Last week, a viewer has asked whether it is possibile to create a mod that resembles the characters in the anime "Fairy Tail", such as Mavis, Zeref and Erza. He also recommended the Forest Denku's Frillycoat as a look-alike to Mavis' dress. Mavis' dress actually looks very simple and can be easily done up in real life but for skin mod, mesh design (3D model) causes a lot of constraints.
For example, Mavis' dress has the three pieces of cloth on the front of her torso. In order to paint those onto an in-game skin, it will need to have a flat surface that is not overly stretched. If the surface follows the contours of the breasts, anything drawn onto the skin would become distorted.
After checking out the Forest Denku's Frillycoat, I do agree that it kind of resembles Mavis' dress, except for the length of the dress, rounded sleeve instead of trumpet sleeve and an additional coat over the basic dress. But it helps a lot that the mesh at the torso portion of the costume is straight and not overly stretched, which enables the blue squares and triangles to be drawn on without becoming distorted.
The other good reason for using the Forest Denku's Frillycoat is that, it is a five piece costume, which can be worn separately. Thus, you can just wear the chest piece and leave the rest out so you wouldn't have the wooly shoes, gloves and tail which sticks out from the back of the leg piece.
Let's take a look at Mavis dress in "Fairy Tail" anime and the Forest Denku's Frillycoat to make a comparison.
From the image above, we can see the similarities in the dress and the coat. Do note that the Forest Denku's Frillycoat above included the hat and shoes which can be unequipped. You can also notice the main differences (length, sleeves and coat) that I have mentioned above. Other than that, Mavis also wears a shoulder cloak which the Forest Denku's Frillycoat does not have.
And so, I proceeded to work on the Forest Denku's Frillycoat in which, I firstly turned the entire dress and coat into an uniform pink color.
Next, I painted the three symbols on the torso area. Because of the open center design of the coat, I painted one of the symbols on the dress itself and two other sides on the coat. The three symbols ended up shorter than what Mavis' dress have because the length is limited by the coat (unless I make two short ones at sides and one long one in the middle).
Thirdly, I trimmed the sides and back of the coat to make it less obvious. However, the side and back of the coat cannot be excessively trimmed because it will leave a hole. 😡
Then, I tried to find a suitable shoulder armor similar to that of Mavis'. But the closest that I can find, with the design that covers the entire shoulder, is from the Orichalcum Key. Although I repainted it to full pink and removed the excess accessories, it still does not look that much like Mavis'. 😡
Let's look at the final result below.
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| Front View 1 |
We can see immediately that the length of the dress and the three pieces of cloth on the torso are shorter than that of Mavis' dress.
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| Front View 2 |
Do you think we should remove the two additional pieces of cloth at the sides of the cloak?
In the image above, you can see the two sides (on coat) are a layer over the center piece (on dress). We can also see the 'leftover' of the coat which cannot be removed due to a hole beneath.
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| Front Close-up View 2 |
Well, the cloak does not wrap around the neck like Mavis' cloak, but this is the only shoulder in game that have the closest design. 😅
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| Rear View |
In the image above, we can see the 'leftover' of the coat at the back. It will be a hole if the region is removed. 😦
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| Side View |
Yep. The rounded sleeves can be seen above.
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| Side Close-up View |
Unfortunately, the mesh sets a lot of restrictions. A 3D modeler should be able to lengthen the dress, adjust the sleeves and maybe even the coat, but that's beyond my capability. 😦 Unless someone can point me to a free 3D modelling software that can handle a diversity of model types.
Well, I guess for now, we'll need to find a hairstyle and maybe a hat that can be modified to look like those feathers on Mavis' head. But I don't recall seeing a hairstyle in AION that is as long as Mavis'. 😅
Another costume that I find closely match Mavis' dress would be the one worn by the pet NPCs who stroll Veteron Citadel and Eltnen. It has the required length, trumpet sleeves and a layer in which the three symbols can be drawn. Unfortunately, the torso portion is stretched and thus caused the symbols to become distorted as shown below. This does not affect the original costume because it is just a plain color on the torso.
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| Distortion on Torso |
Overall, I'm not fully satisfied with the mod but that's the best I can do without altering the mesh. 😞
