I want to recolor the Stack 'em High Display with some great t-shirts I found. Easy, right? Open GIMP, a little color adjustment, some cut and paste of designs, and done!

Except not, because I discovered that the display is a little lazy about textures. There are four shirts in the display, shown in eleven stacks of two. The flipping effects occurs from one side of the display to the other. Images shown correctly on one side are flipped horizontally on the other side. The mirror effect occurs within a stack. Any portion of the image that's visible on the bottom shirt is the mirror of the image on the top shirt, as though a flipped shirt has been folded and placed upside down under the top shirt.

The front of the display:


The back of the display:


The texture from the package file:


I've played with the mesh and the UV maps, but I don't know enough about how things work to know what needs changing, or if it's possible. I'd appreciate any pointers in the right direction. And if anyone can explain why it can't be done, I'd appreciate that, too. I don't mind banging my head against a wall, but only if there's a chance the wall will break at some point.

Thanks!

It's fully possible to fix this, but probably a bit finnicky because you'd have to know where to fix the mesh, since it's not broken everywhere. The problem parts of the mesh would need to be mirror-flipped, or the UVs would need to.

Whether you'd want a standalone mesh or a default replacement would probably depend on if you have mods or other replacements that uses this mesh.

Had a go at playing around with the mesh to see what would be easiest or what would look best, and depending on program used, if you have Milkshape, definitely get Cat's UV flip tool. Mark the cloth pile you want to fix (if there's two identical ones that need fixing, you can mark both at the same time), open the UV screen, deselect the loose edge parts, and flip the rest using Cat's flip tool from the Vertex menu (horizontal or vertical depending on what works best). You shouldn't have to do other edits in the UV screen than the flips.

Use your texture on the mesh as a guide, so you see where it needs fixing (the writing/designs makes it easier). There's one with the rainbow stripes that also needs flipping - you can see it on the shadow in the neck area.

I tried to flip a few meshes just to see, but they have a slight rotation (and it's always extra work to flip meshes in Milkshape if you don't want even more work aligning/fixing normals after - Cat's mesh flip can sometimes be of help since it doesn't corrupt the normals, but it depends on the mesh)

https://modthesims.info/download.php?t=405374 <-- cat's flip tool
https://modthesims.info/d/405899/mi...esh-mirror.html - mesh mirror

Thanks! I am using Milkshape. I've downloaded the plugins. I tried separating the shirts--definitely fidgety. And the UV map was a mess, and that's when I realized I needed help.

I hadn't noticed the shadow. I also hadn't noticed until just now that the flipping on the fourth shirt is on the opposite side of the table from the rest.

I don't have any mods or replacements for the display. I looked to see if someone else had fixed it already, but Google thinks I'm looking for Sims 2 execution stacking. A default replacement makes sense for me. If I can get this working and looking good (big if), I might submit it for upload, in case someone else can use it, but they might prefer a standalone.

Let me know if you have any issues (just post here - I usually check for new posts when I'm on).

Could of course upload a fixed mesh, but since you were already trying to figure it out, I thought you might want to try on your own. Can be nice to learn a couple new things you can use for other projects later

Oh, I definitely want to try on my own! Honestly, I haven't done much in the way of meshing or UV mapping. I know I had Milkshape on an older computer, but I don't remember what I was doing with it. Okay, really honestly, I just did Moune's Talking Table tutorial earlier this week. But I'm the person whose first knitting project was a faux cable sweater instead of a scarf, because I needed a sweater. But I was also smart enough to ask for help at the yarn store, so I will definitely let you know about issues.

Progress! I've flipped the tops of the stacks as needed. I've also fixed the bottom shirt in the stacks with the round design. I'm having trouble figuring out which vertices or faces to select to flip the rest. Any hints?

They seem to be the right way around now, so I'm not sure if you need to do any more flipping/editing. Is there anything in particular you have in mind?

If it's the mirror effect on the bottom shirts you're thinking about, that would most likely need a bit more work. Probably the best you can do is to flip the UVs of the underside so they mirror like shirts lying on top of each other and not like a mirror effect.

The text on the white shirt is upside down on the bottom shirt. I can't seem to find the right points to flip it. I may have to adjust the design.

Didn't see the issue about the mirrored text first. Added a picture to my post above on how to kind of fix it. It's a bit fiddly, and it doesn't look like it will give a perfect result, as it seems the shirts are mapped to work as single colored and not with writing. That particular area practically screams for a remap.

That part of the sweater is technically separated, so it should be simple enough to mark. There's a "trick" in Milkshape to how you know when you've marked this particular area properly - you should be able to move it away from the rest of the mesh without anything following (but Ctrl+Z to get it back in place!). If you can, you've got the right area. I had an illustration somewhere, but not sure where it went (if you need one I'll go looking).

Thanks! That picture will help. I think I know what you mean about moving the selection. I'll play with it some more.

I understand now why I've only ever seen recolors of the stand itself.

I played around with a simple(ish) remap of that part, and it looked a bit better, but the problem there is that you'd have to remap all the pieces separately so it's going to take a bit of time. The result is much better, though. And Milkshape isn't too crappy so you can have a go with it (the default "remap" button does a fair job for once, as long as you have the parts for each sweater "group" selected.

