Layered Top No. 2 Through 5

"Hey Gamesmaster!" She said. "You have some work to do! Sita wants that layered drindl top in bright red and green!"

"Got 'em done," says I. "Now I just need a model! I don't suppose..."

"I'd be happy to. Hmrph. I'm getting kinda flattened in this boob tube, but I like the bounce! OK, how's this?"

"Very nice! Smile!" >click<


Four Variations on the Layered Top

SimsHost subscribers can click on the links below to download these garments.
psaflayerstop02 - bright red ~540 KB
psaflayerstop03 - deeper red ~540 KB
psaflayerstop04 - green ~548 KB
psaflayerstop05 - red brocade ~582 KB
Caution: These are large files.
Each zip archive includes the corresponding top shown above. The shirt is off the shelf from the Maxian boutique. For female adult sims.
Unzip the file psaflayerstopXX.zip and save the .package file in your Downloads or SavedSims folder.


"I really like this brocade! Yeah, I'd say this one is my personal favorite."

"Yup! That's great!" >clickety< "Hold that pose!" >click< "Say, how about modeling the top without the boob tube?"

"Is your life insurance paid up, buddy?"

"Oops. Forget I asked."

"That's all right. You're forgiven. Besides, you made 'em! But for free modeling services, my belly button is all you're gonna get! This outfit needs something, though. Like a matching skirt. And shoes! You forgot shoes!"

"Don't have the mesh for it. Maybe I can con somebody else into--"

"Ahem."

"Ma'am?"

"The maid's dress. How could you forget her? You've been staring at her cleavage since before I was born!"

"Oh. Right. That one might be worth a try."

"Well, if you do, and you need a model--"

"You'll do it?"

"Nottachance!"

I like the brocade one best too!

This took a little longer than I anticipated because I had to tidy up the sundry Photoshop layers before I could easily do variations.

The brocade was tricky. I didn't even try to line up the pattern on the sundry parts, but it still turned out quite nicely.

did you happen to save your layers, greg? I would love to recolor these about a million times, just for myself. I would love it in black but if you could give me the photoshop layers file, I can do it myself and save you the trouble. I really love this style!

edit: or I would even like to do the undershirt in different colors.

I'd like it in black with a pale pink tube top!

That one, I'd have to create a Sim just to wear it...

Liss, it's uploading right now. Look in that same ol' spot on your site.

Caution: The zip is almost 4 MB. I included the alpha and normals, and then just now realized that you could get them from the object. Oops. Oh well, now ya got 'em for sure. If export one of my outfits to use as the base, use the brocade (05) version. It has the best Alpha channel.*

Note that five layers that have color overlays (layer effects):

Gem - the jewel in the necklace
Gem Clasp - the whatchacallit that holds the jewel
Bottom Hem
Neck Hem
Sweater r2 - main body of sweater fabric

It would be easy as pie to add a color overlay to the Tube Top layer, too.

(Three other layers have layer effects but those are just the window dressing. If you think this is a mess, you should have seen it before I cleaned it up just now!)

The Brocade is in a separate layer. You'll want to make it invisible if you just want to recolor the sweater part.

The fabric weave is in the Sweater Bumps layer. It's set to Multiply.

For the mesh, you can use one of mine or one of the long-sleeved sweaters from Maxis. I think I started with the orange sweater as the original, though only the mesh remains in this garment.

If you make recolors, you are welcome and encouraged to put them on your site. I even specifically wrote that in the copyright nastygram that's in the texture layer.

Ermph. I just realized that I completely forgot to do the body contour shading. I tried it out in the game, though, and fortunately the nature of the garment is such that I didn't even notice until I looked at the Photoshop file again. Still, a bit of body contour and maybe a fabric fold here and there would make it more realistic.


*Unless you want the topless version, in which case the definition of "best" is a matter of personal judgement.

oh! Greg! OH!

These are fantastic and I do agree with Sheba! Of course She is right, the lady has taste. The brocade is fan-bleeping-tastic!

Thank you very very much.

thanks muchly greg ok time for me to conquer Photoshop. hehe...i'm not exactly sure how to go about this, but i'll figure it out.

anyway, you rule and all that

Sita, glad you liked them! That was kinda the point!

Liss, the trick to editing these things, if you just want to change the color:

1. Select the layer in the layers palette.

2. If you don't see the list of layer effects for that layer, click the little triange to expand it.

3. Double-click one of the layer effects to open its editing window. You're probably most interested in the Color Overlay effect.

(Or: Just select the layer and pull down under Layers to Layer Style. If you're using a version of Photoshop older than Photoshop CE, this is labeled Layer Effects.)

4. To change the color, click on the little color swatch in the Color Overlay editing window.

5. Play with the different modes for applying the color overlay.. I usually use "Multiply" mode. Note that you can also adjust the intensity of the color fill from 1% to 100%.


