Cuote:
"Export it as a BodyShop project, then import it back into the game with no changes. Close BodyShop, then go to your Saved Sims folder and copy the new .package file into the work folder. Next, create a new mesh .package for the adult version of the mesh, and link it up to the BodyShop .package as explained here : http://www.modthesims2.com/article.php?t=139819

You will want to link up the Adult Female, the Elder Female, and also the Young Adult female if you have University."

what do u mean by linking the mesh...im breaking my head i...i am new at this and i know i should be patient.
i did the tutorial for the body meshing but had to stop because my mouse doesnt have a rightclick and i couldnt keep going. i tried to do the hair mesh sorta like the body mesh and after many things i did (which i cant remember) i ended up getting to the milkshape step and i created the hairdo i wanted to do...( not as good as i wished but hey im a noob) and then i exported it but then i got lost.

can someone answer my questions or do me the favor of doing the hairdo of Lenny from shaman king????? plz if im doing something wrong in posting this here im sry i dont know where to post it and i decided to post it here because its this tutorial im trying to do. plz plz

nooberstoober,
You know, at the beginning of this tutorial it tells you to learn how to make clothing first. There's a reason - so that you would know about linking, editing, and all sorts of things. and then just have to worry about the ages and stuff by the time you got here. I'm sorry if this doesn't sound helpful, but you have to assume you'll spend a lot of time, probably months - learning how to edit meshes (if not more)

i got the clothing one right i didnt complete it because i cant without the right click of the mouse.. but i did finish it with another suit and it worked fine...what i mean is that i cant relation the word "link" to something i did on the clothing... what does liking mean?

It's the part with the modified shape and cres going being put into the bodyshop recolor file. Which is what you're doing here - opening up the bodyshop recolor file and looking for the correct 3dir - because in a body mesh there is one - and there are multiple ones in a hair recolor file. There are *3* body tutorials, which means you would have done it at _least_ 3 times, although I would recommend more projects before touching hair.

Great Merlin's pants, but that was difficult. I went through at least 5 tries before I finally got it right. My tips to anyone doing this tutorial: Print out not only this one but Clothing tutorial 1 + 2. put them all in a 3 ring binder with tabs for easy access. Follow the process step by step and if you have trouble keep a detailed log of every single procedure that you take. (Even if you screw up, and revert to the last saved version!) That way if you make a mistake you can easily retrace your steps. Take it from me. I probably wasn't quite ready to take on hair meshing, but I've never been one to shy away from jumping into a task that was bigger than my skill level.

Ok, now admittedly during the first 4 tries I was imbibing of some Sailor Jerry's. It's a wonder I didn't crash Body Shop completely.

Long story short, Great tutorials you guys... I'm completely new here and so I haven't even gotten around to dishing out "thanks" on these yet. Now that I know I'm not a complete buffoon I'm going to go on to try the next tutorials... and if that works I'll wear my computer out making custom meshes! And then, take over the world Mwhahahahahaaa! .. .ha..h
ermmm....
Anyway thanks.

zellsbells - well hair meshing is really advanced, you are expected to actually have the body meshing tutorials _memorized_ before hitting hair. Glad you got your project working!

Deleted a minor rant; replacing with a polite request that someone consider writing a unified, tool-updated hair mesh tutorial so that the steps are all in one place in a linear fashion, instead of leaning so heavily on 'read the other tutorials, because otherwise you just aren't smart enough'.

Making 3d animated meshes is complicated. There's no easy way to jump ahead, even for smart/experienced folks. There's 300 separate (and mostly unique) steps covered in the 3 body tutorials. I can't make it 'easier'. The projects are picked to build on each other.

In order to present the huge amount of meshing info in consumable chunks, the first two tutorials don't even discuss bone assignments at all - which are fundamental to making major modifications to body/hair/accessory meshes. But even without it, there's 50 odd steps in each. The last one makes the leap into bone assignments, groups, combining groups, remaking a morph - and as such is crammed with many concepts and 100 steps - but it at least covers 90% of what people will need to know to do creative stuff.

Just two days ago another person completed tutorial #1 for bodies. So maybe your SimPE is having an issue (I did see your long rant, and your reference to the spot where you are stuck) . Probably you would do better to get that ironed out by asking for help in tutorial #1 (or on the general forum) before moving back to hair. The 'issues' in that tutorial are small, the mesh finding technique does work, at least it did last time I used it, even if there is a faster way now.

