What have you made?

[ManagerJosh]

So tell us... and share your creations! What have you created with BodyShop? :)

[Flameback777]

Could it be myself? :p

[FaeLuna]

My first creation in bodyshop is a sort of idealized version of FaeLuna. :D
I worked on the eyes and hair in photoshop but I haven't gotten much further than that at figuring it out. I didn't realize it was out till about 1pm today my time!! :rolleyes:


http://pages.ivillage.com/faeluna//sims2/FaeFirstSim01.jpg

[KatAnubis]

Cool, FaeLuna!

I played with it quite a bit today, but I haven't saved anything yet.

I found the pointed eared head and had a great deal of fun making some very interesting "Vulcans'. It was fun changing them from adults back down to toddlers and back again.

[FaeLuna]

Cool, FaeLuna!

I played with it quite a bit today, but I haven't saved anything yet.

I found the pointed eared head and had a great deal of fun making some very interesting "Vulcans'. It was fun changing them from adults back down to toddlers and back again.Ooooh where did you find the point eared head?! I haven't found that one to play with yet! I want to make Elves!! :P

-edit big THANK YOU to KatAnubis for messaging me and explaining how to find the pointy eared head! It's in the male heads second to last. :D

[Mirelly]

Cool pix, Fae ... ;)

I've managed to sort out the registration issue and uploaded a (totally) improved version of me (huh! talk about poetic license ... or is that licence? :chinese: )

I've been messing around with skin tones (lighter and darker ones ... Abby here has some rather fetching freckles and a blue-ish pale skin. Trouble is that blusher has covered it up. LOL

Speaking of blusher. Oi! Maxis! Don't you employ any girls at your place. Sploshing rouge on the front of the cheeks (infra-orbitally) is strictly for toddlers playing at mommy's dressing table, Aunt Sally's and drag queens. Also (putting on my DDS hat :D :rambo: :devious: :mads: ) I'm a bit worried about the range of facial deformations ... don't they realise that some of those skeletal structures would result in agonizing dental problems? :ermm:

Abby Showcase (http://thesims2.ea.com/sim_detail.php?asset_id=1500&lastUrl=%2Fshowcase.php%3Faction%3Dsearch%26nrows% 3D20%26order%3Ddesc%26age%3Dadult%26gender%3Dfemal e%26submit%3DGo%26country%3DGB)

http://www.sa-fi.co.uk/images/abby.jpg

[FaeLuna]

Yep! I noticed the problem with the blush right away too!!! Ak! :p I haven't messed with custom skin or make-up yet. Abby looks GOOD! :D

As for the range of deformations... maybe my sims should all be dentists and become filthy rich!! ;) ;)

[ManagerJosh]

Everyone does know they can post attachments right? Multiple ones.

[Mirelly]

LOL ... Yes Josh, I knew. I did upload my pic to worldsims but was fazed by it showing up as a thumbnail in the post (good idea as not everyone who posts images to a BBS is up to speed on cropping/resizing/compression etc.

Anyway while I was wondering how Fae slapped up her fullsize pics I opened good ole WSFTP and pushed the pic into my own images directory ... (It's why I included a link to the showcase as I anticipated that Maxis will outlive me ... :p )

[FaeLuna]

Yep, I LOVE that we can do multiple attachments here! I just used the link to my graphic since I had it uploaded to post it in my blog already. :D

I'm currently working on my first attempts to make a sim look LIKE a character who already exists... elves from ElfQuest. ;) So far I've done pretty well on the first female main character I've attempted, Ember (who my attack kitty is named for) but the first male, her father, Cutter (another cat named after him... hmmmm) is NOT turning out so well! I'm having jaw/chin troubles! :rolleyes:

I've been mainly going through finding a random face that has the cheeks and head shape more or less close to what I want, and then tweaking everything in the order it appears in the controls, but I'm hoping to catch on to a better approach. :) I'm frustrated there's no Cheek or Ear controls. :p

[Mirelly]

There are ear and cheek controls, Fae. Tho' I suspect that you need extra controls for the good of your elf ... sorry I can't seem to resist a pun these days!

