I ran into the weirdest darn thing with the elf face.... I ran it through twice trying to get it upright as I was getting the XYZ/XZY weirdness and that should fix it. I was able ot get it back upright and oriented properly... but when I go to test it, the ONLY thing that changes is the ears. I have the nice pretty pointy (and slightly asymmetrical) ears on my sim... but the default Maxis elf face!

I didn't add or remove anything, only shifted vertices around slightly, and it was remarkably slightly - I got the face almost how I wanted it in Body Shop and just did some minor changes. The actual face I used was also from a different sim originally - it's not as if I started with the Maxis elf base, even. So how it's overriding the whole face with the original but keeping the ears... I have no freaking clue.

I also used another Sim's face to change the shape when I posted the pic with the strange eyes - at least the other changes worked fine for me (it replaces the strange looking "caus" mesh) and overwriting worked so it seems like it is possible somehow (used meshtool only for the trial). Have to go on fiddeling...

lol anyone going to use this to make and upload a sim for people to test? e.g. a perfect lara croft face or an acurate james bond could now be made using 3d max... lol

thanks HP... I have a definite need for this. I'm willing and most able to blow up a few sims. (I probably can't avoid it. )

Geez... I found the link to this tutorial from your Martin Gore... which I found from searching for hair you mentioned in a respond to a thread I made... I'm just running all over now. Haha..

This is GREAT! I have not encountered any instances yet where I deperately need fine tuning that I was not able to manage in bodyshop, but now I know if I ever do, it actually IS possible now. I've done default CAS edits before, so if I need to, I think I could manage this... this is very much bookmarked now... thanks!!

Though I've not been dealing with meshes (I have no 3D programs because most of them are or too expensive for home users or are sold only online and I cannot use money online), I've been experimenting a lot with game data and placing available all I find out by myself.
Yep, the biggest claim I have on TS2 is the horrible models chosen as defaults. Some of them are not even complete but deform faces without any simetry. You create a Sim and age it, results are almost casual.
Yep, I'm wishing a paralel development of the game, made by the user to the user, once the biggest fun in this game is not to play, but to share our experiments.
Unfortunately the producer is not following our development, our requirements and is limitating to include a lot of NPCs that are based on very primitive programming (you include a set of commands and they simply execute them without any logical).
For a future development of a high class game I would just wish that the Player is the most important creator and decisions must be based on wide-open-possibilities.
Thanks for all the creative minds that are placing themselves available to research.

I think I'm doing something wrong..... I changed the Elf face by combining two mesh parts. That worked out fine but when I follow the next steps I fail because when I open bodyshop and load my new face it's totally different from how it is supposed to be.

What I've changed are the ears, but in bodyshop I lose an eye and the ears well......they turn human. And I don't get it because in SimPE when I click preview it shows exactly what I want.

I know this is something new and not fully tested but does anyone have an idea of what I have to do to let this work out fine?

Thanks,

-M-

You cannot combine mesh parts for this. You have to just edit the location of the vertices of the original face - move them around, but you can't add or delete anything or "frankenstein" pieces together for this.

I see....so I can't add vertices either? That's a huge bummer....I'm diggin' in my brains now to think of a solution.....

were do i find the sims faces ive created?

Nope, can't add vertices. I tried adding vertices into the GMDC which SimPE detected just fine and it showed up fine in BodyShop, but the additional vertices are dropped from the generated GMDC in the Sim's character file.

The Sims faces you create need to be put into a default replacement face file that you put in Downloads. Then you can find them in BodyShop or CAS.

Okay, I just did the meshing and importing and whatnot...

Holy Freakin' Hell!!

I just about crapped my pants when I saw Bodyshop load my mesh.

Oh man, HP, you're a genius.

Thank you so much!

What I would like to try doing is editing individual (already born) sims faces. I know their face meshes are stored in their character files. What I don't know is, when genetics are passed down, will the edited sim's child take on any of my changes, or refer back to the default meshes as baseline?

Also I am never quite sure what people mean when they say "Meshtool" except I know it's something Delphy made. How do I run it? Or is that what is automatically used when I use the Import button in the GMDC plugin?

