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Forum Resident
Original Poster
#1 Old 19th Feb 2014 at 4:16 PM Last edited by telefen : 30th Aug 2014 at 8:49 AM.
Default Need help skinning
Hi: I have been working intensively for past three weeks to get this body mesh ready. I am including some pictures of both BS& MS showing how it is constructed emphesising how wasy it is to recolor this mesh. I started out by finding some nice texture and worked several hours to get the skirt looking fairly decent but the top part i am stuck. My skinning skills are not that good and don't think are gonna be much better cause I think I lack that artistic aptitude as to adding textures and my main strength is highly mechanical and I can construct very complicated meshes and have an easy time with it. I need help skinning the top whethere some skilled skinner is willing to do the top for me or guide me in the right direction is highly appreciated. I think the mini skirt turned out pretty good however a skilled skinner could have done it much better than me I feel. The mesh is in 4 parts another word body= the top part,body2 the thighs and lower body & the 3d seams&shoes,then body_alpha3&body_alpha5. This is the third mesh I am puting together following Blooms great tutorial (thanks Blooms). Here is the link to that great tutorial here

Anyways take a look at it and see if you can help me in some way and I am very excited about learing to construct my own mesh package containg several alphas and part so what I am trying with this package is to depict a ballet dancer wearing her pointe shoes and dressed casual. Thanks for help in advance. have a look at the pictures.


Update: for those of you that showed interest here I finally managed to make this mesh decent,I think so anyway. I listened to Nysha's advice as to look at some maxis and believe me ther is not much unless you wanna do like others just recycling maxis creations but for me who is a real novice at skinning,it seems like the only option. Anyways after going back&forth thru bodyshop about 15x I decided to use a formal dress to cover the leotard. The undies I had to struggle a lot giving them some bumpmapping , finally I gave up and decided to do a mosaic on the bumpmapp and it became so good to my surprise. They look like they are neatly woven in some metalic texture.. This bodyshape is oversize as you can see and that is the result of 3½ yrs of intesive work. Have fun and I just wanted to share the outcome of my work with those that were curious. I am gonna fire up the game and enjoy

Update: Ok I realized i goofed up on the arms UV cause I got to ambitious on giving her some musculous upper arms and I could not correct the skintone distortion in that area. It is a difficult intersection where arms join the shoulders and one has to know exactly where to cut&weld so now she has better looking arms and skintone in that region although not perfect as one can still see a line where the upper arms join the shoulders. This body has gone thru a lots of modification since 3½yrs back but it is good enough for me. Have a look at those last two pictures and if you want u can leave a comment.

Oh boy this is a lots of work but a lots of enjoyment looking at my creation in the game. There is another post that shows more of this bodyshape if you are interested to see,also you can look herehttp://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=520913
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Née whiterider
retired moderator
#2 Old 19th Feb 2014 at 4:48 PM
If you're struggling with the texture, the simplest thing may be to lift the texture from an EA item. There are several tank tops and swimsuits which will have appropriate contouring and folds which you could use - you'd just need to desaturate the EA texture and apply your blue chequer over the top. You may also want to texture and bumpmap the seams rather than meshing them, as it's much easier to make them look smoothly curved that way.

May I ask what the alpha parts are? I can't see any parts of that mesh which are obvious candidates for alpha editing, unless it's the skirt?

What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact.
Forum Resident
Original Poster
#3 Old 19th Feb 2014 at 5:53 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Nysha
If you're struggling with the texture, the simplest thing may be to lift the texture from an EA item. There are several tank tops and swimsuits which will have appropriate contouring and folds which you could use - you'd just need to desaturate the EA texture and apply your blue chequer over the top. You may also want to texture and bumpmap the seams rather than meshing them, as it's much easier to make them look smoothly curved that way.

May I ask what the alpha parts are? I can't see any parts of that mesh which are obvious candidates for alpha editing, unless it's the skirt?
I usually look several times in Bs looking for some texture that I can use and indeed i have made stuff using maxis textures before cause it is easier but, this time it is a bit different. On my other projects i had low cut leotards sort of 80's style but this time I wanted to make a more modern stuff which is more old fashioned as compare to low cut 80's stuff and the problem is that maxis swimwear are all low cut especially in the back near the spine area and they won't cover my mesh this time and I'd have to fiddle a lot with it just to make it work. ya sure one skips all the shadow work if using maxis. take a look at the leotard and as you can see it covers a larg area both front,back lower and upper body. that is supposed to be modern looking . As for seams i sort of wanted to make them stand out and not just be painted on and depended on right bumpmapping and lighting envirnment as my other stuff and that is why I made them from primitives. ( the uv is not correct on them and it should be a lot larger to show more texture but that is not a problem as I can always scale it up. the main problem is that I can not find any maxis texture to cover the top.

I see a lots of people photoskinning and as I observe alots of the textures upon closer look , looks goofy and inconsiquent and unrealistic especially on the skirts that are supposed to be pleated or have a lots of waves. however there are som skinner that use their own textures and with proper uv mapping the outcome of their work looks great even though they lack proper meshing skills. A couple of days ago I saw this artist that had just made a mini skirt and when I looked at her uv mapping,I saw something very proffessional. She had put a lots of work on the mesh yet one could see vertices around the waist line that were just sticking in the air not connected to anything and that was a disappointment to see her work in BS showing several gaps. I need some help since I can't figure this out by myself as i really lack skills skinning. It is a great mesh but it has to have good textures otherwise it will look stupid & boring. I have even considered to remove the 3d seams just to make it easier to skin. Yes the alpha parts are the skirt which was originally inteded to look see thru like what ballerinas wear. Thanks for you help anyway.
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