Ok, I guess something I did the second time was different from the first... I don't think this sim is going to be happy with his face on the floor.

I'll try and figure out what I did the first time. I'm getting so many files with similar names I may need to delete a few before I can identify what is what.

I had that happen once, see what I meant with funny results?
The mesh was reimported with the wrong orientation - but at this point and after work, I'm not sure that I follow the process you explained above... Anyway it seems to me that you'll find your way through this eventually

I extracted the gmdc from the template file (not a sim), imported it into Milkshape with Unimesh, and squished it all over the place. It's probably worth noting that I didn't add or subtract any verts, just moved them, for those who want to check this out for themselves.

Then I exported with Unimesh, and replaced the original gmdc in the template file with the new one. I had to rename the group to "face" (instead of "unknown") and change the filename as in Motoki's tut for template fiddling, but everything seems to have worked just as it should.

The animations are retained, and though the edges look odd, at least they are where they belong. As you can hopefully see in the attached picture, Subject N did the moose ears just fine.

I'm so glad I came across this through Lunar Eclipse's Sims. I just messed around with it using Milkshape and SimPE and so far everything is alright in bodyshop. I hope it is alright in game too so I can make sims with no noses the way I like.

Only strange thing is one eye messes up. I didn't mess with the eyes at all But since all I'm after is the nose I just go into bodyshop and click on that nose separately and it works great.

Now to tweak it a little more and test it in game

Maresuke - That can be due to forgetting to uncheck "Import UVs" in Meshtool. I know I had one eye go wonky when I forgot to do that.

I can't use Meshtool. It's giving me an error every time I try to save. I've just been exporting the object files through SimPE Unimesh plug-ins and editing them in milkshape then reimporting them back into SimPE. I'm also running into a new problems with just using the nose instead of the whole face so I'm going to have to figure the eye problem out eventually.

this looks amazing to use but rlly i have no idea what yoo were talking about could yoo maby simplify it for me lol i just rlly wanna be able too mod the ears lol please hehe hope to hear from yoo soon biii ^^

Little~Cry~Baby - No, I can't simplify it - this is plenty of info if you're capable of doing this. This is not a beginner technique for anyone to do - it actually requires you have some meshing knowledge.

I was never brave enough to try this before, as my meshing knowledge/skillz equal zero, but with the help of this (and a couple of other) great tutorials, I managed to get it to work!! It's awesome!! I wish I tried it sooner. I also wish MeshTool would work with ZBrush .obj files, but I won't complain :D

P.S. Minor case of necromancy here, sorry :P

Hi! I just found this thread through a post by mistyblue4 (http://www.modthesims2.com/download.php?t=322757) for her Gregory House sim. I've created a Sim of actor Randolph Mantooth and he's close, but... what would improve him is some asymetry introduced into the mix. (Mr. Mantooth has a nose which quite prominently leans to his left. Since most pictures of him are shot from this side, it's not terribly noticeable, but it is when seen from the front or right side.)

Anyway, my problem is that I'm a rank beginner at recoloring, having not even reached the point of making use of MilkShape or other meshing tools; terms like GMDC mean vrtually nothing to me. I did manage to create some custom content for my sim -- mouth frown lines and eyebags -- but that's about the extent of my skill and efforts so far. I can post pics of the real actor and my sim of him, but is there a tutorial which breaks down the steps (in painful detail, since, as a beginner, I really need that much hand-holding) so that someone like me could make the necessary adjustments? See... I want to learn, but I need to start at the beginning of doing this kind of mesh editing. A lot of tutorials have you do editing in other areas, which is great, but if my passion is here, this is where I'd like to start. (Don't even mention creating a new animal mesh for a dachshund, which is another project I want to do...)

I read the MATY thread HP mentioned on page one of these posts about how to breed true for these kinds of changes.

I was hoping that I wouldn't necessarily have to screw around with the default faces or make the new face into a default. Is it possible to make it a "temporary" default; that is, to set the face I'm replacing aside, then create the new one, based on the starting sculpt I already have, then, once I have the altered MilkShape face, reset the original default? If that's possible, how would one do it?

I'm sorry if these questions are really stupid or basic... I'm intrigued about how to create sims which are much more realistic and wondering why -- if it's possible -- that people haven't made more use of this capability? And I'd greatly appreciate if someone could take me under their wing and help me move from where I am to where I'd like to be...

Thanks in advance!

This is SO cool. I wanna try it! I know I'm not an expert yet, but I need to try this out. I think I have knowledge enough to make it

But before that, I have two questions to ask:
1 - Can I use only SimPE and Milkshape to modify the faces? I wanna be 100% sure. I won't mind to use Meshtool (even though I never saw it), but if I didn't needed to get the program, it would be kinda easier. XP
2 - Is is REALLY so hard? I mean, I know it's not something any newbie can do. I'm not an expert, like I said, but I've been "studying" and praticing Meshing for almost two years, and for what I read in HP's post, it doesn't look sooo difficult. It's not easy, that I'm sure, but I undertood how's it done, and I believe that's the first step to make great creations... Besides, you can never be sure if it works unless you try to make it, isn't it? Also, can it really mess up my computer? 'Cause I don't want that o_o But I think HP was just exaggerating... :P

Hi. I have an issue. I followed your tutorial exactly as you said, but in-game, the face that I made shows up as the one that I replaced with my new one. What's going on here?

what is GMDC???...

http://www.simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=GMDC

Hi, this is my first post:
Someone (I think HP) said earlier that you can only move vertices, but not add or remove ones, well, I was wondering if this could help:
http://www.facegen.com/customizer.htm

Ha! i played with this a loooong time ago. But, seriously, no i dont think it would be possible cause the 20-some-odd facial morphs wouldn't carry over from either the gmdc and/or what ever this program ex/imports as. like apple and oranges, my friend....

