Hello I am editing a mesh to make a deadpool/spiderman-type mask. The sim's head will be shrunken in CAS, but I would like the mask to mirror their facial expressions. I only want to apply certain bones like the eyes and jaw. I've only ever assigned bones through the mesh toolkit, so I don't know how to manually assign them in blender. Where do I start?

Might be a bit of work, but... Using TSRW or s3oc, Get your head parts as geom. Note, the scalp is separate part. Also, the scalp actually has a separate texture from the rest, so you will have to rearrange the UV mapping to fit everything. Assemble the head in Blender and arrange the map. You don't need teeth, mouth parts, eyes or eyelashes. Use Mesh> Transform> shrink/flatten to increase the size of everything by about .001 0r .002. Then make your modifications on ears, nose area and mouth area.

Those are the basics. You will need to add in the head morphs.

The way I have done similar, is to simply make it as a hair/hat. Either way, clipping can get tricky, but making it from a Sim head, vertices and edges will align better than converting a foreign model. Also, add on neck parts to extend the mask.

I will say that eyes can be especially tricky, but again, a Sim head base helps.

Do you know where I can find head parts with morphs? I tried searching "head" in S3OC but I'm only getting hair. I'm currently using the mesh from a slender man mask that was shared here.

It's listed as "face" in s3oc, and under Make up/ face overlay> "face" in TSRW. I don't remember if TSRW as listing for scalp, but pretty sure S3OC does.

I exported the AM face. I tested assigning bones and morphs using that reference and the morphs work great. Is there a way to view and copy selected bones to my mask in Blender? Kind of like how ts4 to ts3 pose conversions are done.

I believe Transfer Geom Data, in the geom tools can do that, but I've never used it. For individual bones, you can use bone weight transfer. For that, you need to have the bone in both meshes. If the mesh you want to transfer to doesn't have that bone, you must type it in, in the vertex groups panel. Select the donor mesh, hold shift and select the mesh to receive bone. Go to weight paint mode. The mesh getting the transfer should be the one that is set for bone weights. Click weights> transfer weights. Normalize all, and limit totals, and you're done that transfer. I think you can transfer more than one weight ata time, but have never done that.

Transfer GEOM Data is purely for giving a mesh what it needs to function in .geom format if it didn't start as one, doesn't touch anything to do with the mesh itself.

Transfer Weights will do just fine, it should even create the groups automatically by default (the panel in the bottom left that appears, if Create Data is ticked). Same panel, the Source Layers can be changed to copy only the active layer or all By Name.
As with most tools in Blender this is the manual version of a modifier, the Data Transfer. That modifier can be used to do exactly the same thing as MeshToolKit's auto-bones.

You'd benefit from Blender tutorials about bone weights / weight paint in general, as it's not a TS3 exclusive topic so you don't need to limit yourself to learning it from Sims creators

I think I made this more difficult on myself. Since the eyes, nose, and mouth are shrunken, the texture gets distorted around those areas. To fix this, I made the eyes a separate 2D mesh to hover over the face, added bones, and painted weights, but I'm stuck connecting the bones and mesh.

I grouped the armature and mesh, but only the bones move—the right eye stays in place. I tried following tutorials on 2D and 3D model rigging, but my mesh is both flat and curved. I’m using Blender 4.0.

My plan is to rig, mirror to the left side, and rename bones to match the adult face rig. The upper lid will use the brow bones, and the lower lid will use "squint" (not sure if it means lower eyelid). Afterward, I’ll connect to the mesh, export as .bin, and import into TSRW with the main head.

I hope this makes sense. I would also like to know if my rig needs fixing.

Yes, problems you're having is why I said to use an EA head mesh. Perhaps @CardinalSims has managed to transfer Sim facial bones to foreign meshes? I have only gotten this to work one time, and even then, in a very limited way. You are dealling with the arc of eye rig, which doesn't change.

As for mirroring, use MTK, it auto matically renames and changes, right to left, or left to right. Only thing is that it also flips the UV. I usually do not add the new mesh to the original in MTK, rather make it a separate mesh. Then import to Blender and realign to the original.

A trick you can try, is to set the eyes as 50% headnew. That holds them in place better, but reduces how much they will move.

I am using the EA head mesh. The mask will be split in 2 groups: eyes and the head. I think I see what you mean for the arc. I deleted some of the bones of the EA adult rig so that only the parts I want remain. Hopefully I can transfer them to the mesh. What is MTK and where can I find it?

