Trying to make open bottom dresses

[Guest]

I've been trying to modify a few dresses to be open bottom, to work with the Kinky World mod. The problem is that the dress disappears on angles when the inside of the dress would be exposed. I think it was Tart4cus who created skirts and a few dresses that didn't disappear by using a double wall mesh in places that the inside might be seen and "shrinking" the inner mesh slightly. Then, laying the inner and outer mesh UV's over each other.

 

Okay, I have gotten that far! What I can't figure out is how to reverse the UV of the inner mesh layer so the texture shows on the inside of the dress when its exposed. I'm using Blender, not MilkShape. Can the UV be flipped to the back side for a mesh using tools on Blender?

[JoshQ]

2 hours ago, LadySmoks said:

I've been trying to modify a few dresses to be open bottom, to work with the Kinky World mod. The problem is that the dress disappears on angles when the inside of the dress would be exposed. I think it was Tart4cus who created skirts and a few dresses that didn't disappear by using a double wall mesh in places that the inside might be seen and "shrinking" the inner mesh slightly. Then, laying the inner and outer mesh UV's over each other.

 

Okay, I have gotten that far! What I can't figure out is how to reverse the UV of the inner mesh layer so the texture shows on the inside of the dress when its exposed. I'm using Blender, not MilkShape. Can the UV be flipped to the back side for a mesh using tools on Blender?

 

Sadly the game’s engine doesn’t support that, you have to create a second mesh just for the interior.

 

One option is to clone your existing skirt and then you can flip the normals, then scale it down at least 99.99% so outside and inside meshes don’t share the same location. 

[Guest]

Thank you for responding. FYI... BIG fan of your creations and I have a lot of your shoes and boots, and some other items! Truth is that the boots in the photos are made on one of your meshes that I modified slightly. They're a work in progress, as I see a few things I need to tweak. But, I wander off on a project like trying to make open bottom skirts and dresses, and never get back to old projects.

 

I'm just a novice at making things and usually use stuff from artists like you as the base of what I make. I do it for myself, and a little self satisfaction and don't put anything out as mine to the public... like the boots on your mesh... and other parts on those were from someone else, who I can't find the original to give credit to, so I'll probably never upload them.

 

Anyway, I understand the need for the inner mesh. The skirts and dresses by Illusive K and Tart4cus used an inner "lining". I made a few things for myself using their meshes. I just couldn't figure out how to reverse the texture. Asking here was after the second day of trying to figure it out on Blender. Late last night, I found a tutorial for Milkshape that got me in the right direction. SUCCESS! I got it in game this morning and it looks okay. )

 

Thanks again for your reply. And THANKS for your creations!

 

[JoshQ]

6 hours ago, LadySmoks said:

Thank you for responding. FYI... BIG fan of your creations and I have a lot of your shoes and boots, and some other items! Truth is that the boots in the photos are made on one of your meshes that I modified slightly. They're a work in progress, as I see a few things I need to tweak. But, I wander off on a project like trying to make open bottom skirts and dresses, and never get back to old projects.

 

I'm just a novice at making things and usually use stuff from artists like you as the base of what I make. I do it for myself, and a little self satisfaction and don't put anything out as mine to the public... like the boots on your mesh... and other parts on those were from someone else, who I can't find the original to give credit to, so I'll probably never upload them.

 

Anyway, I understand the need for the inner mesh. The skirts and dresses by Illusive K and Tart4cus used an inner "lining". I made a few things for myself using their meshes. I just couldn't figure out how to reverse the texture. Asking here was after the second day of trying to figure it out on Blender. Late last night, I found a tutorial for Milkshape that got me in the right direction. SUCCESS! I got it in game this morning and it looks okay. )

 

Thanks again for your reply. And THANKS for your creations!

 

You’re welcome!

 

To flip normals on blender go to edit mode, select your mesh and press “crtl+shift+n”, also you can find the option here:

 

To see if it worked go to the “viewport shading” menu and activate the “backface culling” option” (or export your mesh as .obj and open it on milkshape):

 

I knew I saw that boots somewhere else You did a nice work!

