Yep. That's me.

[hat_plays_sims]

Guess who sat down to look at skirt meshes and untuckable tops, then get back to work on Medieval underwear...

... And Pooklet'd five thicknesses of stubble, two mustaches, and a soul patch?

Turns out I've missed Pookletting things. I also finally counted all my beardstuffs. There will be 23 when I get around to a beard dump, not accounting for possibly doing some of those long Santa beards in waves AND straight textures.

Do you guys like your beards binned or unbinned? Um, which is to say, should I offer unbinned options, too, because boy howdy am I binning them for myself. I hear they go funny in the family-ing stages, so they're gonna get binned like my hairline blushes, with the hairtones changed. (Adults ARE getting gray options, for those men who begin to get grizzled around the muzzle earlier than it sets in on their hair. Likewise elders are getting colored options, because sometimes the color in the beard is pretty stubborn.) And... are beards and facial hair among the things one can townie-enable? That sounds like fun.

Also if anybody knows of any facial hair meshes (I have Necrodog's Amish beard, Simsbaby's thick beard, and SynapticSim's Face Fur, plus all the Basegame and BV beards), let me know? I may just need to add them to my list.

Comments

[heget]

Oh, Please, more facial hair in all the Pooklet shades? *folds hands prettily and bats eyelashes*

I prefer mine binned (I get annoyed with things aren't, especially when it is like eyebrows and I have too many sets to flip through.)

I think there's a hack to make beards townie-enabled....

I'm waiting for this mesh here to be released- it looks fantastic so far: http://www.digitalperversion.net/gardenofshadows/index.php?topic=29350.0

Also- a weird thing I've noticed- but especially the maxis full beards only go up so far on the sides at the ear, and if your hair mesh doesn't have sideburns or hide that area, the transition looks unnatural. So it was a project plan of mine to see if could make some sideburns and bin them as stubble or mask, just as another hairline element to try and lessen that.

[hat_plays_sims]

Shades and textures. I'm working with FR's versions now, but I'm also planning to do some V3 versions-- I don't like V3 as much for hair (possibly because my hair is shiny, so to me that feels 'normal'), but I think it would look better for beards once I get out of the short stuff like mustaches.

Binning is easy; I heartily recommend binning your eyebrows. Family-ing eyebrows even works, but I have some issues with grays so I haven't shared my binned Trapping eyebrows.

I shall google!

Is that Alfred's beard? Your link isn't working.

Ah yes, I know what that problem is! That's a custom hair mesh problem. There's a definite seam between the face and the scalp-- you can see it here, in how the hairline makeup just STOPS. The beards can't go up any farther than that, so when hairs aren't meshed to come down in front of the ear a bit, there's nothing that can be done to cover the gap. ... Well, nothing besides meshing meshed beards higher, but in terms of stubble and painted-on beards, there's nothing I can do. (Most hairs have a scalp layer. Most of the time this layer is never used, to save space and make parts look more realistic.)

[heget]

Yes- and yes.

And yes, I bin eyebrows and beards and all. (Though I really should go and remove some sets, because no, Trappping, a 100+ sets of eyebrows was actually in hindsight a bad idea ^_~)

I'm happy with how that curly texture for the Wizard beards turned out, because the maxis textures won't ever Pooklet for me without loosing all definition. But yeah, I was surprised how some warp tool and teh curls made it easier- though i'm still bad at alphas from scratch.

[hat_plays_sims]

Yeah, I went and did a mighty weeding, but I still have *checks* sixteen sets of December brows, plus Creating a New View. When multiplied by twenty, that's a LOT.

... You did a beard? Did I miss a beard? (Cynnix just made crowns. Suddenly I have yet another project. Time to put some textures on those puppies that don't look handpainted!)

[heget]

Yes, the crowns.
http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g443/heget/gifs/grinchsmile.gif

My beards were the Summer Secret Gift for Cynnix, along with a kareoke machine made tavern barrels and bottles, the first round of shifts and the then shifts + shawls, and some 15 odd hair. As the link is a mediafire one, I'll probably end up reposting the rest of the things on my journal as well with new links.

