Replacement skinny "skintight" meshes
by Cal (calezane@xs4all.nl)
first upload: 15-02-2004
update 30-08-2004: changed SSP URL, torqued swimsuit mesh UVs
                   moved HD meshes to HD zipfile


The Sims uses the same mesh for male and female skinny nude/swimsuit
skins. This mesh is the perfect skinny man from the waist up, and
the perfect skinny woman from the waist down. In fact, it's the
perfect skinny woman except for one thing: a totally flat chest.

To allow fans to choose swimsuits as daily wear, Maxis released
the skintight meshes with the code "B300". The B300 meshes,
also known as "the swimsuit pack", were mostly just the nude
meshes renamed, although the skinny nude meshes were cleaned up
a little. The skinny male and female meshes were still identical, 
though.

Then came Hot Date with its buyable swimsuits (and inability to 
change a character's default nude body mesh). The S100 meshes
are all copies of the B300 meshes. The S401 and S402 female skinny
swimsuit meshes are improvements in that they have a bust; they're 
clearly slimmed-down versions of the fit female swimsuit mesh. 
The S402 male skinny mesh, on the other hand, is almost exactly 
like the S100 mesh, and the other skinny-male swimsuits, though 
perfect when seen from the side, are still a bit wide in the hips. 

My two replacement meshes have a bust added for the skinny female,
and bigger feet and flatter hips for the skinny male. Thin men can 
have hips that huge if they have big bones and not much meat to fill 
up the space between, but genuinely slender men are generally straight
all the way down. These files replace the B300 (if present) meshes, 
which are not backed up in FAR files and will be OVERWRITTEN by these 
versions, so if you want to keep the originals, copy them to a safe 
place. The NF/NM CMX files overwrite nothing since the game has no 
files of that name, and have to be manually entered in the Sims' 
bodystring with a utility like IFF pencil or IFFSnooper. But once
they're in the bodystring, they stay in, even in HD+ installations
which don't allow custom nude CMXs.

The "hero" outfits are renamed copies of the B300 bodies. They are 
stored in "Animation.far" and so won't be physically overwritten 
by the replacements.


As I'm replacing defaults, the names have not been shortened to a 
Mac-friendly length. The best thing to do with them is shorten their
names using Namer.


File list:

Basic files (put in GameData\Skins):

xskin-b300maskn_01-PELVIS-BODY.skn
xskin-b300faskn_01-BODY.skn
xskin-herofskn_01-PELVIS-BODY.SKN
xskin-heromskn_01-PELVIS-BODY.SKN
nfskn_01.cmx
nmskn_01.cmx

The last two files refer to the B300 meshes and can be put in the 
character IFF to replace the default nude/swimsuit mesh. (The game 
will not automatically select them when creating a new Sim, though.)


These meshes were only intended to replace defaults. Do with them 
whatever you like, but if you distribute them with custom skins,
add a warning that they'll overwrite default files.


For technical problems with these files, I wrote something called the
Sims Support Page (http://www.simania.nl/ssp/ssp.htm). To
email me personally, put the word "gatch" in the subject line to keep
the mail out of the spambox. (In good weeks, I get 200 spam mails a
week. In bad weeks, I get 400 spam mails a week. Not kidding.)