Shirt Ideas and Techniques

[Chairman Greg]

I started this as a simple reply to karialSim's request for T-shirt ideas and (as usual) got carried away with the idea.  I'm thinking that a thread about skinning ideas and techniques would be appropriate here, so here we go.

I've included some notes about how to make tight T-shirts look more authentic, tricks with tops that have bottoms and bottoms that have tops, and some of the special considerations that come up when working with Warlokk's uberboobie gals.


Novelty T-shirts?  Hmm... sometimes it just takes other ideas to kick the cranial creative corpuscles off top dead center, so perhaps some of my recent mischief will provide some inspiration.  

I tend to get an idea for something that seems like a quick knock-off project and then spend days fiddling with a single garment.  All of these are rather elaborate with custom alphas and bump maps ("normals") where they work.

Each image is linked to its respective discussion at the Hullabaloo.  (There's a lot more noise about each of these.  More screen shots, too.)



No pretensions of subtlety expressed or implied:


Eagle Brand Condensed Milk

Milk-related themes on an uberboobie T-shirt are always good for a chuckle as well as jeers from those who enjoy jeering.  (Although, to be honest, the pun didn't even occur to me until the webmasters started laughing about it.  Silly me.)



Historical and patriotic themes are good conversation starters:


First US Navy Jack

I made the Navy Jack for 34C and 34D tops, but it just didn't look good on the larger ones.  I think to make a T-shirt emblem look good on a full-figured gal we'd need a mesh that drapes like a looser shirt would.

Note that I like to add some undies to a top mesh.  They don't show in most outfits but if she dons a bottom with a low waist the straps will show.  Another neat application of this trick is to include full stockings with the top mesh.  It's a great way to provide some variety.



One day while we were nattering at the Hullabaloo I said something about different kinds of oil and mentioned Texas sweet crude.  That's all it took to inspire a shirt as well as the gal it's stuffed with.


Texas Sweet Crude

I made a 34D version of Texas Sweet Crude, too.

If you look closely you'll note that usually there's a hint of a bra under the shirt.  These meshes imply really tight shirts so if she's wearing a bra, it'll show.  To get that effect I fiddle with the texture, alpha, and bump map; whatever seems right for the garment.

[Chairman Greg]

Tops with Bottoms and Bottoms with Tops

Warlokk has given us so many tops and bottoms that if you wanted to make a version to fit every possible body shape you'd spend days on a single project.  (Which I do anyhow, but that's just me.)  Here's a technique that gives the end user more flexibility and reduces the proliferation of files for everyday outifits.

When make an outfit, consider adding a bottom to top, or a top to a bottom.  That is, include the rest of the outfit in the texture, alpha, and bump map.

Here's an example:


Teen Kosmos Cosplay Outfit

It looks like a full outfit but I offered it only as a top or a bottom:  

The top is Teen D.  The user can pair the top with a nude version any of Warlokk's teen bottom meshes to get the desired hip size.

The bottom is Teen Large Hips.  The user can pair the bottom with a nude version of any of Warlokk's teen top meshes to get the desired top size.


The original Kosmos Cospay outfit was an outfit for adult sims that I offered only as a size 36 bottom.  The user can match it with any of Warlokk's nude tops to rack up the desired rack.  Warlokk has even given us options that allow the user to choose whether or not the nipples show, so there are lots of possible variations from just one set of textures; the user can match it up to the size and personality of the sim who will don this silly outfit.


Note that this technique works well for skin-tight costumes like this one.  It can be trickier for more elaborate meshes, especially if you make a bottom that has a top.



(The image is linked to the discussion topic at the Hullabaloo.)

[Star Ranger4]

GRRRRR!  Og want, but it paysite

:cry:

[Chairman Greg]

GRRRRR!  Og want, but it paysite

:cry:

It's a subscriber-supported hosting site, and I'm the host, so I have to follow the rules there. :lol:

Which one do you want?  I can upload it here, too!

[Lifa]

Here's what I've found:

You know those wonderful nude bottoms meshes that Warlokk provided us with?
Yeah, those.  There's a whole whopping 5 of them (including Maxis size nude), as opposed to 9(+) tops.

Warlokk also provided us with nude recolours of all of the tops meshes, if you know where to look.

If you do a full-body outfit recolour of one of the nude-mesh bottoms, you can use the nude recolour of the tops meshes to select the top size.

If that makes ANY SENSE AT ALL.

But that's what I do, yay.

[Star Ranger4]

Just that Kosmos Cosplay outfit you showed us here...

[Chairman Greg]

Mission accomplished!

http://www.insimenator.org/showthread.php?t=23449

[Chairman Greg]

Here's what I've found:

You know those wonderful nude bottoms meshes that Warlokk provided us with?
Yeah, those.  There's a whole whopping 5 of them (including Maxis size nude), as opposed to 9(+) tops.

Warlokk also provided us with nude recolours of all of the tops meshes, if you know where to look.

If you do a full-body outfit recolour of one of the nude-mesh bottoms, you can use the nude recolour of the tops meshes to select the top size.

If that makes ANY SENSE AT ALL.

But that's what I do, yay.

