How to 3D Edit Faces (Yes, Really!)
 

Please note that the following is INCREDIBLY experimental, just discovered, and may break your game, asplode your computer, kick your cat, and throw you down the stairs. It is not for beginners - if you do not understand what I am talking about, do not try this. However it is also FRACKING SWEET as well.



1. Create a default replacement package using a GMDC from the facial default templates. If you've never done this before, you'll find them in Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Sims3D in CASFace.package - there are a lot of them, for each of the facial templates in game. I'm not quite sure which ones are which - I edited afarchelf, the female elf face. You should be able to find more info on this by looking up facial templates, or just by previewing each face and comparing them to what you see in Body Shop. Anyway. Make your default replacement package using the main GMDC. LOD15 version not needed unless you feel like running on low detail like some kind of animal.

2. Export the 3d model from the GMDC as an .obj, making sure you're set to XYZ.

3. Edit that 3d model in any editor that use the .obj format. I have not yet discovered the limits of editing but as you can see from my quick proof concept above (with modified nose, brow, cheek, top lip, and ears) you can do subtle or extreme, and it appears you can do quite a bit of editing without terrible results. Save your edited .obj

4. Use Meshtool to import your modified mesh into a new GMDC. Under the settings, make sure you uncheck UVs and Normals. This is important.

5. Replace the GMDC in your default replacement package with your new one that meshtool gives you.

6. Commit, save, and move that package to Downloads.

7. Now create your sim using that facial template.



That... is it. It's that easy. Animations are retained, my sim appears to have made it onto a lot with no ill effects (no flashing blue face in Pets for example), and it's totally groovy.

You are probably better off doing as much sculpting as possible in Body Shop, saving that sim, and then using their face as your .obj that you edit to import into Meshtool, combining your new edited .obj with the default replacement GMDC.

Please experiment, test, and report any issues that arise - I'm still playing with this, but I was so excited, and as this had been deemed Entirely Impossible by others and myself up until this point, I could not wait to share.



Tutorial and more info/reports on experimentation coming soon, after I calm down and quit hyperventilating at how awesome this is.

I luff you HP!!! I'll test this for you! Thank you so much!

Wow, that was quick HP! I only saw the post where someone suggested this to you earlier today. Amazing, this is very interesting and I'm sure it opens a lot of possibilites. Great work!

Actually, Simsample, I still haven't figured out how to change the default bodyshop mannequin face - this only changes the facial templates you can use when creating an actual sim, not the mannequin that displays when working on a project. I can't find that face anywhere - but I stumbled across the default faces in trying to find the mannequin ones, and it struck me while working on that problem that this just might work... And for some strange reason... it did!

You shoulda seen the look on my face when the sim animated properly my first try in-game.

Those mannequin faces... golly, dunno, they could be anywhere. That'd be cool to do but I think in the grand scheme of things, this stumbled-upon thing is way cooler.

Yup, but I knew that post was where you got the idea for this from- you work fast girl!

You can skip step #1 by grabbing AllenABQ's base face replacement templates here. Also, it might not be a bad idea to include the LOD versions anyway if there's any chance the templates might be shared in the future, since there are still some people limping along with PC's that can't handle the higher graphics settings.

Looking forward to seeing what kinds of new templates people come up with!

I am not sure about the mannequin face, but there are a bunch of face meshes that bodyshop uses to make Sims from in the res\Catalog\bins\globalcatbin.bundle.package file.

