoe.
Middle : this is close to impossible for me. I usually just cheat and use one of CHNxiaoju's shoe laces from older shoes that match the color. Again, rarely do you search a shoe's picture on google and get it's view from the top. If you ever used any of my crackpot shoe patches, the laces are probably unbearably ugly
Bottom : This is only easy if you dont care how everything on the top of the shoe and bottom connect. You can sometimes find a picture of a shoes bottom, but honestly if it doesn't connect with the colors and shapes that the rest of the shoe has it won't look real. I suggest you be careful throughout your shoe patching, noticing where the colors cut off ect. Go look at some of choi2k or CHNxiaoju's work, the color expands from the bottom of their shoes to the rest of the template. it looks great ingame if it all connects properly
5. After you're done save and then use Fshx to open up the template of the shoe you want to replace. (i.e Sh004 and sh004r)
6.) Make sure this is the shoe you want to replace! I suggest making sure its a shoe no one really wears, because you don't want Someone from another team wearing your shoes. WHen you open the shoe with Fshx, make sure it's resolution is 512x512. It will say bsho (512x512)
7. Go up to texture at the top of fshx, click import. Find the custom shoe template you just made.
8. Now you will notice the original shoe you opened probably has a blue layer over it. That's an alpha layer, it keeps the shoe from looking like a shiny wedding shoe. However you will notice that the texture you import will not have this layer, but thats okay u can add it once you export it as a .dds
9. Almost there! The shoe is now in .dds format. This is where you have to add the blue layer. Just search this forum for my alpha layer tutorial, it's easy. It involves installing a plug-in for Photoshop though, so if you have trouble PM me.
10. Yayyyyy, blue layer added. Now you can open the original shoe file (sh004) and import the new texture you just made (.dds with alpha layer) and then click FILE and SAVE. You have just SAVED OVER sh004 with your custom shoe template. Do the same for the sh004r file.
11. copy and paste into your sgsm folder, go to edit player, select your shoes and see how they look in practice mode. This will probably be the first of many trial and errors because you will start to notice the small things CHNxiaoju and choi2k do that make a shoe patch complete and enjoyable. Strive to be as good!
Remember to give all credit to whoever templates you use until you can do it on your own! Now, if all you want to do is change the color of a shoe, thats easy too. Just open a shoe in photoshop and go to image>adjustments>replace color. Play around and see what kind of team colors you can match your shoe with.
