Rogues' Gallery Medieval Men's Separates

[hat_plays_sims]

So I've had some ladies' separates done for ages, and I've always meant to do the men's stuff, too... but I kept putting it off, because I felt like I needed to get all the foundation pieces together-- enough pieces that, if you watch your colors, your Sims can just sort of go through and strip.

I finally got to that point, so I finally got to make some menswear!




If you've downloaded my Medieval goodies before, you've heard long, long spiels about color actions and dye and classes. Because there's not really a whole heck of a lot to say here besides, "Separates! They work!" I'm going to rehash that a little bit.

Effectively, the more saturated the color, the more expensive the dye and thus the fabric. Good clear reds were sought after, and that tyrian purple the books go on about is actually closer to Red Wine than Purple Haze. If you've fallen in love with Denim and Royal Blue, you should know there's no natural dye that produces those colors... but there were paint pigments and Medieval artists loved to use them for fabric. If those dyes had existed, they would have been eagerly used.

Black is an odd one; until Europe got a colonialist foothold into the New World, the most common way of making black dye was with iron filings and walnut shells. It worked, it produced black cloth, but the acidity of the dye was so potent that inside of a few years, any garment made with the black fabric would fall apart. (In an age where you sewed everything by hand and wore clothes until they wore out, then cut them down and made clothes for your kids, disintegrating fabric was no little thing.) The Vikings made a unique black fabric they called 'blar,' using woad (blue pigment dye, using the same chemical as indigo, just in a lower concentration) and dyeing the wool of black sheep with it.

But when they brought back mesquite from the New World to use as dyestuff, black dye wasn't a death-knell for fabric and so became a color for rich people just in time for the early Renaissance.



So just as a reminder, while I'm the kind of completist who can't not provide you with all eighty-two recolors, in the Middle Ages, certain colors just plain weren't possible:

Aelia's Magenta, Purple Haze, Denim, Royal Blue, Teal, and (probably) Mauve
CuriousB's Cove, Kingfisher, Jet, and probably Bluebell
Pooklet's Dynamite and Flash Powder (although Flash Powder may resemble the Norse blar color)

Okay, let's actually talk about the separates because they're pretty awesome.

FantasyRogue made the original adult male tops and bottoms, and they have fat and pregmorphs (and should be categorized as Maternity). Cynnix converted them to Teen and Child (TM and CM have fatmorphs and I think TM has a pregmorph), and delightfully they all use the same mapping, so!

Everything is texture-referenced.

Adult Male files are the masters. You can effectively un-link them by opening the AM files, extracting the texture resources (not exporting the textures), and building a package file with just the textures. Straight-up texture referencing is easier for me, so I don't do it that way.

Also, AM files are enabled for Young Adults and, because meshes don't exist and I need to save space however I can in my own game, they're enabled for elders, as well. Because adding a cloak or hood (but maybe not Daislia's Altair Hood. Her Ezio one would work better) makes the tunics look plenty toasty, they're also enabled for outerwear.

Nothing is townie-enabled because what if you don't like townie-enabling the same colors I do?



All the usual people need a thank you, FantasyRogue for the meshes (and textures, I tweaked and recolored but didn't replace), Cynnix for the conversions, Pooklet, CuriousB, and Aelia for their color actions, and I have even used a tiny slice of ZoeJ textures in here. Personally I don't mind what you do with these (DO BODYSHAPE CONVERSIONS I'll send you my texture reference worksheet!) so long as it doesn't break anyone else's policies.

DOWNLOAD CENTRAL
Bottom-Only Chausses with Poulaines
YA-EM Pooklet Project Mayhem Naturals (MASTER)
SWATCH
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share
YA-EM Aelia Autumn (MASTER)
SWATCH
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share
YA-EM CuriousB Any Color You Like (MASTER)
SWATCH
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share

TM Pooklet Project Mayhem Naturals (SLAVE)
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share
TM Aelia Autumn (SLAVE)
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share
TM CuriousB Any Color You Like (SLAVE)
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share

CM Pooklet Project Mayhem Naturals (SLAVE)
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share
CM Aelia Autumn (SLAVE)
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share
CM CuriousB Any Color You Like (SLAVE)
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share

Top-Only Belted Tunics
YA-EM Pooklet Project Mayhem Naturals (MASTER)
SWATCH
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share
YA-EM Aelia Autumn (MASTER)
SWATCH
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share
YA-EM CuriousB Any Color You Like (MASTER)
SWATCH
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share

TM Pooklet Project Mayhem Naturals (SLAVE)
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share
TM Aelia Autumn (SLAVE)
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share
TM CuriousB Any Color You Like (SLAVE)
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share

CM Pooklet Project Mayhem Naturals (SLAVE)
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share
CM Aelia Autumn (SLAVE)
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share
CM CuriousB Any Color You Like (SLAVE)
DOWNLOAD On Mediafire | On Sims File Share

Wanna help me feed my cats?

