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Sita's Dress No. 2 in Black

Sita's Dress No. 2 in Black
SimsHost subscribers can click on the image to download from The Pearl. 131 KB.
Unzip the .package file to your SavedSims or Downloads folder.
This is an Adult Female outfit.
Warning: This outfit has only a half slip. Anatomically correct sims will show through the top. Mrs. Grundy is watching you!

So, what does the notorious Wilhemina wear when she is out for a night on a town? You guessed it! A slinky lace dress with a half slip that lets the sun shine in on top!


Well, OK, in reality, Sita asked for something like this in the thread about Wilhemina's Sex Top Collection. Hence the name "Sita Dress." Was this the sort of thing you had in mind, Sita?

It's number 2 because I didn't like the way Sita Dress No. 1 turned out.

I thought it would look most effective with a skin-colored half slip. This works on the light skin shown here, but the skirt might look too light on a darker skin tone.


[MEMO] The model is wearing Light Skin No. 6 by The Pearl. The lace is Mesh No. 31.

Sita Dress No. 2 in Black: Tech

This one was a good example of how complicated it can get if you have an open lace mesh where you want parts of the model's skin to show through, but not all of it.

If you look at the alpha and the texture, you will see that the see-through top has the lace mesh in the alpha channel, while the opaque area over the half slip has the lace in the texture.

I had to do it that way because the opaque area had to be... erm... opaque.

Editing the Alpha Channel

Lining up the mesh wasn't too difficult. First I created the alpha with the lace in the whole dress. Then I duplicated the lacy part and masked out the skirt area. That gave me a template to work from, so that I could tell precisely where the slip stopped when I got to the point where I edited the texture.

I used a similar technique to tile the lace mesh. First I copied a 512x512 area from the source file. Then I pasted two copies of this and arranged them vertically on the front of the dress, but overlapping to get them perfectly aligned. The overlap area was too dark, so I masked out part of the lower part right to the edge of the upper part. Then I applied the layer mask and merged the upper part into the lower part.

The next step was to duplicate the merged lace mesh and move it over to the back. At that point I was in luck, because I couldn't find the place where the front merged into the back. There was no obvious discontinuity in the front-to-back seam. (Had there been, I would have had to adjust and stretch the front and back until the lace lined up.)

Merging the back on the front gave me a single layer for the lace. The next step was to select the opaque area from the layer that had the solid alpha and using that selection to mask out the lace everywhere but in the fabric area of the dress.


Editing the Texture

When I was happy with how the lace worked and the placement of the waistband of the half slip in the alpha channel, I copied the alpha channel to the Photoshop file for the texture. There, I set the mesh to Multiply (instead of Normal). I put a skintone layer under that area and then a shading layer (again in Multiply mode) on top of the skin tone to get the shadows from the curvy parts. The lace mesh went on top of that.

I reduced the opacity of the lace mesh for the skirt to 77%, which gave me a reasonably close match to how the top appears when it maps onto the model's skin. That makes the skin-colored half slip almost invisible, which was the effect I was going for. (At least it'll make 'em look twice and wonder!)

In actual practice, I iterated back and forth between the alpha and the texture until I got what I wanted.


Other Bits

This outfit had to have an opaque skirt because it is based on a standard Maxis long-dress mesh. If we had a 3D mesh that included the model's lower torso and legs (and in turn made the model nervous about wearing patent leather shoes), this whole thing would be a lot easier; but we don't, so what you see is what you get.

The high-heeled sandals are right off the rack from the Maxis Boutique. I trimmed down the neckline a bit because I thought it looked nicer this way. That lace would be rather heavy in relation to its structure, so it seemed that it would want to drape more from the attachment point than the standard Maxis dress does. Besides, it shows more skin, and this is definitely an attention-seeking outfit!

I give you high marks for artistic impression!

-SCG

PS. Did you see my poster of you in the moonsuit, in my latest update? Hard to tell it is you because of the helmet visor but I'm sure it is.

That's lovely, Greg!

SimCityGallery wrote:

I give you high marks for artistic impression! -SCG PS. Did you see my poster of you in the moonsuit, in my latest update? Hard to tell it is you because of the helmet visor but I'm sure it is.

Pointless trivia: If I recall that picture correctly, that's really Pinky Nelson testing the Manned Maneuvering Unit on flight STS 41-C.

This is lovely! And thank you for the explanations!

Oh goody! I'm glad you like it!

I was thinking this would look neat as a long-sleeved floor-length dress, too. I'll have to snoop around and see if there's a mesh that supports it.

Try making the area between the dress sections lace pattern too. It would be skin tight, but does that really bother you?

miros1 wrote:

Try making the area between the dress sections lace pattern too. It would be skin tight, but does that really bother you?

I'm afraid you lost me with that. I don't understand.

Lemme fire up BodyShop and get the alpha to show you...

Ok, here it goes...

This is the original alpha and texture:


This is my modified alpha and texture:


This is how it looks on the Sim:


Obviously, I overachieved a bit, since she looks like her sleeves have attached gloves... but you get the idea!

Rose/Miros

Oh. Silly me. You were talking about sleeves!

Lol! I don't think I want to know what you thought I was talking about!

miros1 wrote:

Lol! I don't think I want to know what you thought I was talking about!

Well... actually... I couldn't figure out what you were talking about. I thought maybe it might have been a technique for making the lace.

2-for-u has some skirts that are translucent/transparent so the girl's legs show through.

http://www.2-f0r-u.de/startsims2.htm