Here, they are this set:



and a working link is here: http://www.medievalsims.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=51340#p51340

(earlier in the thread shows all the other goodies, but I put teh beards up on box.net links because of demand.)

[hat_plays_sims]

... Looks like Nouk's Valentine waves? Nice! A little shiny for my purposes, but that's why I'm devling into V3. (I swear I'm gonna retexture that hair someday, too. Ja's version is nice, but lacks some of the interest of the original.)

[heget]

yep. And yeah, a bit shiny and the curls means it woun't work for straight hairs, but I had such a reduction of quality when I ran actions over the FR maxis that I had to make my own.

I really don't like V3 for hairs, but I can see how it'd work for beards.

[hat_plays_sims]

Maxis doesn't Pooklet well, particularly in terms of textures. Sometimes it doesn't even retexture well. It takes some creative blending to make it look decent, much less nice. I'm sure you can find a few entries of mine and Aqulegia's bitching about the difficulty of Maxis hairs, especially the frickin' basegame hairs. I can't imagine the beards would be much different, as a lot of the HH content is actually IN the basegame, just inaccessible (those beards, for instance).

That's my thinking-- I like the shiny for hairs, but on beards it doesn't look as realistic. On the little beards, that's no big, but for the larger ones, I really want to try playing with my own shiny new warp tool.

[heget]

Well, it's not like I don't need a plethora of beards for my game. :)

[hat_plays_sims]

*grins* I know, right? *just got finished alpha-editing the Basegame Devil beard so that it looks less Cartoon Devil and more Fandral of Locksley*

[siofrabunnies]

I don't know how it works, but Mirablu made this hack that enables the base game facial hairs for townies, so I imagine custom ones work, too. It works with FantasyRogue's pookleted default replacements, as well.

[hat_plays_sims]

Awesome, thank you! MATY was gonna be my first stop. At the very least I can open those up and see what's what inside them. ... And then probably make hiders, because if I'm doing full-Pooklet versions, I won't really need the orginals showing.

[dinuriel]

Pooklet'd facial hair! And with gray options! Oh man, I think I can die happy now. Curious as to what you'll do with the separates too.

Question! With the basegame beards, will you be Pookleting the FantasyRogue alphas, the originals, or both? Just wondering because I have some well-groomed Sims who like their facial hair neatly trimmed, and some scruffy ones who can't be bothered to fight with it. Takes all sorts and whatnot. :P

As for binned or unbinned, I'm tempted to say "binned", but there are certain "intermediate" shades (Shrapnel, Safety Fuse, Comburent) that could possibly be used for multiple hair colors, at least in terms of stubble? Though honestly, I think I'm just too excited about the prospect of Pooklet'd facial hair to care whether or not it's binned, so I'm good with whatever's easiest and/or most desirable for you.

[hat_plays_sims]

Well, first plan on the separates is wide-laced, short-sleeved kirtles where the kirtle is the bottom, and the placket, shift, and stockings (that match the placket) are the top. I also keep thinking I should do something with aprons so I've got some defined Not Upper Class outfits, and maybe a top-only shift with contrast sleeves, and I found an ankle-length skirt mesh but the shoes are wrong and the teen version has no pregmorph. But I feel like I need to finish more things before I go a-begging for shoe swaps and morphs. Again.

So far, I've just run the actions over FR's versions-- though I did edit down the mustache on the BG Devil beard. Did that one twice, so there's Cartoon Devil and then there's Fandral of Locksley. But on the fuller beards, I'll be using v3 textures (probably keeping FR's alphas, since... they're there), because while the V1 ones are shiny and pretty, I think the rougher v3's will work better for facial hair. And I'm gonna retexture Synaptic Sim's face fur, so that oughta provide some serious scruff.

I have pretty much convinced myself to make three edits of everything-- unbinned but with proper tooltips (stupid Bodys Shop not having enough room for all my credits), binned after fixing the tooltips, and then townie-enabled after binning and tooltip fixing. They'll all replace each other, though, because I value what sanity I have left. I really waffled on it, though-- a lot of men's beards come in far redder than their hair, but I don't want to townie-enable unbinned beards.

