Dress-projecting bottom separates (TSW brocades), part one of two

This is part one of two.

These dresses take the shape of the tops they're projected onto, changing sleeve, bust, and waist. To take full advantage of them, you'll need some mostly-transparent tops. If you don't already have such things handy, there's a set covering the range 34A-34De available at http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=219597 .

Update Feb 17 2007: corrected two alphas in CONTAINS_ALPHA_BMPs_ONLY_Exemplars.zip , and added an example with a lower neckline.
Update Apr 26 2007: added long-sleeved alphas to CONTAINS_ALPHA_BMPs_ONLY_Exemplars.zip .


DESIGN/USE NOTES:

By the time one adds enough noise to a texture to make it look like fabric, the resulting file is often only poorly compressible. "The same thing, but on mesh X" wastes space and bandwidth... lots of it, and bandwidth still isn't cheap. Ergo, I've set these textures up such that they may be moved to any of the common skirt length meshes without modification-- specifically, the Mr. Bill miniskirt, the booted and smooth-calf "Short" meshes, and the just-over-the-knee "Tight" mesh-- while still yielding not-unreasonably shadowed/highlighted clothing.

If these happen to be on the mesh you want them on, well and good-- but my assumption is you'll be using BodyShop to fit these onto the specific hips/hem/calf mesh you desire. To speed matters, the archive CONTAINS_ALPHA_BMPs_ONLY_Exemplars.zip contains sample alphas compatible with these textures. The "Mom" alphas are for dresses to be projected onto a "Mom shirt" top mesh (yielding a thick waist and restrained bust); they handle the collar folds and forearm bulges gracefully. The "Tee" alphas are for dresses to be projected onto a tee shirt top mesh; they handle the upper arm sleeves gracefully. Either one may be projected onto a skintight. (In the garments themselves, the tooltips contain an M or T to help make it clear which shape they're throwing.) Of course, with a bitmap editor, you can customize the alpha to individualize as you like-- the shoes, sleeves, and necklines probably aren't precisely what you want, anyway.

As distributed, these result in a "modesty cap" no darker than the skirt itself. You may want to darken it.

Regarding clothing suites: with these textures, there will at least be a fair chance a quick port to a top separate, a high-hemlined single-mesh dress, a swimsuit, or what have you using the Maxis-standard alpha file will yield a usable garment-- nearly all of each texture file is actual texture, with shadows and smooth noise reasonably likely not to seam too badly along the front-back joins. Unfortunately, longer dresses are more problematic-- since to get the boots/shoes right, these darken and change texture towards the bottom.

The distributed tee alphas go hog-wild spraying texture over the top, including places not ordinarily thought of as being part of a tee shirt mapping in the first place. This to help prevent cracks appearing at certain zooms, something certain of the Maxis alphas tend to suffer.


GREATER CONTEXT:

Meshes, Warlokk: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=155625
Mesh, Mr. Bill 34" hips miniskirt: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=43424

These specific dresses came about as a result of my interest in alkaloid's Natural Redhead Project at
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=203048 , and indeed the color starting points are the same as the "colors for `autumns'" stuff I've done recently. I'm reluctant to declare they're part of the project, though-- the colors are a long way away from their starting points, and multicolored brocades like this are not merely the sum of their parts. (Indeed, the "purple" dress in the second post is actually a composite of shades of yellow and blue that BLEND to 0x332947.) At any rate, I have no idea whether a color consultant would call these garments flattering to autumns or not. If alkaloid links to them, they're part of the project; otherwise, not.

Please do not upload this stuff or anything derived from it to pay sites.