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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 7th Feb 2014 at 12:43 AM Last edited by sciguy77 : 7th Feb 2014 at 3:02 AM.
Default Removing shadows
I've been trying (with limited success) to make a top with the underside of the breast exposed. I really thought I had it this time. The lower half of the exposed body was copied directly from the afTopBraBurnt and unchanged aside from deleting faces. The normal were never changed. Just to make SURE, when the entire top was finished I imported the nude body again, deleted faces, and replaced the torso just before packaging everything up. I still get the very dark areas under the breasts even after all of this! Is there a way to remove the shadows created by the shirt that's replaced the upper part of the body? That's the only thing I can thin of that's causing these dark areas. If I use the same parts of the upper body without the shirt it looks good. Well, the shadows look good anyway! A sim walking around with nothin' between the top of her breasts and lower neck looks a bit odd ---

EDIT: WOOT! I remembered from doing the pareo as a transparent mesh that the shadows disappeared. I tested the mesh as a 2 parter with the shirt set to transparent. The breasts now look normal! I know that the shadows are the problem, but I do still need to get rid of them using the 1 part mesh set to SimSkin. I can't separate the top from the skin properly around the neck without some SERIOUS reworking. As it is now, either part of the skin has to be set to transparent (VERY ugly) or some of the shirt is set to opaque (causes a mismatch). I reworked the area once, but things get ugly too easily around there and just made the adjustment with the textures. Any vertex even slightly out of place gets amplified almost uncontrollably with morphs and bone sliders. If someone can tell me how to remove the shadows from the shirt this mesh will be DONE finally.
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Sockpuppet
#2 Old 7th Feb 2014 at 5:33 PM
You need to seperate(split) the vertice on the seam were the torso meets the breasts and alligne them seperate from eachother.
Hope this makes sence.
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#3 Old 7th Feb 2014 at 9:54 PM
The pics show the way I've separated the mesh to align the normals. The first pic shows the complete LOD1 ready to put into the game. The normals on the body parts are untouched. I imported the nude burnt top, deleted faces, and never touched it again. The main part of the shirt was aligned as a single piece. The inner faces were aligned, and I then went around vert by vert copying the normals from the outer shirt onto the seams to get rid of the sparkles. Loading the entire mesh as LOD1 using the SimSkin shader, the area under the breasts is very dark. If I load the body as LOD1, the top as LOD1-1, and convert the top to a transparent mesh the shadows under the breast get a lot lighter and become exactly like those on the nude body. This is the 3rd remake of this mesh, and I always thought the problem was with the normals. I really don't think that's the case any more though. I'd just use this as a 2 part mesh and be done with it, but the neck seam looks odd where the transparent and opaque meshes meet. To get it right I'd need to rework the entire neck area so the meshes split at the actual intersection of the shirt and skin. Its something I can do, but getting rid of the shadows will also work, and something I'd really like to know how to do for future projects.
Screenshots
Sockpuppet
#4 Old 8th Feb 2014 at 9:08 PM
srry, i dont see the problem?
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#5 Old 9th Feb 2014 at 2:40 AM
You told me in the previous reply to split the body and shirt before aligning the normals. I made sure to keep the normals exactly like the nude body from the beginning of the project by never changing them. When I regroup the parts in the previous pics and package them as a single mesh, the area under the breasts becomes very dark. If I make it a 2 part mesh and make the shirt transparent, the shadows under the breasts go away and it looks MUCH better. The problem with doing it this way is the neck seams. As its meshed right now. part of the neck is on the transparent mesh. I've started reworking the mesh so I can split it on the edge of the collar, but I'm getting a lot of very small triangles and am a little concerned with what will happen to them when I do the morphs. If I can get rid of the shadows created by the entire mesh, I won't have to do any of this.
Screenshots
Sockpuppet
#6 Old 9th Feb 2014 at 8:11 AM
prolly my lack of english but im getting a bit lost....
When you talk about shadow under the breasts do you talk about normals or the shadow generated by the shirt ingame?
And i didn't say to split body from shirt, i said split breasts from body as i thought you weren't happy with the normals underneath the breasts.