If anything there are almost too many controls ... :p At least it seems that way at first. With my training/education I know as much as I want to concerning head and neck structure and I wouldn't want to suggest that it isn't a complicated subject but if I'd been asked I would have said that the principal elements that account for 90% of human appearance can be reduced to half a dozen simple formulae/ratios.

I would have liked to see more opportunities to develop the soft tissues around the eyes. I spent a good hour trying to create a sympathetic epicanthic eye-fold ... see attached pic ...

[FaeLuna]

I think you managed a good IMPRESSION of the epicanthic eye fold anyway. :D And I Absolutely *LOVE* puns!!!!! :D :D :D

Where ARE the ear and cheek controls? I may be overlooking them as I'm overwhelmed by the controls... yet lost as to what EXACTLY I need to be tweaking, haha!

I didn't get a chance to play Body Shop today as we had a big electrical storm, but I'll check in here tomorrow to read posts and then get to work searching out ALL the controls. :)

[ManagerJosh]

Actually the show up as a thumbnail, but you can click to enlarge :)

[Mirelly]

Josh.

I was a bit too vague, I think. What I meant to say was that I had prepped the image for compression and dimensions before I discovered that the forum would only display it as a clickable thumbnail. I had already entered edit mode to sort out the usual crop of typos and I decided that as the punters would have to click a link to see my pic then I may as well use my own web-space and so (in a minute way) help to keep down demand upon WorldSims' valuable bandwidth.

Can I just say that BS has gotten me all excited all over again. I remember my sense of awe and amazement on the day back in early 2000 when I first ran the original ... Isn't it astonishing how quickly we come to take things for granted in this unsettling millenium? It seems that no thing is destined to remain static, not simply for its own sake ... nor even for sentimental reasons like nostalgia. We have come to expect that our most fantastic visions and expectation not only can be realized but that they will be. How long will it be before you look at the TV (or come out of the movie theater) and wonder if the actors were "real" or sims? And can you imagine the demand for the censor patches when that day comes?

Fae.

Cheek and ear controls can be found in the "Face" section of the Tweaking controls. Cheekbones can be move in/out, up/down and even 'embiggened' :p Likewise with ears.

Good as BS is, at this early stage it is obviously seriously lacking in content, judgeing by the size of the skin files. We won't get much of a chance to really go to town until the really clever geek-fans get to wrok and start offering new meshes for things like hairstyles, hats etc. For a start those spectacles are terrible! I've created gold and tortoiseshell frames but for my taste they are just too darn chunky ... :rolleyes:

[FaeLuna]

Oooh I KNEW I was missing a section of controls somewhere!! :o Thanks for enlightening me!

As for sims in movies, I'm amazed at seeing what a good job they're doing putting the actors/characters from movies into GAMES already! And with so much CGI in movies already the fun of guessing whether it's the actor or their cgi version in this scene or that scene has already started!!

For bodyshop I'm already wishing for more hairstyle choices... I hope someone comes out with a meshing tutorial for making meshes compatable with bodyshop soon! I figure there will be much more choices in sims 2 content itself when it comes out but we've got months to work on stuff before then. ;)

[KatAnubis]

Oooh I KNEW I was missing a section of controls somewhere!! :o Thanks for enlightening me!

As for sims in movies, I'm amazed at seeing what a good job they're doing putting the actors/characters from movies into GAMES already! And with so much CGI in movies already the fun of guessing whether it's the actor or their cgi version in this scene or that scene has already started!!

For bodyshop I'm already wishing for more hairstyle choices... I hope someone comes out with a meshing tutorial for making meshes compatable with bodyshop soon! I figure there will be much more choices in sims 2 content itself when it comes out but we've got months to work on stuff before then. ;)
I hope they put a lot more hairstyles in. I also hope that those hairstyles have a variety of hairlines. They need some that are lower down on the brow (as they all seem to have high ones like mine, only I have a little "widows peak" in the middle, which would also be nice to see in the hairstyles) and some with more balding.

There have been people working with the alpha channel for their Sims who have made *shorter* hair, which ends up looking like a nice blunt cut. But it would be nice to have some with a feathered cut too. And curly hair (not necessarily Afros which they've said they will have.)

I didn't see the mohawk hairdo they've shown so much. That must be in an additional content pack. (Not that I'd use it as I dislike that hair cut, but it made me feel like there will be much more to come!)

