12 replies to this topic

[salmonspringrol]

I am trying to make a top out of a dress... unfortunately the mesh stayed the same. I was hoping that changing it from whole body to upper body would do the trick but things do not seem to be that easy.
how do i change the mesh that is being used?

[frisbud]

Just changing categories is not going to change the mesh from a full body to just a top. That just changes where it will show in the clothing directory in the game. It will still be the same full body mesh, but it will just be showing in the Tops section of the clothing rather than the Outfit section.

To actually change a full body into a top, you will need a 3d modelling program so you can remove the rest of the body and adjust the top to join correctly with bottoms. Then you will also need to change the UV Map of the mesh so that the textures fit within the parameters of where textures for tops will be so it does not leak into the bottoms or shoes textures.

[salmonspringrol]

thank you.... but I do not want to invent a new mesh, I would like to use an existing top_mesh
in my naivete I assumed that all i have to do is change the name of the mesh that is being used - somewhere

[frisbud]

So then you want to take the texture from a dress and apply it to an existing top mesh?

[salmonspringrol]

Yes; I guess this is the better way to phrase it.

[frisbud]

Well, depending on how the top mesh is mapped and how the dress mesh is mapped, it may either be an easy transition or a hard one. If they are mapped the same so the textures are in the same location, then the transition will be easy. If they are not mapped the same and the texture placement is different, it will be a bit more difficult.

Which dress did you want to use the texture from and which top mesh were you looking to place it on?

[salmonspringrol]

if I want to take the top of say this dress and use it with a plain top mesh from the game... how would that work with the meshes?

[frisbud]

As that dress is user-made custom content, you really should contact that artist first. You should at the very least ask for permission to use her dress to make it into a top, although you could also ask her if she would do that for you. Once you get that permission, then we can go over with you how to adapt it into a top.

[salmonspringrol]

I do not want to post this anywhere, I am just using this as an example....

[frisbud]

But it is still someone else's work. So it is not right to use it, even as a teaching tool, unless you have that artist's permission to do so. That is just basic etiquette among artists.

What I'll do is show you using one of the EA dresses from the game instead. Give me a bit to get everything together.

[salmonspringrol]

thank you; that will work as well (and makes a lot of sense).

[frisbud]

Okie dokie. Here we go. For this example, I will refer to a project I did way back when Sims 3 first came out. Basically I turned the af body tight dress_halter  Dress to Use.jpg   198.27KB   17 downloads into a top. For the top base, I cloned the af top shirt fitted _tank  Using tank mesh.jpg   270.23KB   17 downloads . If you are not familiar with meshing at all, and thus don't have the UV map for the mesh to know where to place your textures, you can just look at the texture that EA has and use that as a guide.



Using the tank top texture  Tank texture.jpg   155.01KB   15 downloads as a guide, I took the dress texture  Dress texture.jpg   169.41KB   16 downloads and matched them up. In this case the upper body of the dress was mapped very closely to the tank top so I could very easily match the two in the correct position. From there, I just cut off the rest of the dress so that it fit into the space of the tank top texture. This is what the texture looked like when I was done  Finished product.jpg   116.17KB   20 downloads . As you can see I did alter the back of the dress to make it more of a basic top. Here is what it looks like in the game  Adult Ring Halter preview.jpg   226.91KB   15 downloads




I don't know how familiar you are with creating clothing for Sims3. I am including a link you to our Clothing tutorial here at TSR. That will help you with the different aspects of creating the clothing, the different pieces you need to make for your clothing (mask, specular, multiplier, normal map, etc), and tell you how how to put it all together.

[salmonspringrol]

I understand how you changed the dress into a top - I was just hoping that there would be a way to simply change the mesh-name in the file somewhere (like it was with the previous sims games). Obviously this is not possible so I have to do it the "complicated" way ;-).

thank you very much for your help, patience and time.