You can later snap(after deleting few surrounding faces first) those little faces/vertice to make the mesh more decent.
Ms. Byte (Deceased)
#7 Old 9th Feb 2014 at 12:23 PM
How exactly does the neck seam not look right? Can you post a picture?

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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#8 Old 10th Feb 2014 at 8:45 AM
I don't have the package with the odd looking seam any more Cmar. The circled area in the previous pic shows where the transparent and opaque meshes meet. The problem is from that seam to the edge of the collar. Its shaded gray in the pic, but in the finished project it will be skin. I haven't had any luck at ALL with texturing skin on a transparent mesh!
Pay no attention to the the texture in the pic. It's nothing more than the RGB mask that I changed the colors on so it wouldn't bother my eyes so much. I'm putting verts along the edges of the purple area.
Sorry if I'm confusing you with my explanations Bloom. The normals are fine, I want to get rid of the shadows the shirt makes on the body. I did a little more work on changing the collar this evening. Instead of layering the shirt over the neck, I'm making the collar seam part of the body itself. Most of the little polys are part of the new collar area. When its done I'll delete the entire collar and redo it with the smallest # of faces possible. I thought about layering the shirt over the neck, but decided against it. If I do it this way I won't have any clipping to worry about.
Ms. Byte (Deceased)
#9 Old 10th Feb 2014 at 2:24 PM
Okay, I think I understand the problem - if you're using the hair shader on the transparent part, you don't get skin where the texture is transparent, you get true transparency. That part should actually be invisible.

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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#10 Old 11th Feb 2014 at 3:23 AM
Yep. Originally, I just wanted to remove the shadows from the mesh that uses the SimSkin shader. I didn't (and still don't!) know how to do that, so splitting the mesh into 2 parts and making the shirt transparent is how I'm killing the shadows. The normals under the breasts are naturally darker because of the geometry of the breasts. When the shadows from the shirt get added to that, it gets really dark. Without the added shirt shadow, it looks pretty natural.
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#11 Old 14th Feb 2014 at 5:06 AM Last edited by sciguy77 : 14th Feb 2014 at 8:32 AM.
Well, I got the neck seam sorted out and when I use transparency on the mesh it looks good. Now I'm having some REAL issues with getting the bone assignments correct. I'm not worried about the exposed breasts around the cleavage -- I've figured out how to adjust the spine assignments to pull the shirt forward. My problem is the distortion to the print above the left breast. I've tried everything I can think of to clear it up, but nothing seems to make any difference. To get this photo, every vert that touches the body is assigned bones from the nude top. All of the other verts have their settings taken directly from a basegame T-shirt. I've tried copying settings in the problem area from other basegame shirts, as well as manually changing the bone weights. Can this even BE fixed? If so, can anyone give me a hint on what settings to try?
FYI, in the photo the shader is still set to simskin. When I get the print to show up right I'll make that change.
Screenshots
Ms. Byte (Deceased)
#12 Old 14th Feb 2014 at 12:54 PM
If you're using Toolkit to assign bones, the best strategy might be to use the nude top for both mesh parts, then zero out the area between the breasts in the cleavage area and use the t-shirt as reference to assign only to unassigned verts. (And/or tweak those manually- the idea is to assign them to both breasts instead of to the upper spine.) If you've already tried that - is this only happening with the breast slider maxed out? Are you using a slider range multiplier?

