WARNING: You may consider this picture NSFW! Nothing actually indecent, but quite revealing.

I have a problem making a separate bottom version of these metallic male shorts by Newsea. The Sim on the right is wearing the original full body adult male version by Newsea.
The two on the left (one teen, one adult) are wearing separate bottom versions of them that I've made (or tried to make) myself. For the purpose of illustrating the problem, I've paired them with nude tops. The problem is that brown band above the waistband of the shorts. I do conversions like this all the time, and I've not seen this problem before. To make the separates I use the Full Invisible Clothe Set by Drachenfels ("Drachis" in tooltips) on Sexy Sims. This gives me access to all the Maxis nude meshes. I used the textures from the Newsea shorts with them. This method has worked well for me for a lot of other skin-tight clothing.

Two possible clues to what is going on occur to me:
1) The Newsea original uses a bumpmap, but the Drachenfels nude bottom doesn't have one. I've seen a couple of tutorials on adding a bumpmap to an outfit that doesn't have one, so I think I should be able to do this, especially as the Drachenfels texture uses a Maxis mesh.
2) The Newsea shorts don't use the original Maxis male full body mesh, but use a slightly slimmer mesh of their own. I'm not sure I'm able to deal with this myself - I suppose I'd have to edit the Newsea full body mesh in Milkshape to make a bottom mesh out of it, and I've never done anything like that.

Can anyone suggest a way for me to get rid of these ugly brown bands? I recall seeing a tutorial somewhere on MTS about removing the black line at the waist that you sometimes get when using separates, and I think this may a related issue, but I can't find that tutorial now when I look for it.

I suppose this properly belongs in the creation sections, but I feel a bit lost there. I don't really think of myself as a Body Shop creator -- more of just a tweaker! If anybody can point me to tutorials that might help, I'd be most grateful.

TBH I stopped using Familyfunds a long time ago, it's too buggy. I use Pescado's Money Order and just get them to send money to a random townie if I want it to go nowhere, and Cyjon's Loan Jar (and then just delete the jar if you don't want them to pay it back) to add money.

I wasn't making the funds negative, I was subtracting funds. Regardless, it just doesn't work at all with the Peterson household, I can't add, subtract or set a fixed amount.

Your alpha isn't lined up with the texture. It will be because you aren't using the same mesh as the original underwear. I'd imagine that just above the part of the texture that's supposed to show is a gold bucketfill and that's showing up because the alpha is set too high. The bottoms of the undies are also cut off because of this. Move your alpha down.

Is there a way to set a sim as the Mr. Big/Diva or is it like an NPC generation thing?

You don't use familyfunds to add or subtract an amount. You just type "family funds $whatever" and it sets family funds to that exact amount. If you put a negative number there, you're telling the game to set family funds to a negative number, which is not allowed.

I don't like to disagree with someone as knowledgeable as kestrellyn, but I've been regularly using the FamilyFunds cheat for years, and it can be used either way: either with just a number, in which case it sets the named family's funds to that amount, or putting a plus or minus sign before the number, in which case it increases or decreases their funds by the amount specified.

The old modthesims Sims wiki:
'familyFunds "[familyname]" [amount]

Sets the chosen family's funds to the given level. Addition and subtraction of the desired amount is achieved by placing + or - before the amount. If the family name doesn't have a space in it, you can omit the "quotes." If there are two or more families with the same family name in one neighborhood, only the most recently founded family will be affected by the cheat.'

The "Fandom" Sims Wiki:
'familyFunds [family last name] [number]

Sets the funds of the specified household. Add + or - before the number to add or subtract the number typed. If more than one household has the same family name, it will only affect whichever one has most recently been added to the Neighborhood. Note: The maximum amount of Simoleons a household can have is 9,999,999.'

I use it regularly with the plus sign so that larger CAS households can afford to buy the house I intend for them. I don't like doing things to my Sims that they won't like, so I've only used it with the minus sign once; so that Chandler Jackson in New Desconia could only afford a basic hut to live in, rather than a fully fledged house, I reduced his funds from §20,000 by §12,000 to §8,000. It worked with no problems. Fortunately for me, Chandler is a fully paid-up member of the "We woz poor but we woz happy" brigade, and he's never complained about having to work harder than any of the other Sims in his neighbourhood.




Thanks a million! That fixed the problem. If I'd looked at the Texture Images in SimPE, I might have spotted what was wrong.

It looks like I may still have a small issue with quality (which doesn't really show in this picture) so I may try remaking them in Body Shop.

Though you're not completely wrong @kestrellyn - I definitely remember familyFunds sometimes (not always) indeed having problems with the addition and subtraction. In those cases, I just use the cheat without +/- in order to set the amount to the sum I came up with in my head.

It's the allmenus 'money' cheat that lets you use addition and subtraction, not familyFunds. It only works when the household is loaded.

Had experience with it on clothes myself. If you open it in Photoshop and paste the texture over the alpha and make the top one 50% transparent, then you can see where it's badly aligned and fix it.

That blue top really does look awful with it lol. Maxis waistline.

This really a supplementary question to my last one. Although the problem doesn't show in the in-game picture in my last post, I noticed a significant loss of quality in those outfits that I altered. This higher definition picture shows the issue better:


The boy on the right in the grey crop top is wearing the version of the shorts with the issue. These were made by editing the previously exported file in SimPE, selecting the texture image, right-clicking on it and selecting Import Alpha Channel. As you can see, his shorts and shoes are a little darker than the other boy's. and there's a lot of distortion around his groin. The shorts worn by the boy on the left on the other hand -- the boy with the red crop top (by Charity -- Thanks!) were a new export from Body Shop to the game. Both boys' shorts use the same textures. I would have thought that importing the alpha channel in SimPE, would give the same result as a fresh export from Body Shop to the game, but clearly it doesn't work that way. I have a vague memory from the distant past, that I should be using some NVIDIA utilities rather than SimPE's Import and Export actions. But I haven't a clue how to do that. Could anyone explain to me what's going on?