<* Wes *>

Great, HP! This offers the chance to let the Simmies look like real people, including the shape of ears and other things which Maxis just forgot to enable being adjustable.
Just trying (also wanted to try copying the new face into globalcatbin.bundle.package, thanks Wes!) but 1 question: do I have to reimport with the Meshtool, mean: did you already try if Unimesh or SMD export doesn't support it or is it worth a try? Don't know the difference of Meshtool to other importers so maybe it's a stupid question again :D
Anyway, great

Earlier versions of UniMesh disliked the face meshes because they had 27 morph headers, but only four (the current maximum) or less were actually used.
I think I made improvements to help manage this in the updates.
UniMesh and MeshTool work quite differently. In the original MeshTool implementation, as long as you didn't delete or add faces/vertices it worked well because it could go back to the original file and pull all the morphs and stick them in your output package. I know more was done later using SMD files, but I don't know if there remain any limitations on changes.
In UniMesh, I approached the problem from a different tack, one where I would bring in all the necessary data, park it in MilkShape, allow additions and deletions, and then recreate all the Maxis structures to hold the edited data (including all coordinate system changes and reformatting) for export. Alas, I still don't have the layer needed for bumpmapping working.
If your on a roll here, give it a try.
If you have problems, go to the UniMesh thread in BodyShop Meshing and post the proken GMDC and please leave me the name or group/instance of the original so I can try to figure it out.
<* Wes*>

I'm somehow never really on a roll - but I give it a try
Thanks for your explanation and in doubt I'll post in the UniMesh thread - still changing the shape, among others :D

Edit:
Do you know the Jeanette Biederman face appearing in CAS/BS when installed? It only works for females but it is an additional face for woman and men (ok, made by the Maxoids) so might there be a way to get additional working faces instead of replacements?

Right now I am trying to add a new Pet collar to CAS.
I now know how to add the new collar, without overwriting any existing ones.... but I am dropping something here because it is invisible in the icon and on the dog.
I think the same general method is used to make entries appear in CAS in the other bins. After I get this collar thing licked (is that a freudean slip?) I will look at the general way to add stuff to CAS.
<* Wes *>

Because of the collar discussion I thought of this possibility so it would be great when you manage the general way

This actually makes use of the very very first thing I ever added into MeshTool for Sims 2 meshes - which is basically the ability to change where the vertex placement is, without altering the rest of the file (as Wes says, it pulls in the data from the original GMDC as opposed to recreating it - quick and dirty perhaps, but useful for working out file formats)

I'm kind of suprised this hadn't been done before, and I figured MeshTool was superseeded in every way, but kudos for this HP.

In this case it shouldn't be necessary to try and find another way, thanks for mentioning

omg AWESOME!! great discovery hp

From my experiments, it appears that facial templates made in this way behave like normal facial default templates: that is, freaking complicated, but there is some sort of underlying logic to it. I've just spent the past half hour reading this year-old thread over at MATY where they were exploring facial defaults: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,1250.0.html

Basically, it all seems to come down to this: if you want a sim's new default facial features to breed true, to all ages and both genders, you need to create proper facial defaults for all ages and both genders for that facial default set.

You would want to make a sim as darn close as you possibly could to whatever you are doing in Body Shop, save them male and female (they're advising a child toddler and teen male in that thread, I think) and then use those two sims to extract facial defaults from. Then make your edits to the meshes for all the ages and genders. You can use the same for adult and elder if you don't care about slightly sagging jowls and stuff.

Sims also do appear to breed true, assuming one has done the above full replacement, after the defaults are taken out. So you could distribute a celebrity sim created with a full set of new facial templates that would properly breed true and would not require that downloaders use that same set of facial templates.

It would be an incredibly complex process for most applications, but me, I want pointier-eared and better looking elves that bear some resemblance to the early Amarna-period style art from Egypt (think Akhenaten's elongated and exagerrated features) and I think that's doable using this method, if tedious.

I already assumed that it would be required to replace all files. Great that my assumption is proved, thanks HP

Something strange happened, don't know if I found a "limit" or if I just did a stupid mistake (I definately moved vertex from both eyes at the same time) so take a look at her Wanted to change the shape to get a (Schlupflid; English word for this kind of lid is missing - like Schiffer's eyes, hopefully you know which shape I mean) and this was the result

Of course the mesh didn't look like that - just my own fault?

It is a nice piece of work, and we both know how much work went into getting it going. After most of two years, there are still limitations on my approach (disassembly/reassembly).