In case you feel like dropping me a buck or two, should you have a buck or two to spare. Donors get two things at the moment: a) a link to the Super Secret Cat Gallery, full of pictures of the cats you'll be feeding, updated sporadically when the cats do something photogenic and I'm fast enough on the trigger to catch it, and b) a link to the list of content I have done-but-not-screencapped, nearly done, partly done, or in the planning stages, and the option to suggest what ought to be in the next batch of things I focus on.

Comments

Yay!

[(Anonymous)]

These are great! I've wanted recolors for the child conversions for a while now and then there are so many!

Though the link for TM Chausses in CuriousB's Colors goes to Pooklet Naturals instead. Thought you might want to know...

Re: Yay!

[hat_plays_sims]

I'm glad you like them! And the link should be fixed now, sorry about that (and thanks for telling me it was broken. Mediafire gave me all kinds of trouble with copypasta and I'm not surprised I've had a bunch of things out of place).

[kalynn06.livejournal.com]

Ooh, Thank you. These (and the hair and the undies) are fantastic. I use the tunics in my 18th C hood as outerwear and farming smocks with separated breeches. I completely missed the kid conversion though. I would have done those for Advent too if I'd known/ remembered they existed.

[hat_plays_sims]

I'm so glad you like them! Menswear is always so scarce. I went through and townie-enabled about half of these, so now people roll up in all kinds of color combinations.

I was sorely tempted by your Advent version, too! Yuxi's shoes are always so awesome, I just wish they were a smidge closer to 'Medieval' than 'fantasy' so I have more excuses to use them.

[kalynn06.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they're definitely more on the pseudo- medivalish fantasy end of the scale . I had them already edited to fit default shaped legs (vs converted DA legs as on the original) from working on a secret Santa present, and they are cool and worked for that theme.

The happy result, though, is that I have a project file with the legs already hacked up, so if you want other shoes on that mesh, it's a simple matter of swapping them out. I know pretty much nothing about accurate medieval shoes, but if you link me to some better ones and want to do recolors, the meshes are a quick project.

[hat_plays_sims]

That's a dangerous offer because I've been dying for some Medieval ankle boots for years. Alas, the best mesh I know of for that is the Plantsim shoe (just... pruned of vines), and I don't know how easy that is to work with. ... Or how solid, offhand, the alpha area for the vines is, because *rummages a bit* with the plantsim shoes as ankle boots, I could do something like this, which was actually more common than the poulaines I use everywhere-- but if the vine alpha goes all the way around the leg, this might be possible (and I know better than to press my luck for this. I don't think there's a thigh-high boot out there with the right foot shape, alas).

[(Anonymous)]

It really isn't a problem as long as you want to make recolors for them.

Hypothetically, how high would you want the alpha to go for high boots? The plantsim one goes over the knee in the front and just below the knee in the back, at least on the af version, but it could be made to go higher or lower if that would work better. I haven't tried to stick a texture on it, but if it's not solid, it's just a matter of making an inside layer for it. That will add to the polycount, but it's not a big deal.

[kalynn06.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that's still me. My login expired and I didn't notice.

[hat_plays_sims]

*replies to the logged in one because... probably notifications? If openID works that way?* No worries, that's happened to me before, too.

I want to make recolors for LOTS of things. (If anyone ever wants to try their hand at a 'cut a piece off a body mesh and make an accessory' project but doesn't know where to start, they should come to me, I have like six things I'd give my eye teeth for.) And I won't say 'polycount is no object' because I try to stay conscious of it... but I try to stay conscious of it because I use sexyfeet. If it's not higher poly than sexyfeet, I am not remotely bothered.

As an alpha layer, I'd love to see at least to mid-thigh-- that'd let me do ankle, hunting, and riding boots all on one mesh, especially if the higher bits can cling close to the leg the way the plantsim vines do. On the other hand, if that's a pain in the ass, I'd still be delighted with just the ankle boot on a non-alpha mesh. For one thing, it'd give me a shoe mesh to hold up and beg people to swap onto... everything.

And can I say again how much I appreciate even the offer? Sometimes it takes a while for me to recolor things people have made for me, but I always get to it eventually!

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you Hat, for everything that you make! It makes the game much more fun to play :)

The link for Bottom Chausses TM CuriousB Any Color You Like leads to Perfect tunics

[hat_plays_sims]

Argh, Mediafire kept giving me copy/paste issues, sorry about that. Thank you for the heads-up, it should be fixed now! I'm glad you like the goodies.

Issues with downloading

[(Anonymous)]

Not sure if it's only me, but mediafire reports that the Top-Only Tunics - YA-EM CuriousB Any Color You Like (MASTER) file as "This Download is Currently Unavailable".

Re: Issues with downloading

[hat_plays_sims]

Sorry to be so slow getting back to you! The download works fine for me, but honestly, sometimes Mediafire just does that. If it doesn't say 'deleted' or 'violation' (or flat-out link to the wrong download, I do that a lot in large sets), the first step I give for troubleshooting is 'wait a couple hours and try again.'