[Guest]

On 7/2/2019 at 12:14 AM, JoshQ said:

I knew I saw that boots somewhere else You did a nice work!

I did nice work? No no... YOU did nice work! I just recolored it and altered the base YOU created. ☺️ But thank you. I use Blender 2.67b. It seems that each version is slightly different, and again, I'm just a novice trying to figure out how things work. You and a few others have been a big help.

 

I had found "faces" on the drop menu, and "flip normals", and that also worked. I've had some successes and a lot of fails. I always had problems with morphs after I altered a mesh and used to just abandon the project, but I think I found a way around that problem by "stealing" morphs. I open my altered mesh project in TSR Workshop and save the mesh as wso. Sometimes there is an EA mesh wso with morphs that might work. I save that. Then use Cmar's Mesh Tool Kit to replace the morphs of my wso with ones from another wso that has working morphs. Then I take the new wso and put it into my TSRW project. Maybe not the best way, but it seems to work.

 

In TSRW, I can check morphs, check my inside skirt textures and see the overall look of the project. Its tedious, but seems to be working out for me.

 

Sometimes I get ambitious, like with my current project. A while back, I found a Lolita Maid outfit. Non Sequitur did a version here with open and see thru boobs. Neither are open bottom. The one by Lemonleaf also used the af mesh and just renamed it as tf. Well, my project has been to make both open bottom and to make a real tf mesh. 90% success. ? Maybe 95%?

 

The teen mesh came second, and seems to be better than the af mesh, so I may need to revisit the af mesh. The going back is where I always get caught up as some new shiny object catches my eye and I'm off to the next project that will only get 90% or 95% completed.

 

The big hang up on both the af and tf versions is something with a mismatch in texture and shading where I had to split top and bottom. Not sure why. Both use the same base mesh and UV, so both have the same issue. It doesn't really show until its in game. I save the UV map from Blender and use it to line up my multiplier, mask and normal map, etc, but something is slightly off. If I figure it out, I may actually upload these and hope that folks like them.

 

Your boots and shoes and ones I've remade by using your meshes are on almost every female sim in my game! So, I make sure I never overlap your UV. But, I learned a couple of neat tricks. On full outfits, I can usually cut off the bottom, split it front and back and rotate it and the textures without reducing the size of the UV, and still not overlap the shoes and boots. Skirts are different because it may be used with a top that uses the map under the right hand, above your shoe/ boot UV.

 

Because I thought so many open skirts and dresses seemed big in the hip and butt, I realized that by reducing the lower body mesh in just the hip and butt by a couple clicks on the x and y axis, and moving the front of the upper thigh back a little, I can keep the dress/ skirt meshes closer to the original meshes without the thighs and butt coming thru the skirt or dress. ) I don't brag, but I am proud of myself for that one. )

 

Here are a few pics. I still need to add shadows, but...Please tell me what you think. I added the last pic of the af to show the mesh work to make a real tf mesh. Thanks again!!!

[JoshQ]

Mixing EA’s and other people's meshes is exactly how I learned, specially on the texture side. It seems you have already figure it very well, congrats!

 

There’s a chance the legs/butt will still clip with the skirt, sadly TSRW is not as useful to find those kind of problems you have to load your CC and test it in-game, it slows the process but it’s the only way to be really sure. Search for “Builder’s Island” is a very small world that loads super fast so it’s very good for testing.

 

Keep it going!

[ZenBuddhist]

22 minutes ago, JoshQ said:

Search for “Builder’s Island”

i believe you refer to the MTS Builder's Island, JoshQ.
if so, the link is here:

http://modthesims.info/d/546927/bigger-builder-s-island-updated.html

[JoshQ]

 

4 minutes ago, ZenBuddhist said:

i believe you refer to the MTS Builder's Island, JoshQ.
if so, the link is here:

http://modthesims.info/d/546927/bigger-builder-s-island-updated.html

Hmm, that looks a little different than mine, although because it's empty it should load fast regardless. Thanks!

