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Trying to make open bottom dresses


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16 hours ago, JoshQ said:

Here's the method for Sims 4, don't know yet how it translates to Sims 3 but I'm not in a hurry :P

You're an angel! I'm in game testing the dress by Lianaa that I opened again. The shading differences between the top and skirt sections seemed okay on my last test, but I saw what looked like a gap on the left side of the skirt. I ran the mesh through Tool Kit tangent fix, and seeing how it looks. AND the game finally loaded, AND its still there. ( I'm starting to think I need to take a close look at the multiplier. I may not have it aligned with the UV as well as I thought.

 

I might as well try the weight transfer while I'm sorting out the line in the skirt.

 

Thanks as always!

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I'm slowly developing a "style". ) Still working on the weight transfer. I think I like making open bottom dresses more than skirts. I can use both sides of the part mask and keep the lower full size, rotated 90 degrees and stay away from the area used by the wonderful creator of those shoes and boots I love so much! )) I found the shadow on the bottom part was caused by doubling the UV for the inner skirt portion. My fix for this was sort of by accident. I wanted the inner to be shaded darker than the outer texture, and the only way to do that was to move the inner UV. So, I began stacking the inner front and back, resizing smaller since it the shadow I want, and not worried about keeping the outer texture on the inside, moving it to the bottom right corner, or where I had room, and shading it a darker gray. And doing that, the shading on the outer lower part was fixed too! )))

 

I also think I got the Lianaa dress seam. I ran a fresh mesh through Tool Kit to fix bones and morphs, but didn't use "optimize vertex data" when putting the wso back into TSRW. 

 

I also made a "Little Black Dress" from an EA mesh and applied what I've been learning. Its a very tight dress. There is a very small amount of clipping at the hips when bending, but that should be easy to fix by moving the hips back a little on the leg mesh. Much better than the first run... hips, thighs and butt all clipped when bending. ( But, I'm not rushing to upload anything just to upload something.

 

Snap doesn't look right at the skirt hem. For some reason, even those the edges are split, it left a shadow. ( so I've been just making the bottom row 1 click smaller on the x and y and the rest 3 clicks smaller. Where snap has helped a lot is bad seams that have a seam line after clicking "fix seams". 

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Does the shadow appears once you’re out of CAS? Normally TSRW and CAS show a lot of “weirdness” when two faces are too close of each other or when two meshes share the same space on the UV map, but in-game everything looks fine.

 

Another trick for internal faces is to scale them down by just a couple of pixels, so for example if you have a skirt and duplicate it to make the interior, after flipping the normals scale it by 99.998% on the Y and X axis (blender's axis) so it moves veeeeery slightly, it might be possible to see the gap on the 3D editor (if you zoom all the way) but not in the game.

 

Also is recommended to delete parts of the body the only will be visible at very extreme angles and ‘close’ the interior face:

RevealingMaid_autopsy.jpg

 

So in the pic you can see my ‘Revealing maid’, you can see where I deleted the body and the last part are the interior “covers” for the top and bottom. I made them by duplicating the dress and welding the vertices on the extremes, on blender you can do that by pressing “Alt + M” and selecting ‘At center’.

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Yes, it was in game that the shadow was visible, but not in TSRW, which sucks, because if things showed in TSRW when I put them together, it wouldn't be such a long process. NOTHING ever shows in TSRW. ( Bones look good, morphs work, but once in game, I see shadows or seam issues, then go back and try to sort out the problem.

 

I did learn how to weld UV vertices with Blender. And, I've been using snap on seams that if merged would create a total mess of the UV. Honestly, I had been merging seams and then edge splitting them until you told me about snapping them. )


I see I'm doing okay in the way I break down my parts!

 

LBD.PNG.aa9772c02a194593ae8c77d1672c334f.PNG

 

This is my open bottom conversion of the EA afBodyEP3DressShortTight. This dress plays very well in game. Very minor clipping at the hips when squatting down. I hired a bartender and put this on her to get certain movements. Dancing, running, walking, all good, even as tight as this dress is... and the hip clipping should be easy to fix by just pulling the vertices back a click or 2 on the y.

 

The 2 top rows on the lower body were removed to reduce face count and can't be seen anyway. Instead of increasing the skirt hips and butt, I reduce the hips and butt of the lower body to keep the dress smoother. Its become my standard. Then, I also remove the top row of faces from the inner skirt portion, and "cinch up" the next row of vertices on the x and y to close any possible up skirt view.

