I wish it was just fabric samples. I have over 50 "66quart" boxes filled with fabric, as well as 2 closets full of rolls and bolts. I also have a full closet with rolls of trim. It's all organized so that I can find what I want easily. My husband built me racks for the boxes. I had them stacked floor to ceiling at first and it was a big pain to try to get to the box on the bottom. Now with the racks I just pull down the box I want. My other hobby is as a historical costumer. So, when I buy fabric I usually have to get a minimum of 7 yards, but I usually try for 10-20 yards. However, I haven't been doing that as much since I retired because even though I have a ton of fabric, getting the other stuff you usually need to go with the fabric, such as underlinings, linings, stiffeners and the like tends to get expensive. Believe it or not, Sims and computer stuff is *much* less expensive to do, even when you have to buy a new computer to do it!
You should use your fabrics to an advantage... take pictures of them with a digital camera... then make some new skins with them... I usually use a little piece of fabric I find on the internet and take small pieces of it and fill it into the skin... comes out pretty good.
Most of my fabrics are solid colors (in linen, wool and silk). I don't use a lot of brocades and they wouldn't scan in very well anyway. It's not like quilters who have loads of print fabrics. I've used the internet to find print patterns for using on the skins, however. However, one of my other hobbies is scrap booking. I do have loads of papers in that which I plan to scan in and use. I've used a lot of stuff from the websites but not all of them have the sorts of papers I like. I even bought a few new sheets yesterday which I thought would look good as clothes patterns for Sims, but would also work well for some of my scrapbooks. :winks:
Wow! Your fabric supply sounds like it would have been my grandmother's dream!! She taught me to sew on her treadle sewing machine and was always buying cute prints to make me little "butterfly" dresses from, we didn't make patterns, just measured and cut and sewed... Your scrapbooking supplies sound like good sims fabric resoruces, haha!
Besides a "toy" singer, my first sewing machine was a treadle. Not because I am that old, but because my mom thought it would be a neat thing to have. I wonder if it is in the attic at mom's house or if we got rid of it? Sorry I know that this is way off topic.
Errrr well... making skins and sewing clothes... are both related to fashion and design of clothing! We're not TOO far off topic... I think....
Katanubis I just had to write to tell you that I have discovered a much simpler way to make texture files (assuming you have Photoshop). BriAnna on neighbourhood 99 suggests instead that you download this plugin. developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_texture_tools.html (the one called Adobe PhotoShop Normal Map Plug-in) If you open it, it will DL straight into photoshop. She says to do it on the alpha file but I think it works better on the orginal. Open the body~stdMatBaseTextureName file in photoshop go to 'filter' 'nvtools' 'normalmapfilter' then a box will open: Height generation: 4 sample, minz 0 scale 2 3d view options: animate light height source: average rgb No other boxes are checked. and voila a purply bump map that won't make garments look flat and will work better than the manual way!
Thanks, Nancy, for thinking of me. I checked it out and it requires Photoshop 7.0. I've only got 5.5, so I guess I'll continue with the one you had suggested. It's been working fine (although there are times when I end up using Corel Painter 8, Photoshop 5.5 and the Infraview to do an entire outfit. I've been having a blast with it!)
Geez is there a version of photoshop thats around $100 to get? I want to get it but all I can find is like the $800 one.
Look on Halfprice.com and see if you can find an earlier version of Photoshop. You should be able to get one for much less than the $800 newest version. You don't need the newest version to do custom content. Even one as old as Photoshop 5.5 will work. (Although I did find that if you want to use the special texture thing that Nanshi_Nibbles told us about yesterday, that you have to have Photoshop 7.)
Yeesh. I'm $700 in debt, so I need to find the cheapest (but still functional) version I can get... Thanks for the site, by the way.
KatAnubis my version is 6.0 - and this made me think maybe it will work in yours, did you install the file into the right folder? (if I am telling my grandmother how to suck eggs then please tell me!) Mine is: c:/programfiles/adobe/photoshop[your version]/Plug-ins/filters
