Hi there,

So I have been working on converting the tea machine from sims 4 to sims 3. 
To start, I am just trying to get the "pour" animation to work. I converted the sims 4 sim animation and that's working fine, but I'm having trouble with the object animation.

I added the bone _bind_0_pot in the _RIG file, and placed it in the same position as it is in the sims 4 object. In milkshape, when assigning the transform bone, I added a bone called the same thing (_bind_0_pot) and assigned it to the tea pot.
Then I animated the tea machine in Blender using this joint, so the tea pot is lifted up and pours and is put back down in time and place with the sim's animation.
However, in game the animation plays slightly too high, and further away from the machine. It starts off in the right place when the machine is placed, and at the end of the animation it flies back to where it should be, but for the animation it moves out of the correct position.
When I tried setting the bone position to 0,0,0 in the _RIG, and played the animation in Blender, it actually played in the same way as it did in game, where it's just not in the right position. 
So it seems like what's happening in game, is that the animation is playing as if the joint is at the origin rather than at the tea pot handle where it should be, and so when the animation plays, the joint at the origin is suddenly moved to where it should be at the handle, but then the whole tea pot is displaced too as it's moving with the joint.

I thought this was because I didn't set the joint to the correct position in milkshape when I added it, but doing so didn't make any difference. And when I exported the mesh from TSRW back into milkshape, the joint is back at the origin. And also when looking at the mesh in milkshape of other objects with moving parts (I looked at the microwave and crib), the joints are also at the origin when in the _RIGs they have different positions, so I'm not even sure this is the problem, as how come those other objects don't get displaced animations?

One thing I did notice was that for the other objects, the transform bone is the one that's the bottom entry in the Joints tab in milkshape, whereas in mine, the tranform bone is the top entry. I'm not sure if this is the problem or even a problem at all? I thought maybe it was a parent thing, but I tried it again making my bone the child of the transform one (as it is in the _RIG) but it didn't help. I also tried using the bones from the microwave mesh, swapping it with my mesh and assigning the bones, and just changing the microwave door joint to the name of the one for my tea pot, but with the same results 
I'm not sure if it would work to just have the joint at the origin and animate it that way, but I think it would be a bit of a pain as the joint is so far away from the mesh it's assigned to, and I still feel like there must be a way to get it to work this way if the other objects do!

Anyway, I'd really appreciate any ideas on why this is happening & how to fix it because I have no idea what else to try 

Here are the screenshots if it helps get an idea for what's happening:

Thought I would just update this as I seemed to have found a fix.
Editing the rig in TSRW instead of the rig editor seemed to do the trick, though it also seemed to mess up the animation with the transform bone.
This actually happened before, where I animated the transform bone so the whole machine bobs up and down as well as the tea pot moving just to see if it was the bone I added that was the problem , and it didn't work at first in game - the tea pot would animate but not the whole thing. But I think it was when I was messing around with the joints in milkshape that it somehow was fixed  
Though I didn't change the bone assignments in milkshape at all when i edited the rig in TSRW...

No clue what's going on but hey ho 

Good to hear it worked! The RIg Editor in S3PE usually works for me, but obviously, if you want to do things more advanced, Grid is your bet. TSRW's bone system does make things easier, especially if the object doesn't have any super advanced stuff linked to it (We're talking like additional materials, etc.) Good to hear it's working though! :D

Thanks @Lyralei !
Funnily enough, when I figured it was the rig editor that seemed to be the problem, I did try it with Grid, and it didn't seem to work. Though at some point I could try it again another time because maybe I just did something else wrong :P