Date Posted: 6th Jul 2008 at 1:19 AM

... to never wanting to mesh again. I've only got a few more days on my MilkShape trial, and I really don't know if I want to spend money just so I can frustrate myself. I have tried to make two different meshes today. The first one didn't work at all, so I abandoned it. The second one was (I thought) simpler and all nicely smoothed out with the normals and whatnot. It looked perfectly seamless in MilkShape. It looked perfectly seamless in Body Shop. But when I went into the game (after about three hours of playing around with the mesh), I saw a great big ugly line around my Sim's middle, as if she'd been chopped in half.

I am so fed up. Meshing is just too complicated. There are too many variables and half the time it seems like things are random. I used the exact same process on today's mesh that I used on the toddler onesie the other day. The onesie works fine in the game. So why won't the mesh I made today?

Aargh, aargh, aargh.

Date Posted: 27th Jun 2008 at 2:33 AM

Heh... hardly. But I did manage to make a mesh that actually works and shows up in the game. I made a few recolours for it, too. Unfortunately, I don't remember which mesh I actually used (I had to go through a few versions to get what I wanted... and even then, I couldn't get exactly what I wanted because certain things wouldn't smooth out and I had to abandon that particular mesh completely). So, anyway, I'm not sure if it's the last mesh I worked on... or the second to last... or the third to last. Really, it was all kind of a blur of frustration.

There must be a way in SimPE to find out which mesh a recolour references. But I can't find anything. I've searched and Googled and looked at lots of numbers in SimPE... but I can't find anything that looks remotely like any of my meshes.

Well, I knew the MilkShape gods weren't going to let me off that easily.

Date Posted: 23rd Jun 2008 at 11:42 PM

I can't seem to figure it out. I'd like to put up a picture on my main page with terms and stuff, but I can't seem to get the HTML to work. The image tags won't take... and all I get is gobbledygook.

Anyone know how to do this?

Date Posted: 15th Jun 2008 at 9:00 PM

It's official: I am not a mesher. Frustrated by the lack of in-game meshes (or custom meshes suitable for what I wanted to do), I decided that I was going to learn how to mesh. I'd looked at the tutorials before and gotten turned off by the complexity of it all. But yesterday I decided I was just going to sit down and work my way through the tutorials. Easier said than done.

First, I had to get a new copy of SimPE, because my old copy didn't match up with the instructions or screenshots. Then, the new SimPE wouldn't work without various download thingies from Microsoft. When I finally got all that sorted out, I found that my copy of SimPE still wasn't showing the same things as the tutorial pictures. I eventually figured out part of what I was supposed to be doing, only to get completely stuck. After Googling another meshing tutorial, I was back on track. I eventually finished all the nit-picky SimPE stuff and got into the actual meshing program. I played with the mesh a little bit, just to make a change that I could see. I exported it and tried to open it back up in SimPE... and I got nothing except an error message.

At that point, I closed it all down, trashed my temporary mesh files, and went back to Body Shop to see if there was some existing mesh I could use for my textures. But not without a few tears of frustration.

I am not a mesher. There was a reason I didn't take 3D modelling in school (I took Photoshop instead). I don't want to mesh for the sake of meshing. I prefer to be creative with the actual Photoshop work. That said, it is frustrating to not be able to find what you want: the mesh that will make your texture look awesome.

As I was slogging through the beginning steps in SimPE (which appear to be standard for whatever type of clothing mesh you're making), the thought occurred to me that all of this should be simplified with some kind of batch process. And then I wondered: Why hasn't it been? To keep it difficult? To keep meshing as some sort of elite art club that only those with extreme amounts of patience, properly functioning computers, and left-brain sensibilities can join? I mean, the mesh tool itself was not that difficult to use; with time, and a lot of messing about, I'm sure I could create a half-decent dress shape. But it's the pre- and post-MilkShape stuff that's the problem. Export this file. Rename this. Set this instance. Clone this. Add these parts. Make a new folder. Etcetera.

So I guess it's time to fire up Google and search for some really good meshes. Unfortunately for me, most seem to be for adults or teenagers (and I make clothes for kids and toddlers). But I'll keep looking. And I hope that, one day, someone creates some sort of meshing batch process for SimPE so those of us who really want to mesh won't have to pull out our hair instead.