Knee-Length Summer Skirts

The kids will get a sunburn if they keep running around in mini skirts all summer!


Update/Fix 2015-07-10: When making a new top for girls, I noticed two issues with the top edge of this skirt that I couldn’t see before (all the tops that I had until yesterday were covering up that edge) ‒ the top shadow was broken resulting in those dreaded black splotches, and if one looks closely it also becomes apparent that the texture is a little bit too large/high at the top (it goes over the edge, covering up the self shadow). The shadow issue is fixed, please redownload! I also added screenshots that show both the bork and the fix. For the textures it’ll be a little while until I fix them, since that means editing/re-saving all the textures





So I made them a longer skirt. It comes in 29 colours/patterns, is tested to be reasonably playground-proof (see screenshots) and optionally available for boys too (see separate upload). Available in Everyday and Party, and enabled for townies as well.

The bone assignments are a bit different from Maxis because I thought those were animating too stiff for this kind of skirt (also, have you ever seen a sim in a Maxis pencil skirt make situps? It is not pretty .. ). See screenshots; I tested quite thoroughly I hope ‒ there is still a bit of knee-clipping in some extreme positions, like when they climb onto the monkey bars, but that’s only for a very short moment, and some knee disconnection when you peek under their skirts on the monkey bar. Walking and sitting and such should be working fine though; I tested with thin/middle/fat kids and haven’t seen any big issues with that.

Also, with all settings on Low and in Laptop mode I’m seeing a stray face poking out from the belly in some positions (like on the monkey bars) ‒ I haven’t seen it during more generic animations but I don’t normally play in Laptop mode, so I can’t really tell how much of an issue it is. I probably can’t do much about it anyway because the belly is exactly the part that I haven’t changed from the original skirt at all.



Polygon Counts:

LOD0: 624V/890F
LOD1: 470V/626F
LOD2: 283V/320F
LOD3: 209V/172F

This is a little less than the Maxis mini skirt.


Additional Credits:

Some of the flower patterns are based on patterns from http://pixeledpaper.deviantart.com (CC BY-NC-SA). The white CAS background is by lumialover; the sims are wearing short hairs from here and here and Helianthea’s Super Bland Comic Eyes (defaults).


TS4CASTools, Paint.net, Milkshape + Cat’s Normal Smoother, s4pe0.3a.