And I've got to go look for that ear control that was mentioned. I didn't see it in my stuff, only the head I already had told you about. Must keep looking. Although why I want to do it, I don't know. I don't want to play with elves or Vulcans. Maybe it's because I just want to be able to *play* with BodyShop even if I don't actually make a body to use in the game. Much fun!

[FaeLuna]

You've got me wondering about trying the alpha channel haircut trick. :D It seems if they were able to get a blunt looking cut, a little tweaking at the edges might make it more feathered? I'm not sure I'm picturing the right idea though. :p

Maybe we can do something with the hairlines with the alpha channels too... or at least try it. ;) I'm sure there will be more hairstyles in the actual game since we've seen them in the screenshots! :)

[Mirelly]

I'm also beginning to toy with fiddling with the alpha images ... If I actually get any useable results I'll post them here, along with a brief explanation of how it done.

Here's a mixed bag of ideas. The jacket is quite quite successful, I think (I especially like the button/badge). The eyes used are the best of bad lot. (The project shown here was named "Toxic_Shock_Eyes" :p They are not nearly as good as "Lilac_Alien_Star_Eyes" but the latter still has a few issues with pupillary glints and scaling. The we come to The Skin Tone "effect" ... ah.

I was aiming for stripey fur. This is a very difficult effect to achieve. One fairly glaring problem can be seen at the throat -- where the template/pattern for the head and neck joins that of the body in a horizontal 'scar' at the crico-thyroid level. I conclude that skin patterning (on a realistic and believable macroscopic scale) may prove to be a serious challenge!

Anyway ... here she is. Trillispthishar who joins us tonight all the way from the Outer Limits of Inner Space (just turn left at the Twilight Zone a keep straight on until morning). :rolleyes:

[I_bite_138]

I have a dinky web site that keeps going past the bandwidth allowment. Hopefully when you click on it everything will be cool.

http://www.geocities.com/bitessims138/

I am not a web designer.

[Mirelly]

Nope ... bandwidth exceeded ...

[FaeLuna]

Wow! She looks pretty spectacular! I see what you mean about the skin pattern and the line across her neck though. Maybe you'll figure out how to color that so it merges smoothly, but it would be all trial and error! I love how the jacket turned out, which mesh was it from? The sweater with the white shirt collar maybe?

[KatAnubis]

Oooh I KNEW I was missing a section of controls somewhere!! :o Thanks for enlightening me!

As for sims in movies, I'm amazed at seeing what a good job they're doing putting the actors/characters from movies into GAMES already! And with so much CGI in movies already the fun of guessing whether it's the actor or their cgi version in this scene or that scene has already started!!

For bodyshop I'm already wishing for more hairstyle choices... I hope someone comes out with a meshing tutorial for making meshes compatable with bodyshop soon! I figure there will be much more choices in sims 2 content itself when it comes out but we've got months to work on stuff before then. ;)
One of the things I heard about this morning was saving the Sim, then cloning it to work on the tweaking some more. Evidently it lets you do more fine work that way (especially on things around the eyes, such as lashes.)

[Greenlea]

Here are some things I've made.

In the pics of the girl with orange and yellow hair the only clothing I made in those pictures is the green sparkling shirt on the teen. I'm most proud of the green formal dress on one of my alien girls. I've made some other things and haven't made any screen shots yet.

[FaeLuna]

I *LOVE* your pointy eared girl there!! :D And the formal gown is gorgeous! More screenshots, please!!!! *drool!* :p

[KatAnubis]

I *LOVE* your pointy eared girl there!! :D And the formal gown is gorgeous! More screenshots, please!!!! *drool!* :p
I agree with FaeLuna. These are great fun!

[Greenlea]

Here's some more things I've made. The zebra stripes is undies. I should make a zebra striped bikini too though. I wish I'd made the stripes smaller. I didn't do very good on the shading of the gold bikini.

