Note: this can go for both Blender and Milkshape 3D

So I’m a noob when it comes to meshing but I wanted to know if I could alter the mesh of the CAS room for an idea of mine. Here are the list of programs I have:

- S3PE (with the plugins installed that support s3m2b exports, although I can’t get them to work at all)
- Blender 2.65 and Blender 2.70
- Blender tools that support MLOD file imports
- Milkshape 3D 4.8.1
- Wes Howe’s Milkshape tools and MLOD decompiler
- S3OC My problem has to do with the fact that even though I can easily access and alter textures in the CAS Room, I wanted to be able to alter the meshes like others have been able to do (like with the “No CAS Room” mod and other ones that change the layout). My S3PE plug-ins do not work so I am unable to export to an s3m2b for whatever reason, which is what I needed to do to work with the mesh in Blender.

As far as Milkshape, I used S3OC to extract the CAS Room MODL files, decompiled them, and then tried to import them into Milkshape but it doesn’t show up.

I’m kinda blind so I dunno if there is a tutorial on how to work with it, or if there’s anyone that has the s3m2b files on-hand for the CAS Room for download, but if anyone does, they deserve a gazillion hugs. Thanks so much!

SO a small update: I managed to extract the s3m2b files by just manually installing the S3PE plugins myself instead of relying on the automatic installer. But there is a new issue. When importing the CAS Room, the room meshes for the Base game, Into The Future, and Pets are all layered together onto one mesh, and you can't separate them without going into edit mode to modify the whole mesh which takes a really long time. I'm trying to think if uninstalling ITF and Pets temporarily would give me access to the Base Game room by itself.

It may help to export the meshes of such mods that modify the same thing that you want to, to see if they used the same resources you found.

When I work with MLOD/MODL, I export them as s3asc (this comes with Mesh Helper for Milkshape, I think), which can be imported into Milkshape with Wes Howe's TS3 Object plugin. From there, you can export the pieces you want as .obj. This way, you can edit them freely in a more modern version of Blender. Using MS just to convert the files, basically.
Then you have all the convenience of Blender to modify the mesh, and when you are done export the obj, import them back into the same s3asc in MS, delete the original parts, assign any bones, export and overwrite the s3asc.

I had a quick look and I can see what you mean about all the different parts being together, but they are at least spread across different mesh groups. Theoretically, you should be able to just hide the groups you aren't working on. Whether modifying parts would function ingame is another question, as it may function similarly to geostates in the way it 'knows' what pieces to display- so adding any vertices could disrupt this. Worth experimenting with, though.

Uninstalling wouldn't change anything, as this file lives in the base game FullBuild and DeltaBuild packages. As it needs to be one object, it was probably just patched in.

I have actually tried to extract meshes from other creators, and they all use Fway's version of the CAS room with no mesh. For some reason when I try to open that specifically in Blender, it throws an error and won't import it for some reason. I'll have to try your method of doing things. I actually didn't know that the meshes for the CAS room were separated, as they came up as one whole mesh. Did you find that detail in Blender or in Milkshape?

The other file type may have lost the group information, or something along those lines. The Blender object tools are quite outdated, and for certain meshes outright don't work. Which is a shame, but also how I ended up having to find the other ways to do it and edit things like geostates manually (as that part of the plugin never functioned). Silver linings, and all.

There were about 23 mesh groups in Milkshape when I opened it as s3asc, which should be able to be exported back out as an .obj that will retain that information for import into Blender. I didn't go that far myself though, so if it doesn't work as expected I'll take another look.