 

LBD2.PNG.2ab32fb42252994af168b3c372367106.PNG

 

I mentioned that on the Lianaa dress remake, I found and finally understood a tutorial on editing 4 channel masks! Now, I'm trying to understand weight painting and trying to follow the video you linked for me. Yes, its a TS4 video, but its being for Blender that is important. I'll understand it sooner or later!

 

I've also been experimenting with "solidify". It doesn't work for me on the skirt parts, but its been great for making bump out edges where a dress top shows separation from the skin, instead of being flat and separated only by the multiplier texture. ) But, I'm not rushing to upload anything. I'm working with the new things I've learned and trying to get better at meshing.

 

I'm an amateur mesher, but I've been playing and using CC made by others for a while. Too often the sample pics look great, but it looks awful in game. I'm not going to do that. Honestly, not to brag, but right now, the Lianaa dress, a Harmonia dress, my EA little black dress and a few others look as good or better than some of the CC out there. )))

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This may be a total WTF moment.... I'm serious about learning this weight stuff, so I opened my full build 0 and pulled out all the body parts for adult female as packages. (face, scalp, top nude, bottom nude and feet) I then opened the packages and pulled out the individual lod1 geoms, loaded them into Blender, and "joined" them all to get a complete af head to toe reference. (tf will come later if this works) In weights mode, when I click on "head" in vertex groups, it looks like a seam at the neck!? AND... WTF??? These aren't mod parts. These are straight from full build 0.

 

1629834594_headtotoeEA.PNG.f3b97e211ea878ec882d3607b70bdbec.PNG

 

My LBD (little black dress) has tested great in game so far. Absolutely no clipping when walking, sitting or dancing. Next is to go jogging. A couple of very tiny multiplier alignment repairs and better shading, and its uploadable... except those neck and ankle seams. I'm going to keep going with this reference manikin and try the weight transfer, but thought I'd toss this at you and get your input.

 

 

full.PNG.b4e6bdd4b9b238b6041c8bccc767ddaa.PNG

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Oh yeah, this is Laura... she's a 6' 5" tall (in heels) vampire bartender and part time Kinky model who looks pretty good in her little black dress and Gala shoes by Josh Q! )

 

Screenshot-75.jpg.9733a4209735345340e6a3c1bfc2f2c5.jpg

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Yeah TSRW is not very good to find errors except maybe to test masks.

 

On my experience shadows come from two places: the alpha on the multiplier and the game, when I said “the game” I mean sometimes the engine draws strange shadows around your garments (happens a lot when I make strappy heels), if those only appear on exteriors you’re good.

 

In my case I use solidify with very small values (0.001 – 0.002m):

 

If your neck, feet, hip vertices match with the reference then you only need Meshtoolkit to transfer weights; that’s why I haven’t touched Blender’s weight section, although I will have to if I ever want to find the definitive solution for fixing clipping on front of a skirt.

 

I see your sims have sane proportions, I mean you don’t seem to use custom sliders and/or go beyond the default scale. In that case, as you have stated, clipping will be mostly contained.

 

 

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Hey! I might try again, but so far nothing has worked to fix the neck/ ankle seams. I fixed the little multiplier problem where it looks like I missed the edge of the piece across the chest and was dark like on the back side. ) Getting ready to put it back in game now to see how it looks.

 

The mesh I made converted a 2 group mesh into a 1 group mesh. I just ran several different EA mesh wsos through TSRW to get bones and morphs to my mesh before I found one that only had a very small amount of clipping at the hip/ thigh bend. From there, I just moved the offending vertices back a little. Never thought I'd be showing you things as alternatives to meshing, but...

 

1.PNG.55cb86d748422c89a660f15c7d32d0f3.PNG

 

This is how I squeeze into the lower skirt portion without making the skirt wider. After cutting the top 2 rows of faces from the bottom nude, I narrow the hips and butt on the x and y. I remove the top row of faces from the inside of the skirt and then close the new top row of vertices so you don't see empty space looking up the skirt.

 

2.PNG.152fa3d59e5670c48da9dfd897b0ee27.PNG

 

3.PNG.287ddfd53e1ccdd6cc3b6c789700cf46.PNG

 

4.PNG.12a6c871b3bb0786af72225b82533a22.PNG

 

This has become my standard way of doing the lower part of a skirt or full dress mesh. This seems to work well for me. Its the neck and ankle seams that have me drinking vodka!