<* Wes *>

Is this the beginning of being able to get Sims that look like human beings instead of cartoons? Hmm is there any way to do this and *disable* the facial animations? I prefer my sims to keep their faces grumpy if I make them grumpy, and sad if I make them sad. They're not meant to keep going through the gamut of expressions, not in my game anyway.

I did some experiments with face meshing a while back, and it did stop them pulling faces, but they also tended to wear their new faces on their chests, leaving a big empty hole in their head.

Khaibit - Your edit is probably fine, you just need to make sure to uncheck UVs and normals when you import your modified mesh into Meshtool - you'll get that eye weirdness otherwise. I'd successfully edited eye shape a little earlier, creating a beautiful squinty almond-shaped thing that animated perfectly.

I got that strange eye streak my first test in Body Shop till I changed my Meshtool settings. I always get a completely corrupted uv map when importing a face .obj into Milkshape for editing, and I think that may be related to that problem - something's not translating right with the mapping on the way in or out or both.

I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to do more accurate or easier edits by importing the GMDC using Unimesh instead of an .obj into Milkshape, as that retains the original uv mapping. A texture can then be applied to the 3d model, which would make specific tweaking one hell of a lot easier to accomplish, rather than looking at flat grey where you will have a full sim texture - and also make it easier to, say, get that celebrity sim just right, if that's what you were applying it to. Then export as an .obj instead of a GMDC and Meshtool the same way.

Imma give it a try, it sounds like it might actually work.

Edit - I end up with an XYZ/XZY problem trying to do it this way... Unimesh to obj. I tried running it through twice to fix that but I just got the default elf face, not my edited version when I tested it. I find that just tragic, as I desperately want to get this face in-game:



Continued fiddling seems required. Meh.

Inge - If it's possible to edit them with the smd format it may be possible to change the bone assignments on the various vertices, to either remove the assignments to the facial animation bones and just assign everything to head, or reduce the weighting to make for less extreme animations. I don't really use the smd import/export at all... I hear it's quirky, but further experimentation is probably needed.

Will try again later on but I definately unchecked UVs and normals, checked it before posting the picture already twice. That's why I was so confused... maybe I was just addlepated again, I'm a champ in being addlepated
Anyway, because of that I can fidding so I'll go on trying - maybe I even might find something out...

BTW, your elf face is cool, a lot nicer than Maxis default and more 'elfish'

Well if a template face can be made where the corners of the mouth don't go zooming off to do their own thing, and the eyebrows don't keep shooting up into a rollercoaster, that will be a start.

First, congratulations for figuring this out, you're my hero again

I just did tests using only the Unimesh plugins and it works just fine (replaced the gmdc with the edited .simpe file), this should work as well with your elf face - and I hope it does, this would be a gorgeous replacement.

Now of course I tried adding faces, using the divide edge method on the forehead and then pulling out the new vertices to form rough horns - the forehead showed perfectly smooth in CAS even though my other edits were there... Looks like the game totally ignored the new parts - well except that it crashed when trying to put a sim using that face on a lot
Mmm I still need to test edits on the uv-map.

Now, there is no bone information at all in the GMDC... So my guess is that it's stored in the same mysterious place as the real body skeletons - and I have no idea how to make it apply to new parts.

Oh wow!! WOW WOW WOWWW!! I love this discovery!

And HP, your elf is extremely attractive!

Wow such a neat discovery! It makes possibilities endless! Kudos, HP!

I ran into the weirdest darn thing with the elf face.... I ran it through twice trying to get it upright as I was getting the XYZ/XZY weirdness and that should fix it. I was able ot get it back upright and oriented properly... but when I go to test it, the ONLY thing that changes is the ears. I have the nice pretty pointy (and slightly asymmetrical) ears on my sim... but the default Maxis elf face!

I didn't add or remove anything, only shifted vertices around slightly, and it was remarkably slightly - I got the face almost how I wanted it in Body Shop and just did some minor changes. The actual face I used was also from a different sim originally - it's not as if I started with the Maxis elf base, even. So how it's overriding the whole face with the original but keeping the ears... I have no freaking clue.