[currantpotpie]

My personal preference is for things to be binned! Nothing worse than a redhead with a blond beard. XD

[hat_plays_sims]

Which I totally understand! I'll be using binned beards, myself. I just know sometimes brunets and blonds end up with very red beards, so I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.

[oph3lia]

Would Nouk's later wavy texture (the one that nymphy edited) work for wavy beards? It's a bit more matt looking than the older curls. Or Nymphy's edit depending on how tight the curls need to be.

Are you doing... uh I dunno what it's called... it's one of necro dogs ones, with 2 hanging plaits off the bottom?

[hat_plays_sims]

I've got Nouk's Longwavy on my Santa and Father Time beards; I didn't try it on any of the smaller ones because I wasn't sure how it'd look. Also it took a lot of futzing to make it less shiny (which was my goal for the meshed beards, less sheen than FR's versions) while still making sure you could see some texture on the blacks.

The only beard of Necrodog's I have is the Amish beard. I will cheerfully look at more meshed beards if you know where I can find them; they seem to have deleted their stuff from MTS.

[oph3lia]

Ah that's the ones I was thinking of (Odin and Thor need them, although Odin needs remaking off alfredaskews cyclops face template). Yeah, they're a lot less shiny than some other textures, but it's weird how you can assume with sim recolours something will look good and then decide actually that's not quite right and start fiddling with things.

I've located the mesh in my downloads, it's called the jack sparrow beard I think... I have a recolour somewhere I know as one of my sims is wearing it. Will have a poke around for it tomorrow.

[hat_plays_sims]

I keep thinking I need to make some primary-deity Sims so I can Sim-Surgery the Chris Hatch toddler deities, speaking of Odin. (My Three Lakes Vikings get to have a one-eyed king of the gods.) But mostly I wanted beards to look coarse and rough-- you never really see a guy with a totally smooth and shiny beard.

There's also this one, but hell if I know where to find the mesh. A quick googling suggests Necrodog jumped ship for TSR, but apparently never went FA as his stuff isn't in the Booty.

I wonder why there aren't more beard meshes out there. Beards are awesome.

[faechangeling]

With all of the pain Alfred went through with her new beard mesh it's a wonder that there ARE custom beard meshes. She said that most of the ones she found were more like accessories and didn't morph with the sim's face in body shop. Have you had that problem with the few that you're using?

[hat_plays_sims]

I actually have ONE custom beard mesh (and I haven't messed with it in CAS to see what happens). The only other custom beard mesh I have is apparently an unlocked beard mesh, sort of a scaled-up version of Beard Full called Beard Thick. (Which has much better mapping than Beard Full, by the by). But if it's a case of morphs, I think I understand-- I took out all my eyelash accessories because they stayed stuck to the brow bone when Sims blinked or slept.

[oph3lia]

Toddler deities :O

Beards are definitely a coarser type of hair (I have a bearded father so I know much of such things).

https://www.box.com/s/e98sfno8bw60ceyy0t5e that's necrodog's jack sparrow beard with a recolour (I don't think its a recolour by necrodog but hey it works).

[hat_plays_sims]

*grabs!* I'll check it out in Body Shop when next I open it up. Gotta get my SimPE work done on the current beards.

And yep, toddler deities, because toddlers don't do walkbys. (My solution is to build the gods a house hidden away somewhere and give them all prisoner tags, so they can't turn up on community lots or as walkbys.)

[oph3lia]

Ahh I see. So they are intangible.

My hood is going to be medieval with a dash of fantasy, anglo-saxon and viking thrown in because I am a history nerd with a keen interest in fantasy (and because I like pretty, even if it's not historically accurate). I plan to have a main medieval hood (with mages/witches), with a fantasy sub hood (elves, plant sims, satyrs etc) and then a second subhood for vikings (not sure where to throw in the anglo saxon, since their culture is closest to viking but historically they didn't really get on lol). And for some reason I decided in the viking subhood it would be cool to have the main norse gods as kind of kings/ruling dynasty over the denizens (since they lack immortality without Idunn's apples).

[hat_plays_sims]

Yep! My world is not a world where mortals really get to make friends with gods. (Though they could send greeting cards if I ever make some for that system.)

