How to Make Skins for The Sims
Part 2: Finding the Right Mesh

"It looks like my beautiful toreador is wearing a skin-tight outfit with a little open vest and low heels, and she has an obviously fit physique. Now all I need is a body mesh that matches.

"Finding a mesh that matches the outfit is really important. It can be really disheartening when I download a skin only to find that it doesn't have the right body shape underneath. The mesh, defined by the CMX and SKN files, is the shape of the body.

"In the very first skin pack that Maxis released, I found a nice body shape named B013 that comes with a jacket that's just right. Unfortunately, the pants are all wrong. The Maxis character is wearing jeans with a pretty big cuff, and that would make my lovely toreador's ankles look awful!

Click on the image to download Archive includes B970 body mesh by Richard R. Ward, body texture in 3 skin tones, UVMap, and readme file Distributed with permission from RRW

"But I'm in luck! Look who I found among Richard R. Ward's custom bodies at The Wage of Sim! She's perfect!

"Richard presents a variation on the Marvel comic book character, Rogue, with his mesh. It looks really good, but for my purposes here what I'm really interested in is the mesh rather than texture that covers it.

The Wage of Sim is closed now, but with Richard's kind permission, I can offer his original file for download here. Click on the picture at the right to download it.

"With this body, Richard grafted the torso from B013 onto the fit female's B300 nude body shape. Her shoes are just painted on over bare feet, so they might be the best representation that I can get of the toreador's unnaturally tiny feet. The B013 upper torso is very chesty, as any self-respecting pin-up gal would be! There's nothing I can do about the toreador's waist being down around her belly button -- a sim built like that would look really funny -- but other than that, considering how tight those toreador pants look, this is just the body shape I want!

"Now that I've picked a body mesh, I want to learn about that mesh before I start working on the skin. To do that, I need to look at the UV map."