I also used another Sim's face to change the shape when I posted the pic with the strange eyes - at least the other changes worked fine for me (it replaces the strange looking "caus" mesh) and overwriting worked so it seems like it is possible somehow (used meshtool only for the trial). Have to go on fiddeling...

lol anyone going to use this to make and upload a sim for people to test? e.g. a perfect lara croft face or an acurate james bond could now be made using 3d max... lol

thanks HP... I have a definite need for this. I'm willing and most able to blow up a few sims. (I probably can't avoid it. )

Geez... I found the link to this tutorial from your Martin Gore... which I found from searching for hair you mentioned in a respond to a thread I made... I'm just running all over now. Haha..

This is GREAT! I have not encountered any instances yet where I deperately need fine tuning that I was not able to manage in bodyshop, but now I know if I ever do, it actually IS possible now. I've done default CAS edits before, so if I need to, I think I could manage this... this is very much bookmarked now... thanks!!

Though I've not been dealing with meshes (I have no 3D programs because most of them are or too expensive for home users or are sold only online and I cannot use money online), I've been experimenting a lot with game data and placing available all I find out by myself.
Yep, the biggest claim I have on TS2 is the horrible models chosen as defaults. Some of them are not even complete but deform faces without any simetry. You create a Sim and age it, results are almost casual.
Yep, I'm wishing a paralel development of the game, made by the user to the user, once the biggest fun in this game is not to play, but to share our experiments.
Unfortunately the producer is not following our development, our requirements and is limitating to include a lot of NPCs that are based on very primitive programming (you include a set of commands and they simply execute them without any logical).
For a future development of a high class game I would just wish that the Player is the most important creator and decisions must be based on wide-open-possibilities.
Thanks for all the creative minds that are placing themselves available to research.

I think I'm doing something wrong..... I changed the Elf face by combining two mesh parts. That worked out fine but when I follow the next steps I fail because when I open bodyshop and load my new face it's totally different from how it is supposed to be.

What I've changed are the ears, but in bodyshop I lose an eye and the ears well......they turn human. And I don't get it because in SimPE when I click preview it shows exactly what I want.

I know this is something new and not fully tested but does anyone have an idea of what I have to do to let this work out fine?

Thanks,

-M-

You cannot combine mesh parts for this. You have to just edit the location of the vertices of the original face - move them around, but you can't add or delete anything or "frankenstein" pieces together for this.

I see....so I can't add vertices either? That's a huge bummer....I'm diggin' in my brains now to think of a solution.....

were do i find the sims faces ive created?

Nope, can't add vertices. I tried adding vertices into the GMDC which SIMPE detected just fine and it showed up fine in BodyShop, but the additional vertices are dropped from the generated GMDC in the Sim's character file.

The Sims faces you create need to be put into a default replacement face file that you put in Downloads. Then you can find them in BodyShop or CAS.

Okay, I just did the meshing and importing and whatnot...

Holy Freakin' Hell!!

I just about crapped my pants when I saw Bodyshop load my mesh.

Oh man, HP, you're a genius.

Thank you so much!

What I would like to try doing is editing individual (already born) sims faces. I know their face meshes are stored in their character files. What I don't know is, when genetics are passed down, will the edited sim's child take on any of my changes, or refer back to the default meshes as baseline?

Also I am never quite sure what people mean when they say "Meshtool" except I know it's something Delphy made. How do I run it? Or is that what is automatically used when I use the Import button in the GMDC plugin?

Face in the wrong place in MS3D
 

Okay my attempt has come out odd.
Following your instructions to change XZY to XYZ and export with the Maya Object Exporter by Delphy from SimPE.
I then imported it into MS3D with the Wavefront.obj importer and this happened.



So I went back into SimPE and set XYZ back to XZY and it's in the right place in MS3D.



What am I doing wrong here?