[Guest]

On 7/6/2019 at 5:54 PM, JoshQ said:

Mixing EA’s and other people's meshes is exactly how I learned, specially on the texture side. It seems you have already figure it very well, congrats!

 

There’s a chance the legs/butt will still clip with the skirt, sadly TSRW is not as useful to find those kind of problems you have to load your CC and test it in-game, it slows the process but it’s the only way to be really sure. Search for “Builder’s Island” is a very small world that loads super fast so it’s very good for testing.

 

Keep it going!

Thank you both! I have been so busy trying new things that I haven't stopped by. No way I'll ever try making an original mesh from scratch, so the mix match thing is what I've been doing. I may take parts from 6 different meshes to get what I want. ) I've had some successes and of course quite a few fails! As it turned out, the adult maid seemed good in game... at first, but then I noticed the butt and thighs were clipping when the sim did certain things. Eventually, I'm going to go back and run it thru TSRW and try using bone assignments and morphs from a different mesh, or several, until it looks good when I get a chance. The teen, however, has worked pretty well so far! ))) Dancing, sitting, walking and running (I may set it as "athletic" to see how things look) ... all seem good, with no clipping, so I've been fixing little things I noticed, and may even uploaded it here soon. I think I have the issue with the normals map fixed. 

 

Question... Have you ever had the color from a magenta mask channel show partially on only one small area of the red? It took me forever to figure out what was going on, but I still don't know why. The fix was to use red green blue, and that worked. The original was only 2 color channels, but I wanted the bow on the chest to be re-colorable separately. So many silly little things! And as you wrote, its try something, looks good in TSRW, put it in game, see all the problems, go back and keep working.

 

So... I added a bow! The original has the bow drawn into the multiplier. I took the bow off of the EA French Maid, copied and flipped the loops to make it a double bow, made it bigger and attached it to my open bottom mesh, and it works! I think I may want to make it even bigger? And then I need to do better shading on it.

 

Also been converting EA skirts and dresses to open, and a few of my favorite CC. A trick I learned that helps with clipping is to reduce the hips, thighs and butt on the x and y to fit inside the skirt, instead of making the skirts bigger on the x and y to fit over the bottom mesh.. You really can't notice the hips are squeezed. With KW, the program switches to a regular bottom mesh when the skirt comes off, so no problems there. )

 

Anyway, here are a few pics to see what you think. I play vampires, which works out for checking meshes while they sleep!

 

Those are the full outfit accessories. For KW, I added suspenders to the stockings. The originals had part of a suspender strap that just ended because it was a closed bottom mesh. Josh Q, nice shoes!!!

 

Oh, and THANKS! I'm downloading Bigger Builder Island right now. )

[JoshQ]

1 hour ago, LadySmoks said:

 No way I'll ever try making an original mesh from scratch,

I also said that once 

 

Sometimes magenta and yellow get lost or become unusable because of .dds compression, RGB as you found is an alternative and also when you're doing fine details move them to the alpha channel (white over black) and then save your mask as dxt5, don't forget to activate the 4th channel on TSRW.

 

As far as I know teen's body proportions and bone painting are easier to deal with, young adults/adults can become nightmarish specially if you plan to use custom sliders then the clipping is literally unavoidable, that’s why 99.99% of the clothes I do don’t go near the buttocks/chest area, although I still have to test a new approach.

 

To retouch normals and other stuff you’ll eventually need to move to a program like Blender, it sounds daunting but is not impossible. Of course there are professional solutions like Maya but for this game you don’t need complex meshes, or better said, the game struggles the more polys you include, and the texture space is scarce…

 

Anyway nice to see you’re making progress and learning new stuff. Talking about small worlds I remembered there is an ever smaller map designed to test stuff, here it is:

 

https://fuzzylogicdishwasher.blogspot.com/2010/03/world-for-sim-and-clothing.html

[Guest]

11 hours ago, JoshQ said:

I also said that once 

 

Sometimes magenta and yellow get lost or become unusable because of .dds compression, RGB as you found is an alternative and also when you're doing fine details move them to the alpha channel (white over black) and then save your mask as dxt5, don't forget to activate the 4th channel on TSRW.