Okay my attempt has come out odd.
Following your instructions to change XZY to XYZ and export with the Maya Object Exporter by Delphy from SimPE.
I then imported it into MS3D with the Wavefront.obj importer and this happened.



So I went back into SimPE and set XYZ back to XZY and it's in the right place in MS3D.



What am I doing wrong here?

Exportdry, I'm pasting here my reply to your other thread:

The positioning issue in Milkshape is normal when working with exported obj files, no mistake in the tutorial; it will be put back in the right position when importing it back in SimPE, if you're using the Mesh Tool.
You can also rotate the imported obj to put it in a more convenient position to work with, as long as you don't forget to put it back in place before exporting, but then the lighting in Milkshape will be a little weird.

EDIT: I was pretty sure that I had been using the Unimesh plugins for that, without any issue, but I just checked and obviously I was wrong: the face animations and assignments are all messed-up. Unless the templates themselves behave differently, since I noticed differences in the files at the time but I still have to take a look again...
RE-EDIT: right, the Unimesh plugins work fine with extracted templates! Just mauled the afarchcaus and the sim created with that is "fine" >_<

Small precision: you CAN alter the edges in Milkshape, but this won't be retained in game, so no gaps will occur. All you could get is a normals distorsion in some cases.
Also, no matter how tempting it could be, don't change anything to the UV-map: this will move the vertices themselves in the opposite direction in game.


Inge,

The Mesh Tool and the tutorials are here ; I see that Miche says that this version has compatibility issues with the few last EPs, and didn't test that one personally (and it seems that I lost my old version in the computer change *sigh*).
But as you guessed, when editing an already born sim the only shape that will be passed on is the original shape; if you want to make the change genetic you'll need to make a full template, with the faces edited for all ages and both genders.
If this doesn't deter you, there's a tutorial by Argon on MATY about adding new templates instead of overriding an existing one - I didn't try it yet though, and it's a little bit scary.

Hi HP and Marvine. I've been trying this, and I've run into a couple problems using Wes's Milkshape plugins for this. I got the face (AM cpol) as close as I could with body shop, then extracted the sim's face with SimPE and imported it into Milkshape with the Unimesh plugin, just like a normal mesh. I think that's what you did, Marvine. Well, the first thing Milkshape does is ask if I want to create blend groups. If I say yes, there's a morphmesh, and it's all goofed up. I tried saying no, and everything seemed to be ok, the mesh replaced the original extracted cpol mesh (thanks Allen ABQ) and body shop made a new sim with it. So did the game, but when I put the sim on a lot, the whole lot froze. I could go into build mode and buy mode, exit the lot fine, but in live mode nothing moves. I tried starting over in bodyshop making a new sim, extracting the face and importing it into Milkshape, and the same issue happens with the blend groups. I also this time in the joints tab asked it to select unassigned verts, and half the face is lit up. I can't remember, but I think when I exported the first time there was a warning about unassigned verts. I can't think of a reason why Milkshape is losing some of the bone assignments, but I tried using the fix underassigned bones plugin under vertices, and it didn't help. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong and how not to do it wrong again?

dragonarts - the instructions are not for using unimesh. Please read them carefully.

They use meshtool and obj format - meshtool will rebuild a new gmdc with the bone assignments from the original.

This is why I was trying this with Wes's Unimesh plugins.



And this is why I was reluctant to use the meshtool. I have all the EPs and I hadn't downloaded meshtool onto my new computer yet. So if the Unimesh plugins work, using them would be my preference. So... Marvine?

I expect the face template data remains unchanged from one ep to the next - while there have been some changes to body meshes (they went from 3 to 4 bone assignments).

At the time this tutorial was written there were already quite a few eps. It would be easy enough to download meshtool and do a quick test run - just pull one vertex way out of place - and import and see if it works. Simple. Quick.

Tiggerypum is right to point out that this method uses the Mesh Tool ; and it does for a reason - nothing can be broken this way since it doesn't change anything else than the vertex positions.