 

And yes I use sliders. ))) I just don't go quite as buxom as your models! ? But Laura is taller than most male sims in my game, even without the shoes. I didn't increase her bust as much as other female sims, especially my Harley Quinn who is a bit curvaceous, being shorter than baseline with wider hips a slightly bigger butt and bigger boobs. ) She also has a small waist to make her appear more curvy, but not quite Barbie doll or cartoon curvy. )))

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Hey! I was looking at the pic of one of your new shoe meshes and saw the faces are square! I thought they had to be triangular??? I had always assumed the game didn't read squares correctly and that's why everything is triangulated.

 

Also just made 2 more items that may never get uploaded! I'll have in game testing soon. One is actually a redo of a babydoll nightie I downloaded, but the mesh didn't really fit the multiplier, so I remeshed it. I did that before you told me how to flip normals. My Harley Quinn wears that nightie, and I noticed the transparent inside and fixed it.

 

The other is an open remesh of the EA cocktail dress, which I raised the hem line and call my "Way Too Short Cocktail Dress". I'd never wear it! Looks a bit drafty to me, but sims don't seem to mind. )

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Blender works better when using ‘quads’ and is much easier for selecting/editing a mesh, you can convert a triangle into a quad pressing ‘Alt + J’ or dissolving the cross(?) edges:

 

On export the program takes care of ‘triangulating’ every face.

 

As for the seam I once was able to fix the normals on the feet seam using the ‘transfer data’ modifier but since then I haven’t been able to reproduce it…, instead I use milkshape with the unimesh plugin.

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I have Blender 2.67. I downloaded a newer version a while ago, but I forget why I didn't use it. Probably because I was just starting to figure out a few things and something was different about the new version so I went back to 2.67. I tried to take a picture, but it didn't work... in the mesh menu, 2.67 has Faces CTRL + F, then Triangulate faces CTRL + T. I've actually used it on another experimental mesh... an unbuttoned dress with a collar. Need practice with collars! To get a 3D edge along the open front of the top, I used solidify, but the fillers between inner and outer meshes were square. I didn't know Blender auto triangulated on export, so I highlighted the blocks, hit "triangulate" and it worked.

 

There are a lot of tutorials and videos on fixing the ankle/ neck seam using Milkshape, and for TS4. So far, I've only seen the tutorial that you linked for me for Blender, and either it didn't work on 2.67, or I did something wrong. I'll keep working on it!

 

Some of the shadows I got are on the Vampire Long Coat around the corset. I haven't returned to that project yet, but from all I've learned recently, I think its because of the way I just let the top and bottom meshes slice through the corset. Since my selfie sim is the one dancing with Laura while testing the Little Black Dress, I saw the amount of clipping on the coat was almost nothing, and only when doing the extreme dance back bend. The coat follows knee bends pretty well and the tiniest clipping of the boot heels, only sometimes when walking.

 

So, a couple things to look at... AND the darn neck seam... and I may upload that one finally, although the teen version has issues of its own that I still need to sort out.

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Almost had a total disaster! Forever in pursuit of fixing those darn seams, I came across a possible fix on MTS. Of course the catch was the new stuff is for Blender 2.80. Well, I downloaded the plugins, then downloaded Blender 2.80. Apparently you can't have 2 versions of Blender running on one laptop. So, I uninstalled good old 2.67.

 

Not my finest moment! 2.80 is completely different. I couldn't find to add on the MTS plugins for TS3 geoms. Finally I did and loaded a geom that I'm testing in game right now. It loaded it with the crazy bones and it looked like a Picasso on heroine. Can't figure out how to navigate the darn layout. Stupid pictures and symbols instead of plain words!

 

And uninstalled... found another 2.67 download and happy again! I'm going to try to install 2.80 on my gaming laptop, but I had a lot of problems trying to load Blender on there for some reason. Fortunately, my husband loves me and said to try our travel laptop if all else fails. ))) Hmmmm... I think it will fail and I'll have to use the shiny 4 month old travel laptop!!! ))))))))))))

 

I hope whatever the fix is that was made to run on 2.80 works.  I came up with a plan "B" after watching a video for fixing a similar issue on a different game and reading an archived MTS post from 2010 about this. Of course the answer then was to get milkshape because of the plugin that fixes the seams and Blender apparently doesn't blend the neck normals to the head because the head isn't there. But the other video showed a very tiny misalignment of the neck to head seam. I checked, and there is on my mesh also.

