🐋 Now I am become death, the destroyer of Bloat™ - LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! -- [3/15] ⚡ Fret not, I haven't forgotten about this.

I will eventually document every case of The Bloat™, though it'll have to go in a GDrive folder because I assume it's more items than Patreon will allow me to attach as screenshots.

Destroying The Bloat™ has been one of my goals ever since I became aware of it.

To be quite honest, it's less about whether or not I like the clothes and more about my love for troubleshooting and fixing things, and because EAxis deserves criticism for it - it's something they can stop but they refuse to.

Contrary to the belief of some who complain about criticism, I don't go looking for things to criticize - EAxis keeps shoving it in our faces, and some of us simply choose not to ignore it or forget it. I'm not "too negative and toxic", I'm a proper amount of negative, though I can always be less toxic. I feel the need to explain myself all the time because of my attitude and behavior.

A quick F.Y.I., Bloat™ affects Female and Feminine Frame sims more than Male and Masculine Frame sims. You likely won't notice this on the latter but you will notice it on the former, and as explained in the "DISSECTING AN EAXIS ABOMINATION" section, the reason why male variants of Bloated™ clothes worn by female sims don't Bloat™ is because the male clothing is fitted to the male body in most instances.

⋆⋅ LONG LIVE THE QUEEN:

My anonymous friend was instrumental in my search for the fix for our broken bodies. Without the ton of 6/6/2024 files that they and another simmer provided for me, I would not have found the culprit as soon as I did.

They're also the simmer I turn to whenever I've hit a wall in Blender, or just to bounce ideas off of.

Now they've given me another gift - a better understanding of The Bloat™ and a cleaner way to destroy it.

⋆⋅ DISSECTING AN EAXIS ABOMINATION:

For as long as I've complained about The Bloat™, I have not fully understood it, and besides me, I don't know of anyone who cares enough to continue searching for a solution or even an explanation.

That hasn't stopped me from trying to explain it to the best of my ability to anyone who will listen - including my anonymous friend - in hopes that one day I might discover a way to destroy it.

I knew it had something to do with "baggy" clothes, and I assumed the solution would require editing meshes. What I hadn't considered was that the problem is actually the shape of the mesh - because it looks "fine" in Blender.

Somewhere, there exists hidden "default bodies" for female and male sims, either in the form of a mesh or code. These default bodies are not affected by the hidden Nude Parts in CAS or Body Presets.

When I disable Body Hair in my overrides, this "default body" is what I force the game to use, which is why when you [X] off the body hair bits with my override installed, you'll notice not even the "Bald" variant is applied to the sim.

The default body for female sims looks like this, and it has an hourglass waist - I thought this model was a "placeholder":

Any clothing that doesn't fit this default body shape will Bloat™ outwards when the waist is adjusted.

The clothes don't need to fit the sim like a glove, but it needs to follow the curvature of the body to avoid The Bloat™.

Anything like this that doesn't follow the curvature of the body will Bloat™:

That excess space between the body and the clothing is The Bloat™.

My old "dirty" band-aid accomplished No Bloat™ by replacing the Vertex Color with a color that prevents sliders from affecting the clothing, this had the unintended effect of doing exactly what it's supposed to do, causing all sims to adopt the body shape of the clothing while wearing it, regardless of what their actual body shape was. This is why I never shared it - it was a dirty band-aid.

My anonymous friend's method of modifying the shape of the mesh to closer match the shape of the default body doesn't do the !@#$ery my dirty band-aid did - in other words, the clothes function as they're supposed to.

It's more work, but it's the desired outcome.

⋆⋅ I HATE YOU FOR THIS, EAXIS:

If EAxis did not hourglass the default body, we wouldn't have Bloat™.

I understand now why this will never be fixed.

It's the "too much work for an old game - that they're still selling and creating new DLC for and making loadsamoney from" excuse.

It would require "fixing" that default female body - which EAxis could do, but neither my anonymous friend nor I have any idea where this thing is or how fixing it would affect the game, or if fixing it would negate what comes next... - or fixing every one of the clothing meshes they've made "baggy".

