Out of interest, where do those of us that use CCMagic point the tool at in regards to mods folder?

I've never used CCMagic so I can't answer, except that it should be the folder that the game reads mods and CC from, presumably Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/Mods.

I got an interesting thing to test for you  So I'm working on a cat head default replacement, which means that the mesh gets altered but the morph currently aren't working as well as I'd like. Sound to me like a great test. :D Especially since the game seems to think the eyes are on an entirely different location and are now looking all derpy.

I'll let you know how it's going  So far this seems like a great tool! Definetally better than NinjaRipper where you have to find your sims through 10000 of different files!

Nice work decoding the SIME and especially the SIMO files!  

Thank you! The SIMO was already decoded in the wiki and s3pi and I only figured out part of the SIME, but thanks!

I use CCMagic, and when I did a test sim rip, I didn't have to do anything different to get it to read my CC. Now, I have not tested it extensively, but I would imaging you DO have to have CCMagic set to a profile that has all of the CC you want to be included. (e.g. I have a profile that is stripped down to bare bones, I'm guessing that would be not great for ripping sims.)

I will do some additional testing and report back, though, to confirm.

It does seem to work with the default set up when using CCMagic. My only issue is, while my sims' rigs look fine in the ripper, my rig looks like the first image in Blender. The finger bones are always in the wrong place on sims that use the height slider, it seems. But I have no idea what the skirt rig thing is all about. Also, copy-pasting a pose onto the rig, the rigging doesn't seem to be correct. The second pic is me trying to copy-paste that pose on the right onto the rig on the left, and that being the outcome.

@AmuHav - It looks like you are using Blender 2.67, which I know is the last supported version of the posing plugins. I had similar issues when I used that version. But if you get a copy of 2.79b, the copy and paste seems to work more correctly, at least with the 5 second test I did. The posing plugins installed at least, but I haven't tested extensively. I do know that they do not work in 2.8 though.

I intend to test more extensively very soon, as I did notice an anomaly with my quick test, but I failed to get screenshots.

(Also, being a total noob, I don't know if there is a way to change the rigging on the ripped sims to look more like that on the original posing rigs. The rig on the ripped sims is extremely hard for me to see.)

Thanks! I've never worked with animations or poses in Sims 3, so in order to troubleshoot I'd have to have someone to spell out how to do a pose step by step in excruciating detail since Blender makes me want to rip my hair out.

Possibly the bone files that are linked from the CAS parts correct the skeleton, they do contain part of the information needed to set up the rig in Blender but I don't know how I'd combine them for one mesh. Or maybe using a height slider displaces the finger bones.

Testing with 2.79b, things do seem to be working better, including sims that are height adjusted. BUT the import and exporting sims animation files part of the addon do no seem to be working (so can't save them as poses) and none of the Load CAS, Load Prop etc show up. So, yes, seem to be able to pose them, but then... can't really do anything with that. Which... kinda defeats the object of having posable rig :/ I assume *someone* out there has figured out how to get Blender 2.79b to work with the sim animation tools...

(image shows sim with shorter height working with pose, also tested with taller sim)

This is easily one of the most versatile and impressive programs I've seen for TS3 in ages -- I was especially excited to see it came with UVs. I always had that issue when ripping with other programs. And a rig?! Too kind.

When I highlighted the program to some community members they hit some dead-ends right away that might be useful to know of. For one, horses with extreme height sliders (either small or big) seem to come out as a mangled mess in one way or another. I'll attach some examples -- They appear to be looking like that in the program itself, not just Blender. But IDK if that's something feasible to fix since it only occurs with modded sliders. All the Sims I've tried import fine, though, so that's great. Still, I figured it merited highlighting.

I've also noticed some rig weirdness when trying to use them with the pose tools -- Though I have to say switching to Blender 2.79b has 'fixed' the sims & from what I see they work with pose tools just fine. Horses, on the other hand, get a little... Weird. It almost looks like their rig is slipping off them in Blender. To be fair I haven't tried with 'vanilla' horses yet so this might be another slider thing that might be unavoidable.

Either way, this is such awesome work being done I will keep trying to break it.

Okay, I maaaaaaay have worked out a workaround to get a workable, posable rig that you can actually export the animation to save as a pose. It requires having both Blender 2.79b AND 2.67.

First, import the rig into 2.79b. Save as blender file. Open blender file in 2.67. Voila, rig is imported correctly, no weird bone craziness going on.

Edit: Or do all the posing in 2.79b, then save as blender file, open in 2.67 just to export it. Since 2.79b is easier to see things in IMHO.

Edit Edit: There is definitely some custom facial sliders not ripping correctly, though I'm not sure which ones :/ I think it might be Lower Nose Height and something to do with Mouth/Jaw/Chin Height.

Hello!

First of all a thousand thanks, this program is so helpful and I am very grateful!
I have a question about the sim rip in combination with the clip tool...