Exportdry, I'm pasting here my reply to your other thread:

The positioning issue in Milkshape is normal when working with exported obj files, no mistake in the tutorial; it will be put back in the right position when importing it back in SimPE, if you're using the Mesh Tool.
You can also rotate the imported obj to put it in a more convenient position to work with, as long as you don't forget to put it back in place before exporting, but then the lighting in Milkshape will be a little weird.

EDIT: I was pretty sure that I had been using the Unimesh plugins for that, without any issue, but I just checked and obviously I was wrong: the face animations and assignments are all messed-up. Unless the templates themselves behave differently, since I noticed differences in the files at the time but I still have to take a look again...
RE-EDIT: right, the Unimesh plugins work fine with extracted templates! Just mauled the afarchcaus and the sim created with that is "fine" >_<

Small precision: you CAN alter the edges in Milkshape, but this won't be retained in game, so no gaps will occur. All you could get is a normals distorsion in some cases.
Also, no matter how tempting it could be, don't change anything to the UV-map: this will move the vertices themselves in the opposite direction in game.


Inge,

The Mesh Tool and the tutorials are here ; I see that Miche says that this version has compatibility issues with the few last EPs, and didn't test that one personally (and it seems that I lost my old version in the computer change *sigh*).
But as you guessed, when editing an already born sim the only shape that will be passed on is the original shape; if you want to make the change genetic you'll need to make a full template, with the faces edited for all ages and both genders.
If this doesn't deter you, there's a tutorial by Argon on MATY about adding new templates instead of overriding an existing one - I didn't try it yet though, and it's a little bit scary.

Hi HP and Marvine. I've been trying this, and I've run into a couple problems using Wes's Milkshape plugins for this. I got the face (AM cpol) as close as I could with body shop, then extracted the sim's face with Simpe and imported it into Milkshape with the Unimesh plugin, just like a normal mesh. I think that's what you did, Marvine. Well, the first thing Milkshape does is ask if I want to create blend groups. If I say yes, there's a morphmesh, and it's all goofed up. I tried saying no, and everything seemed to be ok, the mesh replaced the original extracted cpol mesh (thanks Allen ABQ) and body shop made a new sim with it. So did the game, but when I put the sim on a lot, the whole lot froze. I could go into build mode and buy mode, exit the lot fine, but in live mode nothing moves. I tried starting over in bodyshop making a new sim, extracting the face and importing it into Milkshape, and the same issue happens with the blend groups. I also this time in the joints tab asked it to select unassigned verts, and half the face is lit up. I can't remember, but I think when I exported the first time there was a warning about unassigned verts. I can't think of a reason why Milkshape is losing some of the bone assignments, but I tried using the fix underassigned bones plugin under vertices, and it didn't help. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong and how not to do it wrong again?

dragonarts - the instructions are not for using unimesh. Please read them carefully.

They use meshtool and obj format - meshtool will rebuild a new gmdc with the bone assignments from the original.

This is why I was trying this with Wes's Unimesh plugins.



And this is why I was reluctant to use the meshtool. I have all the EPs and I hadn't downloaded meshtool onto my new computer yet. So if the Unimesh plugins work, using them would be my preference. So... Marvine?

I expect the face template data remains unchanged from one ep to the next - while there have been some changes to body meshes (they went from 3 to 4 bone assignments).

At the time this tutorial was written there were already quite a few eps. It would be easy enough to download meshtool and do a quick test run - just pull one vertex way out of place - and import and see if it works. Simple. Quick.

Tiggerypum is right to point out that this method uses the Mesh Tool ; and it does for a reason - nothing can be broken this way since it doesn't change anything else than the vertex positions.