I've been successful with the Unimesh plugins when making a template replacement, for which you overwrite a base template instead of editing the face of a given sim. I had forgotten about this detail when I first replied to you. At the time I was probably trying to get rid of the neck width limitation, and this seemed the only chance left (except that it didn't work either).
The faces that are in a character file have blend and weighting information, and this information gets altered by the Unimesh plugins, making them unusable in game. I never got a crash though, during my last test as well, all that happened was that all face animations were lost.
On the other side, the faces in the CASface.package don't include the same information, though it varies between archetypes, gender and age. Most of them don't include any blends or bone weights, and I'm not sure that what is found in some of them isn't junk data: the afarchcaus archetype that I used for the last test had at least blends that I didn't keep, and the sim created with the edited template behaved perfectly fine in CAS and in game as well. So the information that is used in the final sim comes from elsewhere.

But maybe I wasn't clear: you can't use an extracted and edited template to replace the face gmdc in a character file. It should be done as a replacement for a base template (or a whole new template, which I didn't attempt yet), which in turn will be used to create a new sim. The whole point of templates replacement is documented elsewhere, but while I used it occasionally because it allows me to use my favourite tools, it's not the most straightforward way to alter a single sim's face - which is the one explained here.

As for the Mesh Tool, why not try it for yourself? It won't take much room on your computer, and can come useful for a lot of things

To all: sorry for the confusion.

One thing I see I didn't mention is the fact that I actually wasn't trying to change the face of a character. I know that's what the tutorial does, and that alone is pretty cool. I played around with that some on my old computer, though I didn't actually put anybody ingame, but what I was doing now was using the tutorial as a basis for altering face templates. I successfully completed the basic steps of extracting a bodyshop face from it's package and exchanging it for the template GMDC from Allen's set, and from facefiles I extracted myself as per Motoki's tut on MATY. While that got me closer to what I want, it still needs adjustment to achieve my goal, so I came here. It seems like the Unimesh should work, but I'll go ahead and use meshtool. I do like the point that nothing can be broken.

Sorry I didn't make that point clear, but I wasn't confused about you using a face template. That is also what I wanted to do.


Edit: Using the meshtool everything worked just fine. You see the child Sim here with the altered face. And yes, I know she looks strange, but I haven't made the new skin yet. I still need to alter the rest of the template files so the face is consistent for all ages and genders. I had a "I wonder if this will work" thought occur to me though. In Milkshape it's easy to import with Unimesh and then export obj. Would the orientation in Meshtool be messed up if I used that exported obj to replace the GMDC? The whole xyz/xzy thing is annoying in editing in Milkshape. If I could skip the step of exporting from SimPE as an obj file and edit the face in Milkshape like I would clothing, then export as obj and use meshtool it would be easier.

ReEdit: I tried skipping the "export from SimPE with orientation set as xzy" step. Just extracted the bodyshop GMDCs (LOD too), imported into Milkshape with Unimesh, edited, then exported from Milkshape as obj. I used Meshtool to replace the mesh from the extracted file with the new one, and then replaced the template GMDC with the one Meshtool created. The guy with Enayla's serpent skin is the result. Animations retained, everything looks good (except I don't think I'm satisfied with the mesh yet )

This would need confirmation, but I think I remember that a mesh imported with the Unimesh plugins, then exported as obj, can't be used with the Mesh Tool because the vertices are renumbered differently. Whatever method you choose, it's safer to stick with it from the beginning to the end - well, playing mad scientist can be interesting, but then you should prepare yourself for funny outcomes

I really am prepared to break anything but my new computer. I seem to always be asking myself the question "what if...?"

Ah... see above. Your reply seems to have crossed my edit in passing.

Well congratulations, and so much for my theory

But now I need to ask: when you imported the mesh in Milkshape, you didn't get the warning about morphs and unassigned bones?

I was asked about creating blend groups, and underweighted skins. I answered no to the first and yes to the second. What I actually did, was take the obj file I'd already saved from my first attempt, and replace the mesh in the original extracted file using meshtool. I had saved an obj file then because I could import that into the other face files to use as a target for altering the others in a similar way. I'm going to try again "from scratch" just to make sure this actually works. I'm using a bodyshop sim, extracting the GMDCs and importing them into Milkshape with the Unimesh plugins. Answering no to blend groups and yes to fixing underweighted skins, making my changes, and then exporting as a wavefront obj. Then I'll use Meshtool as per tut to replace the GMDC.