Indeed, definitely would not work. Facegen uses its own meshes, and there's no way to assign the joint stuffs to a mesh imported from it - and making the edges of the face mesh match up with the body mesh of sims would be near impossible.

Tokiita - Any program that can edit OBJ files.

like what program??...I'm don't know any program

Like Milkshape for example, anyway, guys when I was talking about facegen, I meant the customiser, not the modeller (I know that the modeller uses its own meshes and textures, that's ok), HP you said that you can play with the vertices position but not add or remove any, so what about if you can automate the process a little bit to get more accurate results?

About the customiser:
Facegen customiser lets you create your OWN MESH that you can use in the modeller, i.e to replace the modeller's mesh with YOUR OWN CREATED ONE!

For example I am not sure if you heard about the V4 models (victoria 4)
http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=4783
(Yeah, I know!)
The tutorial written in facegen's website is actually based on facegen's models:
http://www.facegen.com/Tyler/CustomizerTutorial.htm
and results in having V4 face as a model for facegen modeller:

and you can then apply the face you would like in the modeller, and you will get nice results:


SO, what I did yesterday is that I took the mean adult female face (with the calp, and I deleted the body) from DRPIXL meshes, I added the facegen mean face to it (just like the tutorial in the above link), waited for 10 hours (sleeping), then I integrated the sim face model to it, and then integrated the textures (imported from bodyshop), and that's what I got:

(in case if you were wondering, yeah! that's the mean adult female face, imported to facegen modeller after I created it with facegen customiser, with the SAME NUMBER OF VERTICES and SAME NUMBER OF FACETS as the ORIGINAL mean adult female face, I am 100% sure because I have checked it with UV Mapper).

BUT,oh o, THERE IS A PROBLEM!
yeah, what you saw above was when textures turned off, when I turn on the textures, that's what I get:

Horrible of course, unless you are creating a creep

I am 50% sure that the problem is with the texture integration or the geometry integratino (THE face is definetly prefectly created), and I had some questions:
(1) Is the textures (IMAGE TEXTURES, IN .BMP) imported from the bodyshop are for both the face and the scalp, or the face only? like this one:


(2) What the heck is an alpha channel?
(3) In case you understand what I was saying, and you are familiar with facegen customiser, can you please give me a hand? any help would be appreciated, the problem is that I am not a PRO, all of my knowledge in 3D modelling I gained was by trial and error (it was actually like digging in a rock), therefore I absolutely understand nothing? (lol)

O.o OMFG is so difficult :P

if somebody can explain me that in spanish, maybe I'll understand (or not) :P

joker, your best bet would honestly be to download Milkshape and try it for 30 days. The trial has NO RESTRICTIONS people. I've seen people whine about trial-ware restrictions when there too stubborn to peel themselves away from blender. Facegen is good for whats its made for... generating realistic faces, but trying to play with sim faces, well.... the in game/bs face-maker would probably be easier to get acceptable results.

Anywho, ok lets take a step back for a second. To those of us who have played with the faces in obj format know that 1) we have yet to successfully export a properly rigged face 2) obj format does not change the numerical build of any vertices or any variables; uvw, xyz, normals, etc...and 3) Almost all sim age-group/gender faces have exactly 750-some-odd polys. So lets say for instance when a sim makes a specific facial expression, the game recognizes verts 1-4 as an eyebrow, and when they move the eyebrow the game understands it as, "verts 1-4 have their position modified by XYZ" (where XYZ in this case is how to relocate these verts) I've seen this done with professional movie-grade meshes when i ventured into 3ds Max and Mikumikudance, they would have a series of prerecorded facial expressions for each model that moved the verts as opposed to having a skeletal arrangement for the face. Also, a while back the was a mesh floating about with "bouncing breasts" so for *ahem* research purposes, i investigated. Right clicking on a sim wearing this outfit would bring up a menu to make her dance, and yes the breasts would bounce. i found that the mesh had no extra bones, but the animation told the verts themselves to bounce accordingly. well i played with the package and inserted my own mesh which had double the poly-count and instead of bouncing breasts, hers shoulder and upper-arm bounced accordingly.
So theoretically, this answers all three issues 1) because technically the sim faces don't have a skeleton, 2)specifically because the numeric alignment isn't changed is the reason this works, and 3) because all animations with the verts would be the same for each face variant. And thus my long winded theory that i pray hasn't been addressed already and is kept in a secret thread somewhere for all the MTS2 big-brains.

So yeah.... NO RESTRICTIONS....

Yeah, I would tend to use Body Shop to get the face close, and then just change the small things necessary in Milkshape.

"1) because technically the sim faces don't have a skeleton"

This isn't correct though, Ken. Faces -do- have a skeleton. There are face bones. It's just that no tool allows access to those bones. I had Delphy investigate a while back and he identified what bones there are, but never got around to creating a tool for it.

That big ol' paragraph was pretty tealdeer though so if there was a question in it, I missed it.

That giant paragraph was actually a proposal to said wrong answer but it was all for not, sadly. if i were to post an image, it would be the "more you know" rainbow