 

As far as I know teen's body proportions and bone painting are easier to deal with, young adults/adults can become nightmarish specially if you plan to use custom sliders then the clipping is literally unavoidable, that’s why 99.99% of the clothes I do don’t go near the buttocks/chest area, although I still have to test a new approach.

 

To retouch normals and other stuff you’ll eventually need to move to a program like Blender, it sounds daunting but is not impossible. Of course there are professional solutions like Maya but for this game you don’t need complex meshes, or better said, the game struggles the more polys you include, and the texture space is scarce…

 

Anyway nice to see you’re making progress and learning new stuff. Talking about small worlds I remembered there is an ever smaller map designed to test stuff, here it is:

 

https://fuzzylogicdishwasher.blogspot.com/2010/03/world-for-sim-and-clothing.html

Hi! I'm finding out about af v tf meshes. I usually make an adult version first, then a teen version. I do basically the same set ups with both, but always seem to have more problems with the adult mesh on the first go around. Then, since the teen mesh worked better, I end up doing all my fixes and fine tuning on that, then go back to the af version.

 

 I think I may just start making all of my masks in rgb, and avoid yellow and magenta all together. I'm using GIMP 2.8. I absolutely do not get how to make a 4 channel mask or set up the alpha. I've read tutorials and watched some videos, but they don't match my exact set up and I usually can't find whatever it is the instructions say to click on to do something. So, you can imagine that switching rgb channels and changing the alpha to make a normals mask wasn't work for me either. I have the normals map tool installed and use recommended settings. I doubt even its close to being the right way to make normal maps, but I played with stuff and found that if I use "desaturate", "luminosity", then erase at 50%, the normals seem to work and no strange shading. I use Blender 2.67 for meshing. I was able to set up that version with most of the import/ export tools and get it to work.

 

Often, my eyes go cross if I stay on one project for too long. I might put things I made into a separate folder and put them in game and play a while, and of course test the new stuff. Other times, I may set a project aside and try something less complicated. Eventually, I get back to the old projects... usually... sometimes... maybe? ) And lately, I think I've learned so much that I want to go back and redo everything. I have pics of a couple other on going projects. One is the tfBodyDressTank_ruffles. Now I need to go back and redo the af version! The teen mesh is not perfect, but I was able to finally match the top and lower UV alignment pretty good. The "skirt" is rotated 90 degrees, but because its a dress and the left side of the UV isn't used for top parts, I was able to keep the skirt UV full size, which certainly helped with alignment and patterns. I made a 3 channel rgb mask to accommodate rotating the lower patterns 90 degrees. I was stuck on alignment for a while, but got really really close (enough) today. You can see the plaid pattern looks okay. That's the pattern I use in game the most, and the other patterns are close. The other project was making an open bottom of Li.Ko's Gypsy Star skirt. So many pleats! But, I'm really close. )

 

Another thing I found is that EA meshes using group 0 and group 1 can be played with. I cut the legs completely from group 0 and put the floating finger together with the dress portion. Then just made the legs as group 1. I used the wsos from tf chemise to get bones and morphs for group 0 and tf nude bottom for group 1. Also, pic 4 is my mesh layers. It seems to be enough between meshes on the tf.

 

I must thank you again for your help and encouragement!!! Notice the shoes and boots in the pics??? )))

[Guest]

Josh Q, your help and encouragement has emboldened me! Although, I still seem to have a problem staying focused on just one project. As I've said, I like to play with my family as vampires. ))) A few years ago, I found the Dark Night Long Coat for af, which fits the vampire theme, but there wasn't one for tf. For some reason, I have a problem opening the Dark Night meshes in Blender to convert them to teen as I did with the Lolita Maid... so, I pieced together my own mesh! )))))) The collar, corset and arm parts to make sleeve cuffs from one EA mesh, body top nude, coat bottom, legs, mini skirt, all pieced together as 2 geom/ wso groups and put together in TSRW. The corset detail is borrowed from LorandiaSims3_GotikaOutfit_1201 for af... which I will probably make a tf version of sooner or later.