It's highly unlikely EAxis will ever fix this, but the bit that pisses me off more than their unwillingness to fix their !@#$, is that it's apparently too much to ask that they stop doing it for future content releases - because I have asked on AHQ, nay, I have begged. I'll link that thread if I can find it again.

Make no mistake, EAxis can claim ignorance for as many back to back three month periods they want, but they damn well know what they're doing, because they've been doing it for TEN (10) YEARS - Bloat™ exists in damn near every content release including the Base Game, and I am certainly not the first or the only simmer to complain about it.

⋆⋅ THE LAST HURDLE:

There's a caveat that we can't solve yet, and we're not sure if it's caused by S4S or Blender, but modifying EAxis meshes is screwing with "shadows" - not Shadow textures, it's something else.

It's less visible on some clothing but more visible on others - like my favorite Sleepwear shirt cannot be unBloated™ because of how bad it gets. I'll provide screenshots eventually.

⚡ Simply exporting and re-importing the mesh for these EAxis items without modifying the BLEND or the PACKAGE is resulting in the "shadow" oddities. It certainly appears to be S4S, because I tried THREE (3) versions of Blender, including 2.76 and all gave me the same oddities.

Simply exporting a mesh for any EAxis clothing, opening it and re-saving it in Blender without making any changes whatsoever, then importing it back into the PACKAGE causes the problem.What I haven't checked yet is if simply exporting and importing the mesh causes it - if it does, then S4S is the culprit. I'm also gonna try some UV Map shenanigans and other Blender stuff. I don't care how much work it takes if the result is perfection.

This isn't the first time I've encountered this.

I almost didn't release my Wearables™ Hearing Aids because of it - even though it's damn near "invisible" and you've gotta really be looking for it to see it on something so small, and you certainly won't in regular gameplay.

I didn't release my Wearables™ Wigs until I had perfected a method that didn't require extracting or modifying meshes in any way, in order to avoid this "oddity".

I'm sure it's there in the fingernail modifications I've done, but it's too tiny to see.

It's not just a "me" thing either. My anonymous friend can see it on some of their EAxis CAS modifications too.

⋆⋅ THE BEGINNING OF THE END:

I'll focus on what I like first then work through the others, HOWEVER, if there's a particular item you like and want it unBloated™, just let me know.

This won't be included in CAS Overrides on release for a couple reasons:

• Each Bloated™ item needs to be modified independently, and some require more work than others. There is no "press X to unBloat™" button.

• I don't think most folks care about this, or even if you do, like me, I doubt you care about every Bloated™ item, e.g. I utilize SP48_GothGalore's TrenchLeather to highlight the issue because it's one of the most egregious examples of it, but I'm never gonna wear it even though I just fixed it, because it's not "my style".

It's unlikely that I'll do all LODs for this for a couple reasons:

• Decimating doesn't always give the best results, and manually modifying each LOD - like I do for my fingernail modifications - would give varying results for clothing.

• I'd prefer to keep the file size for this as small as possible. HOWEVER, if you're someone who has to sim on lower than Ultra Graphics Quality and whichever sub-setting that controls this has to be lower than the highest possible thing, I'll consider doing other LODs, but you'll have to let me know - I assume LOD is connected to the "Sims" sub-setting. I'll have to verify.

⋆⋅ I'VE DROWNED AND DREAMT THIS MOMENT...

I can't believe it's done. The 🐋 will no longer haunt my dreams!

Every time new CAS content is released I dread trying it because I know I'm going to encounter two things - incompetent PartFlags and The Bloat™ - but now I can fix both!

🎙️ Another one with the golden tongue poisoning your fantasy.

🎙️ As the stars begin to gather and the light begins to fade, when all hope begins to shatter...

🎙️ Arm yourself because no one else here will save you! The coldest blood runs through my veins...

🎙️ IT'S TIME TO DIE! <CACKLES MANIACALLY>

I was never much into James Bond until Daniel Craig came along. <SHRUGS>