[FaeLuna]

I really like the first green bikini. :D I see what you mean about the shading on the gold bikini though, maybe add more highlight to the top of the breast near the straps, think of it like sunlight shining down from the top of the sim. ;) I think a zebra striped bikini with smaller stripes would be cool! What did the original outfit look like that you made the grey pants and jacket from? That has a nice soft look to the material, however you did that. :)

[Greenlea]

The original outfit was a pink jacket with the white shirt and the pants were pink and purple vertical stripes. The reason the gold bikini turned out so bad is I opened the black and white alpha file instead of putting the pattern over top of the original. I decided to try to do things differently. I still need to experiment with some techniques lol

[Mirelly]

I love how the jacket turned out, which mesh was it from? The sweater with the white shirt collar maybe?

Yeah, I was especially please with the jacket myself. I have now put up a Zip file of the bitmaps (640kb) on my website ... for the next 24 hours it'll be easy enough to find just clicking on my "blog" link (below) ... after that it'll be tied up in the archives as "today" - May 17 2004 ...

[I_bite_138]

Since my bandwidth exceeded (I think for good) I'll just show ya'll my work.

Pugsly
http://img63.photobucket.com/albums/v191/I_bite_138/pugsly.jpg

Gigi
http://img63.photobucket.com/albums/v191/I_bite_138/Gigi.jpg

Sara
http://img63.photobucket.com/albums/v191/I_bite_138/sara.bmp

Violet
http://img63.photobucket.com/albums/v191/I_bite_138/violet.jpg

Marcus
http://img63.photobucket.com/albums/v191/I_bite_138/Marcus.jpg

[Greenlea]

Here's the zebra striped bikini. Modeled by the Sim version of myself :)

[Tahera]

Hi,

I like the work your`re showing here, especially the hair (gold and green) made by FaeLuna and the zebra bikini made by Greenlea.

Today, I want to show you my first dress. What do you think about it?

Tahera

[Mirelly]

I really like that Tahera. Would you please post the artwork (the bitmap / skin) that is used by that dress.

Some patterns work much better than others and you have definitely got a very good one there.

[FaeLuna]

Hey! I like how the zebra bikini turned out Greenlea!! :D Big thumbs up!!!

And my reaction to Tahera's dress is "Wow!" I actually said that out loud and my hubby had to know what impressed me! :p Did you draw the print/pattern design yourself or work from a fabric sample or what? It's incredible how it turned out!!! It's like it's got an exotic TEXTURE to it!! :)

[KatAnubis]

Here's the zebra striped bikini. Modeled by the Sim version of myself :)
While I liked the zebra print which was bigger, this one with a smaller design looks much better! Good job! (More please.)

[ManagerJosh]

Hi,

I like the work your`re showing here, especially the hair (gold and green) made by FaeLuna and the zebra bikini made by Greenlea.

Today, I want to show you my first dress. What do you think about it?

TaheraGreat to see you again Tahera! Wow, You did some great work with Body Shop :D What's your secret? ;)

[Tahera]

Thanks a lot. Yes ManagerJosh, I`m back and I will stay! I gave up my German page (it will be closed in a few days) and now I`ve the time to make more objects for WorldSims.

What's your secret?
Never stop learning! Meanwhile I`m able to make simple 3D objects, too.

@ mirelly and FaeLuna:
The texture I was using for the red and black gown is from this page (http://www.equilter.com/cgi-bin/webc.cgi/st_main.html?sid=31U9Hz0-JM220a4-02104440418.3e) . There are much more beautiful textures! I think, that it is not allowed to show the original picture here. I modified it (it was mulicolored) with Ulead PhotoImpact and Corel PhotoPaint to get my result.

This morning, I made two new gowns. The pictures are attached. I made the dresses, the black and blue hair, the eyeshadow and the lips of both Sims.

Tahera

My old email does not work anymore! Today, I submitted a new one.

[KatAnubis]

Thanks a lot. Yes ManagerJosh, I`m back and I will stay! I gave up my German page (it will be closed in a few days) and now I`ve the time to make more objects for WorldSims.


Never stop learning! Meanwhile I`m able to make simple 3D objects, too.

@ mirelly and FaeLuna:
The texture I was using for the red and black gown is from this page (http://www.equilter.com/cgi-bin/webc.cgi/st_main.html?sid=31U9Hz0-JM220a4-02104440418.3e) . There are much more beautiful textures! I think, that it is not allowed to show the original picture here. I modified it (it was mulicolored) with Ulead PhotoImpact and Corel PhotoPaint to get my result.

