So I'm trying to edit the ingredients for the chef salad, but when I import it to Wings3D I get this very weird thing where the salad mesh is split into many separate objects that each contain only one face, and are not connected to each other. This would not be that much of a problem if it didnt completely change the looks of the salad in-game, making it look full of spikes instead of smooth leaves in one piece...

in Wings3D:



an in game:


any idea what is wrong? can I somehow change the import parameters to avoid this?

Could be the smoothing, maybe autosmooth or some such (like the issue Blender has when meshes have split edges).

Milkshape keeps the original smoothing even with split edges as long as autosmooth is off. Could be Wings has a similar setting somewhere.

I can't find how to edit the import settings unfortunately, except for model scale. And the help menu was not very... helpful

I found this in the user manual though: "The other formats [other than Nendo] contain triangle or polygon meshes. To import them, Wings must combine the polygons into one or more closed objects that can be represented by the winged-edge structure. Combining gets tricky if the mesh contains defects, and many meshes do since the defects usually are not a problem in other modelers or renderers."

My guess is that the topology of this particular salad does not play nicely with the way Wings3D works because it is not a fully enclosed object, and the solution it finds is making each face into a separate object.

Anyway, kind of off-topic but sometimes I feel that I am touching to the limit of can be done with Wings. Although it is a simple tool that is great for low poly static meshes, I cant work on anything with morphs for example, which is very limiting for food meshes. Maybe it's time for me to learn something else...
Blender sounds overwhelming though (dont think my PC could even run it...), and I'm thinking is it really worth starting with Milkshape in 2022?

I've run Blender without too much trouble on my previous laptop (not a gaming laptop, it had a Nvidia laptop card, but not a top-notch one). As long as you don't set it to render anything, and only do modeling and such, it shouldn't be too heavy-duty. It can be a bit difficult at first, but if you read or watch some tutorials (there's a lot of beginner tutorials at Youtube on the main tools) you'll get into the most important things without too much trouble.

If you convert from TS4 you'll need one of the 2.76 to 2.79 versions, as these are compatible with S4Studio. There's some plugins that work for newer versons for TS2 if you're not interested in conversions (but you can have multiple versions of Blender installed, so that's also an option). I haven't used the plugins yet, but if you're starting out with Blender anyway and don't want to go for Milkshape, it could be an idea to try.

I used Wings3D for a bit on my old laptop - I had problems getting Milkshape to open/install properly, and I'd lost the install files for another program I preferred - but didn't like it much. Nowadays I only use Wings3D if I need very accurate slot placement (It displays the vertex coordinates so they're readable).

I use both Milkshape and Blender. Blender for meshing from scratch, UV remapping, TS4 conversions, and a bunch of other random things. Milkshape for simple mesh edits, body mesh edits and anything with skeletons and morphs, texture previews (honestly much easier than in Blender), and generally when there's something I don't need Blender for. Both programs have their advantages and annoyances. Milkshape has some advantages on compatibility with TS2 meshes, mainly because it preserves the smoothing (Wings and Blender struggle on that point, and always seem to need fixing).

@simmer22 thank for the insight, it's really valuable having the point of view of someone who knows what are the specific needs for TS2 creation.
I guess I'll have to try and see what works best for me. I'm not really interested in 4t2 conversions for now, but I think learning Blender might still be a good idea in the long run