FamilyFunds does work with the plus sign! :







Well, it certainly works in my game! I use it frequently!

Good stuff, Andrew. I do recall using FamilyFunds to add or subtract funds. I even done it while in a household.

I've experimented a bit with this, and it seems importing the alpha channel that way downgrades the quality (similar to DXT1 or regular "Import"). When I'm replacing a texture that uses the alpha channel with SimPE, I replace the whole texture, using DXT5 (for best result with the alpha channel, especially the edges). Bodyshop also works, but you may notice a slight quality loss there, too. DXT3/5 has a slight quality loss, but less than DXT1 or "Import", and most of the time it's not enough to notice ingame (and if it is noticeable, it's likely the texture wasn't the best quality).

However, the more you extract and edit a texture, the more quality loss you can expect (extract from one already made, make into file, extract from that file, edit, make new file, etc.). If a texture goes a few rounds through Bodyshop and/or SimPE, there is going to be some visible pixellation in the end. If at all possible, use the least edited texture for your project, and not one that's gone through Bodyshop/SimPE a few times.

Open the texture file in SimPE and right-click on the image and choose Build DXT to get the different DXT options.

IIRC, DXT3 is preferable where there is no alpha and DXT5 is preferable where there is an alpha channel.

The wiki says you can add/subtract amounts with familyfunds, I think I have done so in the past but I can try again when I have my computer back to see. Regardless, this doesn't address the fact that attempting to set it to a specific amount instead of adding or subtracting still doesn't work specifically with that household. It works everywhere else.

There might be some issue like a non-breaking space with the family name, or one of the hidden townie/npc households has the same name. As mentioned, the allmenus 'money' cheat will work around this. Or SimPE.

Why are you editing it in SimPE at all? Why don't you just use Bodyshop?

SimPE gives better textures.

The idea was so that Sims who already have an outfit, would have it upgraded to the corrected version. Making a new export to the game from Body Shop, adds an new item of clothing to the game, meaning I have to get each Sim wearing the old version (including townies) to buy the new one, before I delete the old one. I'll probably use Christianlov's Gussy Up, so they don't actually have to pay for the corrected version.

It won't really matter in this case, as I only did that separate conversion at the beginning of June, so I think there's only one Sim wearing those separate gold shorts, but I can think of some other clothes I'd like to update/correct (like some of my tie-side white briefs), where there must be dozens of Sims with them in their wardrobes. Even some straight boys in my game wear them!

I think it looks much better with Andrew's pale blue shorts.
Andrew thinks so too!


I'm afraid I don't really understand the stuff about DXT1/DXT3/DXT5. I don't know what they are. Could somebody please explain them to me, or point me to somewhere where it's explained? Thanks in anticipation.

Explanations on the difference:
https://episims.tumblr.com/post/743...-dxt1-dxt3-dxt5
https://pforestsims.tumblr.com/post...dyshop-vs-simpe

Enabling DDS + links:
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/moo...impe-t1197.html

Old but quick tutorial on how to replace a texture (disregard that it's shown for a default file, essentially it's step 4 to 6)
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/moo...simpe-t526.html

The S3 Texture formats differ in transparency, or level at which pixels can be seen through.
DXT1 - no transparency, basic format
DXT2 - 4-bit direct transprancy giving 16 shades, color is premultiplie by alpha, rarely used
DXT3 - 4-bit direct transprancy giving 16 shades, not premultiplied
DXT4 - gradient transparency with a similar encoding to color, color is premultiplie by alpha, rarely used
DXT5 - gradient transparency with a similar encoding to color, not premultiplied

These codes are unfortunately named, giving an impression that the formats get progressively better as the number incraeases.

The compression works by splitting the image into 4 by 4 blocks, picking two most representative colors and allocating the remainder on a gradient between them. There is some search involved in choosing the two colors, which is why there is a quality setting in good software like Nvidia Texture Tools. Some free software produces poor quality images, and gives a green tint. You usually get better results by directly importing a file produced by Nvidia T exture Tools. Artifacts appear where 3 or more colors meet, for example a road sign where black, red and white come together at corners.

Premultiplication makes the color darker with lower opacity values. Because it makes compression work worse with black around the edges, it is not used, and you can forget about them. It makes other forms of compression work better.

With DXT1 there is a form of single step transparency, which reduces the color quality. DXT3 works better for hard cutouts, and DXT5 works better for smooth gradients.

Repeatedly encoding textures will reduce their quality. It is also important to use good software that doesn't impart a color tint when opening a texture for editing.

It also gives much higher file sizes though.



I thought that you were making a new separate, so I presumed that noone would be wearing it already.

And agree to disagree lol. I think that top looks awful not tucked in properly.

It's because changing the texture decompresses the changed resource (TXTR). You'll have to compress the file again, and it should go back to roughly the same size it was (depending on the texture/quality).

It didn't for me!! Compare the shorts on the two boys in my post #34036 above. The one made by a fresh export from Body Shop is much better. (Though it does seem I could do better in SimPE if I used DXT3/DXT5 instead of importing the Alpha channel.)



It was quite a new separate, originally made on 1st June, but I'd already made one adult wearing it. And, since I'd "townified" the adult and teen versions with shoes, there was a faint chance some else might pick up the outfit.


But Andrew wants to show off his bare midriff. He thinks it's one of his best features!

Well other things matter too, old meshes (I am assuming an old mesh) could be badly mapped. Anything old was made on old graphic cards where we didn't see things as clearly vs new cards that show up every crease, shading and flaw. Somethings can't be made to look uncrunchy.