Hair is extra complicated. Your request is 'give me a tutorial on calculus - and explain all the algebra in it also'. This stuff is like math. Trying to learn the next concepts when you don't know the basics cold just amounts to frustration. I don't want people having to look up (or do for the first time) how to extract mesh parts when they start working on hair - the focus once on hair is sorting out the mesh parts for hair, the multiage bodyshop file, (and later headaches with layers and bone assignments).

When I started meshing, there was 1 tutorial on body meshing (it's still online). To learn all there was to learn, I went through every thread I could find, reading hundreds of threads and responses. When I came on staff - I worked to separate that out. The InfoCenter has information crammed into it - all in one spot and labeled. Unimesh comes with a _manual_. Yes, some of the articles could use (often small) updates, but this is all volunteer.

I never say 'read' the tutorials. I always say DO. Actual hands-on experience is the only way to go. You'll breeze through the parts you know; good, it'll go faster for you, just don't skip reading any bit of explaining made in the text. Before trying to learn the new complicated parts with hair, I strongly suggest to people that they have mastery of tutorial #1. And that they have at least done #2 and #3 (which would enforce mastery of #1, and introduces all the other concepts that will be NEEDED for real hair edits). For some people, doing the 3 tutorials is enough to dive into hair. For others, they need more practice.

Ok.

Ok. Wow. I spoke a bit too soon. I went and made another mesh but I got the old "empty" head. I'm not exactly sure what I did wrong, is that typically in the Mesh or is that something improprtly linked, in the recolor package? I'm tempted to think it's the Mesh because I started over from scratch twice, and the only thing I didn't redo completely was the Milkshape file.

I am using the adult male short mop (same on as in the recolor tutorial) and trying to bring the bangs all the way across. Reading over some previous posts I saw that maybe it was the normals. So, I did align normals on the non-base hair groups, but all I got was some weird black shading that didn't look "normal" in itself. I double checked bone assignments and the hair-bone is connected to the head-bone, weights are at 100%.

The second part of this post is just a little nitpicky. At the last step, do I have to -copy- or -move- my meshes to the SavedSims folder? It seemed to work either way... does the game just read the files no matter which they are in, and add that key into the overall object library? And, will it cause conflicts to have two identical objects in different folders? I may not be using the correct terms for some of these things; I'm very new to all this!

Now, last thing, and this is just a note really, for anyone who has the same problem I did. Even though I got a working hair mesh to show up by following DrP's tutorial, I never really "got it" until today. I had no concept of what data, exactly, was in each file, and how it linked up. (I'm still a little fuzzy on a few things, but, all in good time.) What helped it to all click together for me? All I did was open, in SimPE, a couple of package files that I had downloaded. I already knew what was in those because of the filename labelling structure, so it all became relatable.

PS. Tigger, I certainly have it memorized NOW! *LOL* I'm the kind of person who has to learn by doing, and by learning how *not* to do something too!

If your mesh isn't showing up _at all_ on the head (or body) it would be a linking issue.
I'd make a new recolor file and try the linking part again.

As for the shading, I think I'd need to see a picture of the mesh (in milkshape) and screenshots of your new hair to give further advice. You can 'go advanced' and use manage attachments to provide screenshots here.

If you copy or move your new version of the file to 'saved sims' (dr pixel is doing that in order to double check that the sizes don't change significantly) it should overwrite the file you have there. Two copies in saved sims would cause problems. But a copy in your working folder (far away from sims2 folder) and in saved sims would be fine. Everyone has their own technique there - with body meshing I just tell people to edit the file in saved sims to begin with, and don't make a copy in working and them move it back.

I hope I got all the questions. As for the understanding - there are parts I still know what to do, but I'm not sure I understand all the nuances. While I could try and explain more of why this or that is this or that way... it seems hard enough to for someone new to focus in on all the steps and follow along. I think the 'ah ha, this is how this works together' is something that comes as things get more familiar and the mind has had time to puzzle through it.

I have always learned a LOT when I make a mistake, far more than when I follow directions and it goes right I've had all sorts of bloopers, meshes that didn't do what I want, explosions and other oops's

Yep, you helped a lot! I went back and examined the mesh, and turned on "Show Skeleton." There WAS no skeleton! That was problem number one. I sorta merged the two together (placed my modded hair over the original one with skeleton intact) and that was done, but I have no clue how I managed to do that in the first place.

Also for some reason there were only liek 4 items in the 3ID reference files. I don't know What they all do (yet) but I'm sure the game needs em!