 

The top half works great, except for a see thru collar on certain angles and some overall shadow issues, which I thought I had fixed, but.... And I still need to find the right combination of wso bone/ morphs for the bottom. There's clipping of the legs thru the back of the coat when walking. Its funny... my husband always encourages me to try things, but he's supposed to do that. Coming from you, someone who's creations I think are wonderful, it gave me the push I needed. There's still so much I need to learn though.

 

Again and always... THANKS!

[JoshQ]

You’re definitely ahead of me on the meshing department, the dress looks very nice and I can’t believe those are my boots you did a great job with the textures/UV.

 

I also like to hop from project to project, it becomes an unorganized mess on my case but keeps me interested. When I get stuck on something (normally a 3D garment) I just hop to an accessory, shoes or some experiment I know it won’t work but at least It will be fun.

 

An alternative to making masks with alpha channel is using 'DXTBmp', it allows you to import a normal 3 channel mask and then add a grayscale image as alpha, then you can save it as DXT5. I use it because I found it compress masks with less artifacts, just be aware that for some reason if you load the resulting file on Milkshape it will crash (tsrw and the game read it perfectly fine).

 

You could try to use Blender 2.8 to open geoms, Smugtomato at Modthesims released a compatible plug-in. I don’t have a lot of experience working with .simgeoms but it seems to work.

 And yep, I recognize the Capri heels I edited a looong time ago, when I barely knew how to use Milkshape… completing that project took me months ?

 

Keep it going, but more important, keep having fun on your game.

[Guest]

The teen long coat may be one of those projects that never really gets finished. I've tried to redo the issues I see, and after each redo, the first version still looks better in game. Something I found with morphs, EA, TSRW and Mesh Tool Kit is that where EA splits a mesh with a few fingers and a knee cap as group 1 and the rest as group 0, to not overload the mesh bones, I've been splitting them top and bottom halves and using top/ bottom EA wsos to make bones and morphs in Tool Kit. Also, since the lower half of the long coat mesh uses 3 completely different EA meshes, and making it open bottom, I "FrankenMesh" the 3 EA wsos into 1, then Tool Kit seems to match vertices and bones pretty well automatically, and then morphs to my mesh. It seems to be working.

 

The retexturing your boots took a while. I had never seen a UV layout like you used with the UV split up the back of the leg. The texture is just a pic I pulled from the net, desaturated it and trimmed it to the UV. I didn't make that texture. Because of the split up the back of the leg, aligning the overlays was the hard part. Those overlays are from other boots I used a lot, but could never get the geoms to load correctly in Blender to make them into true height heels. Finding and trying to use your boots was the best thing for me. And as I said, I use almost all of your shoes and boots now! An FYI... the "Josh Q" logo is still on the souls of the boots I altered! )

 

I'll have to play around with your recommendation on a normal map alternative. I have to check, but I think I have Blender 2.8 on the game laptop, but it won't work. That laptop loads and plays the game nicely, but it seems any other program I try to load doesn't work right. I end up transferring stuff from that laptop to my old slow one via memory stick, where the modding programs work.

 

I had hoped to have some game pics of something, but as I said, the first version still looks better than the newer versions I tried. Oh well, time to actually play a little!

 

[Nonsequitur]

Depending of the situation you could also:

 

• Take the mesh and re-burn the sections wanted included or occluded. There are some tutorials on U-Tube for Marvelous Designer and UV mapping that can explain  the process. Haven't investigated this much or know if it will work in your case.

or

• you can use "Solidify" (setting of .00010 thickness or really low not to "thicken" and "even thickness selected) in Blender. Only the selected part will become 2-sided and roll the edges for you as well (or not...). You can also just roll the edges or use edit mode and select only the faces to be 2-sided. Whatever is painted on the UV face will be on the back face. Solidify will add quite a few faces so the polycount will be high after. Make sure you have reduced the polycount (decimate) before "solidify" then decimate (again) after to bring the poly count down. In many cases you will have difficulty reducing polycount after using "solidify".  Reducing polycount with Direct-x in MS will work better then Blenders decimate after using solidify.