OK... I just saw that you uploaded your mask yesterday, and took a look. First thing, you can't use earrings as your donor. If you are making a mask that is tighter to the face, you must have morphs. I also suggested that you make this as a hair/hat. Nraas master controller allows to change hair with outfit category. For hair, I would use afHairWrapLong. Just change flags in TSRW. It has morphs. If using accessory, Egypt armband and Egypt necklace have morphs. Pretty sure there are others, but I've been using those in recent projects.

You can't have this for teen thru elder. Heads are different. Your mask is smaller than an adult male head. It must be a little larger. Import aan am face and scalp as geom, as your reference, then import another face and scalp. Remove mouth parts, you don't need them. If the multiplier in your TSRW file is your final texture, import it to Blender. Remember that the scalp UV needs to be shrunk and moved. ecause your texture appears to bbe symmetrical, you can fold the UV and use half of the face texture, and have room for the scalp, or shrink the scalp to fit somewhere blue.

On the head you're making into a mask, join face and scalp, and merge vertices. In edit mode, go to Mesh> Transform> Shrink/Flatten, and increase size by .001. Now, you have a "skin tight" mask to work from. Make adjustments you need, and you have the reference head so you know not to pull your mask inside of it as you shape the mouth area and ears.

I know it shows .002 in the pic, but it looked too big, and I reset to .001.

Hello! The first file I uploaded has changed a lot since then, the multiplier was just a placeholder. My final multiplier will be a gray square. And I just realized you were referring to mesh tool kit for MTK, my bad!

The mask will only be for AM. I was thinking of shrinking the sim's head with sliders so it doesn't get in the way of the mask, as this will be his only outfit. I'm making the face part and scalp 2 separate accessories. I will add morphs at the end.

I also found a creator who made default anime heads and he said he only used weight paints to get everything animated. I auto assigned face bones to the eye part w/ MTK and am now painting weights for each of the vertex groups. I'll update on that once I'm done.

Problem you'll have with shrinking the head, is that the mask will follow since they will have the same bones.

I see. Do you think it would work if I make a headless sim by editing the grim reaper in cas? I read that the head disappears if you change the everyday outfit

I have never tried that, so I don't know.

It was a very tedious task, but it's working now!! :D

OK, so I'm not sure, exactly what is your mask? I'm now guessing it's that cut part that only goes around the eyes and mouth? When you said "Spiderman mask", I was thinking you wanted to make a full head cover mask.

My mask is split into 3 parts: scalp, blank face, and eye. I really want the eyes to be animated, so I can't achieve that effect with just the full head cover and multiplier. The blank face part is weighted to the jaw and head bone. The eyes are weighted to the eyebrows, squint, and jaw bones. Like the comic spiderman mask, the web patterns don't move and it looks like the eyes are laid on top of it.

OK... I think that I better understand what you're trying to do. Going back thru things, you cannot transfer an external rig into TS3. To remove bones from the mesh, you must do that in the vertex groups window. Removing them from the rig in Blender only means they won't move in Blender. You need to partially paint in headnew to your floating part, so it doesn't float. I guess, also to the jaw... around 50%. That would be similar to how I got some eye and mouth bones to work on an MMD model head. With the eyes, 100% attached to the rig by eye bones, they follow the EA eye arc. Partially attaching to headnew, kept the eyes more where I want them, but does restrict some eye movements.

The eye parts are done. I weight painted them to their respective left and right sides, and they stretch with the jaw when the sim is doing an action like freaking out.

My new problem is that it shows through objects that are in front of it, like some kind of x ray effect. They can also be seen when looking at the back of the sim's head. I imported the final .simgeom as a .bin file into tsrw to preserve the new weights. Is this an issue with how I imported it? And how can I fix this?

It looks to me as the mask is still away from the face. Also, did you move the scalp UV? In the file above, you have the scalp and face overlapping.

It's supposed to be like that. When I equip the sim with all 3 parts in cas, they will have the full mask. I tried combining and exporting the meshes as 1 file, but it crashes tsrw so I have to keep them separate. I followed your advice of making the blank face part larger so that it covers the eyebrows and other things that can poke out of the mask. I plan on going back to make the chin larger.

With this edited version, I only need to flatten the sim's brows, nose, cheeks, and ears. The blank face part is mostly weighted to headnew, so it won't be affected by the sliders. I didn't move the scalp UV because it's going to be a hat hair. I want the texture quality to be consistent, so I'm not shrinking it.

I'm attaching the tsrw files for the blank face and eye part. They both have the x ray issue. They also have a weird shine, but I think it looks fine in game.