This morning, I made two new gowns. The pictures are attached. I made the dresses, the black and blue hair, the eyeshadow and the lips of both Sims.

Tahera

My old email does not work anymore! Today, I submitted a new one.
Very nice, Tahera.

[Sims2Addict]

Hello all - Great Work!! The amount of creativity is incredible!

[FaeLuna]

Thanks for the link to the fabric, I see how you changed the colors for it and I like your recolor better! :) I really like the cut detail in the back of your two new gowns too. :D

The necklaces you've made with the gowns made me start wondering more about how jewelry might work in the game... do you think we'll be able to make them as separate accessories like the eyeglasses are now? Or do you think it'll be like the hats and hairclips and we'll have to make jewelry painted on skins or heads/hair?

[Tahera]

I don`t believe that we will be able to make seperate jewelry :disappointed:

I wanted to have a dress without straps but there was a problem and I don`t know how to explain this in English. Ok, I will try it:
I deleted the straps in the alpha picture (I made these parts black) first and reimported the dress into BodyShop. When I now choose this dress, the Sim looks funny. At the place of the straps the skin of the Sim is raised (embossed ?). That`s why I made a necklace from the straps.
If you want (or if you don`t understand what I`m saying) I can make a screenshot of the dress without straps, tomorrow. Then you`ll see the problem. Sorry, my English is not so good :rolleyes:

Tahera

[Mirelly]

Tahera,

Your English is very good. I think there are 3 different bitmap files for each clothing skin.

eg:-


top~stdMatBaseTextureName.bmp ------- (actual image of the 'skin')
top~stdMatBaseTextureName_alpha.bmp - (the alpha component)
top~stdMatNormalMapTextureName.bmp - (if you look closely at these blueish images you'll see they contain the texture of the clothing *eg, belts, belt loops, straps etc.


I have attached a part of one of these images as a jpg - the rest of the file name has been left unchanged.

I think that I won't be an easy task to make images like these ... or maybe I mean that it isn't difficult to make them ... but making them look good isn't easy. Hope this puts a smile back on your face ...

[KatAnubis]

Well, I finally finished my first paint program project. I decided to do my screen name's namesake: Anubis. I just wish that the Showcase didn't darken them up so much.

Anyway, Anubis is a tuxedo. So I used AltF8's tuxedo from TS2R, made a "facepaint" mask which had his colorings and made some blue-green cateyes.

This is what he came out looking like: http://thesims2.ea.com/sim_detail.php?asset_id=6900&lastURL=%2Fshowcase.php

[FaeLuna]

I think I kind of understand what you're saying happened with the raised skin without the straps Tahera. :) I just don't know if that's something that could be fixed by changing the Texture file or if that's part of the Mesh... Has anyone else figured this out yet?

And KatAnubis, I love the eyebrow whiskers on your namesake sim!! :D

[KatAnubis]

And KatAnubis, I love the eyebrow whiskers on your namesake sim!! :D
Thanks, FaeLuna.

I have a pressure sensitive graphics tablet and was using a "thick-thin pen tip". He actually has many more whiskers on each cheek and on his eyebrows and they are white-white. I just used a few since things don't look quite right if you try to get them all in.

Of course, the little stinker is sleeping on the chair next to me today. Why couldn't he have done that yesterday when I needed him to model? I kept having to chase him down to look at his little face. Today I can just glance over. (Murphy's law, probably.) If only we could put tails on our Sims. :winks:

[crdpolaris]

She sort of looks like Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

[crdpolaris]

A cute teen girl in a skirt.

[crdpolaris]

A cute Blonde girl. I tried to make her look like Buffy but she doesn't quite pull off the look, although her clothes are something Buffy would wear and the hair is the same.

[crdpolaris]

She sort of looks like Avril. Not intented but still a good sim.

[Tahera]

@Mirelli

I don`t have these blue pictures!

When you look close to the texture file, there are different grey shades in that area. I`ll change these parts and I hope that somethings changes. I`ll report about that, later.



It`s "later" now :D

That doesn`t help. I attached a picture of the embossed skin. I wonder why I can delete parts of the dress without having the same problems.