 

I don't know if this helps or not.

[Nonsequitur]

Thought I may have been a little off track with my response so re-read.

 

Just looking at the front image - looks pretty good except for the shadow - crease area under the boobs are a little low. 

In Blender you can select a UV part  or a single face to isolate and make 2-sided fabric. This makes it easy to make 2-sided any part of the garment.

 

Once a face has been solidified in Blender (and it's thin enough) handle it like any other component.  Normals, Specular, Multiplier, Masks... all handled the same - it's just 2-sided now.  Not sure about the Alphas though. Haven't tried to make a 2-sided garment with transparent properties as yet. 

[Nonsequitur]

As far as Alphas go in GIMP 2.8

 

with your Multiplier Layer selected -

 

Select the area of the Multiplier you want to have transparency. Make sure the image has an Alpha Channel.

Select COLORS > CURVES

 

Select ALPHA in the "CHANNELS" drop-down box.

 

Move the top right corner of the graph line and drag it to the first box below the middle line.

 

To much lower then that will cause the final result to be solid with no color at all. Play with it.

 

It's a work-around.

 

 

[Guest]

On 7/25/2019 at 3:27 AM, Non-sequitur said:

Depending of the situation you could also:

 

• Take the mesh and re-burn the sections wanted included or occluded. There are some tutorials on U-Tube for Marvelous Designer and UV mapping that can explain  the process. Haven't investigated this much or know if it will work in your case.

or

• you can use "Solidify" (setting of .00010 thickness or really low not to "thicken" and "even thickness selected) in Blender. Only the selected part will become 2-sided and roll the edges for you as well (or not...). You can also just roll the edges or use edit mode and select only the faces to be 2-sided. Whatever is painted on the UV face will be on the back face. Solidify will add quite a few faces so the polycount will be high after. Make sure you have reduced the polycount (decimate) before "solidify" then decimate (again) after to bring the poly count down. In many cases you will have difficulty reducing polycount after using "solidify".  Reducing polycount with Direct-x in MS will work better then Blenders decimate after using solidify.

 

I don't know if this helps or not.

Thanks Non-Sequitur! I'll check out the youtube videos soon. I'll also copy and paste your tutorial and try to follow them while working on a project. Admittedly, I think I saw "solidify" on Blender, but have no clue what 90% of the features do. I fumble thru and ask a few questions. So many people are kind enough to take time to write. It IS much appreciated! I've been using the double mesh and reduce the x and y by a click, then flip normals on the inner mesh, put them together, adjust the hips and thighs on the lower body mesh to fit inside without looking distorted, then put that together with the skirt. Then I take a look up and delete the faces at the top of the inner mesh and lower body mesh to reduce poly count and cinch the top of the inner skirt around the body so there's no see thru. I always say that I play using vampire sims, so its easy to check when they sleep floating on the altar.

 

The boob shadow was my stupidity. I can't say it enough... I don't really create anything, I just change them. That was a mistake I made with the original multiplier by Dark Night. I tried increasing the contrast too much and have corrected it in the latest version which still isn't quite right, although better for both af and tf. Something I'm trying to start doing is keep both UVs the same, and same multipliers, etc, instead of them being 2 completely unrelated projects.

 

I couldn't open all the original mesh lods from DN. Lod1-0 was okay, but  1-1 and 1-2 were balls on the bottom of the screen... so I got the idea to FrankenMesh them and try loading that on Blender. Mesh Tool Kit gave a message the formats were different? It worked, sort of. I haven't been doing this stuff very long, but I've never seen a mesh put together the way that one is! I really couldn't reuse any of it. I have finally managed to pull a collar off an EA mesh and get it to look good, with no see thru spots.