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This is an adventure I could do without. ((( Got 2.8 on the gaming laptop. Its confusing. But, I loaded a geom. I played with it and exported it. Put it in a package and opened it in TSRW to see how it looked... The neck seam was fixed! AND every other seam was buggered up!!!!!!!!! Side seams, leg seams, shoulder seams... all visible now. So much fun. ?

 

I did find a thread on the blender site how to load 2 versions on the same computer, so I'm going to try that on the travel laptop and see what I can figure out.

 

What are those blue lines on you shoe mesh? I see them in odd places on my mesh on Blender 2.8, but not sure what they mean.

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Happy! HAPPY!!! HAPPY!!! Screenshot-86.jpg.8c674e0af47bc24485f18bdced313adb.jpg

Screenshot-88.jpg.4fb4df8fb10a127b0ecf93dab02a01e6.jpg

Screenshot-91.jpg.08e03b823dceab174506e0510e5faef0.jpg

Screenshot-89.jpg.300d9b917996d3560690c6675f2e0b0b.jpg

 

Well, as it happens, CmarNYC came out with a newer version of the Mesh Tool Kit back on 12/20/18. It has a few new features, one of which is obviously a seam fixer tool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I've been using the old version and for some reason, the new version never came up in any of my searches on the problem, and I never thought to look into the new version. It works on both necks and ankles as you can see. Just look at lovely Laura's long legs as they transition so smoothly into that fabulous pair of Josh Q Gala shoes! ?

 

I have sooooooooooooo much old CC that I made as I was just messing around making stuff for myself, in addition to newer things I hope to upload. The little black dress will probably be coming soon. ))) After fixing the neck and ankles on the Lianaa remake, it developed a waist seam that had been corrected. I'll have to play with different combinations of what order to do which until all the seams look good.

 

Thanks as always for first of all being so kind and patient with me. Second, for being open and honest about things you saw in the maid mesh which pushed me to find a way to fix them and hopefully make better CC.

 

For you, if you need it, and for anyone that reads this, here's the link to the new Mesh Tool Kit: http://modthesims.info/d/481950/meshing-toolkit-version-1-4-9-uploaded-12-20-2018.html

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You can download Blender 2.8’s manual here, is well written and explains most things although a video tutorial is 100 times better.

 

The blue line indicates the edge has split normals (known as ‘sharp’) and lets you define the shading on corners and other areas:

blender_sharp.jpg

 

Mixing it with ‘Auto Smooth’ and the ‘Weighted Normal’ modifier should give you different effects depending on the shape and definition of your mesh. You kinda get the same effect dividing the edges but that makes a mess when unwrapping.

 

There were several meshtoolkit versions floating on the forums so is nice to have an updated one located on the main site, thanks for the tip! will check it later.

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My foray into 2.8 will come eventually, but having found this newer version of tool kit that takes care of the neck and ankle seams, I'll probably stick with 2.67 for a while longer. Although, during my struggle to find an answer, I also reloaded 2.79 and found it to be very similar to 2.67. One of my inconveniences is that for some reason, 2.67 will not work on my gaming laptop. I set everything up the same as on 2 other laptops, but I can't import meshes. 2.8 is on that laptop, and I can import. Since it is so similar, I'll be trying to load 2.79. Its a pain in the neck because the laptop I have to work on is slow, and loading even a TS3 test game takes forever. And the graphics are terrible!!! If I can get 2.79 working on the game computer, I can make small changes to a mesh if I see something bad during testing, pop it back in and load a test game in only a couple of minutes to see how it looks. For now, I test on the gamer, see a problem, put the package on a thumb drive, transfer it to the work laptop, fix... hope I fixed the problem, put it back on the thumb, load it BACK to the gamer and restart the test game! OY!

 

Hmmm... I had blue lines on parts of my mesh that I didn't know were split. The only way I know to cut the UV is by edge splitting the mesh first, then move the lower dress UV down to the sides away from the legs. If I rejoin the mesh parts, the UV automatically welds, but doesn't show that until I export and re-import the mesh, Then I have spider webs everywhere. So as you probably saw when you looked at the maid mesh, its split into 7 or 8 pieces.

