Hi? I'm someone in Korea who's interested in Sims 2 modding.

I’m writing this thread using a translator, and I’m not very familiar with thread culture, so I’ll ask for your understanding regarding that.

I wanted to mod using Blender 4.1, which I’m familiar with, so I looked up various IO add-ons, but they all said to go through MilkShape3D. So I modified smugtomato’s IO add-on for older versions of Blender using AI and turned it into something for 4.1, and I’m using it. Thanks, smugtomato.
What I want to do isn’t anything special, but rather make some Korean-style hair and clothing like these days. And also the work of tailoring clothes to the desired body shape.
So first, to test it out, I extracted the existing CC hairstyles and combined the back hair I wanted with the front hair I wanted? Make the mesh structure the same. And that's how it turned out.

I’d heard that Sims 2 is such an old game that implementing and calculating 3D is outdated, but I never imagined AlphaBlend mode would work like that.
Is there perhaps a way to fix that phenomenon?

Hair needs proper layering, so make sure you do that. Otherwise the layers show in the wrong order.

PF has a quick tutorial on layering properly (not hair-related, but relevant).
https://pforestsims.tumblr.com/post...-opacity-issues

(In Milkshape, this is fixed by setting the opacity for the hair layers, and exporting as Unimesh - I'm not sure if Blender exports the layers in proper order, though, as I mostly use Milkshape for this, but I think there are some tutorials around)

I referred to the advice you gave and also tried modifying the opacity issue, but the problem remains the same. When exporting from Blender to GMDC, it told me to split the sharp edges, so I did it as is, but it’s still the same. Could it be a problem with the tool?

If you have a look at older meshes, it's easier to see what I mean by layering. TS4 (and TS3) meshes usually only come with two layers - the head and the hair. Maxis hairs and most older TS2 hairs have the hairs split into more layers, because it's easier for the game to read which layer is in the back and which is in the front.

Splitting sharp edges has to do with the mesh normals (how light and shadow works with the mesh, and where the mesh splits into parts between faces - depeding on how the original mesh was made, you might see some iffy areas where the edges have been split in an unwanted way)

There's a Blender tutorial here that might help:
https://sims2tutorials.tumblr.com/p...h-for-your-anto

(this page might be helpful, too - there are a few more Blender-related hair tutorials here as well: https://sims2tutorials.tumblr.com/meshing - scroll down to "Conversions 3t2/4t2 Hair")

Wow, thank you for telling me. I’ll try it first, but it’s too difficult... I don’t understand the idea of separating the problematic hair and then putting it back together, but it must be an internal structural issue, right?

It is. For 4t2 hairs (and other meshes with transparent textures), how the mesh is seen by the game comes down to either the layering, or (if there aren't layers) the structure of the hair - most likely decided by vertex order.

There are a couple other things that can cause the issue too - check if the TXMT for the hair layer(s) says "SimStandardMaterial" in the "cMaterialDefinition" tab. If it just says "StandardMaterial" it has the wrong setting. (Don't edit the TXMT for the head, that one should say "SimSkin", otherwise it doesn't pick up the skin texture). This is a more common bug with accessories, though.

If you can't figure it out, can you upload the mesh and recolor files (package files), so I can take a look?

Hello, I tried splitting the mesh and then recombining it, but there was still no change. I have no idea what I did wrong. I am attaching my blend file, the package file, and the io add-on I rebuilt for 4.1.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FO...iew?usp=sharing


Since the Blender blend files cannot be attached directly or even when compressed, I am sharing them via Google Drive.

My guess is that the add-on must be faulty

I would appreciate it if you could let me know what faulty process it is.

SimNopke has GMDC Blender 4.1 plugins here, if that helps: https://simnopke.tumblr.com/post/75...-for-blender-41

I checked the hair in Milkshape and Bodyshop, and I can't see any particular issues with the opacity/layering, or in the files, so if there were any issues there, it's possible you fixed it.

HOWEVER, the mesh is showing up the same for me in Bodyshop. I'm reasonably sure it's due to the plugin/OI, though, as I tested if it worked to import the mesh (from the package file) to Milkshape, directly export it out without any changes, then import back to SimPE. This worked like a charm, and the hair is showing up fine.

You might want to give it a try with SimNopke's plugin, and if you're still stuck, I can send you the fixed file.

Blender has some exporting issues to other programs, which can cause all sorts of weird results. OBJ files for instance, need particular settings to export fine, or they show up inside-out, fully black, or with other issues. I'd advise against using generative AI to cobble together a fix for a plugin if you aren't quite sure how to check if the coding is actually working - there's probably something missing in the exporting settings. AI is known for making mistakes, so take what it says with a tub of salt...

I decided to use djalex88’s IO add-on for 2.8 on Blender 3.2.1 again.
After repeating the same operation, exporting it, and checking it in SimPE, I found that all the joints were gone. Thinking it probably wouldn’t work, I just checked at the body shop to see if the alpha-sorting issue that used to make the back of my head stick out of my face had been fixed, and wow, it’s perfect!! And strangely, if the joint wasn’t applied, the mesh position would get messed up, but that was normal too. When I checked in-game CAS, the joint/vortex weights were applied correctly!!
Then why weren’t the joints visible in SimPE?

Is this the current one you're using?
https://modthesims.info/d/656032/th...ender-2-80.html

No idea why it would act like this, other than there possibly being some settings for flipping normals (done wrong, it can potentially cause the inside-out issue).

Also not sure about the skeleton, but as long as it's showing up in the finished mesh, it should be fine. If it isn't showing, it likely wasn't imported properly, or the CRES broke (that one usually gets you a warning message, but not always). CAS meshes without a skeleton act a bit weird and don't move with animations (wouldn't move properly with the head even with the limited poses in Bodyshop), so I think you'd notice if it didn't have one.

What’s really amazing is that the joints didn’t show up in simPE, but they appeared perfectly fine in the in-game CAS.

If this process is indeed correct, then I can just keep following it, but if this turned out well by chance, I’d like to fix it...

I don't use the Blender plugins currently, so I'm not sure.

Are the ones I linked the ones you used now, or are you using other plugins (if so, can you link to them)? It would be useful to know for troubleshooting.

Yes, it is the plugin by djalex88 in the link.

From the comments on those plugins, it seems some other people have issues with joints not showing up when using Blender 3+. Whether that's an issue on the user's end or a bug in the plugins isn't clear, though.

Have you gotten around to test out SimNopke's plugins for 4.1+ yet, since that's the Blnder version you originally wanted to use?

No, I haven't tested it... I think 3.2.1 already has enough functionality, so I’m not going to bother using a higher version anymore. There are also things like compatibility issues with old games.

You can have multiple versions of Blender installed at the same time.
Only caveat is that the Blender files usually aren't backwards compatible, so if you want to edit something with the more recent Blender version, especially if you're using the Blender format to save your main files, you have to stick to that version for that file (or use a different format to import/export, though sometimes that can be a bit troubly, too).

(I've got two at the moment, 2.78 for compatibility with an older version of S4Studio - haven't updated my TS4 game in ages, though I'm noticing some issues with items that don't want to show so I might have to update at some point, and 4.1 because some unrelated meshes I wanted to check out didn't want to open in the older one. They're about as different as they can be, but I've found I can manage to juggle between them with some searching and tutorial use to figure out the 4.1 UI/tool move changes and addons).