 

Normal maps continue to be one of my short falls, and I'll try anything. Right now, I'm working with a 64 x 64 blank to hold the spot in the package. I think I will  have the long coats worked out soon. Played them in game today. A couple of clipping problems on both af and tf. 

 

Got frustrated with this and the Lolita Maid project, so I did a few "easy wins" and converted a few af items to tf, and one open bottom af dress that was similar to stuff I've done before. What's been difficult with the long coat is morphing 3 wsos into one (just for the bottom half), and getting the right combination so the legs and butt, skirt and coat don't clip. But, I'm close! ))) And with all the help you guys give me, I'll get the normal maps working soon too!

 

Hi Zen! People here are great! Its not a weird competition, but everyone is so helpful and willing to share anything they know. I have learned so much. But some times, its even more frustrating when things don't work right. At least before I could say, "well, I don't know anything." I'm getting close to making a couple of things that I want to be able to upload here. 1 out of 4 main projects is 99% ready, the tf open bottom Lolita Maid. No clipping and the morphs work. I added the 3d bow, and need to get better shading. Soon........

 

 

[Nonsequitur]

Glad I could help!  I wasn't sure what you were needing.

 

Blenders "Solidify" is very handy and saves tons of time and frustration manipulating another copy. 

It's very easy to pull a component out of any mesh using the UV Map and MS. 

1. Select your Group.
2. Add a color or image to the group. Best to use the same image size as the original Multiplier - apply.
3. Goto UV Map Editor (Ctrl-t)
4. Use "Select" to turn all the "Dots" red on the item you think might be the component of the group you want to separate. Use MOVE to test it to make sure you have only the vertices you want and there are no "Klingons". If Red Dots show on other components that you didn't select - Unweld the group then try again. Make sure to re-weld.
5. Go back to MS > Select MOVE and set Z-Axis to 0.5 > MOVE.

 

This should move only that part away from its group.  You can tell what it really is - if it's not the part you want - use Ctrl-z to undo the move then select another part.

Now you can duplicate the original group and remove the opposite part from the other groups. I may not be explaining it clearly. Basically, now you have two copies of the same group with separated parts. Delete the parts not needed from the duplicate and vice-versa with the original group. Now you have only that separate component in its own Group. This also allows repositioning of that part where you want on the UV Map. 

 

If you run across a UV Map that seems to be EVERYWHERE and a HUGE confusing mess, You can remap in BLENDER or Unwrap then use Blenders UV Map Editor to auto select components and separate them. Once separated in BLENDER - back to MS to pull components out of the Group.   Clear as Mud - Right?

--------------------------------------

 

You know.... I've only messed with Normals a few times. I really don't mess with them with what I've created so far. I know the quality would improve a little adding a little "Bump" or contouring to areas.  I find that a little shading does a comparable job along with an actual mesh and alinement of existing Normals.  I found Normals be be more useful on flat "painted-on" textures to give it the appearance of lifting off the surface in areas. 

 

It's a Never Ending Learning Curve (NELC).

[Nonsequitur]

Forgot to mention...

 

In a few of those UV Mapping tutorials (U-Tube) I found a way to manipulate the map vertices to aline mismatched patterns/textures correcting pattern angles between parts, etc. 

If I run across it again I'll post a link.

[Guest]

A big problem for me is that I don't have Milk Shape or Photoshop, and so many tutorials involve using them. I was trying to follow a Gimp tutorial on making normal maps, but get stuck on moving red to alpha and green to red and blue. I click a channel and don't get an option to "copy" it and move it. That's really where I'm stuck. I have the normal map plug in and get as far as the blue normal map. So, I continue to play with it. I have a fairly new gaming laptop that I play on with 1 TB storage. I tried loading newer versions of Gimp and Blender, but Gimp works only so-so, and I can't get the plug ins to work on Blender... so, I try to work on my old laptop and then move stuff using a memory stick. I've redone the long coat so many times that I'm losing track of where I am! 

 

I've gotten UV mapping for what I'm trying to work pretty well, although I have learned a couple of new things recently.