 

I did look at the 2.8 manual, but the main reason I went back to 2.67 is that when I exported my mesh from 2.8, the fix seams didn't work at all and every mesh seam was visible in TSRW, even after using the new tool kit seam fixer, which I imagine is specifically for the neck and ankle issue. As I said, I will eventually play with 2.8 again, but for now, I'll stay on the older versions since the new tool kit will fix what had been my biggest appearance problem.

 

As always, testing, fixing, and more testing in game on primarily the black dress and the Lianaa dress, since in my opinion, they are my current best looking work and most likely to be up-loadable sooner than later.

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Try converting a .simgeom into .obj using meshtolkit, it gets rig of all the sharps without affecting the shading nor the split edges, does the same for a .wso. Just be aware I haven’t tested converting back (I use milkshape for that and only for .wso).

 

Now here’s the thing, most of my self-made stuff don’t have split edges, only sharps. I just recently read that it was important to split them on the UV seam, but I don’t see why. Maybe is because it doesn't matter for .wso :confused:?

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Huh? What? Oh... I don't know???? ? As you know, I'm just learning this stuff. I've never used sharps. I've seen you talk about it, and see it in one of the menus in my Blender, but have never used it. What does it do?

 

As so many tutorials are for milkshape, I've seen where people save a mesh from blender as an object and open it in milkshape, but never really understood. The tool kit I have has a new object tool, but I've never worked with objects.

 

I began using edge split after seeing a tutorial video about getting rid of the shadow caused by sharply folded meshes. It doesn't seem to work that well for me. Is that what sharps is for?

 

I've also found that with the way I make my meshes (rearrange someone else's mesh) that I can save several steps from how I used to separate the skirt portion from the top, slit the front and back and move the UVs by using edge split. Honestly, I used to take the mesh, delete the skirt part, save the top... reload a copy mesh, delete the top, save the skirt. THEN... delete half of the skirt, move the UV, save it, and then do the same with the other half! It was the only way I could figure out how to NOT have vertices lines all over the UV map. But, I learned edge split cuts the mesh and the UV in one shot.

 

Update: my last test of the LBD I saw a weird skin tone at the cleavage. Sooooo.... I reopened the mesh and realized the mesh didn't allow the multiplier to separate the skin from the dress. I went back further and found its the way the EA mesh I used as my base is made. I have learned sooooooo much these passed few months, and now can do things I knew possible, but only dreamed of doing myself... like cutting a mesh and making new faces, and reshaping the mesh and aligning the UV! 

 

This is the EA dress...

EA.PNG.2719089479cc97e301d31951d149da4a.PNG

 

This is how much I've learned!!! It just takes me a while to figure things out.

1.PNG.1d4a8eaffced403fd1a57d3454de4401.PNG

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I found that UV Map Adjusting information but it was in a DOCX format. I copied it and hopefully it will not be to much here.  Hope this is useful to you.

I don't know who originally wrote this Tomb but it has value.

 

Milkshape-  Adjusting UV Mapping On Your Modified Body Mesh

Adjusting UV Mapping In Milkshape

Sometimes if the changes to your meshes are very small, you might not need to adjust the uvmapping. But other times, it's really important to take the time to do so, so that your meshes and textures will display at their best.

Here is an excellent example of why one would want to adjust the uv map; When I modified the scrubs mesh to make the medieval meshes for men and elders – I eliminated the v neckline, getting the seam to blend almost perfectly in the mesh. But… when I went to check the uv mapping, the texture did not connect smoothly across the seams.

In order to check the uv mapping and make adjustments, first you need to create a Material in the project, and then assign it to the body.