Now that you mention it, that's a really good idea.  If it's a whole-body outfit then all you need to make is the 5 bottoms to accommodate the entire range of top sizes.  

Some of them might even work on multiple tops if the meshes line up.  F'rinstance, the KOS-MOS outfit that I just uploaded looks nice with a T-shirt mesh as well as the nude mesh.

I'm liking this idea more and more.  You can even use it to have the bottom overlay different colors of trim on existing tops, creating a new outfit with a minimum number of files in your Downloads folder.

[Chairman Greg]

Just had another thought: If we could figure out how to convert a full-body outfit mesh to a bottom mesh, we could go totally wild with that idea.

[Lifa]

Just had another thought: If we could figure out how to convert a full-body outfit mesh to a bottom mesh, we could go totally wild with that idea.

The bottom "color" section and the bottom alpha will overlap into the top half of the mesh if the separate top is colored alpha-black/nude.  In fact, the bottom half layers over the top half in most cases.

One of the Marvine/BBB body-builder bottom-half meshes overlaps into the top mesh.  I can't remember which one, I found it by accident.

[Warlokk]

Yep, Roxxy and Duschenka experimented with this a lot on the Original Bodyshape set using Skirt bottom separates with top textures attached... works well with any Top separate that has cut-out areas in the alpha as well, since the Top texture will overlay whatever the bottom texture applys... so you can do vests over sweaters, for example.  There's a bunch of examples at MTS2, they were created long before I set up my Workshop here...

[Chairman Greg]

Yup, this is probably my second-favorite skinny toy.  (Your meshes being the first.)

Way back in the ancient days of February this year, I did some weird experiments trying to redefine a whole-body outfit as a bottom to see if I could get it to overlay the top.  The results were not thrilling:


Screen shots from the CAS screen in the game

Trying to redefine the leather jacket outfit as a bottom instead of a body skin causes strange effects when I try to match it with any top.  In this case, I have it matched with the blue sweater shown in the 3rd picture.

Note that bits of the jacket outfit seem to show up on the hands and the game is trying to show both a white shirt (which is what the original outfit looks like) as well as the blue sweater.

The outfit in the middle picture should be all red, not just those bits that appear to be isolated triangular faces, but it's getting the original black coat and white shirt from somewhere.


I haven't given up yet.  It might be that I just picked the wrong outfit for my first try.

At least I was able to get the outfit to show up as a bottom instead of a body outfit by changing the 'outfit' property  to 10 and override0subset property to "bottom".  

In case someone wants to know:
   Outfit 04 is top.
Outfit 08 is body.
Outfit 10 is bottom.

Having learned that much, I haven't yet figured out what to do with that information.

[Lifa]

Yep, Roxxy and Duschenka experimented with this a lot on the Original Bodyshape set using Skirt bottom separates with top textures attached... works well with any Top separate that has cut-out areas in the alpha as well, since the Top texture will overlay whatever the bottom texture applys... so you can do vests over sweaters, for example.  There's a bunch of examples at MTS2, they were created long before I set up my Workshop here...

Yeah, I think I remember seeing those once, the Roxxy dresses... although at that time there wasn't a whole set of awesome nude tops meshes, so it all looked really weird.

I dunno, I'd post more of my created content (because I think most people would enjoy it or atleast be able to add to their collection and use every now and then) but there's so few things I've got that are actually 100% mine.  I tend to borrow textures or use the crap that comes with Photoshop.  :sad3:   Because I suck.

[Chairman Greg]

There must be a trick to making this work.  It might require thinking through the logic a bit more.

In the images of the guy in the leather jacket (above) you can see that his blue sweater conflicts with the jacket.  It peeks through in the spots where the sweater would be outside the jacket.

Mixing a top and bottom seems to always work--the bottom texture overlays the top no matter what mesh the top has--but recategorizing a whole-body outfit as a bottom doesn't work.

For instance, here's an snapshot of the enigmatic Miss Chandra Bear standing in front of her beach house in Lake Dorothy.



Chandra's Top is really a body stocking.

All that alphabet soup is her top, including the bits that cover her legs.  She is wearing the stock Daisy Mae shorts on top of the top.  I made this top by simply replacing the alpha and texture file from Morgaine's aftopnaked with the body grid for the texture and solid white (instead of solid black) for the top.

This works even for body-conforming bottom meshes.  For example, these pink shorts (a bottom garment) have an alpha that's slightly transparent in spots to get a special effect:


The shorts don't appear so sheer on a light skin tone.  The panties are in the alpha channel.

Obviously, the whole thing works, even the partially transparent alpha on the bottom.

[Chairman Greg]

Ooh,those t shirts are cute!I like how the panties are with the shirt,that's cool!I tried to do that but the poor girl ended up with pants down by her ankles....

Hey!  She sounds like my kind of gal! :laugh:


OKOKOK... seriously... sometimes the mesh's UV map can thwart your best-laid schemes.  This trick has to be matched with a mesh that's picking its pixels from the the same place as the garment you're working on.

It works for about 95% of the Maxis meshes but the more elaborate costumes have bits coming from all over the place.  In that case, you never know what you'll get!