I acknowledge that my 'hood is fantasy (I couldn't deal without witches, Servos, and Plantsims. I love them), but I really want the look to be.... around 70-85% historically accurate. My main and shopping 'hoods will be the base kingdom, Downtown is a sort of Medieval B-Picture Uberwald full of vampires and gypsies and werewolves (because I know they're not accurate to the Traveler population, but Sherahbim's gypsy clothes are so pretty), then Vikings in Three Lakes, with Twikkii Island and Takemizu Village just getting more thematic hair and clothes, and more Medieval technology.

[oph3lia]

"Almighty Odin, Happy Birthday! I have enclosed an offering of good mead. Yours, Mortally Mortal" I have a strange sense of humour... lol

That sounds interesting, I don't think I have the patience to make something that accurate. Most of my fantasy stuff is Sherahbim's clothes. I started toying with the idea of a medieval hood back when I started playing around when OFB came out but the content out then was often poor and mostly pure fantasy when it did exist.

I'm not quite sure what to do about holiday destinations, I'd like to have one of each but struggle on how to make them thematic and look medieval. And what to do about Vikings and three lakes.

[hat_plays_sims]

Well, the prayers have to reach the gods somehow; why not through the post? Kids write letters to Santa.

Most of my textures are burgled from Sherahbim, so I think we definitely share some tastes there. *grins* I love her more fantastical stuff, but I got tired of having gorgeous fantasy-Medieval clothes for nobility, burlap-sack clothes for peasants, and not a damn thing for the silk merchant's wife. Or kids. Elder-enabling adult clothes means my old men have as much to wear as my young men, but all of a sudden I had bupkiss for little boys.

Well, you could always bear in mind that they don't have to be Medieval Europe to work. Steal a cold-weather society like northeastern Russia or an Inuit tribe for Three Lakes, maybe? Or go for a Scottish Highlands feel or something, anywhere where the men are proud and free and the hills are high and rocky is probably a good Mountain vacation 'hood.

[oph3lia]

I like the idea!

Ha yes, I have a huge almighty hat folder in my downloads. Yeah I hated how ugly a lot of the early peasant stuff was (not a big fan of grunge) , and tended to save colours I don't like (brown) for them (I have a lot of medieval sims in bodyshop although not many in game; except the tester hood I started yesterday to get in game shots of clothes) . Yeah kids and toddler stuff has been hard to come by, getting some sherahbim stuff edited a little to work on cynnix's liz alpha dress conversion at the moment (I can only work with stuff sans boob shading since I can't remove it myself but been adding undershirts/dresses on a few bits here and there) Most of my adult male stuff is elder enabled, bit more hit and miss with females.

Ah yes that had not occurred to me... hmm maybe they could be Rus or Finn or Sami; similarish but not quite the same as Vikings. Scotland could work too, might be easier to find names for the locals that way. Twikkii is more a case of using stuff from Castaway Stories (I actually played that, quite a fun game; shame its identical to the sims 2 with different content after the main quest/storyline). I've tried medievalising Takemizu but I have no idea what medieval China looked like in the slightest.

[hat_plays_sims]

My trick for removing breast shading is to look at the back of the dress-- a lot of times it's almost the same as the front, or close enough that you can at least use it to make patches to cover things up. So far it's worked on the Du Lac Cotehardies and the Front-Laced Lady, and I consider those pretty successful retextures. A little stretching and a lot of careful erasing at 0% hardness works wonders.

If you wanted to get particularly anachronistic but still climate-accurate with your Mountain denizens, try something like French fur-trappers. They were all over Canada and the wilder parts of the American frontier back in the Western Expansion, and they wouldn't actually translate too badly to a Medieval-Fantasy world. Big hairy men wearing fur and leather and naming mountains after boobs. (Out here in California, we have Mount Diablo, because the dual peaks made the Spanish missionaries think of devil horns. More towards the middle of the country, you get the Grand Tetons, because they made the French fur-trappers think of, literally, big breasts. Very different priorities.) Ahem. From what I hear, it's actually surprisingly hard to research Chinese historical fashion. This gal had some problems finding reliable sources that weren't period movies. My solution is to accept that the clothes (mostly BV and HH age conversions) are Japanese, the niftiest hairs are probably mostly Chinese (seriously it would be nice if XM and Rose ever SAID on anything but Roses Taobao hairs), the furniture is more Asian Fusion, and then just go around redecorating lots to swap out things like modern phones, TVs, and stereos for more period/A Wizard Did It equivalents.