To assign the Material,
1) click to the MATERIALS tab
2) hit the NEW button
3) click the first button that says <none> and select your bmp file

blob.png.e3b3b68ab41680a34f55dca3999d7192.png 

4) click the GROUPS tab
5) click on BODY to highlight it
6) hit the SELECT button, you will see your mesh highlight in the other windows
7) click the MATERIALS tab
8) hit the ASSIGN button
9) right click on the window showing your mesh, and select ‘TEXTURED’ to see the material on the mesh.

blob.png.446e42fba71f059d1eea5e6c47396710.png 

Now, when I zoom in on the neckline, I can see that unfortunately, the texture does not cross the seams well at all, it’s not lined up. If I leave it mapped like that, it will be almost impossible to make the shirt front look smooth or put any designs across it. So I want to fix it.

blob.png.9b109ebbdd9f57e89209e8fec8195a7a.png 

To get to the uv map editor, use the WINDOW menu and select ‘Texture Coordinate Editor’ (or hit CTRL-T)

A window will pop up showing your texture and the uv coordinates over it. In order to see the entire uv map, I need to set the size to .5 (50%) and hit the SCALE button. You can try other sizes depending on what are you need to focus on. If we were using the Unimesh plugin, it would look something like this (this happens to be a uv map of a girl’s dress):

blob.png.11b58bc35dce73bb011c2df0dd3f033c.png 

When you export an OBJ file from SimPE (for a Meshtool modification) the body UV Map in Milkshape is appears below the texture instead of on top of it. My example mesh was created as an OBJ file, and although it might be a bit confusing to see the map below the texture, I am using it because it is such a good example of why to take the time to fix the uv map.

When you look at the picture below, you can see the uv map points are visible below the texture. That is okay, because we can move around in the window, and zoom in and out, so to have the best view, if the points show up on the texture or not.

blob.png.81ae6459a996c8290a159830113d0a43.png 

Now I'm going to change the scaling setting to 2, and I'm going to use ctrl-leftmousebutton to move the view so that I can focus in on the neckline area. I'm going to checkmark REDRAW, so my changes will show up as I make them.

Time to start moving the uv map points around and fixing up the mesh. 

To select a point – be sure the SELECT button is clicked and then hold down the mouse button and drag over the point(s) you wish to select. You can hold down the shift key and click-drag again if you want to select yet more points.

Then you can click on MOVE or SCALE and then move your mouse to drag the points around. I seem to always want to move the points in the wrong direction, and it takes a while for me to adjust to how I need to move them to get the results I want. This is picky fiddly work, with very small movements of the points to get things just right. 

You can use UNDO from the menu to step backwards, if you are not happy with the way you moved the points.

blob.png.c2a65352ac5aa748a2cdf7da71221b99.png 

Now I am at a spot where I'm not sure which points are part of the central triangle and which are part of the main body, so I can select them in the Texture Coordinate Editor. I want to focus on the central triangle area, so I first close the Texture Editor window. Then I went over to my mesh and selected the FACES of the central triangle area I wanted to focus on. Then I went back into the Texture Editor, and only those points appeared, which will make it much easier for me to pick them and move them.

blob.png.7e5a7b59d321daa746d705681b01f2fc.png 

When I want to go back to seeing all the points, I can close the Texture Editor, do a 'Select All', and then open the texture editor again.

Take your time, relax, take a break if necessary. Slowly your mesh will come together…. And in the end, it can look like this!

blob.png.2cfd843f442bb19f5eff0ad43613e762.png 

The mesh and outfit can be found here:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=99584

Included below are two template bmp files which you might like to use to fine tune your uv maps, enjoy!

Additional notes:

First, make sure you use the Milkshape commands that actually will properly add points to your uvmap if you do add points, see Milkshape Settings/Tips 

The mesh shown is only the second mesh I edited, and the uvmap is indeed still a bit distorted at the neckline, not all the squares are 'square'. But as I got the lines to match across the seam, I stopped at that point. I expect if I tried again now I might be able to get it a bit better, but the distortion barely shows on the finished mesh. As uvmaps are stretched over the body, you might not always be able to get things perfectly square or even, but the closer you get, the better textures will look on your mesh.

While we're discussing uv maps, I'm going to note that Maxis uv mapped many skirts (even though they flare) with straight lines - which result in some stretching of the pattern horizontally as the skirt flares. This nice square uv mapping means that trim and checks and stripes all can be put onto the skirt and will line up easily at the seams. Now, on the other hand, if you made the hem longer or shorter - you will probably want to adjust the uv map vertically to make the boxes (I used boxes on my test pattern) as equally sized as possible, so that any sort of fabric can be used on the dress, not just solid colors.

On this example mesh with the male tunic and pants, I also stretched the shirt to be longer. I was able to adjust the uvmap to distribute the stretch, by moving the map points one row at a time vertically up and down on the uv map. The lower area is still a bit stretched, but it's less obvious. As this was one of my first meshes, I think the attempt was adequate. If I had it to do over, I might move the upper pants a bit down to make a bit more room for the tunic.