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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#13 Old 14th Feb 2014 at 4:21 PM
The slider settings in the pic are really unknown. I changed models to a custom sim from another creator who has a preference for larger breasts. I'll try switching to a new sim with neutral settings and see what that looks like. I completely forgot about the sliders. I'd bet dollars to donuts that's the biggest part of my problem.
It would be helpful to know exactly how the bone weights affect the mesh too. Let's say there's a setting of 72 on the breast, 25 on spine_1, and 3 on the clavicle. 72 what? 25 what? Does the setting affect both the distance of the vert from the joint and how it moves relative to that joint, or is the distance only changed by the slider setting? When I did the first set of bone assignments, I used the nude top as a reference for the body parts and the T-shirt for the top. All the verts at the collar separated so badly I thought I made a mistake with the assignments. After a lot of fiddling, everything cleared up as soon as I assigned the bones from the nude upper body. I really don't understand what the settings do aside from causing premature hair loss. If I can get a better understanding of what the changes are actually doing, I can probably make better guesses at what's going to work.
Ms. Byte (Deceased)
#14 Old 14th Feb 2014 at 6:41 PM
Each bone can be morphed using any combination of position, size (can be any combination of x, y, and z size), and rotation. In Sims 3 land that's called a bone delta. My understanding of the bone weights is that for example a weight of 50 for bone 1, 30 for bone 2, and 20 for bone 3 means the vertex is moved with 50% of the bone 1 delta, 30% of the bone 2 delta, and 20% of the bone 3 delta. Exactly what that delta movement is depends on the slider being used, and one slider may have a combination of several bone deltas.

In this case: Say we have a vertex right on the cleavage. If it's the body mesh, that vertex should not move when the breast slider is used since the female breastbone doesn't move when she has big breasts and should be assigned to the spine/clavicle/whatever. However, if it's a shirt mesh we want the vertex to move forward since there will be a natural gap between the shirt and the skin between the breasts. So the correct bone assignment would be something like RightBreast 40, LeftBreast 40, Spine_whatever 20. That should get the forward movement of the breast slider without movement to the side, but not move it quite as much as the actual breasts. (Those numbers are just a guess, of course.)

Clear as mud? Good!

Please do not PM me with mod, tutorial, or general modding questions or problems; post them in the thread for the mod or tutorial or post them in the appropriate forum.

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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#15 Old 15th Feb 2014 at 4:52 AM
Believe it or not, I actually got a good feel for what the bone delta is and how the weights operate from your description. In a previous post I had about issues with the breasts coming out the sides of a layered mesh, you suggested making layered clothing with verts that match the body as closely as possible and using the same bone assignments. This top is exactly that. I duplicated the body and scaled it in the appropriate direction(s) to make the new shirt. So each vert on the body has a corresponding vert on the new top that's been scaled to a new position. For most of them, using the same bone settings works fabulously. the problem is making the shirt separate from the body in a way that looks smooth and natural around the cleavage. I COULD work out what the settings should be with a little math, but that's a lot of work that causes much uncomfortableness in the dangly bits. I think I can get there with a couple of educated guesses since you schooled me with the previous post. Thanks much for that!
Is there a way to load a slider into MS and use it to move the mesh around? Man, if I could see how the slider moves things, I could max out the settings, move the mesh into position, and crunch some numbers to figure out the bone settings that would move it from point A to point B with that particular slider. I could even watch the verts as the wireframe moves to figure out what the heck is going on to distort the top so much in the trouble areas. This problem is related directly to the sliders. When I used a sim with neutral slider settings the print looks fine in all the morphs. I still need to tweak the part of the shirt that "floats" in the cleavage area, but I'm very close. I've also got some weird curling of the bottom edge of the shirt when the fit and thin morphs get close to max, and I have no freakin idea of how to handle that -- yet. As I work more with bone assignments I expect I'll have a eureka moment at some point in the learning process. That's the base mesh moving with 2 different morph assignments at the same time. Figuring that one out is the the Higgs-Boson particle of Simdom. I hope I don't stroke out before I get that one looking right. Geez, it took em 48 years to find the Higgs-Boson. I just want to finish this project up and move on to something new and a little less challenging. When I started this top, I thought it was gonna be a one evening project. That was a month ago -- just about the same time I ran headfirst into troubles texturing a working bottom mesh as an accessory. This has been a very unproductive and frustrating month!
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