VPN Garage – a site that is now, alas, defunct – had a project going on where they made cars that, rather than being real-life models, are meant to be models also made by the manufacturers in the game (Smoogo, Heaveola, Yomoshoto, Smord, etc.) as well as a few similarly-styled “rival” manufacturers. In that sense, they are “Maxis match,” not realistic. Some (All? I don’t know?) were vintage-style, with body styles reminiscent of cars made in the US and Japan from the 40s through the 80s. @psychosim then repositoried them so that they all drew from one master car for their body panel colors/texture. I then chose to screw around with 21 of the meshes for the 50+ models that Psychosim repo’d in this way. They are the ones shown above, all models/styles that fit my “target era” for the retro-Strangetown I’m putting together, so they are models from the 40s through to 1963, IIRC. Mostly, I made Simlish license plates for them and shinied up the metal bits and, in most cases, made the metal reflective, too. Plus, I made 25 shiny new body recolors, in actual colors from the 50s era. There are pics of all of the colors in this post here. (Separate post so you can see the pics full size.) All 25 of those colors can be applied to any of the models above as well as to any of the slaved models that I didn’t refurbish but that I linked to above, if you have/get them.
Download here. But some of the notes are important, so read them.
1. In all but one of these, the texture images for the metal trim is part of the same texture image that has the textures for things that shouldn’t be shiny or reflective. Like the tires, for instance. I wanted at least some degree of shiny/chromey metal (50s, after all), so I played around with material definitions, trying to make them so, trying to strike a balance between shiny chrome without the tires being weirdly shiny, too. (In some cases, it wasn’t possible; in order to shine the chrome at all, the tires became unacceptably shiny. In those cases, I merely brightened the metal.) If you look closely, however, pretty much all of them have some degree of shine/reflection on the tires. It can also create some odd reflection artifacts in the trim around windows from certain angles, depending on the mapping. If this bothers you, it is easy to turn off the reflection, requires changing just one word of text in SimPE. I have included a quick tutorial in RTF format in the download folder that shows you how to do it and includes pictures. Or, you can use the original mesh rather than the one I fussed with, which leads me to…
2. Each model above has its own folder within the downloads folder. Within each folder, there are two versions of each mesh. One is the original slaved one that Psychosim made, completely unchanged, and the other is the one I messed with. KEEP ONLY ONE OF EACH, as they have the same GUIDs. There’s a 1000-pixel-wide pic of each version in ¾-view in each folder so you can decide which you like better. There is also a text file in each folder that tells you what I did with each mesh to make it, IMO, prettier. :) There is also a separate folder for the body panel recolors, which includes pics of each color. At minimum, you need one or the other of the master meshes and then you need whatever other models and body colors you want.
3. The Simlish issue: For all of these, my version of the mesh has Simlish license plates. That said, most of these have the make/model of the car on it in English. I would change this if I could, but in all but one case, it’s in the mesh and I’m not a mesher. It is not excessively noticeable unless you’re looking quite close up. The license plates are far more noticeable.
4. Some of these look funky in neighborhood view. They don’t flash blue or anything, but for some of them, parts of them are invisible in neighborhood view. Like this:
Which is really weird because it’s basically the same car, just a 2-door and a 4-door version. One is fine, the other…isn’t. I don’t know why. I tried to fix it, but I failed. So, if you care about neighborhood view, you might want your Sims to keep some of these models in garages rather than in carports or out on driveways. ;) The worst offender is the Oberon. All that shows in neighborhood view with that one is the windows and odd bits of the interior. Very strange.
5. If anyone would want any of the other models that Psychosim similarly repositoried “refurbished,” I’d be happy to do it. Just shoot me a message/ask/whatever.