I've been successful with the Unimesh plugins when making a template replacement, for which you overwrite a base template instead of editing the face of a given sim. I had forgotten about this detail when I first replied to you. At the time I was probably trying to get rid of the neck width limitation, and this seemed the only chance left (except that it didn't work either).
The faces that are in a character file have blend and weighting information, and this information gets altered by the Unimesh plugins, making them unusable in game. I never got a crash though, during my last test as well, all that happened was that all face animations were lost.
On the other side, the faces in the CASface.package don't include the same information, though it varies between archetypes, gender and age. Most of them don't include any blends or bone weights, and I'm not sure that what is found in some of them isn't junk data: the afarchcaus archetype that I used for the last test had at least blends that I didn't keep, and the sim created with the edited template behaved perfectly fine in CAS and in game as well. So the information that is used in the final sim comes from elsewhere.

But maybe I wasn't clear: you can't use an extracted and edited template to replace the face gmdc in a character file. It should be done as a replacement for a base template (or a whole new template, which I didn't attempt yet), which in turn will be used to create a new sim. The whole point of templates replacement is documented elsewhere, but while I used it occasionally because it allows me to use my favourite tools, it's not the most straightforward way to alter a single sim's face - which is the one explained here.

As for the Mesh Tool, why not try it for yourself? It won't take much room on your computer, and can come useful for a lot of things

To all: sorry for the confusion.

One thing I see I didn't mention is the fact that I actually wasn't trying to change the face of a character. I know that's what the tutorial does, and that alone is pretty cool. I played around with that some on my old computer, though I didn't actually put anybody ingame, but what I was doing now was using the tutorial as a basis for altering face templates. I successfully completed the basic steps of extracting a bodyshop face from it's package and exchanging it for the template GMDC from Allen's set, and from facefiles I extracted myself as per Motoki's tut on MATY. While that got me closer to what I want, it still needs adjustment to achieve my goal, so I came here. It seems like the Unimesh should work, but I'll go ahead and use meshtool. I do like the point that nothing can be broken.

Sorry I didn't make that point clear, but I wasn't confused about you using a face template. That is also what I wanted to do.


Edit: Using the meshtool everything worked just fine. You see the child Sim here with the altered face. And yes, I know she looks strange, but I haven't made the new skin yet. I still need to alter the rest of the template files so the face is consistent for all ages and genders. I had a "I wonder if this will work" thought occur to me though. In Milkshape it's easy to import with Unimesh and then export obj. Would the orientation in Meshtool be messed up if I used that exported obj to replace the GMDC? The whole xyz/xzy thing is annoying in editing in Milkshape. If I could skip the step of exporting from Simpe as an obj file and edit the face in Milkshape like I would clothing, then export as obj and use meshtool it would be easier.

ReEdit: I tried skipping the "export from Simpe with orientation set as xzy" step. Just extracted the bodyshop GMDCs (LOD too), imported into Milkshape with Unimesh, edited, then exported from Milkshape as obj. I used Meshtool to replace the mesh from the extracted file with the new one, and then replaced the template GMDC with the one Meshtool created. The guy with Enayla's serpent skin is the result. Animations retained, everything looks good (except I don't think I'm satisfied with the mesh yet )

This would need confirmation, but I think I remember that a mesh imported with the Unimesh plugins, then exported as obj, can't be used with the Mesh Tool because the vertices are renumbered differently. Whatever method you choose, it's safer to stick with it from the beginning to the end - well, playing mad scientist can be interesting, but then you should prepare yourself for funny outcomes

I really am prepared to break anything but my new computer. I seem to always be asking myself the question "what if...?"

Ah... see above. Your reply seems to have crossed my edit in passing.

Well congratulations, and so much for my theory

But now I need to ask: when you imported the mesh in Milkshape, you didn't get the warning about morphs and unassigned bones?

I was asked about creating blend groups, and underweighted skins. I answered no to the first and yes to the second. What I actually did, was take the obj file I'd already saved from my first attempt, and replace the mesh in the original extracted file using meshtool. I had saved an obj file then because I could import that into the other face files to use as a target for altering the others in a similar way. I'm going to try again "from scratch" just to make sure this actually works. I'm using a bodyshop sim, extracting the GMDCs and importing them into Milkshape with the Unimesh plugins. Answering no to blend groups and yes to fixing underweighted skins, making my changes, and then exporting as a wavefront obj. Then I'll use Meshtool as per tut to replace the GMDC.

