Hi simmers!

I seem to be bothering you alot lately, well I did something weird again...

Before I start, this is what I use:

- Milkshape 1.77a
- Unimesh tools 4.5
- Latest SimPE This is what's wrong:
Even with the use of the awesome Unimesh tools, I managed to mess up the shoulders and arms.
Plus, the fat morph looks... uhm.... special?


Oh the shame!


Not exactly what I wanted, but allmost! :P


This is what I did so that didn't work :

- Unchecked autosmooth under groups tab before importing original gmdc
- fixed all underweighted vertexes
- did not weld anything or touched autosmooth again
- there is no error when I export my mesh
- made sure the morph vertexes weren't assigned to anything
- checked for 4th skin weights - not there
- chewed off some nails... had the least effect lol


So can anyone help me?

Thanks in advance!

Greetings from Nouk!

Interesting. Exactly what mesh is this? It's a maxis original?

Yes, it's the afbodyswimwear mesh, from the base game.

You did edit the mesh? Or just import, fix underweight and export?

I believe your morph is blowing up (if you edited anything) because while it might have the exact same number of vertices (and thus no error) somehow the ordering is not the same.

I would say the best way to do a morph is to select the entire body, and duplicate it. It will make a new group. Hide the body, then take the morph group and the new group, and use move or scale to adjust the new group to more or less match the morph group in shape. So of course you need to do that in the end.

I haven't tried that game body.

Wait wait wait. Did you use ms 1.7.7 and *regroup* something? Anything? Because 1.7.7 will lose all the secondary bone assignments (because they were new and added to comments, and Mete missed some of the commands). Because those shoulders sure look like no secondary bone assignments are one them.

Go get MS 1.7.8. Start over.

I had that "exploded" morph thing happen with the earlier version of the plugins - make sure you download and install the new version from the thread here, don't use the ones that came with the MilkShape 1.77a download.

If you installed the 1.77a version, it would have replaced your plugins with the original release version of them, which had some bugs.

And do be sure to install the 1.78 MilkShape update, there are bugs in both the 1.77 and 1.77a versions of MilkShape, although I think that it's most likely your plugins got over-written with the older ones.

Also, if this mesh is one you had edited before, the group comments will be incorrect.

Besides not using "Weld", do not use "Smooth All" either.

And do not use the [Assign] button on MilkShape's Joints tab, always use the UnimeshBone Tool for making assignments.

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For a quick test after making sure your MilkShape and Unimesh plugins are both up to date, try this:

* Import a mesh
* Make no edits at all, just export it right away as a GMDC file with a new name.
* Close MilkShape, re-start it again, and import the GMDC you just exported - it should still look exactly the same as the original mesh, the morph group(s) should still look the same too.

Oh dear, seems I do have outdated stuff, and I did regroup several times.
I'm going to try out all your tips, guys. You are so kind! *huggles*

Thank you!

Hey guys!

New Milkshape and a redownload of the plugins did the trick! It's all great now.

Now I have another question... do you know of a way to add bumpmaps to a custom mesh, that actually works?
I know it should be possible, but I've never managed to make it work on a custom mesh....

Thanks!!

Not with Unimesh. Not at all. Wes has tried but couldn't get them working right.

Bumpmaps are kept (but edits very limited) with meshtool obj format.

The new SimPE smd import/export has some bumpmap support, but I've heard that it's somewhat 'faint' in how it works or something, skankyboy is still working on getting it working better.

Ahh too bad Well, looks like I'll have to wait for it to happen in the future or learn to work with the obj. meshes.
I actually tried this afternoon, but no skeleton showed up so there was nothing to assign vertexes to.
In bodyshop the poor girl showed up with her arms stretched out heheh

Nouk, MESHTOOL with obj files. You must use Meshtool, and you must follow the directions regarding the fact that you can only make minor modifications because there *are no bones in obj files* - so like how wes' plugins rebuild things, so does meshtool. No deleting, no adding, no new bone assignments. I said it was limited. There is a beginner tutorial for meshtool using the obj format.

Otherwise, you need to find an editor that properly supports smd files with 4 bone assignments - both xsi modtool and 3ds max do, from what I understand. Blender does not.

Okay, I tried xsi some time ago, it was confusing. 3ds max is way to expensive for e to get my hands on so...



The mesh is allmost the way I want it! I made a plain weird outfit for it, to test it out. Looks nice!

Thanks for your help!