Your Twikkii Island sounds a lot like my Twikkii Island, though.

[nixed_sims]

Hooray for facial hair! :D

Me, while I want my hairs binned, I prefer eyebrows and beards unbinned so that Sims with auburn hair binned brown can have red beards and Sims with dark blond hair brown (or light brown blond). And like somebody said above, some colours work with several different hair colours. IMO it would be a shame to have this really nice Shrapnel beard, but only black haired Sims could use it (esp. since I always rebin Shrapnel as brown). :)

[hat_plays_sims]

Well, unless it turns out to drive me crazy, for every beard, there'll be an unbinned, a binned, and a binned-and-townie-friendly version, and you can mix and match binned and unbinned colors (I know Shrapnel makes a great brown, and I could make arguments for calling Comburent a strawberry blond or Brisance an auburn, but Dynamite and Flash Powder are pretty definitively black) or decide which styles you want cropping up on townies (unless you're running a Restoration or piratical 'hood, the Sinister and original-alpha Devil beards probably wouldn't make much sense to townie-enable).

So, plenty of chances for guys with Depth Charge hair to have Shrapnel beards, or Vikings with Incendiary hair to have Comburent beards and get called Redbeard. *grins*

[nixed_sims]

Hooray! This makes me a very happy Nix. :) You're the best! (And not just for making unbinned beards, but for making... well, everything you make. My medieval-ish Westeros 'hood would be a lot poorer if it weren't for you. :))

[hat_plays_sims]

Hey, I just checked out your DW to see who you were besides someone who likes beards (which, you know, is fine, I was just curious) and grabbed your Thinking Helm, because even though I never USE it, it'd be nice to have-- so thank you for that! Makes me wonder if any hair-covering accessory mesh would work-- I've got that Sell Aspiration Rewards hack for OFB so my mage family is really going to have a lot of fun stuff to peddle... provided I can find good mesh defaults.

Stay tuned, because as well as beards, I'm working on massively full wardrobes for all ages from the skin out. ... I make no promises as to when, but it's in the pipeline.

[nixed_sims]

Heh, you're welcome! Yeah, I have plenty of DR'd stuff in my game, too, that I never use but that I still want to look period-ish, just because. And of course you wouldn't know who I am since I never comment, just lurk and download with abandon. :)

Makes me wonder if any hair-covering accessory mesh would work

For the thinking cap? Sure. :) It has a nifty little #STR that changes the Sim's hair to bald, so it actually isn't so much a matter of covering the hair up as it is hiding the fact that the Sim suddenly doesn't have any. ;) (That's why I made the helmet so thick, BTW, to keep the baldness hidden.)

Edit: Oooh, more clothes! *drools* I'm definitely going to stay tuned. :)

[hat_plays_sims]

Well, yeah, but of course you want a default just in case it turns up or your Sim rolls a want to get vending machine food or whatever. I'd be more likely to use all kinds of things if they looked period-- and if somebody with disposable cash came in and bought a goofy aspiration reward that had been adequately defaulted, hey, I might let 'em use that, too.

And now I have to go look at who can wear noodlesoothers and thinking caps, and look at accessory hats and helmets. I've got that Altair hood, I could do a fancy 'magical' embroidered recolor...

Yep! I have a very long list, but it's gonna start with underwear. Five sets for each sex, child through elder. (Toddlers only get three sets and the diapers are done.) Because everything else I want to make needs to get built over underwear.

[nixed_sims]

Yeah, you never know what silly things those Sims might want to use. :) Hmm, the noodlesoother. I use the thinking cap with abandon, but I don't think I've ever used the noodlesoother, not even for my contemporary or Star Trek Sims. (Yep, I'm into Star Trek. I actually started my Simming career making Trek stuff, and even though I've branched out since I still consider it my primary bailiwick.) Which isn't to say I wouldn't be happy to have a nice, period-appropiate one, just in case . ;) And a hood sounds like it would work brilliantly!

