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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 17th Nov 2019 at 9:23 PM
Default Questions about learning how to recolour clothing - project striped shirts
Hi all,

As the title says, I'm trying to make striped shirts in order to learn how to recolour clothing. I want to recolour hair eventually, but being a good student, I followed the advice from this website and started with clothing I followed the first two parts of Faylen's tutorial and thought I'd start with something simple: striped shirts. I wear those a lot, so I thought it would be a good idea to have them for my Sims too, and I thought they would be pretty simple to make. I attached images of how far I've gotten to this post. I feel like I've improved in working with the program (Adobe Photo Elements 2020, free trial...), but I could really use some advice. After all, learning by dialogue greatly helps

My steps
I opened Body Shop and chose the plain white short-sleeved shirt from the base game. I made the shirt brown (using the 'colorize' option) and started to add layers with stripes, making sure the stripes of the same colour where equally wide and also equally distanced from each other. I then back-upped my project and flattened all the layers. When looking inside the body shop, I was pleased to see that the woman was indeed wearing a brown-orange-white striped shirt, just like I intended. So, the foundation has been laid. However, if you look at the pictures, you will immediately see that the stripes on the front side within the breast area stretch in a funny way (I also read Faylen's explanation about skinning, and although I don't understand everything, I do get why the textures may stretch out or 'shrink'). The back looks better, but around the armpits the stripes also go up a little and I'm also not completely happy with the back of the sleeves.

Questions
1) How do I 'purposefully' alter the stripes within my design? I tried sponging out the colours in order to make some stripes wider/smaller by hand, but that seems like a lot of trial-and-error to get it right. Is there any way in which I can more accurately determine where the stripes within the texture file should be altered, and is there a more 'controllable' way of doing this?
2) How do I check the polygon count, and how do I diminish it? I'm asking because that's one of the reasons for wanting to learn how to rexture hair, and I could very well check this for clothing as well.
3) As I said, I don't fully understand Faylen's explanation about skinning. She tends to use words I don't know without a definition, but I got a vague idea of what most of it is. But for instance, what does she mean by skinning? I've never seen the term with CC creators before. And do I understand correctly that recolouring and retexturing are two words for (almost) the same process?
4) Do you have any additional tips for me as to what to improve in my design? I will be reviewing the colours at a later point (maybe more beige instead of brown, coupled with more red than orange? Though I think I also like this...) and, like I said, I want to straighten out the stripes. Imagine I would be uploading a bundle of striped shirts to MTS (maybe I will if I'm satisfied enough with the result?): what would I definitely need to pay attention to? What makes quality shirts? Comments on fashion taste are appreciated as well, I'd love to hear feedback
5) Can you recommend any free photo-editing software, without a trial period?

Thanks a lot in advance
Screenshots
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 18th Nov 2019 at 2:02 PM
1a) There are various ways, but it depends on the program. Personally, I often use an adjustable color layer with the stripes as a mask because it allows you to change the color easily. The size is a little more tricky, though. You probably still have to make one mask layer for each size stripes. I sugges you look up how to use masks (Youtube has several tutorials - I'm guessing Photo Elements has simlar basic tools to Photoshop and they're probably used similarly too, so you can probably look for Photoshop tutorials).

1b) The stretching has to do with the UVmapping of the shirt mesh. In the recoloring process there's little you can do with it, and most of the time you either have to ignore it or work around it. Alternatively choose a mesh with better UVmapping. One of the best ways to work around a mesh is to extract the UVmap and use it as an overlay. This is slightly more advanced, and you'll need to know how to extract meshes and UVmaps to do so. Lately I've used Blender 3D to extract UVmaps - it's free, but not very easy to learn. Wings3D also does a passable job with UVmaps (also free).

2) Polygon (face) count can be checked by either opening a mesh or extracting a mesh in SimPE. How to extract meshes is covered in one of the Unimesh tutorials. You can click the GMDC and it has a box where the polycount/vertexcount is listed (vertex count often says "too many to show" but that's normal).

3) Skinning is basically the same as texturing. I think it's a somewhat older phrase used much in making games, where you put texture over the skin. Recoloring and retexturing are used interchangeably, but if you want to be very technical about it, retexturing is giving a new texture (not sure if a pattern would be considered a retexture, though), and recoloring is changing the color.

4) Tip for the recoloring process - I prefer having the color/pattern underneath, and having the white texture on top with a layer style applied (I mostly use Multiply, because it doesn't wash out the colors as much, and also doesn't change the colors except darken them a little). It's very useful for darker patterns and colors. You may also want to keep black parts black, because otherwise you can get some strange colored shadows under the arm and in the neck and belly areas. Again, masking them out is very useful.

5) Gimp is free (but is also much harder to work with, and doesn't have a lot of the useful funcions from Photoshop. Fine if you're in a pinch and don't want to spend money, otherwise not the best).


