Trying to make open bottom dresses

[Nonsequitur]

I admire anyone who can make shoes and boots - been working on a pair of thie-high flare top strapped boots for my Harley.  My goddess - it's temperamental.

They are meant to go over her leather pants.  The Calfs don't want to behave and if the mesh is over the Sim Legs - I get some weird displays. I'll figure it out. 

 

Hopefully by the time I get my game back so I can test.

 

Anyway. To you and yours have a Merry Holliday and a Bright New Year!

JoshQ Hope all is well in OZ - Enjoy your Sabbatical and Holiday Wishes to you and yours as well!.

[Guest]

Hey! Altering shoes and boots isn't that bad... MAKING them from scratch the way Josh does... well... I'll leave THAT to him!!!! ))))

 

If you're making height altering boots, I have the chart on my other laptop and will send it and a basic bond to you when I get a chance later tonight.

 

Generally when I make boots, its just using the bottom briefs mesh legs and sizing them bigger. I just fold over the top... basically. I usually use one of the EA shoe/ boot foot meshes, stretch it taller, adjust toe and sole thickness and move vertices to get a nice foot shape. Set the overlay priority to 9 or 10 to be sure they go over the pants, but usually with boots wider than the leg, its not a problem. Oh... and I shorten the boot leg UV so the boot texture won't go on the pant legs. )

 

Merry Christmas again!

[Guest]

Had time... here you are...

a generic bond with 54, 55, and 56.package

[Nonsequitur]

what's this generic bond package? It has something to do with height but not sure what it is or how to use it.

Never seen this chart either - not sure what it means or how to use it.

[Guest]

Sometimes... almost all of the time... I forget that there are a few things that I learned about modding that someone else may not have learned. I started making height altering high heels a while ago... basically because of the first time I saw a pair of Josh Q shoes and loved them. I made a default replacement package of base game, and late night shoes that alter sim height. I even repackaged shoes made by people other than Josh as height altering.

 

Here is the tutorial on MTS... http://modthesims.info/t/536062

 

Its like baking cookies. Ever taste baking soda? Nasty! Not sure what its for. But, someone figured out you put it in cookie batter and they taste good when they're done. I know a normal shoe bond only has 53 "adjustments". Not sure what they do. Height altering shoes have 54, 55 and 56. Apparently, those change body and foot height alignments.

 

You may understand what "units" are? I just guess and plug in numbers, check in game to see if the foot is floating above ground, below, or just right. You don't alter the ankle seam vertices so they'll match to the standard sim legs, unless you are making boots with 3d legs, then of course keep those vertices together.

 

[Guest]

Meanwhile, I've been working on Harley poses...

[Nonsequitur]

Posing - another thing I've never done.

 

I'm not interested in altering sim height - Just getting the shoes with that high-top to paint correctly without a huge amount of paint on the mesh below - and, without separating the mesh and scaling down so it will all fit in the shoe-box.  If I do that then patterns are out of the questions as I'll have mismatched UV component scales.

 

You know I can make a Defuse/Multiplier Map - as well as most any map. The problem is I used the UV Map as a template to cut away any excess paint and it shows up a huge amount above the mesh onto the underlying mesh anyway. Not "blank" but with the image. This should not be possible as there is no image beyond the exact shoe mesh on the UV Map.

 

Like Accessories, and some large objects, - shoes seem to have their own set of rules.

[Guest]

If you just want a boot to show over the existing leg mesh, just download a pair and see how they set up the multiplier.

 

I find 3d boots almost easier. Its still the leg mesh only a little fatter, and clipping is never too bad, and can be adjusted out. I wasn't talking about scaling the UV all the way down to the foot section, just a couple clicks so the top edge of the boot and part of the leg behind it don't overlap on the UV map.

 

I'm on the wrong laptop again, so I'll try to find examples when I get on the other one. Trust me... all the stuff YOU do, this will be easy!

[Guest]

Okay... I think I see the biggest problem you have if you'retrying to make boots to fit your Harley pants. You used a pants mesh as your base for your Harley leather, which will never "tuck inside" of a boot mesh in any way I know of. That would require something in the the boot CC to force an alteration of the pants... well above my pay rate (as my husband often says)! 

 

For 99.9% of the stuff I make, I use the af bottom briefs as the bottom base. It doesn't attach any nude stuff to what I make, but keeps the ankle and waist seams in tact... And boots fit over the legs. 

 

Well, I liked the boot mesh I did for that pair of Shushilda boots, and want to do more with it... SOOOOOOOOOO... I figured I'd do a step by step (more or less) of the basics and share it with you. Josh will laugh his ass of when he sees this mess!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Get your shoe/ boot mesh and some legs

 

 

Cut the legs at least one vertices row above where you want the top of your boots.

 

 

Merge vertices and UV at the ankles, but make sure to separate vertices at seams that will mess up the UV map. 2.8 has an auto click for this before saving... older Blenders have other ways you know about, and I honestly am starting to forget.

 

 

Scale the top row of vertices enough so they will fit inside the next row down. Do one boot at a time since if you try doing both, scaling on x won't work.

 

 

And, move the  vertices down inside the next row down. At this point, or after finishing the base boot, you can adjust how you want the top of your boot to look. I'm leaving it flat for now...

