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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 28th Apr 2015 at 12:36 AM
Default Help me please ._.
Hello there I am new to creating custom content. So far I have successfully made one piece of cc, separating a shirt from a full body outfit so it could be worn as a top. Now I'm trying to separate a bottom from a full outfit.



Everything's gone fine so far, but after I edited in Milkshape it looked like this. Ignoring the painted sneakers and khaki leggings, I don't think that it is supposed to look like this.



I must have taken too much off the top. Does anyone know if there's anyway to give him some of his body back without having to start all over and work around that damned shirt? Which still remains, by the way, in the form of these pesky triangles that rotate when you spin him around.



At least I'm pretty sure that's what those things are. I can't get rid of them without tearing off a big chunk of the panties. Milkshape is not exactly easy to use for a beginner.


This is what my milkshape looks like. The garbage bin-like lip around the top of his panties is being very stubborn. I think that's what the triangles are from. Maybe they'll go away when I retexture it?
But that's not as much of an issue. I really mainly need help with giving this man his stomach back. If you can help me with that, I will be very appreciative.
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 28th Apr 2015 at 7:40 PM
There's not much you can do at this point that wouldn't be quite complicated (you'd basically have to add more vertices at the top, assign bones, etc.). Not exactly a beginner's project. Starting over is probably going to be the best way to go.

You definitely need to get rid of that lip around the shorts, which is actually the easy part. The problem you're going to have, though, is no matter how you do the mesh, the texture is going to be messed up (unless you make one from scratch) because the original underpants don't have a top edge (it's "covered" by the tank top). If you want to separate an outfit so your Sim can wear just the bottoms, the easiest thing to do would be to pick an outfit with no top (like a swimsuit, or one of the underpants that your Sim wears with a bare chest). Then you won't have the actual top to deal with, like you do in this case.

I mean, technically, you could do what you're trying to do here; it's not impossible But it would mean altering the mesh to get rid of the lip and then drawing a new texture from scratch so that it went all the way up to the waist... and if it's those fancy fruity shorts you're after, well, it's just not going to work. You could stretch the texture, but it won't look quite right.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#3 Old 28th Apr 2015 at 11:27 PM
Thanks for the advice. I used the speedo. I'm okay with having some low hanging panties. And yes, I will have my fancy fruit shorts whatever it takes.
I managed to painstakingly remove every bit of the shirt by deleting vertices. Is there any way to select a vertex directly on the 3d model, rather than having to search for the right little dot on the projections?

The speedo imported without incident, but now it's intruding on these panties. That crotch must be subdued.

Do you know of a simple way to chisel down those thighs without disturbing The One Pair Of Panties? I'd preferably like to take in the body, rather than the panties, so I don't have to retexture too much. I think the speedo is adding bulk to his hips anyway. [This is why I just need to go ahead and get a nude mesh. Not for pervy reasons. Just definitely unpervy reasons like these.]
Mad Poster
#4 Old 29th Apr 2015 at 8:53 PM
You can select vertices in the 3D view by holding down the "Alt" key and clicking on the vertex on the 3D model (make sure you have the Wireframe Overlay turned on, of course). If you want to select more than one, hold "Alt" and "Shift" when you select. You can also deselect vertices (while holding down those keys) by right-clicking on them.

What you've got going now is not going to work, since you've got two overlapping pieces of mesh. It's going to confuse the game and your UV maps (and texturing) will therefore be screwed up. You're going to need to delete the bottom part of the full body mesh and join it with the shorts. That's what we call "Frankensteining". It's covered in the beginner meshing tutorials, so I won't bother to repeat it here. (If you haven't worked through the tutorials yet, I highly suggest doing so. It'll help you build a good knowledge base so you can attempt more difficult projects later.)

Did you change a setting in your MilkShape? Because your 3D view should be grey, not black (unless you're displaying a completely black texture, in which case, never mind).
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#5 Old 30th Apr 2015 at 7:31 PM
I had changed it to flat shading so I could see the wireframe better.
I finally managed to get the vertices merged in the right places. I removed most of the upper body so that the shirt I was planning to use wouldn't clip through those pecs. I had to modify the seam of the body a little so that I could fit it with the panties. Do you think that will mess up the skin or anything?

I have another problem now, hopefully one of the last ones in this saga. I opened it in body shop, and it classifies this as a full body outfit. I need it to be classified as a bottom. I could have sworn I properly changed the comment of the full body outfit in Milkshape. Do I need to merge the groups somehow, or something? Is it something I can fix in SimPE? I've found tutorials for how to convert models to a different category, age, or gender, but not location(?). I wouldn't even know where to go, much less what code to change it to. Do they not have a tutorial because it's so stupidly obvious?
Thanks for all your help so far
Mad Poster
#6 Old 30th Apr 2015 at 9:55 PM
If you're making a bottom (shorts, pants, skirt, etc.), then you need to make sure that the upper ring of vertices matches with the "standard" ring. The bottom of the shirts and the top of the bottoms have a ring of vertices that's in the same place on pretty much every single top or bottom out there (based on the original Maxis dimensions)... so it's easiest to line things up with that if you want your clothes to work with other ones already out there. The easiest way to do this is to import an existing bottom and copy all the vertex data (including bone assignments) from that ring of vertices onto your new mesh. You'll have to do this for the fat morph, too (unless you want to see what happens when your Sim gets fat on top but not on the bottom... or vice versa).

The mesh is showing up as a full body because it's got a full body skeleton. You can't fix this simply by changing the comments in MilkShape (unfortunately). But don't worry, you don't have to completely redo your mesh or anything like that. What you need to do is start a new project in MilkShape and import an existing bottom (one of the Maxis ones, for example). This will give you a skeleton that works as just a bottom. Then you can import your altered underwear mesh on top of that (make sure you don't include additional bone definitions, or whatever it asks; if you do, you'll end up with two skeletons and completely confuse the software). When you've done that, you can delete the existing bottom and adjust the comments on your new mesh accordingly.

Also, if you've got two groups in MilkShape, you'll need to add groups in SimPE (which is kind of tricky, but I can point you to some help if you need it)... but for something like this, I think I would just merge the groups and make sure there's no overlap on the UV map. Fewer groups means less chance of something going wrong!
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#7 Old 1st May 2015 at 10:40 PM
The panties are slowly becoming as great as they were always meant to be, but now I have one more minor problem. There's a seam where two parts of the texture don't line up. I'm pretty sure it's the part that was covered by the tank top, so maybe it's always been like this. I'm not even sure where this extra bit of texture even came from.

The texture looks perfectly fine in photoshop though. I avoided changing the panties too much for just this reason. It was probably just never meant to look good this far up.

I was thinking about just giving it a waistband, but I don't know where the cutoff is when I'm editing it. What do you suggest?
I really hope my incessant dumb questions aren't bothering you. it's just very difficult to find the answers to problems this specific.
Mad Poster
#8 Old 2nd May 2015 at 6:23 PM
Your UV map needs some adjusting, that's all. You can look at it in MilkShape and do your adjustments there (you'll probably notice that you have what looks like two parts for your shorts, which will be because you merged two mesh pieces). Looking at the UV map can also show you where the shorts end, if you import the shorts texture into MilkShape (you'll be able to see the white lines and vertices, so you can tell what needs to be moved). I think adding a texture in MilkShape is covered in one of the tutorials (# 2?); instead of loading the blue check texture, though, you'll add your undies texture.
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