Help with clothing meshes (newbie)

[charmander]

Hi there everyone. A while ago I started making mesh edits for sims 3, and have followed the tutorials on creating pregnant morphs and doing "scale and move" edits.

I'd like to move the next step up and do something a bit more ambitious. I really want to make some of the clothing from Dragon Age. Like the mage robes (http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l8elqwb3wi1qce0j1o1_400.jpg) or the templar armour (http://www.artbylowis.com/arts/3d/armor_templar.jpg)
I think the templar one might be a bit tricky but the mage robes should be rather simple, i think?

Anyway, the tutorials i followed were the meshing for dummies, and quick meshing.
i looked at a couple of other tutorials but they all said they wouldnt teach me how to mesh objects? I did look at the frankensteining one and I might try that. but i would like to obtain skills that will help me make the dragon age stuff, and i dont know if that will?

also i have some questions -

is scale and move the only way to change/edit a mesh and what if i can't find the suitable parts to frankenstein something?

any suggestions on how to specifically create the items in the pictures would be great too.

Thanks :)

[fox_demon_princess]

the scale and move method is not the only way to edit a mesh. i found just moving certain parts will get the look i'm looking for. now i am sorry i can't help you with making your Dragon age clothing. i too am a newbie at meshing and creating clothes. If you can't a suitable part for your mesh look for something that is close and move things around to make it look the way you want. i hope this helps and the best of luck to you.

[robokitty]

The mage robes look fairly doable to me.

I think I followed this tutorial way back when I made a frankenstein mesh. Post #13 has instructions for adult meshes rather than toddlers.
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=397088

Also, I haven't used this tool before, but it looks like it could help streamline this process if you're adding vertices to a mesh rather than frankensteining. (Maybe Cmar can tell you more)
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=442393

If you want your mage robes to similar but not exactly like the DA robes, then I think frankensteining with some minor scale adjustments could work. If you want your mage robes *exactly* like the DA robes, then you'd need to learn some more general meshing techniques like extrude, subdividing faces, and creating/adjusting UV maps. And you probably *don't* want to use Milkshape for that. Blender may work instead.

[charmander]

I have both blender and milkshape, but most of the tutorials for sims 3 stuff are for milkshape. I would prefer to use blender.

I may do a frankenstein version first but i would like to learn the other stuff anyway so I can make other things. so should i just search for general tutorials for blender and then use that to edit an existing mesh for sims 3? the process should be the same, right?

[CmarNYC]

As far as I know, procedures for working with Blender should be the same as long as the Blender import/export plugins work right. Milkshape and Blender basically do the same functions.

The tool I wrote that Robokitty linked you to may be helpful, but only if you use CTU - I never got it working for TSRW. What it does is update the morph meshes to match a base mesh when you've added or removed vertices. It's most useful for frankensteining since you can use pieces from different meshes, update the morphs, and group the pieces together for the base mesh and the morphs. If I ever get back to it, I'll fix the TSRW part and do a tutorial.

[robokitty]

Frankensteining first is probably best because it'll give you a chance to look at how all the vertices are assigned to different bones without having to assign any yourself. If you create any new vertices with more advanced meshing, then you'll have to check the surrounding vertices for their bone assignments and use that to guide your new bone assignments. When you work on the mesh in Blender, make sure that the bone assignments have all been imported before you start. It could save you a lot of headache later on. (I haven't needed to do bone assignments in Blender yet, so I can't give any more specific instructions aside from the general concept.)