This is fairly a simple question I hope. I have been over and over the tutorials, misc. posts, even other sites and can't seem to get a more direct answer. Just need some clarification.

I am creating customized clothing for a full body mesh. I already have a skin tone linked to the mesh, looks fine in game. I do not want to redo the entire mesh since it has muscular definitions, etc. To my understanding, is the only way to do this is to import an actual maxis clothing part (ie: button down shirt), and drape it over your model, then merge the new piece to your exisiting mesh? Or would I need to physically re-draw everything from scratch on each new mesh I wish to use? I assume you can merge the 2 as info provided with the Shoe tutorial, but I was actually hoping for some more info on how people added clothing mesh onto a a blank (nude) mesh.

I also am planning on keeping a fatboy mesh in there as well, but upon using the milkhape fatboy option, it wasnt giving me duplicate results like it should no matter how I worked with it. Do I have to do the same article of clothing twice to each type mesh?

I believe when I am done, I will have 18 different full mesh's

Nude (Full Body Mesh)
Nude Top (cut from Full Body Mesh for clothing)
Nude Bottom (cut from Full Body Mesh for clothing)
---
Tank Top (want to draw an actual mesh to go on top for this)
TShirt (actual shirt mesh on top too)
Long Sleeve Shirt
Collar Short Sleeve Button Down (open shirt)
Collar Short Sleeve Button Down (closed)
Collar Short Sleeve Tucked Button Down (closed)
Collar Long Sleeve Tucked Button Down (closed)
Collar Short Sleeve Polo 3-Button Tucked
Vest
Fleece (5" zipper top)
Fleece (full zipper)
Shorts (normal)
Shorts (knee length)
Jeans (Relaxed)
Jeans (Baggy)
Jeans (Relaxed above ankle length)
Jeans (Baggy above ankle length)
Dockers



Thanks for your assistance.

Last edited by Drakah : 26th May 2007 at 03:28 AM.

I believe that most of the time the nude top and bottom are used in the game paired up, instead of the all-in-one nude mesh.

I am not sure about your muscle definitions, but whatever clothes you make will show the shapes where you make it skin tight, but a lot of the muscle definition is created by careful shading on the texture image for the skin.

Skin-tight clothing references the mesh it was designed to go on (and thus requires no MilkShape work), but it leaves the non-clothing parts transparent. The game then shows the texture map for the skin (whatever one the Sims has) in those places. If you want that behavior different, then you need to texture all your skin parts in your clothing texture. Then you end up with a clothing item that will be white or black skinned despite what skin color the face has.

The fatboy option has nothing to do with Sims2 meshing. To get a fat mesh for your custom meshes, you need to duplicate the normal mesh (and do the appropriate naming and comments additions) and then use select and move to pull the base mesh out to your desired fat shape. While a fat morph can be made by making the same edits on the base and an importer MORPHMOD, this can easily be edited out-of-sync, which will make an exploding mesh. The only cure then would be to delete the MORPHMOD and remake it from the base mesh anyway.

While your list is ambitious, there are plenty of people here that have made as many clothing items or more. I wish you good luck and we will try to help you as you dive into the modding waters.

<* Wes *>

Thanks Wes. However if I make a modified Upper/Lower/Full mesh, I would be forced to create the clothing articles that would physically match the defined base mesh. Otherwise if I dont, anytime a clothing is shown would have maxis default showing and not matching the physique of my own creation. The texturing I dont have a problem with, I am still left with the question to be pointed to perhaps a tutorial that deals specifically "How to add a collar shirt to a custom drawn nude mesh" (ie: taking a maxis collar shirt and altering it in milkshape to fit to your custom mesh).

Thanks

Uhm, have you completed all three unimesh tutorials as written? I believe you did not, as making, preserving, or remaking a fat morph is covered in those tutorials in several ways. There is a lot of vital info packed in the _3_ tutorials that could not be covered in just 1, besides doing 3 projects is barely enough to get someone to some level of being good at it.

Clothing for the game needs to be not only in top-bottom combinations - for all the clothing options other than casual, the clothing needs to be a 1 piece full-body mesh. If you are making a new bodytype, they will need swim and undies and formal and workout and outerwear, etc.

If you took a regular maxis nude body and then reshaped it (without adding vertices) then what you would do is do similar reshaping to other maxis outfits to match your new base bodytype. You can (like with tutorial #3) save reshaping bare arms or legs if you go ahead and cut the arms/legs off your new clothing and put copies of the ones you remade onto it instead.

Some people use poser magnets to make that part of the process go a bit quicker - although from what I've seen, you should still be making some adjustments by hand to the clothing after working on it that way - giving thought to how the fabric actually drapes.

Depending on the reshaping you might also be adjusting the uvmap some (especially on clothing areas, you can't change the uvmap on the skintone area without causing problems for skintones made by others). Anyway, please work your way through the 3 tutorials, doing them as written. There's things that when only reading them it's easy to miss.

Actually I have done the tutorials as well as several others off the site. My problem becomes to take what I learned and apply it to a different method. I am not the type to do things half fast, since Ive been known to be a perfectionist/meticulous.

However, I have made some progress. I know how to preserve, alter comments, etc. of the fat morphs, but I don't ever remember the part to physically use a filter to create a morph automatically, other than having to actually create one by hand/import a default fat morph and alter it or leave it alone.

I do have full body mesh, top separate, bottom separate for clothing already too.

What I have decided to do though, is to make a mesh from a default maxis, (ie: button down short/shorts full mesh) and re-edit it in milkshape to lineup to the vertices's of my nude model if needed. But what I wanted to do was to edit the maxis shirt for instance, delete out any under-body skin, then import that on top of my nude mesh, and snap together the vertices's, editing as needed. But I found that just re-editing the default mesh to match up to my own seems a tad quicker actually, go figure.

Some people when making new bodytypes use the program POSER which has magnets in conjunction with Sim meshes (and meshtool) to make body changes that they can then keep the 'magnets' for and apply to other meshes.
I have not done this, but I know Warlokk has. Only helps if you have poser though.

I have it but havent used it in ages. Ill take a look at that when I get some sleep, TY for your response

Closer and closer, then saw this when I went to bodyshop.
It seems the cuffs I made appear threw the mesh to the other side. I checked the normals, bones, all are assigned, etc. Any ideas?

underweight bone assignments cause that display issue. Also setting the matd to blend would do that.

Here ya go

(edit: removed attachment)

Last edited by Drakah : 30th May 2007 at 05:07 PM.

Yes, it was underweight bones (as we spoke in chat) the cuffs have some parts where the 3rd bone assignment is 13% bone -1 (no bone)
Odd, and it won't trigger the 'unassigned' bones and the unimesh fix underweight bones or find underweight bones does not find it either.

I'll put that condition down on the 'to be improved' list... not merely check the weights, but make sure they are paired with a bone.

<* Wes *>

Thanks Wes I'm not sure how the values got that way, but being able to find them would be a good thing.

needless to say, I wound up scrapping the shirt and started from scratch...this time it came out better, so I live and learn