Once patterns are created in the 2D window of CLO, they need to be placed around the body in the 3D window, so that once the sewing lines are created, the garment will wrap around the body as needed, the blue dots seen around the avatar are placement guides (see images below).
CLO3D Sewing Lines
Blue dots = placement guides
Once the basis of the garment was formed I changed the fabrications of the garments to match that of my designs. This was a good reminder to consider the difference between the default fabric (a stretchy knit) and the intended fabric. In this case one of my final fabrics is denim, so the structure of the garment changed noticeably - something to keep in mind for future construction orders.
The last step of this outfit was to add on the flat lock details on the garments. This is done using the topstitch tool, then applying an overlock trim to the area, and adjusting the thickness and colour of the thread to be visible from a distance.
In order to import my 3D outfits from CLO into Sims 4, i needed to use a combination of Blender, and Sims 4 Studio to convert the file into one usable for Sims 4. Sims 4 studio is a designated application, used to create custom content for the game, and it provides meshes and avatars to work with, for importation into the game. Above you can see that once Sims 4 Studio is open, you need to search for a CAS Standalone, in this case I imported the mesh of a nude female Sim to use as the avatar. The outfit was re-sewn to the Sims avatar in CLO, then exported as a OBJ file to be used in Blender.
The first image on the left, shows what happened when I tried to import the outfit from CLO (sewn onto the default CLO avatar) into Blender onto the Sims avatar. I quickly learnt their bust shapes were quite different and would not fit correctly unless the CLO outfit was re-sewn onto the Sims avatar. The final step will be fixing the UV maps in Blender and importing the completed outfit into Sims 4 for in-game wear.
As I was somewhat struggling to work with Blender, throughout my research I found that there was a simpler way to put clothing into Sims 4 using Photoshop. It was quite the discovery, see the video below.