Adding totally new parts

If you are adding *new parts* to your mesh, you should uv map them to some unused part of the 1024x1024 clothing texture file, separately, *before* you add them to your mesh. (Like between the legs below the arms/hands) Read the next few messages in this thread for tips from Dr. Pixel about this. You can also view two mini-tutorials he wrote about uvmapping objects using Milkshape here: UV Mapping Shoes and UV Mapping Objects 

Now that your UV Map is Changed

Now that your UV Map is changed, you will need to adjust your texture and maybe the alpha to your new layout.

This posted by Dr Pixel:

To get a copy of your UV Map (that you can use as a texturing guide) I open the finished mesh as a .ms3d file in LithUnwrap (the free version)

You can find it here:
http://files.seriouszone.com/download.php?fileid=198

On the File menu, it has an option "UV map/Save"

I set the Save window to bitmap and give it a name.

Then a second window opens, with several options. Set the options as you like and make sure the dimensions at the bottom are set correctly to 1024 x 1024 (for a body mesh) and that's all there is to it.

For a "standard" looking black and white uv_map image, set "Groups" to "black and white", and un-checkmark "fill"

If you make objects, it works great for them too - just set the dimensions to whatever image size your object is using for it's texture.


Tigger adds: For myself I usually simply take a screenshot of my map when it's set to 50% especially now that I'm working in unimesh and don't even have an obj file. The I edit it in my graphics program, removing the rest of the screenshot and then scaling it up to 1024x1024. 

Now you need to go and rework your texture. Go into bodyshop, Make a NEW project, you should see your mesh with your texture on it - perhaps now some parts will look wrong (like a moved hem showing other stuff on it). Now go and edit the texture (and alpha files if necessary). You can use the uvmap graphic as a guide. If you aren't sure about all your bodyshop files, go check out the tutorials by Faylen specifically her 4th one covers the alpha file - http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=138342. A detailed simple reworking of the uvmap and texture is also covered in Unimesh Tutorial #2 

If you are encouraging others to recolor your clothing, you can include that uvmap graphic with your mesh files, to make it easier on them.
 

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Its a lot of detail, but I don't have milkshape. Probably won't be getting it. I do everything on Blender 2.67. I have 2.79 and even 2.80, but have stayed with the older version. I fumble through things, but somehow get them done. I've gotten better with adjusting UVs by just moving one vertices at a time to fit what I need to do and matching it to another UV or to a multiplier that I already set up and then found a problem as with the LBD.

 

This is the EA mesh UV...

 

4.PNG.eaaeabe3074ac329707a6687dc006de9.PNG 

 

First, I cut loose the dress, it was basically already done that way by EA. then I shrank it on the x and y, and moved it down. Then I took a piece of chest from a nude top and gave the mesh and UV some cleavage. ) Next, I cut loose the lower part, shortened it a little and moved the front and back with the inner flipped normals layer.

 

2.PNG.eef9cba00f5e4e0a29f7559389893f7e.PNG

 

I merged vertices and welded UVs. During testing, I found a strange look at the cleavage under the strap. Turn out I never moved a couple of faces, and they were also part of the dress. Not in these pics, but I overlayed the multiplier on the UV editing screen. Something I've gotten better at is knife cutting faces and putting them where I want, and moving the corresponding UV... this time more to fit the multiplier.

 

As with everything I do, I'm sure there's a quicker and easier way, but I'm slowly finding ways to do things with what I have... Blender. (Free)

 

3.PNG.fd34fe276c90130f11420ce24c704ab8.PNG

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The “correct way” would be to modify mesh, texture and vertices to match each other. The way you did it is faster although if you scale down your textures a little too much your garment will look blurry on the game.

 

There’s a second method and that is to “liberate” some space on the UV map, I do it by deleting the left arm and then mirroring the right one, after fixing the normals on the seam you’re left with this:

half-uv-mesh.jpg

 

Now you have more space to accommodate your textures without reducing them:

RevealingNinja_UV.jpg

 

 

Works with clothes too! But sadly half of your texture just repeats and doesn’t look nice depending how close you zoom.

BabydollSparkle_experiment.jpg

 

 

 

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Wow, learn something new every day. Thanks.

