New Moon Clothing Line - Completely Revised due to Upload Rejection :(

[Elizabella]

So I have a tee shirt that I absolutely love and I've attached a picture of it. I was doing my graphic by memory so I know that is wrong but what do you think of it so far? Right track wrong track? Totally wrong method of transportation :)

[hatthecat123]

Yeah it's a good start! but i'd put some shading under her bewbs, also tis' not the red texture more orangey and really very smooth (your texture is kinda blotchy) although to be frank body shop's lighting might not be doing it justice...
anyway it's always so much easier to be said than done

[heaven]

I think it may look better as an untuckable tee, if you can recolor that mesh.

[Elizabella]

Hmm good thinking but I didn't see one in body shop? Do you have a link to an untucked tee?

[heaven]

It's something from HystericalParoxysym and Fanseefem: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=228762

[Elizabella]

Ok So I took your advice and used HP's untuckable tee but I'm still not totally happy with it so I think once my texture is ok, I'm going to modify the mesh and make a long tee shirt, I don't think I've seen any yet like that. So let me know what you think. Thanks!

[lauratje86]

On your screenshots, the shirt doesn't seem to be paired with untuckable pants. Have you tried that? Then the shirt will, well, be untucked! Then it would look more like the shirt on the source pic in your first post, and may be more like what you're after.

If you haven't downloaded any untuckable pants yet, just search the downloads section for "untuckable pants", there are loads available.

I think your shirt is looking good! :-) Though maybe the writing on the shirt could be a bit bigger??

[Elizabella]

Thanks Laura. I'll enlarge the writing again because I had shrunk it and I'll download some untuckable pants.

[AnnitaSims]

Well, i can see that the texture and the text in the t-shirt are not enough tense..The fabric round the neck its somehow cut and the highlightings not so clear..If i were you,i would download HP's untuckable tees that have bump mapping too, and repaste the texture.The tee will look much more realistic.

[Elizabella]

HI Annita, I'm sorry but I don't quite understand you *blush* The fabric around the neck actually is a little worn. What do you mean by tense? And I did use HP's tuckable tees so what am I doing wrong?

[AnnitaSims]

Well, i did not make it clear i know..No you are not doing anything wrong, i just wondering why the text in the tee is fading.You know,the text and the red color around it must have bigger cotrast..The text now is brown, why don't you darken it?Then it will be more clear what to read it.Something other.Does it say ''wen noom''?Did you take the pic with a mirror, view cause the text is reversed..
Sorry if i'm not clear,my English is not the best..:-S

[HystericalParoxysm]

On your texture you have a lot of horizontal lines, all over the texture. Those would make sense in areas like under the breasts and the center of the back, but not anywhere else - take a look at a tee shirt on yourself and see how it looks in the mirror. Also, if ya look at my Fanseefem textures (which I ttly ripped off from Fanseelamb) you'll see how there are some light horizontal lines under the breasts, but the rest is fairly smooth. I see, looking closer at the source pic, that it does have some lines like that, but the way yours are done it looks more like ripples - yours seem to be mostly shadows, not highlights. The original tee, it looks like those lines are just slightly shinier areas of the fabric.

You can always use the Fanseefem textures and mesh and just paste your logo on top of it, if that's easier.

I agree with AnittaSims - the logo does need to be darker. It looks better on the newer version than the first version but it looks like it still needs to be a bit darker.

[Elizabella]

Ok I'll definitely make the text darker, perhaps I just have my opacity wrong or something. On the real shirt, it's slightly transparent so if I do a light grey on the map where I want it a little transparent would that work do you think?

[Elizabella]

So I enlarged the text and made it a little darker. I also worked really hard on improving the texture of well the texture. On the alpha I recreated the pattern and colored the lighter parts of the shirt with a light grey so hopefully that means they're slightly transparent?

