I've been trying to recreate the attached yellow outfit (the download links are dead, even on Wayback Machine and I haven't been able to find it anywhere). https://getagirl.livejournal.com/8770.html

As you can see the bodysuit goes all the way down Bloom's alpha mesh with no visible waistline, but try as I might I can't make it do the same thing with my attached picture. There's always a crossover at the waist, even when I try to match it up perfectly. Does anyone have any ideas as to what I might be missing to make it like the original?

Thanks.

Have you looked at the UVmap? My guess is they're overlapping, even just a tiny bit.

I went in and made sure that the UV maps lined up perfectly and this is what I got.

Can you upload the files?

I uploaded the version I've been working on.

The mesh you're working with has a clear pant seam that stands out, whereas the yellow pants in the picture is smooth. I think the error is somewhere along that seam, mostly because it makes the visual of the textures not quite line up. The "outcrop" is also mapped to itself in the "pants" groups (the legs are 4 separate groups, but were slammed together into one map in Blender due to having the same name).

The seam does meet up exactly, but quite a bit of the crotch area doesn't match, so unless you get it to match exactly to that line, there could be some weirdness.

In your picture I think I can spot that skin-colored "outcrop", because the texture seems to match up. I think this could be fixed with a mesh edit, but not sure how easy it would be, because there are a lot of mesh parts in this mesh.

Sending you the UVmaps in case you don't have them. You can clearly see the circular UV of the "outcrop" on the Pants UV.

Wrong mesh, that mesh is supposed to have a join at the top of the pants. You need Blooms_ModelMultioutfit_Mesh and map the top part to the top then there will be no visible join. I've remapped your outfit with SimPE to the correct mesh for you.

Thanks!

I did notice that there was a pant ridge at the waist, but hoped that if it wasn't selected on the UV Map then it wouldn't show.

But, I had the wrong mesh. It was my best guess based on looking through Bloom's meshes. So thanks for the right mesh, Chris!

By the way, how do you get the UV map picture like that? It's much better than my 'open the texture coordinate editor and take a screenshot' method.

UVs are fairly easy to do in Blender

- Extract mesh as OBJ + texture from the mesh in SimPE.
- Open mesh in Blender (or import OBJ)
- Click the (+) button for the group you want to extract from
- Click the identical name directly below (mesh will highlight in orange***)
***if it doesn't, there are some boxes at the bottom, one is called "limit selection to visible" and one "face select". Click both. The mesh should look see-through with lots of lines. Hold Ctrl and mark the entire mesh, should highlight in orange.
- In the bottom left corner there's a triangle shape. Click-drag this. It makes a new window pop up.
- The picture next to this new window has a dropup list, choose "UV/Image Editor". You should now see the UVs of your mesh in that window (lots of lines).
- Highlight all the lines (Ctrl + leftclick-hold-mark). Should now show in orange.
- Click "image" at the bottom. Find and select the image you extracted.
- Click "UVs" at the bottom. Then click "Export UVs". Save with a new name. (You can also change size and all that, but by importing the texture you get the size of the original texture).

(Video here for picture references --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmoMLEIFLEk )

(It is possible you get a "shifted" map with some CAS meshes when extracting from SimPE, but that's possible to move back in Blender. Before exporting the UVs, make sure everything is highlighted, then press "G" to move, and either "Y" for vertical or "X" for horizontal, then hold in "Ctrl" to move in increments, and keep track of the counter in the parenthesis at the bottom. When it says 1.0000 you've shifted the UVs one full square in the direction you want)

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The only items you can completely leave out in an outfit are alpha parts, which are parts that have the "SimStandardMaterial" setting and are flat-meshed back-to-back like hair and leaves, or flat-meshed against a SimSkin group. Removing an edge, even if it's an alpha part, will still leave a gaping hole.

One more question. I've got the mesh working, but even with a normal map I can't get the same texture look as in the original picture. Is there a trick to that or did they just start with a better texture?

Probably the texture. Theirs has a smaller and somewhat different grid pattern along with another color, which gives a different look.

Yeah, I thought so, thanks. Unfortunately I have no idea where they got their texture from.

I'm guessing they probably made it from scratch. It's pretty much diagonal lines in a grid pattern. With a few Photoshop tricks, it's not too complicated to get something that looks roughly like it (you'll want about half the size of what you had, and maybe combine it with a bit of bevel/emboss and/or bumpmapping), but I'm not sure if you can match it up exactly with the original.

Most of that went over my head, so I'll stick with what I've got. XD

Thanks.

Bevel & emboss is a layer style in Photoshop that adds a raised shadow/light effect to textures. Looks like an "fx" icon at the bottom of the "layers" tab to the right (there's lots of effects to play around with). If you're not using Photoshop, it's possible whatever program you do have has something similar.

You can get pretty cool effects with it, and it's much simpler than painting effects.

Added the PSD file so you can look at it. Can't promise the effect works in other programs, though. It does look better zoomed in (I used a piece of your texture, just to show an example of something you can do with the texture you already have).

I tried the bevel and emboss. The slightly paler bodysuit is the one I worked on. Does it look any different or not really?

There is some difference and it does seem to pop out a bit more.

Okay final (I think) question. XD The new pictures have a normal map added. Better or not much difference?

Looks good to me

Thanks heaps for all the help!