How would i add sleeves to a mesh? And smooth out the sharp coners?

[The Regal Sim]

Hi everyone! Ok so i recently started on an 18th century dress mesh for TS3, and the dress i cloned to make it didn't have sleeves on it. Is there a way i could add sleeves to it? Also the dress is very wide, because back in the 18th century women wore a hoop skirt called a pannier or side hood it was in the shape of an oval thus the hoop of the skirt comes out wide. It worked out quite well with the width i wanted but there seems to be some sharp corners on the sides take a look here at these picture's http://thumbs2.modthesims.info/img/5/1/9/3/1/3/8/MTS_TDC95-1277818-1.JPG http://thumbs2.modthesims.info/img/5/1/9/3/1/3/8/MTS_TDC95-1277819-2.JPG

the type of sleeves i'd love to add is this http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e0/Pompadour_.jpg but since that looks impossible i would also be willing to do a sleeve that goes to the wrist with lace that pops out just a little like at the end of this one [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/Batoni_lady_mary_fox.jpg/428px-Batoni_lady_mary_fox.jpg or elbow like this http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Andreas_Moeller_001.jpg IS this possible? :)

And here is an example of a pannier http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Stays_and_hoops.png/464px-Stays_and_hoops.png

[BloomsBase]

You had autosmooth on(groups tab) when you started working on the mesh.
Always turn it off before importing ant CAS related stuff.

You best start over as fixing this mesh is alot of work.

Adding sleeves should give no problems:
http://www.modthesims.info/showpost.php?p=3128095&postcount=7

[whiterider]

You can also make sleeves by just moving the arm vertices - select them a row at a time and scale up to make the sleeve a bit wider than a normal arm, and do it selectively so the sleeve ends up straight rather than lumpy like an arm; then add whatever details you like. As an alternative to frankensteining, which will also work well. :)

As for the skirt - honestly, the easiest thing might be to create a cylinder with lots of slices and make the skirt from that, instead of trying to manipulate the EA skirt. You would have to do bone assignments and mapping from scratch, but I'm not convinced the EA skirt will have anywhere near enough faces to get a smooth effect.

You've picked a hell of a project for a beginner, assuming you're a beginner. ;)

[The Regal Sim]

Heh I know :p but like they say if you want something right do it yourself. I think I could try the sleeves like you said making the arm a little wider, could I add lace to the end of them by using a 2D design in like the alpha?

So your recommending basically starting the skirt over with a shape like a cylinder? I could easily work with that :) but just wondering the first reply I got wasn't clear is there a tool or something I can use the smooth the corners?

Yeah I'm new to meshing, though I find it easy, I have never done any bone assignments, is it hard? I also hate UV mapping but I just got pro the other day is it easyer to work with? The old free UV mapper is so annoying.

Thanks for helping :)

[Elexis]

Oh my, you will find a lot more "fun" when you will start with the bones :D

There are no auto tools for fixing the smooth problem, you will need to select the specific mesh parts face by face and use Align Normals on them. Sounds easy, but the hardest thing is to know which faces should be aligned together and which not, this will require a lot of practice and time to get right.

Also, you won't have much use from all the UV mapping programs, since clothing in Sims 3 should be mapped strictly in it's place like most of the EA meshes are mapped. Basically, you can't map something wherever you like, you need to keep the standard "placement limits" for tops, bottoms, outfits and shoes (otherwise you will get texture overlapping issues with the skintone another CAS parts).

The easiest way to make custom clothing mesh is to modify the existing EA mesh, it will give you limited possibilities, but you will spend less time making something that way.
I know that sometimes the temptation to add totally custom mesh details to the clothing mesh is present, but remember that you shouldn't do that as your first clothing mesh. The bones will be probably the most difficult part, because you will need to assign every little vertex properly, otherwise it won't be animating nice in game.

And the last, but not least important thing - each clothing mesh needs to have 3 morphs (fat, thin, thick), which should be made the same way you did your base mesh. You can use the Morph Matcher, but it won't give you the best results on custom meshes.

[BloomsBase]

better use a existing dress and sleeves and frenkenstein all together.
Believe me, you do not want to reassigne a whole dress with new boneassignements, that is a huge ammount of work.

[Robodl95]

Maybe you could use one of Liana's meshes, she has a poofy dress close to what you want. http://www.lianasims3.net/meshes.php?displ=f&gen=&age=&artist=all&outfit=1&top=1&bottom=1&order=Date&direction=Descending&pages=16&seite=16