[ManagerJosh]

Are you using bump maps to accomplish that look, Tahera? :)

[Tahera]

No, ManagerJosh, I din´t use bump maps.
In the alpha channel, I filled the areas with black and the result is the embossed skin where the straps have been before :devious:. This mistake does not appear when I change the décolleté. On my PC, this dress has no blueish bitmap (Mirelly was talking about that).
I wonder why the original bitmap of the skin (the colored one) has so many different grey shades in the "background" around the dress. I thought that, if I change the grey tones, the Sim will look better, but nothing happened.

Tahera

[KatAnubis]

No, ManagerJosh, I din´t use bump maps.
In the alpha channel, I filled the areas with black and the result is the embossed skin where the straps have been before :devious:. This mistake does not appear when I change the décolleté. On my PC, this dress has no blueish bitmap (Mirelly was talking about that).
I wonder why the original bitmap of the skin (the colored one) has so many different grey shades in the "background" around the dress. I thought that, if I change the grey tones, the Sim will look better, but nothing happened.

Tahera
Yesterday on the Sims2BBS someone was talking about that problem (only they were talking about shoes at the time). Evidently the reason why we are seeing embossed "straps" is that they are part of the mesh. That's why we've been having problems getting rid of them. I'm hoping that if that is true that Maxis will make their meshes simpler so that we can just use the alpha channels and bmps to change the look of the clothes. (At least until we have a way of changing the meshes themselves. I'm studying Maya, how about you?)

[Tahera]

Thanks CatAnubis!

I`ve got a demo version of Maya at the Cebit (German Computer Fair). I installed it yesterday but I don`t know what to do. I think that it is hard to learn. Now I`m looking for tutorials for beginners.
At this time, I`m learning Carrara. This 3D prog is very easy :D but I can make simple 3D objects only. I`ve to learn a lot!

Tahera

[KatAnubis]

Thanks CatAnubis!

I`ve got a demo version of Maya at the Cebit (German Computer Fair). I installed it yesterday but I don`t know what to do. I think that it is hard to learn. Now I`m looking for tutorials for beginners.
At this time, I`m learning Carrara. This 3D prog is very easy :D but I can make simple 3D objects only. I`ve to learn a lot!

Tahera
Alias has a pretty good tutorial book called "Introducing May 5: 3D for Beginners." I've been working through it slowly. (*Very* slowly at this point because I'm also working my way through learning my paint programs and learning HTML!) If you can't order it through your bookstore (which is how I got mine), you can order it from Alias directly: http://store.alias.com/dr/v2/ec_MAIN.Entry10?V1=627887&PN=1&SP=10023&xid=41107&CID=0&DSP=&CUR=840&PGRP=0&CACHE_ID=0

That takes you to the bundled one (which is $69US) but if you just get the Introducing Maya book, it's much less.

It comes with the Maya5PLE. (I had the 4.5 version already, but 5 is closer to what they are using for Sims2.)

[crdpolaris]

Alias has a pretty good tutorial book called "Introducing May 5: 3D for Beginners." I've been working through it slowly. (*Very* slowly at this point because I'm also working my way through learning my paint programs and learning HTML!) If you can't order it through your bookstore (which is how I got mine), you can order it from Alias directly: http://store.alias.com/dr/v2/ec_MAIN.Entry10?V1=627887&PN=1&SP=10023&xid=41107&CID=0&DSP=&CUR=840&PGRP=0&CACHE_ID=0

That takes you to the bundled one (which is $69US) but if you just get the Introducing Maya book, it's much less.

It comes with the Maya5PLE. (I had the 4.5 version already, but 5 is closer to what they are using for Sims2.)
You can download maya ple for free as long as you're not using it for commercial purposes. Maya is pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it. I was making custom stuff for UT2004 pretty easy.

[KatAnubis]

You can download maya ple for free as long as you're not using it for commercial purposes. Maya is pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it. I was making custom stuff for UT2004 pretty easy.
You can't use MayaPLE for commercial use according to Alias (the Maya people). They have made it so that the files don't work with any of the commercial products and it has an animated watermark to show that it's not supposed to be used for commercial purposes.

How did you use it to make custom stuff for UT2004? Did they provide a custom interface so that they could use it in the game?

That's what Maxis is hoping to be able to do for Sims2.