The sim rip is perfect, it respects the slider values and is faithful to the in-game sim... No problem with that.
Now when I apply a pose (CC pose exported from a .package) to it, some of those sliders seem to be missing/values seem to be set to zero... for instance my sim has a very crooked nose (both in-game and ripped) but when I make him pose the nose gets very vertical. He always looks smiley when blender posing when he's in reality pouty...

I was wondering if it's a common issue and if I could have a tip to temporarily fix that because I tried editing the joints manually, but I fail to make a 100% accurate facial structure...
Is there, for example, a way to only apply the pose everywhere but the face?

Thank you in advance, and sorry if it's out of subject.

(Of course, I use custom sliders.)

Looking over all of this, there's obviously a problem with applying morphs that make height adjustments. For bone morphs I've already found a possible cause but have to decide how to fix it.

Could some of you upload your save files for problem sims, with packages or links for the custom sliders they use, especially height sliders? I'm so out of touch with TS3 that it would save me a lot of time.

@morti - is the sim okay in Blender before you apply the pose? If the mesh is not importing into Blender correctly that's one issue. Since the mesh is already morphed before import to Blender I can't imagine how the pose is somehow cancelling out the effect of sliders.

Yes, the sim is perfectly okay in Blender before I apply the pose, it's also importing without any problem!
Earlier I was thinking "maybe I did something wrong while following the custom normals tutorial" but then I applied a pose on two raw sim rip .dae files (one "clean", one not) and this issue is happening there too, unfortunately. Also tried to apply a pose from a different set, from a different creator and the problem is still there.

Could custom sliders be the culprit? I use so many, maybe there are some that had never been released... I exported my sim straight from a .sim file and not from a saved game so I wouldn't know which of them I used specifically, I'm sorry... but as you say, it's weird how the sim is perfectly ripped and imported with no problem yet manages to look different when posing.

EDIT : Or could it just be the Clip Tool, that just doesn't support custom sliders? I'm clueless.

The thing is, when SimRipper displays and exports the mesh all the morphs have been applied and the mesh itself is in its final shape. The sliders aren't a part of the mesh or the .dae so it's not a matter of the clip tool not supporting the slider. It's as if you imported a mesh from a non-Sims source, rigged it, and when you used a pose it suddenly changed shape. Could the clip tool be using a standard face and shaping the sim's face to match? That's all I can think of.

Thank you for the clarifications, much appreciated! It seems less confusing with your explanation all of a sudden.



Great question, I wish I could ask its creator about it but I doubt the project is still going. Its latest version is technically for Blender 2.67 and hadn't been updated ever since. Well if Clip Tool doesn't seem to cooperate then I'll try to find some other alternative later on, enough mind boggles for today. Again thanks!

I don't seem to be having an issue with the height slider sims anymore now that I know the rigs work in Blender 2.79b rather than 2.67. Unless it's the height sliders that are making the faces distort in the simripper tool, which seems unlikely? I assume it's facial sliders doing that?

I could theoretically give you one of my broken rig sims along with all the sliders I use, but it would probably be hard for me to work out the exact ones I use on a single sim, as I have 333 sliders in my game I have all the ones from the Masterlist: https://shockshame.tumblr.com/post/38920827162/master-list-sliders

As for Height Slider, I literally use yours http://modthesims.info/d/508972/sim-height-slider.html

Hopefully, today, if I get time, I intend to save some of my sims with no CC or store content other than the sliders, so I'll see what I can do.

I'll do some experimenting with my height slider. It's possible that a height slider could distort the face if the joint positions aren't adjusted correctly for the next slider. I found I had to apply the teen height/size slider last and maybe other height sliders will have to be applied after the others as well unless/until I can figure out what's going wrong in the joint adjustments.

Yeah, that's a lot of sliders! If you click the Sim Information button it lists all the sliders used on that sim, but the names may not be the package names so it may not help much.

For horses, I've uploaded as many sliders as I could pull out of CC Magic (Some are dog sliders I think whoops) & two templates, one is a horse using height sliders to be large and the other to be small. They both start exploding in the program. I also managed to get a screenshot of an error we saw appearing occasionally about missing bones which might be helpful?

Thanks! I'm currently working on textures and have naturally done something that messed up the meshes so it may be a couple of days before I get back to rig and slider problems, but this will be helpful.

Works well, but any way to get the textures? The "save Textures only" button doesn't seem to save anything...

Textures, at least in some usable form, should be in the next version.

Speaking of textures, has anyone worked with blending the skin yourself and have any tips on blend modes etc.?

Good to know. i'll keep an eye on the thread then. Great tool as it is. It threw an error earlier about how it couldn't find my game files... turns out it doesn't like running while the game is running as the files are in use.

I'm not sure if I can help, I managed to get working textures but I used 3D Ripper. Rippers rip the entire sim texture as one 2048x1024 image while normal maps are separated for each part.