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

Looks like I did something right this time!
 

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???...

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

Hello, I followed the tutorial, and I've got the purpose, to change to "MS3D" features of a face of maxis. but my problem is that I had modeled a face in "ts2bodyshop" and now I want to retouch a face with "MS3D" and then import the game. but I have not gotten the following steps. I think you can, because it did "Lunar Eclipse" with your sims "Ash Crimson"

Help me please

In the screenshot you see a face made for me, and exported. "Obj" XYZ as the tutorial says, but as you can see the texture is not correct

*******

Hola, he seguido el tutorial, y he conseguido el proposito, de cambiar con "ms3d" rasgos de una cara de maxis. pero mi problema esta en que yo habia modelado una cara en "ts2bodyshop" y esa cara ahora quiero retocarla con "ms3d" y luego importarla al juego. pero no lo he conseguido siguiendo estos pasos. Creo que se puede, porque ya lo hizo "Lunar Eclipse" con su sims "Ash Crimson"

Ayudenme por favor.

En la captura se ve una cara hecha por mi, y exportada en ".obj" XYZ como dice el tutorial, pero como podeis ver la textura no esta correcta

Can i edit saved sims face templates
 

rather than editing the game CAS templates?

i have one little problem
it seems that the face doesn't really have the same proportions in milkshape and in the game (reference picture)
can someone please help me?

Yeah, the face in Milkshape does look different in 3D view, perhaps because of the perspective. It can be confusing at first, but after a short while you get used to it

By the way, that sim strangely reminds me of someone :D

With wich version of Simpe is making that?

With wich version of Simpe is making this?

Pretty sure you can use most versions of SimPE. You need Milkshape (a mesh program) for the face editing.

simmer22 You with wich version make it?Send it here https://www.mediafire.com/ and give me link! Because of all versions that i use the back of the face is not developed http://prikachi.com/images.php?images/681/9611681A.jpg

Send me one in which the back of the neck is developed

Someone to upload here the version of SimPe that makes 3d faces!

You say most but those who know their backside have not been developed in the back but which version it is ?

People with what version of Simpe you are doing these things please answer me?

Like I said, you need Milkshape (a mesh program) for the face editing. May also be possible with other meshing programs like Blender 3D.

You can find them via a simple Google search.

Info on SimPE plus the download can be found here: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=630456

There's also no need to post ten times in a row or PM me with the same question. Use the edit button to add things if your post is the last one, and please have the patience to wait at least a day for an answer, because MTS isn't a 24/7 answering machine.

ok thanks

I downloaded all the programs I need but why is not the back again?

What version of Simpe i have to install?

0.73 is the most stable one, so use this if you can.

If you have the Ultimate collection and don't get the 0.73 version to work properly, try the 0.75f version (may work better with filepaths).

And the back of the face with them will show up?

Both versions told me that I downloaded but why the back of the face is missing ;(

http://prikachi.com/images.php?images/681/9611681A.jpg this is what im talking about

There is no back of the face. Mesh faces/polys are one-sided, and should be so. Ingame the inside of the head is hidden by the hair and the rest of the body, so it won't look like that.

If you're editing sim faces as described in the tutorial above, remember to not add or remove anything to the mesh, just move the vertices around. Otherwise it'll screw up the morph.

Also, please use the edit button (if your post is the last one on the list) instead of posting several times in a row.

simmer22 Please upolad on youtube video of this tutorial to see it and send the link here

First of all, I don't do Youtube videos. Second, why should I make it into a video? It's not even my tutorial. It's not very polite to demand someone else to do something for you, you know.

Pretty sure the tutorial shows what you have to do, but it's probably not a good beginner project to start out with for someone who isn't familiar with SimPE or Milkshape.

With FaceShop can make 3d face?