That's all there is to it. Just play with the color fill in the sundry layers to get what you want. THEN:

a. Control-A to select all.

b. Control-SHIFT-C to "copy merged." This copies the merged result of all your layers to the paste buffer.

c. Go to your .bmp window and paste.

d. Pull down under Layers to Flatten Image.

e. Save the .bmp file.

f. Refresh the view in Body Shop to make sure you got what you want.

g. If that's not what you want, edit some more, then repeat steps a through f until it's just right.

h. Enter a description in the little text box in Body Shop.

i. While you're here, it's a good time to do a screen capture so you'll have a preview image to show on the web.

j. Import into the game.

k. Go to your SavedSims folder, View Details, Click sort by date twice and the latest file sorts to the the top.

l. Copy that file to some other folder. (I have a folder named "Export" in my The Sims 2 folder for this.)

m. Edit the filename to get rid of the extraneous characters and put the initials for your site at the beginning of the filename.

If you do that it will be easier to find your stuff in their downloads folder and also makes it much easier on them because your stuff won't sort in among all th extraneous files that the game generates.

n. Drag it onto that WinZip icon on your desktop and zip it up.

o. Open your site in NetDrive (or somesuch) and copy the .zip file to your /dl folder.

Ta da! It's time to tell the world about it!

cool, thanks! i was almost ready to copy it layer by layer into psp LOL!! I was having a hard time changing colors, I wasn't familiar with the "layer effects" stuff. I'll try this out tomorrow!

edit: ok, now how do I make a layer effect thing for the tube top part? so I can change the color like the sweater? I want to be able to just choose a color like I did on the sweater and hem and gem layers. I could just use the existing tube top layer as the bump map, right?

p.s. i'm using photoshop 6.0, FYI

p.s.s. one more question. how did you get sheba to stand in the same position for all the pics?

first attempt




click photo to download

I want I want!

That's sooo pretty Liss!

All my ladies are gonna be wearing these soon

OOOH, me want too!

BTW, I think PSP should be able to open a PhotoShop file directly.

Liss wrote:

... how do I make a layer effect thing for the tube top part? so I can change the color like the sweater? I want to be able to just choose a color like I did on the sweater and hem and gem layers. I could just use the existing tube top layer as the bump map, right?

Yup, you can just add a color overlay to the existing tube top.

1. Select the layer in the layers palette.

2. Pull down under Layer to Layer Effects.

3. Choose Color Overlay

4. Set the mode to Multiply. (Different modes will give different effects. Sometimes I use others but 90% of the time I use Multiply for colors. Normal is solid color fill; can be attenuated by reducing its opacity. Screen is the opposite of Multiply; use it if you create a highlights layer that you want to overlay over the image.)

5. Click on the little rectangle that has the color swatch to bring up the color-choosing toy. (There are lots of ways to choose the color. Note that if you wander to a different Photoshop window that's visible behind the color chooser, you get an eye dropper so that you can pick up color from any image you have open.)

Liss wrote:

p.s. i'm using photoshop 6.0, FYI

In which case, these things are probably called "Layer Effects" rather than "Layer Style."

Liss wrote:

p.s.s. one more question. how did you get sheba to stand in the same position for all the pics?

Those images are from Body Shop.

I made all four of variations on the garment first. Then I got her in a pose I liked in Body Shop, and chose each top in sequence, making screen shots as I went.

I used whichever key shows or hides the tool palettes in between screen shots so that I could pick a different top. She didn't move in between outfits.

I pasted all the screen shots into the same Photoshop file, creating a new layer for each. Then I cropped the whole thing and used the eyedropper to select and mask out the white background. At that point She was still centered in the frame, so I just dragged the layers sideways to spread out the images.

I added a separate background layer, filled it with white, and then fiddled with noise and stuff to get a nice pattern.

To create the shadows, I duplicated one of the Shebas, selected Her image area, filled with black, Gaussian blur, reduce opacity.

I duplicated the shadow to get a copy of it for each of the four poses and changed their order so that each shadow was immediately under its respective Sheba, casting a shadow on the next one behind her.

I applied and removed all the layer masks before scaling the image to 512x384. That's because sometimes the masks don't scale precisely the same as the image they are masking. In this case, when I attempted to scale the mask with the image, a half-pixel difference caused a white line to appear around Sheba's images. (Normally I like to preserve layer masks but that it's not likely that I'll ever want to edit the masks for that preview image again.)

Liss wrote:

first attempt

Beautiful! Pink looks great on that model!

Why did you put the image on Photo Bucket instead on just putting it on your site?

Tip: With Web Folders, NetDrive, or Web Drive, you can save an image directly from Photoshop to your site. Just Save as... and find your site in Windows Explorer window that comes up.

In Photoshop, if you want to make a transparent GIF, use "Save for web..."

Liss wrote:

how do i insert a link? i'm forum-link challenged.

(url=http://wytchsbrew.simshost.com/dl/FILENAME.zip)(img)http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/Faedra/pinklayertop.gif(/img)(/url)

Replace the (parentheses) with [square brackets].