Fair bit of warning that it is quite fiddly and if you're not used to messing about with the UV tools in Milkshape it's probably going to be a bit frustrating.

Added a picture to compare - The pink shirt shows the first edit, where you can see there's a lot of texture "bleed" at the bottom. The original UVs are mapped kind of in a half cylinder, so flipping the map flips the map in on itself. There's a "cutoff" that doesn't make this too visible on the mirrored map, but it's very visible with the flip.

The shirt to the left is with the new UV edit where I marked the tiny pieces on the identical shirts, let Milkshape stretch out the UVs (remap, mine was set to "front"), overlayed them, shrunk down so they fit over the original area, and flipped the ones that needed this with Cat's UVflip.

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There's been a lot of questionable UVmapping ingame, that's for sure... I mean, some of it looks fine as-is, but if you want to put anything but simple colors on it, good luck

Oh! Thing I forgot to ask. I want to make this recolorable, but I can't seem to find the tutorial that explains how.

I made a clone of the item earlier, and it does appear to have two MMATs (which is the main recolorable subset resource), and there appears to be several original recolors, so I'm fairly sure the item already has two subsets and is recolorable. Making a clone should be enough to make it recolorable.

For some items you need the CEP installed to have the clone enabled for recoloring.

If you want to add a subset or have one subset and want to add a second recolorable subset (you can only have two recolorable ones, but you can have more non-recolorable ones), here's a tutorial:
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=103379

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By the way, tested the striped shirts that come with the table, and they look better with the original mapping. Making a separate mesh for custom recolors with the table part repo'd to the H&M table (and the shirts as separately recolorable) is perhaps the way to go. That way you can keep any recolors you have for the old table, the new one gets all the table wood recolors from the old one, but the shirts can be recolored however you want them.

Here's a couple tutorials on how to do that:
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=229452
https://hugelunatic.com/repository-technique/

CEP is installed. It's one of those "can't do without" things. The original works as it should. Two rows, one for the stand, one for the shirts. It picks up the recolors for my clone. But my clone gets the "this object is not designable" message. My tutorial table, which is only one subset, is fine. (It looks like a flatpack table with randomly drilled holes for the legs, but it works.) I'm not sure what I missed.

1. SimPE: Clone the display, with new model name. Do the cat description thing. Commit. Do the price change thing. Commit. Save. Export the mesh for the clothes, ignoring the table.
2. Milkshape: Do the flipping things, export the mesh.
3. SimPE: Import the mesh, replace, commit, fix integrity, click ok in scenegraph. Save. Use the hash generator to get a GUID for the primary OBJD, increment it by one for the second OBJD and by two for the third OBJD. Commit, save. Texture is already there, for both subsets.
4. Copy the package to the Downloads subfolder I made for my packages. Start the game. Load lot, place new display, choose design tool, click on new display, get "this object is not designable" message.

(I have this vague recollection of doing meshy stuff before the "get GUID" went down, but I have no record of any GUIDs I might have used.)

1+2) When you replace the mesh, make sure you keep the mesh group names. If you change them, the file won't recognize the mesh. In your case, the mesh group names are "table" and "clothes" (plus all the "shadow" names, if you're keeping those).

If you give a new internal name directly after cloning, that's the same as "fix integrity", so you don't have to do that step again unless you're adding a MMAT or something else that needs this step (in which case you should not change the name, just click "ok"). You don't have to do it after changing the mesh or editing textures.

3) Primary OBJD is the one without a number , make sure that's the one you tick "Update all MMATs" for and then do "update". Don't do that step for the two others. The MMATs need to have the same GUID (objectGUID value) as the primary OBJD to work.

Yes! Thank you! It works now.

Thanks also for the pic of your remap. I'm not unhappy with the current version, but I can definitely see the difference if I've got both tables side-by-side. I'll probably go on playing with it.

I could remesh it with 22 identical shirts stacked by a Sim with neat and serious cranked up all the way, but that probably wouldn't actually look that good in the game.

You don't need 22 identical shirts. The UVmap for the front part was just for the bottom part of the shirts, and you can do them for each group of shirt stacks (all the black, all the pink, all the white...). I didn't do anything (well, apart from the original flip) to the top part.

The original shirts were a bit of a mess, with mirroring going on all over the place...

I'll just fix the bottom part for each group.

Sometimes I make things harder than they have to be. I actually did regroup all the shirts separately before running for help. I learned a lot doing that, just not how to fix the initial problem.

I wish to present the new Zecutine Stack 'em High Specialty T-Shirt Display, remapped with the kind assistance of simmer22.

Front of display/back of mesh:


Back of display/front of mesh:


Look!!! No weird flips or reflections!


Thank you for your help.

Of course, now I have to do recolors.

Looks good

A single recolor--it works! (Well, the colors do; haven't had a Sim in the shop yet.)

Inside the (actually unfinished) shop:


On the lawn of the same unfinished shop:


The shirts came from 2fingerswhiskey. I've matched the colors and designs for this set as best I can. So much content, so few pixels!

Thanks again for your help, simmer22.

Looks great - thanks for using my shirt textures! I'm glad you got the problem fixed!

:-) I'm glad you like it. The shirts are definitely worth displaying.