Problems with Morphs and other lovely things.

[traelia]

Okay so here's the rundown. I've cloned the work boots from the game, and modified the mesh to make them taller, then I added my own mesh of slouchy socks. Well I'm new to added stuff to meshes and couldn't figure out why there was some strange separation at the socks' beginning section. I asked Whiterider for some help and she told me I needed to make new morphs for the mesh. So I followed this tutorial here: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=380954
Everything was going fine and dandy, I even renumbered the morphs starting with 30000 for LOD1 as per Whiterider's instructions. Welp today I went and used the MorphMaker to put the morphs into the .package file and lo and behold my boots exploded on impact in the game.

The only thing I did in between making the morphs and putting them into the package was change the texture map in MS.
Also I did not do anything to VPXY files, so I'm not sure if that has something to do with it... I don't know.
Anyways if anyone can shed some light onto this I would be more than grateful!

OH and that first picture (at med weight) was before I put in the morphs, I just wanted to show the mesh without the explodingness happening. But with the morphs, med weight looks like the thin picture.

[CmarNYC]

Hmm, strange - those look like the faces of your mesh are coming apart, not really the typical morph explosion, but hard to tell.

Could you upload your package and I'll take a look?

[BloomsBase]

When you renumbered the morphs you did include the base mesh aswell i assume?
Cmar is right about the seperated faces, this looks more as a error on a reimported uvmap...

[traelia]

When I renumbered the morphs the base meshes were still present in MS, if that's what you mean?

And here's the package, there's probably ALOT of stuff in there cause I saved so many times in CTU.. so it included all of the files. But I did delete the old morphs and old meshes, I don't know if that has something to do with it, but I figured it wouldn't effect the most recent saves.
Anyways, if you want to see the morphs/meshes or anything else, I'll upload the working files too.
The meshes used would be the ones labeled "WsocksLOD1" and then the highest version number.

And I did edit the texture map in the Texture Coordinate Editor in MS to fix an error on the socks mesh.

[whiterider]

I was thinking that the weird "format" of the explosion was caused by vertices being unwelded (possibly on my advice :p ), which could create that effect if the unwelded pairs don't have matching morph values. That still leaves the question of why the values wouldn't match, of course - but I may be wrong.

[BloomsBase]

i mean, if you renumber base mesh and morphs you first import that renumbered mesh back in the package, then make Bgeo files and reimport them aswell.
i think something is wrong with the Bgeo files as using the sliders crashes TSRW.

[CmarNYC]

I can tell you right off that there are no custom BGEOs in your package. When you used MorphMaker, did you use the add to package function? Because that should have updated the BBLNs and added the BGEOs.

Something's very funky in your meshes and BGEOs. The vertex IDs in the meshes range from 0 to some huge number, with only a few in the 30000 range. The only other time I've seen IDs like this was when I used the Clean function in Milkshape and it messed up my IDs. Using MorphMaker to make BGEOs on those meshes shouldn't have worked at all. And the BGEOs aren't even readable - what settings did you use in MorphMaker to make them? Did you possibly try to make morphs for both the adult and teen shoes in the same BGEO since I'm seeing more than one age/gender? If you remember, I'd like to know what produced this error so I can fix my tool to prevent it.

You could try taking your final base and morph meshes, renumber them all in Milkshape, export, make the BGEOs again in MorphMaker, replace the base meshes in your package, and use the MorphMaker add to package function to add the custom morphs.

[BloomsBase]

Something's very funky in your meshes and BGEOs. The vertex IDs in the meshes range from 0 to some huge number, with only a few in the 30000 range. The only other time I've seen IDs like this was when I used the Clean function in Milkshape and it messed up my IDs. Using MorphMaker to make BGEOs on those meshes shouldn't have worked at all.

This also happens when combining(regrouping) diffrent morphs/meshparts

[CmarNYC]

Good point for the zero IDs, although I saw what looked like random very high ID numbers too.