However I now have this crazy thing coming out of the neck and I don't see where I went wrong with the alpha or the texture! Can somebody please help me :(

[Elizabella]

OK New Pictures and something is dfinitely wrong but I still can't see it in my texture or alpha file. What do you think of the texture?

[JavierMC20]

Hi Elizabella,

If you look at the UV's on the shirt, you will see that you have color bleeding into the neck "well". This is creating that triangle of color along the sims neck. Load the UV's and your texture into the paint program, with the texture as the top layer, make it a bit transparent until you can see the UV's and match the texture to the collar loop as close as possible or a little bit away from the collar UV lines. This will remove that bleed.

I think the new texture on the overall shirt looks a lot better in your new version.

I've attached a photo of a female shirt UV's as an example of what I mean. Keep the texture AWAY from the darkened UV's around the neck. You can even move it slightly farther away from the neck and into the actual shirt UV's to avoid the texture bleed into the neck. It will just make the collar a little deeper on the shirt. NOTE: This isn't your shirts UV's of course, it's just an example but most UV's follow this pattern for avoiding the neck.

[Elizabella]

Sorry everybody for the delay but this has taken much longer than I had anticipated. I managed to change the shirt to an untucked one and I fixed the collar with the help of the UV map so I decided to try and upload, well big mistake. I guess I made it a little too transparent in places along with some other problems. Here's what the mods said:
Dear Elizabella,

Thank you for your submission of "Twilight Saga: New Moon Collection - Eternal Love Untucked Shirt for Teens and Adults" in the Everyday area at MTS.

Unfortunately, the thread has not been approved at this time due to the following reasons:

•Body Shop Content - Texture Details
Details go a long way towards making sim clothes look good. Clothing should have hems around edges such as necklines, sleeves, and the bottoms of shirts. There should be a slight shadow between the sim's clothes and their skin, or between a shirt and pants, to make it look like one is resting on top of the other. Edges should be crisp, not pixellated. Highlights and shadows should accent the curves of the sims' body so it looks 3D instead of flat.

Although these may seem like small details, together they make a huge impact in the quality of the finished project. Please work on the details of your upload. You can visit the Bodyshop Skinning forum for helpful tutorials, and the Creator Feedback forum for feedback on your specific project.


•Textures - Pixellated/Blurry
Your textures are blurry or pixellated. Play with the sharpness settings in your graphics editing program to make sure your graphics are crisp, clean, and look realistic in-game. If you are using photos as textures, make sure you are using good source photos that are of a sufficient size for your project - you should be scaling down, not scaling up!

Sims 2 specific: For clothing, make sure you have read Faylen's clothing tutorials, and check to make sure Body Shop is not resizing/pixellating your graphics.

Sims 2 specific: For objects, you may wish to use a larger texture size for your object textures - make sure you keep the same aspect ratio (256x256 can become 512x512). If you find you are getting pixellation when importing your textures, make sure you are using the nVidia DDS Utilities, not the Import button, and you may try using DXT3 or DXT5 instead of DXT1. Remember that larger textures and higher DXT values create larger files and a greater strain on the game to render, so only use them when you absolutely must. There is information on obtaining the nVidia DDS Utilities and use of the Build DXT function on the tutorial by Numenor, Recolouring Objects with Object Workshop.


•Textures - Texture and Shading/Bucket Fill
Your textures should have some detail to them - not just a single-colour bucket fill or flat pattern, but with highlights and shadows in the right places, to give the appearance of folds, ripples, etc. - even fabric that would be skin-tight or smooth against a surface is going to have some shading and highlighting along the contours. For a tutorial on a simple technique for adding shading and highlighting, see: How to Add Shadows and Highlights.


•Other reasons (these may be clarifications of above points, or additional reasons)
In addition to the above issues, the sim's skin seems to be showing through the shirt in many spots. Please make sure the "alpha" file in your Project folder is all white in the spots where the shirt is. The only parts that should be black are the bare arms, neck, etc.

Please read through all of the rejection reasons above! If you decide to resubmit your item, correcting only one or two of them (when more exist) will result in another rejection.