Have very little experience with Normals. To me they just seem to be a way to add a little contouring and shading to otherwise flat surfaces.  I've seen many objects (clothing) that don't use them or have it blank or use a alph-modified Grey-scale. I've used Multipliers that I've reduced the Alpha channel and shifted the color Hue more toward the blue-green/red.  which seems to work. I've even place unaltered Multipliers in the Normals slot. Perhaps I wasn't paying close enough attention to the results - but they seemed fine for what I was doing at the time. The two of you have a much keener eye for those things, it seems, or I just haven't recognized the deviations.

 

Exactly what do you use them for (Normals)?

 

This talk of reversing Normals is new to me. On the surface it would appear that reversing the Normal would simply reverse the high and low inflections produced on contouring and shading. Forgive me if my Nomenclature is off. I'm self taught for the most part in this stuff with little formal education in graphics. My forte is General Engineering and Business/Robotics Programming. The Technology Transfer doesn't quite work in this case.

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Hmmm... mirror the whole arm? That does free up a lot of space! A definite "will try it"! I usually try not to reduce the size of the UV parts, but had seen it done by others, and it worked to free up the area I needed for the cleavage. I shrank the top and bottom of the dress together so there wouldn't be any distortion at the seam, but I know what you mean about the stretching. I figure trying to shrink that part would cause worse problems with breast shading and UV alignment.

 

Is there a way in Blender to "lock" the UV to move with the vertices? If there is, I haven't figured it out yet. That's why I move UV vertices the way I do. But, if you look at the pic with the mesh, you see that I try to keep the UV matching up to the actually mesh when I move things.

 

I have been shrinking many other parts, but determined the detail loss was far less noticeable. I did a few Sakura dresses as open. She used the entire UV map, so things like ribbons, sleeve cuffs, collar parts, etc got reduced a bit, but I always keep them as big as possible and move them next to the neck and arms. BUT... if mirroring the arm works out for me, I'll be able to keep them full size.

 

I have used mirror for other things though. EA splits hands on wso groups a lot. I convert things to single mesh since it seems the chemise or long night shirt wsos work very well for bones and morphs on short dresses. I cut off the bad hand, mirror the good hand in tool kit from the wrist down and put it back in place of the bad hand. I saw where you cut the hand. I cut a little lower. But, of course I figured out fewer vertices to put back together, and actually faster and easier than trying to stitch the vertices from the EA mesh. )))

 

The arm move is good for me since I already use mirror and have some idea of how it works. ) THANKS!

 

Oh... and I did more experimenting with solidify on what I'm calling "Way2Short Skirt". I have to take another look at the mesh because of a waist seam gap.

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23 minutes ago, Non-sequitur said:

Wow, learn something new every day. Thanks.

Have very little experience with Normals. To me they just seem to be a way to add a little contouring and shading to otherwise flat surfaces.  I've seen many objects (clothing) that don't use them or have it blank or use a alph-modified Grey-scale. I've used Multipliers that I've reduced the Alpha channel and shifted the color Hue more toward the blue-green/red.  which seems to work. I've even place unaltered Multipliers in the Normals slot. Perhaps I wasn't paying close enough attention to the results - but they seemed fine for what I was doing at the time. The two of you have a much keener eye for those things, it seems, or I just haven't recognized the deviations.

 

Exactly what do you use them for (Normals)?

 

This talk of reversing Normals is new to me. On the surface it would appear that reversing the Normal would simply reverse the high and low inflections produced on contouring and shading. Forgive me if my Nomenclature is off. I'm self taught for the most part in this stuff with little formal education in graphics. My forte is General Engineering and Business/Robotics Programming. The Technology Transfer doesn't quite work in this case.

I thought that too, but apparently there are two different kinds of "normals". You, just as I always thought of normals as the texture map used to accent high/ low variations in a multiplier texture, but these "normals" (from what I'm able to understand) refer to which side of a mesh the multiplier texture will show on.

 

I have started experimenting with solidify. Since that is what you use, I found the "normals" automatically flip to the inside because its more of a continuation of the mesh outer, as you know. If you just duplicate the mesh, a I usually do, shrink it down a click on the x and y to make your inner lining, you then must manually "flip normals", so the texture shows on the inside of the skirt.

 

Some things Josh tells me, I get... some I don't... all I try!!!

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