 

Because of my problems with normals, I also do things like increase contrast on my multipliers and speculars to try to create depth. That was the under boob shading that I didn't catch. )

 

But, I may shelf this and try to finish the Lolita Maid. The tf works, but needs better shading on the bow I added. I put a new af in game without the bow yet to test the morphs and clipping. If the af works, I'll be returning to that, adding the bow to the af and fixing the shading... AND uploading here. ) It'll be my first upload. ) But, I'll also upload the stockings with suspenders and panties to use with KW, and a link to find all the other accessories from the original outfit. Deep breath... then I'll try to get the long coats! )

 

NELC! You got that right!!!

[Guest]

Well, sometimes we just need to start deleting files and immediately empty the recycle bin and take a fresh look. And I did NOT have a psychotic episode!!! ? One of the biggest problems, as I'm sure you've had also, is that sometimes things look very different in TSRW than they do in game... and there's no way to check clipping while a sim is in motion.

 

I remade the bottom halves of both the tf and af long coats. The tops were pretty good, and I did some adjustments on the wsos I used for the bones to make them better. Both tf and af are running in game. Both have very minor bottom half issues that I'm confident I can fix. ))) YEAH!!!!!! I want to upload these so badly! But, I want them to look and play right. Honestly, if I was just making these for myself as I usually do, and not wanting to share them, I'd probably be done working on them. Actually, I'd have probably been done 5 or 6 versions ago.

 

Overall, the af in pretty good Very minor butt clipping... easy to fix. The tf has clipping of the thighs thru the mini skirt, especially when sitting. I have a good idea what to do. Both have an odd UV shadow that shows in CAS, but not in game. I know how to fix that. I just have to make sure to keep the UV in the same place. As I said, this is the first start to finish project I've done for af and tf that se the exact same UV and .dds images on slightly different meshes. Change one, change both... for good or bad.

 

Still working on those normal maps!!!! OY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

[JoshQ]

There’s a program called Materialize that can help you to create a nice normal map, it’s free but the interface is a little messy to say the least. First you have to load your multiplier or specular on the ‘Difusse Map’ window (press on the ‘O’ button), then on the ‘Height Map’ window press ‘Create’ and play with the sliders, then go to ‘Normal map’ and press create an again use the slider to modify the aspect.

 

Finally save it (bmp or png are fine) and just open the file on gimp and change the channels as shown here and save it as dxt5, you probably will have to generate an alpha channel but that should be doable even on gimp.

 

There’s an easier to use program named Laigter, you can download it for free, but it has less control over the results.

[Guest]

Hey Josh! The finally is the problem I have. I have the plugin for Gimp, for normal maps, and can get as far as when it says to move the red to alpha and green to blue and red. I don't know how, and I haven't found anything explaining how to do that part. And THAT is where I get stuck. The Gimp plugin I have does everything the Nividia plugin does, except "animate height" in the 3D options. I get the blue map, and can't figure out how to move the channels. I also don't show the RGB channel as in the tutorial. That is only in layers.

 

 But, I may be close on other fronts to being satisfied with my work enough to upload. The af Lolita Maid only has a little clipping on the butt when running that I should be able to easily correct. Both the af and tf long coats have minor issues and shouldn't be too hard to fix either. I'll have to add a link to your page on the long coats when I finally finish. I made them for myself, and so the coats are actually below floor line unless the sim is wearing height adjusting shoes or boots!!! )

 

I made some adjustments to the specular to cut down on shine on the long coat and it looks good. I may do some of the other fixes later tonight. I WILL get these uploadable!!!

 

Thanks as always for your help!

[Guest]

Sometimes, things just don't go as planned. More trouble than I thought it would be sorting out the morphs for the long coats. I'll get back to them soon. But, I went back to the Lolita Maid outfits and had a lot of success. ))) I have an af and tf sim in a test game doing everything I can think of and no clipping so far. I also redid the suspenders for the Lemonleaf stockings. There's also panties that I think are originally by Harmonia. I changed the category to left garter, so they'll work with KW. I hope to be able to upload by the end of the week. )))