While we appreciate the time and effort that goes into making custom content, we advise you to read MTS' Creator Guidelines forum, where you can get information on quality of items and submission details. You can also get help and advice in the individual forums of the Create section, and can post photos of your project in the Creator Feedback forum for specific advice on how to improve.

If you are unclear as to why a specific upload was rejected, you may post in the Creator Issues forum. This is set so that only you and staff can see threads, to keep any issues private. Before posting in this forum, please make sure to review all of the reasons listed above. Once you've worked on this upload, and improved all the points mentioned in this PM, feel free to upload it again.

Here are the pictures I had attached (New Pictures in next post)

[Elizabella]

So I set to work trying to learn more about Photoshop as I went along and trying to improve my work. I used Faylen's second method for adding shadows and they looked like the picture called shadows.

I also learned how to make a particular brush, so I made two different stitches, a running stitch along the bottom of the shirt which isn't really showing up and an X'y K'y type of stitch that goes around the neckline and the sleeves. I got rid of all transparency except on the neckline and a little on the sleeves. I also remade my texture at 25% so hopefully it doesn't look as bucket filled.

So what do you think?

[JavierMC20]

Hi Elizabella.
Is there some reason why the letters on the shirt stencil are so blurred? Was this intentional on your part, because the shirt model in your first post shows the lettering as very defined and legible.

[Lavaster]

The letters are blurry, like Javier pointed out, and the texture of the shirt looks really... odd. Maybe if you blurred the texture or something...

[JavierMC20]

Here's an example of the shadowing that i think the mods were trying to get across. I used the dodge tool on the light texture and the burn tool on the dark. If you can tell, it makes the shirt seem to have a 3D texture and not so flat. Only a suggestion, but i think it might work to look like the reference picture.

[Elizabella]

Hmm interesting, so you've almost raised each of the dark orange spots. I can try that (I think) As far as the lettering goes, it's probably just from transferring it from file to file. Somebody had said it looked too bold before but I can go back to that. I actually typed the letters in Simlish in Photoshop so I should be able to clear them up. I'll try the dodge and burn tomorow. Do you mind me asking what brush size you used?

[JavierMC20]

I sized the brush to match the scale of the color patterns, just a little less than the height of the pattern. For the dodge my exposure was set at 50% of the midtone ranges and for the burn it was set at 25% exposure of the highlights range. The setting are found on the top toolbar after you choose the tool.

You can make the words bold, just do the stencil on a separate layer, then reduce the opacity slightly to make it look like it's part of the shirt, maybe around 85-90% opacity. Hope that helps.

[Elizabella]

Hi Javier, I tried using the dodge and burn technique but I'm not seeing any difference! Can you tell what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks

[JavierMC20]

OK, I took a look at your .bmp file and did a little of burning and some dodging on it to show you what I think is going on. What you need to do to get the effect is to add some burn shadowing under the light parts of the pattern. They need to be dark enough to give the appearance of raised material. Play with the dodge tool on the light parts if it does not appear that the pattern is "shadowing" enough with the burn under-shadow. Hope this is what you're asking and it helps. It's kind of hard to explain without show and telling :D

[Elizabella]

Is this more like it? Or well, um, is i totally unethical for me to ask you to make it "pretty"

[JavierMC20]

I'm not sure why you'd think it was unethical, but I'm always happy to help if I can. :up:

Even after compressing the psd file it was over 16mb, so you'll need to download my revised psd of yours here http://www.mediafire.com/file/dto2iikryx6fd9r/JMCRevisedNewMoon.rar

I made a new layer and named it Javier Manipulation within the psd so you can see the changes I made to the texture. Just click it off and on to see how it effects the pattern. If you like it, you're more than welcome to use it.

Referencing your above pattern change, I think you have the right idea, but the pattern was made a little too big for the shirt texture. Next time try using a smaller brush and finer shadowing detail.

Anyway, let me know what you think.