SimPE SMD Import Ruins UV Mapping of Face Morphs

[please_dont_crash_my_game]

Alright, I've searched everywhere and I can't find anything that solves the problem.

I'm attempting to 3D-edit faces of Sims, using Blender. So far I've been able to export, edit, and import the base mesh of a Sim's face, but - because I did it without touching the morph - the animations were wiped. No big deal. I restored the sim's character file from a backup and exported both the base meshes and the morphs, edited all three meshes, and imported it back in.

When I ran the game with the base mesh AND morphs edited, whenever the sim moved her face, the texture became stretched and distorted, or turned completely red. Not good.

To attempt to isolate the problem, I tried the same thing but with simply exporting and importing the mesh in and out of SimPE, and the same problem occured - therefore, it's SimPE's SMD tool that seems to be causing the problem, not Bobcatben's Blender tool.

Additionally, I've tried importing the main mesh as both the main mesh and the morphs, with the same result. Therefore, it seems to be a bug in the import plugin - export is probably working fine.

Am I doing something wrong somewhere in the import process? If seemingly not, is there a new version of SimPE's SMD tool available, or will I need to manually fix the UV map? (I hope there's something simple and obvious I'm missing, and it's not just an unavoidable limitation of the plugin.)

Thanks. :)

[HystericalParoxysm]

If you look at the Articles section of my profile, I have some basic info on 3D editing sim faces - you can't use SMD for it. You have to use OBJ, and run it through the Meshtool, and do it as a default replacement face template (just temporarily, once you save the sim using that face you can remove the template). IIRC you have to uncheck everything but vertex coordinates in Meshtool to keep it from messing up the UV Map.

[please_dont_crash_my_game]

My MilkShape trial has expired, so, seriously? >_> Dang.

Alright, thanks for the information. I figured it was indeed an unavoidable limitation of the SMD format, but was hoping there was a workaround of some sort.

Time to install MilkShape on another computer and use it to convert meshes >_> or just hunt for a workaround until I find one, get bored of looking for one, or get sent to an asylum. I'll probably just end up buying and using MilkShape, though.

EDIT: Wait, Wavefront .obj in Blender is different from Sims .obj, right?
EDIT 2: Actually, according to MeshTool, Sims .obj IS Wavefront .obj. Which settings to use in the Blender plugin, now...? (w00t! testing now)
EDIT 3: Nope, MeshTool won't save the thing properly - it just doesn't edit the file when I import the .obj. It's the right kind of .obj, though, but that doesn't matter. I'm going to try just importing the SMD and fixing the UV map manually inside the GMDC somehow. Only obvious way to fix it is to copy and paste 1100-ish coordinate pairs... ._. I think I'll just switch to MilkShape.

[Ove51]

I've test it a little with smd and blender and it work quite well (in bodyshop, in Cas and in game) adding or removing vertices causing just the game to use the original templates, with no animation or uv issues.
But if I refer to your 1st post and to the comments of HP's tut, this can only be done on face templates of CAS and bodyshop, you can't do it on a sim that 's already in neighborhood (you could eventually create a new sim and use SimPE sims surgery tool)

[please_dont_crash_my_game]

Alright, thanks. I suspected that may have been the problem but I didn't bother to test that factor. >_>

I'm going to test that the next chance I get. Thanks :)

Only one thing, though: I have an already-edited face mesh for a sim, can I import that into a face template as-is or should I basically start over?