#3
14th Apr 2006 at 11:33 PM
Last edited by tiggerypum : 15th Apr 2006 at
12:00 AM.
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HP is correct.
More specifically, Milkshape all by itself does NOT support sims body meshes in any sort of real capacity - it only supports one bone weight assignment per vertex.
In order to have the meshes behave properly and animate smoothly, parts of the meshes need 2-3 (and with Nightlife they introduced 4 on some meshes, no idea why) assigments on vertices around the joints and the stomach region.
So... if you use the
SimPE milkshape export, it will only support one bone per vertex.
Correct solutions for body meshes involve taking the data in the gdmc, translating it into something we can edit, and then translating it all back. This includes the morph data, and multiple bone assignments.
Wes took on the challenge of trying to give us more support for bone assignments in the limited structure that Milkshape had - and give us a way to edit the morph data -- because the morphs are NOT actually separate meshes, they're just data... but for us to be able to *edit* them as human beings, we need to see/edit a mesh shape.
So his first solution was the bodychop plugin. Because there was no other place to *put* the secondary bone assignments, when his plugin built the secondary morph mesh, the secondary bone assignments were stored there on the corresponding vertices, and then his plugin rebuilt things on export to be in the right place.
Bodychop is retired, Wes created the new Unimesh plugins for Milkshape, after getting with Mete (Milkshape's creator) and having him add _comment fields_ to all the vertices... so the bone assignments are now stored in the comment fields. Unimesh reads them in from *an original maxis mesh gdmc* and put the data in place, gives us ways to change it, and then later writes it all out rebuilding a working gdmc.
Unimesh has a beginner tutorial, and a manual (and there's interesting stuff in the thread too) for you to learn exactly how to use it and create sim bodies and accessories with good bone assignments. You'll find it in a sticky at the top of the forum.