Baby on Board

[~aByssa~]

***Hi Everybody---I'm sorry if this isn't very creative but I have a very bad Paintshop Pro, and you can hardly do anything in it. So ya...***

*UPDATED*
I made some teen maternity outfits...modelled by my latest victim *mwahahaha* Alexa.
The everyday one is a pinky purple outfit that has a purple wrap. It says Baby on Board, and the O's are Smilies!

Just put these in your downloads folder. They will show up in CAS, but then you have to do this in the game: enter--> boolprop testingcheatsenabled true, or if you have Insimenator installed just press shift. But anyway. Then press shift on a sim and then spawn and then Tom's clothing tester. Once your sims are pregnant click on toms clothing tester and plan outfit. Then force redress.
Enjoy! If you have problems let me know!

[LyricLee]

Very nice effort let me just offer the following suggestion-your texturing on your outfit is very pixelated, have you tried tinkering with the sharpen or smooth tools to create a more realistic clothing effect instead of a flat paint bucket feel. Im sure if you played a bit you could texture these a bit more and theyd be great.

[Lorrswim34]

are they for adults or teens and young adults

[~aByssa~]

Very nice effort let me just offer the following suggestion-your texturing on your outfit is very pixelated, have you tried tinkering with the sharpen or smooth tools to create a more realistic clothing effect instead of a flat paint bucket feel. Im sure if you played a bit you could texture these a bit more and theyd be great.

thanx, I'll try that.

[~aByssa~]

are they for adults or teens and young adults

just teens

[~aByssa~]

I will maybe add better pictures soon....

[kathy]

I don't think the remake was a noticable improvement. I think it is a little hard to tell if you are aiming for a belted dress or a two piece ensemble. The look is a little disturbing, so much red and the transluscent portion makes it look very weird. The pink top is a very cute idea, and is a good display of your skills; but I really think the red outfit needs more work.

[~aByssa~]

thank-you kathy, I liked the original dress better but i was trying to improve it, but it got a little too 'improved' for me to undo, so i just went with it.
But thank-you very much.

[gdayars]

cute top! I have problems sometimes with my paintshop pro doing things like the paint bucket effect thing too, so what I do is go fabric searching and copy swatches to special my pictures folders with unique names like sim stuff and sim stuff 2 and use the fabric swatches so it gets a texture effect that way.  Velvet works best with my current graphics card (sigh it doesnt give the same detail as my daughters computer does to my clothes). I have Jasc 9, what do you have?

[~aByssa~]

I have Paint Shop Pro 4, but right now I'm using Paint Shop pro 9 on trial.

[gdayars]

I really like paint shop pro 9, and for the money its a good program.  There are some things I would like to improve about it tho like it doesnt have some basic shapes available such as hearts.  Have you tried doing much with actual fabric swatches yet?

[~aByssa~]

yes kind of. I made some clothes but I haven't posted them yet.

[gdayars]

I tried using the smoothing and sharpening tools last night like LyricLee suggested, and it did help thanks!  I had been achieving a similar effect by really stretching out the fabric for the smoothing part, but this worked better.  Also, I had tried it out early on, but that was before I started doing so much with fabric.

[jase439]

What file format are you working with.  I recommend uncompressed TIFF for maximum clarity.  If you're saving and loading to and from compressed image formats, you tend to get image degradation and you can end up with blocky outfits.  Mandie had this problem for a while when she started out, but she got herself some new software and has improved her technique a hundred fold.  As you can tell from the size of this forum, she has had plenty of practice.

The other technique you can investigate is bump mapping (or normal maps).  The original Sims 2 did not support this, but was introduced in University.  Bump mapping creates variations in light and shadow and can go a long way towards dispelling the "painted on" look.  It has the effect of making the model look higher-res than it really is and creating 3D-looking elements like straps and ties that have no geometry behind them at all.

Don't get discouraged by the feedback.  Image editing is not trivial, but it can be alot of fun!  Just be patient with yourself (and others).

[gdayars]

How do you set it for uncompressed TIFF?  Do you set it up in body shop or the game or jasc?
Unfortunately my graphics card doesnt support bump mapping (I am fixing to get another graphics card however).  It is ironic really, when I got this computer it was so I could play the game better back when it was just sims2.  Now the graphics card is so outdated I am missing out on a lot of quality things in the game   The weird thing is everything else on the computer is still pretty high end, just not the graphics card!  It was the one thing I didnt think to check.  Do you have any recommendations?