For reference, I'm on PC. I use mods, but that is not the issue. It's a tagging problem, and affects everyone. To see for yourself, make any Sim, flip their identity to the opposite gender, and dress them in any Top or Fullbody from the Base Game made for that gender (i.e. dress for AF, suit for AM). Then, dress them in something from Life & Death, and compare the chest/shoulder shape between the two. It's hard to miss. Exhaustive examples below.
A lot of my Sims are Trans, so I've had to figure out how Part Flags work. For Trans Sims to use any mesh made for their gender (what they identify as), Part Flags have to be set to Restrict Opposite Gender, and not Restrict Opposite Frame. (i.e. a Trans-AF Sim has the opposite frame to her gender, so Restricting Opposite Frame on a female mesh means she can't use it, at all. It won't even appear in CAS.) Thing is, most of the matched meshes in Life & Death are tagged "Restrict Opposite Frame", instead of "Restrict Opposite Gender". This is the result. (Model is Trans-AF. Teal sweater is Base Game, and fits right. Purple blouse dress is L&D, and is distorted--because it's the AM mesh, forced on an AF Sim.)
You stick a male mesh on an AF Sim--even a trans one--you end up with square shoulders and crushed breasts. You can test that with any masc t-shirt. Same for AM/male Sims; in female meshes, they get round shoulders and tiny breasts they don't have. You can usually choose to do this (reference Morgyn Ember in their dress. AM frame. AF mesh. Surprise! Tiny breasts), but the whole L&D pack seems to be flagged this way, making the distortion unavoidable.
Here are the examples I took, with EA meshes as reference, and a suit from L&D that shows the same distortion. Note: this is not all of them. Trans AM Sims are also affected. I had limited space.
All I've checked are set to Restrict Opposite Frame--which means every Top and Fullbody outfit in the pack distorts on Trans Sims, and they can't access the ones actually made for them.
I re-tagged the AM and AF versions of this dress in Sims4Studio, and you can see the difference. "Before" is how it comes in-game (AM mesh on Trans-AF, AF Mesh on Trans-AM Sim.) After is with the right tag, which assigns AF to all AF and AM to all AM.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk Thanks for your patience. It's a specific problem, but it's also a big issue for those with opposite-frame Sims. Most of the CAS in this pack is unusable to them. Here's hoping someone can escalate to EA, and they can fix it.
Thanks for reading.