 

 

Again, one boot at a time, scale the leg part (including the top row of shoe/ boot vertices to increase the x and y. Now the boot will fit OVER the leg mesh.

 

 

 

 

So, the UV is overlapped and the boot texture will show on the leg mesh directly behind it... Here's what I meant about shrinking down the boot UV...

 

 

I use UV auto align on the top 2 UV rows. The first row will be the boot part tucked inside, and the second row will be the actual top of the boot. Then, move the top row down, since distortion on this area won't matter (except maybe to Josh!) Then, its just getting things close... No pic, but I'll highlight everything from the row just above the shoe/ boot/ ankle seam... one row up in the pic above... I scale those UV vertices smaller on the y axis... just to be below where the boot and leg will overlay, maybe .8 or .9? Then to control distortion, I bring that UV back down to make the UV faces about the same.

 

 

So, with the regular leg mesh back, you see the boot UV won't overlap and make texture on the legs, BUT... the mesh vertices are still aligned, so only small adjustments will need to be made for clipping around the knee.

 

After all the adjustments and alignment of the UV and multiplier, I use edge split on the top of the boot to remove those shadows. 

 

Well, that's how I do it. You can use an EA or whoever's shoe/ boot mesh, including Josh's since he says you can on his uploads, and attach it to the legs this way. You can use standard, or height altering.

 

I hope you understand my incoherent babble and it helps. )

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

Ooooooooooo.... SHINY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I made bullet casings! Okay, the first try didn't work perfectly, but I don't think anything I've ever tried did on the first try. ))) BUT... its only placement issues.

[Guest]

Still working on placement and things like that, but my husband says they look like Russian or Soviet made 7.62 rounds.

[Nonsequitur]

NATO uses 7.62 as well. 

What was nice about the AK47 -kinda universal for 7.62 but sloppy receiver section causes occasional jams. 

[Guest]

My husband said NATO and Soviet are different. NATO bullets have longer casings and more gun powder and shoot further. ) He is expert about those guns. He said all guns jam if not cared for, but old Soviet production was just about as fast and as many as possible. In Desert Storm, his best friend was stockings to keep sand out of his gun so it wouldn't jam! )))

[Nonsequitur]

That's what I get for shooting an Avtomat Kalashnikova with  NATO rounds...

Explains a lot. 

[Guest]

HA HA! What he says, you could load a bag of rocks and a firecracker in an AK and it would work for a while! )))

[Guest]

I know some people come and read this stuff sometimes. I have learned so much after starting this thread and Josh Q and Non-Sequitur were kind enough to answer. ))) But, no one likes to waste time with someone who doesn't at least try to find the answer his, or herself first. During my many, many........ MANY searches for information, I did find some tutorials on several topics, one of them being how to edit and create a 4 channel color mask using Gimp. Unfortunately, I can't find that tutorial again. (((( I'm not a teacher, but I made and packaged a couple of tutorials, editing an rgba 4 color mask, and creating one, using Gimp and want to share it. I think I got them right, but any boo boos... let me know. Please don't ask me about anything other than Gimp. Photoshop is a stranger to me. )

 

I put them in a package so you can download and open it in your windows photo viewer, or whatever you use. )))

rgba masks.zip

[JoshQ]

Thanks for the wishes Non-sequitur, I wish the best for you and your loved ones for 2020.

On 12/25/2019 at 12:55 PM, Non-sequitur said:

The Calfs don't want to behave and if the mesh is over the Sim Legs - I get some weird displays

 

That’s one of many reasons why I avoid making boots, as LadySmokes said the best way is to duplicate the legs’ mesh and scale it. Also as she said the texture has to be located on both feet and legs UV space, otherwise on the game the feet portion will look brighter than the rest and that requires scaling or moving the texture a feet pixels down:

 

 

Thankfully that only applies to boots.

 

The way I learned to make shoes / garments / accessories was to first study how EA made them, then I studied those made  by others (like Madlen and MrAntoniedu), that meant A LOT of trial an error but that taught me texturing and meshing basics and of course S3 modding "quirks".

 

The moment I got in touch with better tools (first Metasequoia and then Blender 2.8) making my own meshes from scratch became a lot easier.

[Guest]

13 hours ago, JoshQ said:

that requires scaling or moving the texture a feet pixels down:

What I learned is that the texture on the top part that faces inside toward the leg is not very important since it is not seen very much. So, that part of the UV can be shrunk down very small, or doubled under. But yes, the texture will distort as you shrink the UV, so I try to shrink it only enough so the boot texture lines up just below where the actual mesh intersects with the leg.

13 hours ago, JoshQ said:

The way I learned to make shoes / garments / accessories was to first study how EA made them, then I studied those made  by others

And lucky me... You already studied others work, so I only need to study yours! ))) But seriously, yes... I take things apart in GIMP or Blender to see how others made their CC, and try to duplicate it... then vary from it.

 

I don't make whole meshes from scratch yet. So far, I don't need to. I can usually find a mesh close enough to what I want to do and use that as my starting point. What I have learned is to make add-ons from scratch... belt buckles, eyelets and studs.