[Mirelly]

Tahera, Josh was teasing you, asking about "bump" maps ... it was quite funny and (of course) it was very clever (cos Josh is a very smart guy!) :lick:

I am so sorry that I did not check my information more carefully. Yes. The dress that you are using doesn't come with one of the blue texture maps. I think that what is happening is this.

Body Shop has been supplied with a few meshes to get us started ... Now I know only a little about meshes but one thing I do know is that when sims change their clothes they often have to change bodies (meshes) at the same time .... Given the size of the skin files (pretty big!) Maxis obviously had to be a bit economical with how mcuh they gave us to play with. There is a long strapless dress that I'm gone have a play with now and see what can be done with that ...

OK I've had a play ... :rolleyes:

What I did was this. I made new project of the adult bra and the teen forma strapless dress. :confusion:

I used the alpha file from the the bra texture map from the strapless dress from the teen formal collection. Then making lots of use of PSP layers to control what what happening the first job is marry up the upper center of the bra's alpha shape to the top of the dress' front alpha view to get the neckline right (tahera's already been doing this and is probably much better at it than me :tired: ....) After that I painted in a new top to the neckline ... got a bit bored with the straps cos I new they were gonna look terrible whatever I did! :disappointed:

I really hope that meshing isn't gonna be difficult ... I mean it would be really cool if say it turns out to be possible to take an existing and to just tweak it a bit ... eg adding/removing a belt, moving straps, make small changes to hemlines, cuffs etcs ... or does anyone. Josh, maybe??? have any better theories (informed "guesses") ... LOL

Oh and BTW --- 118 days until 9/17 ... :D

[ManagerJosh]

Tahera, Josh was teasing you, asking about "bump" maps ... it was quite funny and (of course) if was very clever (cos Josh is a very smart guy!)

I am so sorry that I did not check my information more carefully. Yes. The dress that you are using doesn't come with one of the blue texture maps. I think that what is happening is this.

Body Shop has been supplied with a few meshes to get us started ... Now I know only a little about meshes but one thing I do know is that when sims change their clothes they often have to change bodies (meshes) at the same time .... Given the size of the skin files (pretty big!) Maxis obviously had to be a bit economical with how mcuh they gave us to play with. There is a long strapless dress that I'm gone have a play with now and see what can be done with that ...
Actually I wasn't joking. In graphics, there is a term called Bump Maps.

[Tahera]

Yes, that`s right. Each 3D programm (or landscaping programm, e. g. Terragen) is using bump maps :D. The only thing I didn`t understand was how to use a bump map in BodyShop :surprised: . But as I don`t know everything it could be possible, who knows??? These blue pictures might be used as bumpmaps; I don`t know it.

Body Shop has been supplied with a few meshes to get us started ... Now I know only a little about meshes but one thing I do know is that when sims change their clothes they often have to change bodies (meshes) at the same time .... Given the size of the skin files (pretty big!) Maxis obviously had to be a bit economical with how mcuh they gave us to play with. There is a long strapless dress that I'm gone have a play with now and see what can be done with that ...

Where did you get the strapless dress from? I`ve two long dresses only, both with straps.

All the files are really big (the amount of data). Do you think that Maxi don`t want to have so much fansites for The Sims 2? Who can afford a site producing so much traffic?
First, I had a small fansite (The Sims 1) on a server I was paying for. The bandwidth was exceeded within two days (more than 1 GB). Because I don`t wanted to pay so much money to get more bandwidth, I hosted my page on a free server (Lycos). Now, I`m closing it. I want to make a site for for The Sims 2 but I don`t know a hoster who will allow to put large files on their servers :disappointed: .

Tahera

[Tahera]

Alias has a pretty good tutorial book called "Introducing May 5: 3D for Beginners." I've been working through it slowly. (*Very* slowly at this point because I'm also working my way through learning my paint programs and learning HTML!) If you can't order it through your bookstore (which is how I got mine),

Thanks again :D

I`ll first look for free tutorials. Last week our car has broken (it was 20 years old) and now we need each cent for another one (not new, it`s to expensive).
Unfortunately, Maya is a very expensive programm and I don`t know if I could buy it :disappointed: . I hope, that my demo works a long time. Until now, I don`t know if I can save my work. I haven`t had the time to play around with it. I`ll do this on weekend.