Basically I deleted every working file, every project file, etc except for my fixed Milkshape file, and started over from scratch cause I wasn't sure what was original. When I did Fix Integrity I called it something new. Now it works... so far! I can't wait till I get to the point where I can share stuff.

I'm able to fix some minor problems of my own so that makes me a little bit more confident. Yesterday I tried to make a adult hair fit on a teen and it ended up on her shoulders. *LOL* I've yet to have something explode...sounds exciting!

zellsbells - for an age conversion - the very first mesh you import as to be of the age you want to end with. (so in this case, a teen). Then import your adult mesh. And the obj body/head for a teen for reference. It's still a mess to sort out all those parts - Dr Pixel suggests renaming some of the groups to help you keep them sorted out.

I'm having a problem with getting my mesh package to show up under Young Adult.
So far all I have done is reach the part of linking the mesh to the texture. I've made plenty of clothing meshes before.
When I check it in bodyshop, by creating a new Sim, I can select the hair in the adult section and the elder section but it doesn't show up as an option for Young Adults. If I select it in either adult or elder and then change the Sim's age to Young Adult then it does show up on the Sim, just not in the catalogue.
Any idea of what I've done wrong?

I'm REALLY new to this, and i got lost so fast lol. I don't know how to make a mesh package or whatever you said, i went to that site you gave about, but that was no help at all. Is there another tutorial teaching you how to make a mesha package or whatever, because i REALLY want to make custom content. I am really dedicated to making custom content. So please explain this mesh package thing to me.

Menaceman44 - Were you cloning from the same hair as used in this tutorial, or using another style?

shamere900 - That's because you need to go through the body tutorials and do them first. If you'd do them (as it says to do in the tutorial) you would know how to make a mesh package. This is not a beginner's tutorial, and making hair is Very Challenging, even doing a simple edit of an existing hairstyle like this. You can't do brain surgery your first day of med school either - you have to learn the basics and work your way up. Do the three Unimesh body tutorials, master them, and do some of your own body meshing projects before attempting the hair tutorial again.

Ok, Thank you.

I was using the female hairstyle that has those oversized pigtails that came with the base game. Should that make a difference?

i wish there was a hair meshing tutorial that goes from start to finish, it would make things alot easier.
I have done many other tutorials from this website in relation to meshing, all being successful, but I have never been able to get a hair mesh to work correctly.
I can do the bodyshop clothing tutorials without the need to refer back to the tutorial at all.
I guess I'm trying to say is that I'm confused on where you stop doing the clothing tutorial and begin the hair tutorial.
I understand instead of choosing clothes you choose hair, but other then that, Im totally lost. can someone help

rosaline, I'm afraid we can't make the hair stuff much easier. It's a sort of... connection that has to be made for you regarding the steps and what you're actually doing with the meshes.

You have to find the 4 parts of the mesh that all go together (the same age) and save your mesh file. You fix integrity. You save out your modifed cres and shape. Now you need to figure out where to do the linking, and that's where this tutorial goes into detail. That part is confusing. It simply is - suddenly you're dealing with a bunch more 3dirs.

Then when you start to edit the hair, it can also get confusing, because it involves dealing with a lot more groups. Hair meshing is complicated. That is why there are so few good original hair meshers. Every time HP works on a new hairstyle, she works hard on it, sometimes for months, and I think she loses some of her Real Life hair in the process.

I only dabble in hair. I understand what needs to be done, but I stick with clothing.

hi tiggerypum, i know this has nothing to do with hair meshing, but i was wondering if you could help, im trying to do a mesh for a fence, I have treated the fence the same as an object.
in SimPE everything seems correct, even the preview buttons show that the mesh i created is successful, but the problem is, once i play the game, i comes up as a mesh and it is recoloured correctly but the height has not changed and other modiications i made to the fence do not appear, what could I be doing wrong?

rosaline, please go over to create - object and ask there, because the object experts, etc, are going to be better able to guess what you're doing.

ok, sorry, i already tried over there in a fence info centre thread but no one has helped me or even replyed, but thats ok il just wait someone might post something.thanks anywayz

Just wanted to say thankyou all for great, awesome, amazing,<insert another compelling description here> tutorials I found the hair tutorial a lil harder than the others I have followed but finally succeeded*hmm did I speel that right?* Anyway thankyou all for helping me on the path to meshing I appreciate it greatly as I am sure everyone does

Kat

when i do this, i dont get the GDMC, SHPE and stuff at simPE..
i just get those 55 data thingies, so i dont have the mesh and i cant start..
someone please help!

GMO - did you complete all 3 body meshing tutorials?