Five sets of underwear for each... be still, my heart! :D If there's something my Sims need, the gents especially, it's underwear. I shall be waiting with bated breath. :)

[hat_plays_sims]

I hardly ever use any aspiration rewards-- Smart Milk and I used to use Elixir of Life, but not so much anymore since I made my aging mod. But I figure if I sell them in a magic shop and Sims buy them, that means they want to use them. So that's totally fair. (That's part of why I want various and sundry potions-- there are the craftable witch cauldron potions, and the ones from the Castaway Stories potion station, and Sunni's got a salable disease cure now, but I think it'd also be fun to see who wants fertility potions and who wants birth control.)

Five sets of underwear, two or three sets of gym clothes, one outerwear robe, one set of separates each (maybe two, but a few meshes would have to spontaneously appear), and a minimum of three sets of casual/formal/maternity outfits. There are days I feel like I'm making an expansion pack.

[nixed_sims]

Yeah, in any setting the smart milk and the thinking cap are pretty much the only aspiration rewards I use, and occasionally the Elixir of Life. But you're absolutely right, if Sims want to buy them, they probably want to use them. :)

Gym clothes, too, yay! (Seriously, you need to stop reading my mind. ;)) And hey, I'd buy the Almighty Hat EP in a heartbeat. :D

Oh! This is completely unrelated to clothes or beards, but while I have you on the line so to speak (I'll let you move on to newer threads soon, I promise). :) Have you default replaced the tv remote? (I've looked, but I can't find one.) The reason I'm asking is that I'm making a period-ish one-tile wall tv (that looks like a painting when turned off and yes, I've totally stolen that idea from Numenor, only mine's a simple thing that's supposed to be for poor Sims like peasants and common labourers), and I was going to make a DR remote while I was at it - getting rid of it completely would require modifying like five levels of BHAVs and that's just... no. But if you've already made one, then it's much easier if I just direct people to get that one because I'm totally lazy that way. :)

[hat_plays_sims]

I think I have an unreleased wooden remote to match Servos and digital cameras and other such things (the oak textures I use for Servos are my shorthand for A Wizard Did It on indispensable technology) lurking somewhere in my downloads folder, but I also know how to make it totally invisible in one fell swoop. Just take HP's placeholder.obj and replace the remote's mesh with it. Instant two-poly invisible replacement for anything that doesn't have slots or joints, casts no outdoor shadow.

[nixed_sims]

*headdesks repeatedly*

I'm an idiot. No, really, I am. I got so hung up on making the remote disappear through the BHAVs that it didn't even occur to me to simply make the it invisible and be done with it. *headdesks some more* Thanks for screwing my head back on. :)

[hat_plays_sims]

It's actually a two-part shiny mesh that is a BITCH to make invisible by normal (transparent png) means, which is why I ended up making an oak-and-runes version. The placeholder object is a better bet for true invisibility, which I totally would've done if I'd known a damn thing about meshes at the time.

... Oooh, I bet one of the many magic wand defaults out there would work for the remote, too-- good for those magic harp stereos...

[nixed_sims]

I know how to mesh, so if I make an invisible object of course I change the mesh as well and not just the texture. I mean, why waste computer resources on rendering a mesh you don't see anyway? :)

Oooh, I bet one of the many magic wand defaults out there would work for the remote, too

Like the twig one for neutral witches? Because that's what I had already used. :) (I wanted something that didn't look too witchy, and that one was perfect.) Great minds think alike. ;)

[hat_plays_sims]

I've actually had a hard time convincing a few people that the game still renders invisible polys, so I kinda figured better safe than sorry. (I still use an invisible sewing machine recolor, because the one spinning wheel default replacement I've found has the hands centered on the spindle instead of the feet centered on the pedal, and for some unaccountable reason that drives me buggy.)

Or one of Decat's new defaults. It's not a bad idea-- most of the electronics in my game are magic-- musical skulls, harps that play by themselves, crystal ball TVs. The only music-producing objects that aren't necessarily fueled by magic are music boxes.

I clearly NEED witches in my game, so somebody can sell all this stuff.