Tahera

[ManagerJosh]

You can turn to SimStuff to help you Tahera.. Its on the same servers we're using here at WorldSims :D


Unlimited bandwith helps a ton ;)

[Mirelly]

Tahera the strapless dress should be in the teen's formal clothes.

Josh.... Sorry. You ended your bump map comment with a smiley and to me it looked like you were teasing -- in the mildest and nicest way. I'm also au fait with bump maps ... but somehow jokes are better when they don't have to be explained.

There doesn't seem to be much we can do with the small scale texturing (and I agree with tahera that the blue-tinged bmps *must* be some variety of bump maps that the some of the skins use to add belt loops and seams and other 3d detail.

The other day I tried to improve on a previous project. I tried to 'push' a small circular depression into the map for the jacket that I showed here earlier to makethe button/badge stand out more in relief ... all I achieved was a a button that looked like it had been designed by Salavore Dali.

[Tahera]

Oh, what is that??? I didn´t hear of SimStuff before so I used google to search it. I found that page and what did I notice? My username and password are working :D :D :D , that`s great!
I want to share my work at SimStuff now. Which files do you need? Please help a newbie.
I`ve got sims2packer.zip (but not installed yet). Should I use this to make the files?

Tahera

[Tahera]

The other day I tried to improve on a previous project. I tried to 'push' a small circular depression into the map for the jacket that I showed here earlier to makethe button/badge stand out more in relief ... all I achieved was a a button that looked like it had been designed by Salavore Dali.

I love Dali! :D

Tahera

[FaeLuna]

Wow, it took me a while to get all caught up on this thread!!:p I'm still not sure how the bump mapping graphic that seems to be with SOME of the clothes works... but I'm glad we've figured out the neck of that one dress still has the raised areas because of the Mesh and not the bumpmapping... Sigh... another reason to try to figure out meshing faster, ak! :rolleyes:

[Tahera]

Good evening!

I`ve just made two swimsuits and a transparent T-Shirt. The picture of the swimsuits is added.
May I show the picture of the transparent T-Shirt, too? The Sim woman looks -----hmmmm----- natural (she has real nipples) :rolleyes: . I`m not sure if I may show the picture here.

Tahera

[Rolo]

The blue-ish colored texture files are "normal maps" and to create them you are going to need photoshop and the nvidea normal map plugin for photoshop which will convert a traditional greyscale bump map into a normal map which is available here at the bottom of this list: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_texture_tools.html

Normal maps work by using the colors of the normal map to determine which direction/s those particular pixels will be lit from. almost all games are using them now to make lower poly models look extremely high poly. for instance Doom3 uses them to make a 1,000 polygon model look like a 1,000,000 poly model.

I will post what I have done later when I get home, so far I have just been working on a decent representation of my girlfriend. only problem being that bodyshop makes her look too perfect. maybe I can mess with the skin to make it look less perfect.

oh, and I have a question =] does anyone know if in the final version you will be able to use modifiers on the bodies like you can on their faces?

[Tahera]

Thank you, Rolo, for this information. I`ve got the file and now I want to test if it works with Corel Photopaint, too (Ihope so :) ).

Tahera

[FaeLuna]

Yes! Thanks for the link and enlightenment!! :)

I'm not sure if they will have modifiers you can use on the sims bodies like they have for the heads, but if they did I would LOVE that! If they don't do it, maybe we can encourage them to include that in an expansion.... ;)

[KatAnubis]

Yes! Thanks for the link and enlightenment!! :)

I'm not sure if they will have modifiers you can use on the sims bodies like they have for the heads, but if they did I would LOVE that! If they don't do it, maybe we can encourage them to include that in an expansion.... ;)
I hope that the "updated version" that's supposed to come with the game will have that sort of modifier. Wider shoulders, wider hips, narrower hips, more female upper chest endowment...

If the clothes are one size fits all (as they don't seem to change when you flip between the slim and heavy body types), then having a little more variability shouldn't make that much difference (unless the changes are too extreme. But the program can put limits on that. You only can slide the button just so far.)

[hyperactivecow]

See mine at www.simstuff.com under "everyday" and "formal" (formal dress will hopefully be added soon) :-) Created by: hyperactivecow. I'm quite happy with the way they turned out!