I'm not too fond of short tops with bellies showing, but that's more personal preference. If this bothers you too, you can use the alpha (black and white texture) to paint in more texture at the bottom. White shows, black is hidden. If I remember correctly, either the pants or the tops are a little borked in the belly area (they always show the belly). Several of the basegame clothes have this problem, unfortunately. Not sure if there are any good fixes for them.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#3 Old 18th Nov 2019 at 2:30 PM
I avoid any kind of pattern on base game clothing, every piece I have ever tried to recolour is horribly mapped. I much prefer a decent custom mesh.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#4 Old 18th Nov 2019 at 4:42 PM
^ True that. Stripes rarely work with female meshes (teen and up), probably because the UVmapping of the chest area tend to be a little iffy. They occasionally work with male meshes and for kids, though (less stretching int he UVmap).

I'd usually go for patterns that aren't obviously meant to go in one direction and supposed to be of a certain size (anything remotely like horizontal or vertical stripes). Most patterns will work but stripes tend to be a bit touch-and-go.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#5 Old 18th Nov 2019 at 5:02 PM
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
1a) There are various ways, but it depends on the program. Personally, I often use an adjustable color layer with the stripes as a mask because it allows you to change the color easily. The size is a little more tricky, though. You probably still have to make one mask layer for each size stripes. I sugges you look up how to use masks (Youtube has several tutorials - I'm guessing Photo Elements has simlar basic tools to Photoshop and they're probably used similarly too, so you can probably look for Photoshop tutorials).

1b) The stretching has to do with the UVmapping of the shirt mesh. In the recoloring process there's little you can do with it, and most of the time you either have to ignore it or work around it. Alternatively choose a mesh with better UVmapping. One of the best ways to work around a mesh is to extract the UVmap and use it as an overlay. This is slightly more advanced, and you'll need to know how to extract meshes and UVmaps to do so. Lately I've used Blender 3D to extract UVmaps - it's free, but not very easy to learn. Wings3D also does a passable job with UVmaps (also free).

2) Polygon (face) count can be checked by either opening a mesh or extracting a mesh in SimPE. How to extract meshes is covered in one of the Unimesh tutorials. You can click the GMDC and it has a box where the polycount/vertexcount is listed (vertex count often says "too many to show" but that's normal).

3) Skinning is basically the same as texturing. I think it's a somewhat older phrase used much in making games, where you put texture over the skin. Recoloring and retexturing are used interchangeably, but if you want to be very technical about it, retexturing is giving a new texture (not sure if a pattern would be considered a retexture, though), and recoloring is changing the color.

4) Tip for the recoloring process - I prefer having the color/pattern underneath, and having the white texture on top with a layer style applied (I mostly use Multiply, because it doesn't wash out the colors as much, and also doesn't change the colors except darken them a little). It's very useful for darker patterns and colors. You may also want to keep black parts black, because otherwise you can get some strange colored shadows under the arm and in the neck and belly areas. Again, masking them out is very useful.

5) Gimp is free (but is also much harder to work with, and doesn't have a lot of the useful funcions from Photoshop. Fine if you're in a pinch and don't want to spend money, otherwise not the best).


I'm not too fond of short tops with bellies showing, but that's more personal preference. If this bothers you too, you can use the alpha (black and white texture) to paint in more texture at the bottom. White shows, black is hidden. If I remember correctly, either the pants or the tops are a little borked in the belly area (they always show the belly). Several of the basegame clothes have this problem, unfortunately. Not sure if there are any good fixes for them.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer all of my questions, this really helps And the belly button never bothers me until someone points it out Some Sims can pull it off, but I guess the shirts would be more universally usable when I use another mesh.

Quote: Originally posted by joandsarah77
I avoid any kind of pattern on base game clothing, every piece I have ever tried to recolour is horribly mapped. I much prefer a decent custom mesh.

That might indeed be better! It would definitely save myself time from painting on the shirt like a colouring book (and having it look like it...).

Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
I'd usually go for patterns that aren't obviously meant to go in one direction and supposed to be of a certain size (anything remotely like horizontal or vertical stripes). Most patterns will work but stripes tend to be a bit touch-and-go.

That explains why I rarely see those shirts, although they are modern nowadays. All the more reason to keep trying
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#6 Old 18th Nov 2019 at 9:40 PM Last edited by joandsarah77 : 18th Nov 2019 at 9:54 PM.
I don't know how this would go for stripes since I have only placment printed the kids ones (I'm a real beginner to recolouring) but this is my favourite T-shirt mesh. It's well mapped, nice comfy fit and length and already has a great texture. https://deedee-sims.tumblr.com/post...rated-for-ef-tf Just adding DeeDee has a great TOU if you want to upload.

I do have some stripped t shirts in game on another mesh. I think by CuriousB... maybe. I will look later.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#7 Old 18th Nov 2019 at 10:38 PM
^ Those aren't too bad wih stripes - I've got several striped ones from a recoloring project a while back.
Another thing about those is that they use the same textures, so they're easily repositoried (texture-slaved) for space saving and also possibly texture handling (not sure about the second). They're even all-age (toddler and up - either with the fullbody version or with the toddler top-only, though I haven't tried that one yet).

One drawback is that they could need some fixed bone assignments here and there because there is a little bit of clipping, and the smooth hands versions kinda bother me (kids version in particular). Not sure if the tops exist in a maxis-hands version, or if these are just issues with the child and toddler versions, though.
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