[traelia]

Okay, so the way that I made these meshes was the shoes up until the ankles are a work boot mesh, and then the socks were taken from the nude mesh and then I just aligned all the verts at the ankle by hand, and then after having done that, I split some of the faces to get me some more verts using the "Subdivide by 2" on the top few sets of verts on the socks. Then I imported another nude mesh to align the top of the socks with the leg, also moving each vert by hand. I never used the weld tool, but the shoe laces came pre welded for some reason, when all they were were really long cylinders that I just manipulated into the shape of shoe laces. So yes, I did just select all and unweld to avoid the welding and exporting error that MS has. After all that, I regrouped, but did not renumber anything (I wasn't aware of the need for it), so could that be an issue as well? Maybe explaining the random spikes in numbers? Another issue that I could think of is: could the poly count be too high or something? Because those damn shoe laces have a rediculously high amount of verts, but I mean I wanted high quality laces. I very well may have used the clean tool on account of my ignorance to the tools, thinking it would fix the "autosmooth" problems (I just got this comp so autosmooth was on and I forgot to turn it off :x).
As far as the Morph tool goes, I didn't use the add to package button, but I did manually add them using SP3E and editing the CASP file. Should I try it the other way? And I honestly have no idea how it added multiple ages to the morphs :( Also I didn't change or make a new VPXY file so could that be an issue? I really have no idea how all this stuff works so I could have missed something.
When I made the morphs I started with the AF LOD1 base mesh, imported another AF, changed the comments like in the tutorial, hid the base, imported a nude fat/fit/thin .obj mesh for reference, moved all the necessary verts by hand, deleted the .obj reference, renumbered the morph (Starting with 30000), and exported and started a new file. Then for teen, I opened the TF base and repeated, so I really have no idea how the BGEO's could have been made for both ages.
I did notice that the MorphMaker was extremely slow and barely responsive while saving files, that could have been a result of strange numberings or incompatible stuff going on.

I sure opened a can of worms with this damn mesh :P

Oh and do morphs utilize the UVmap? Cause the morphs have different UV maps than the base meshes, because I changed the UVmap after making the morphs.

EDIT: I can't import the morphs into MS over the original base meshes because I get an error that says the vertex tag value doesn't match. I tried importing it over all the meshes I have and none of them match. I have no idea how that could have happened.. Looks like I'm remaking the morphs.

[CmarNYC]

Yes, you need to renumber the final base and all the morphs together so they all have the exact same sequence of vertex IDs. So you should be making all your morphs as different mesh groups, renumber, then export everything.

I don't know about the unwelding, but Whiterider's comment implies that may be what caused the separating faces.

It's fine to manually add the morphs to the package, but you need to do all of these steps:

Create valid BGEOs for each age/gender.
Edit the package so that the appropriate TGI link for each morph points to a BBLN within the package, and each of those BBLNs points to the correct BGEO. If you generated your package with CTU you need to update the BBLNs to point to the TGI of the BGEO made by MorphMaker. The link you have to update is the FIRST one within the BBLN - the Blend Geometry link.
Add your custom BGEOs to the package.


The MorphMaker Add to Package will do the last two steps for you.

The VPXY isn't used for a GEOM morph so I don't think that's a problem.

MorphMaker has issues with the Windows 7 file system which causes the sluggishness/freezing you mentioned. It's a flaw in the underlying platform I used so I can't fix it, but in another month or two I should be releasing a new tool using a different language and platform that will supercede MorphMaker and hopefully perform much better.

Morphs don't have any UV so that's also not a problem.

[traelia]

Okay so, I renumbered all of the base meshes on their own just now, then I will be remaking the morphs since none of them will import anymore. So once I finish the morph, I just have to renumber the morph in MS with the base mesh under it? Or should I renumber the basemesh at that point as well? Or do you mean to open all the base meshes and morphs in MS at the same time and then renumbering?

[CmarNYC]

For each lod (and for adult and teen separately if you're doing both) you should renumber the base and all the morphs together, and export the renumbered meshes. (Wes's Milkshape plugin renumbers the whole set together, making sure they match. The base and morphs for each lod MUST match.) Put the renumbered base meshes in your package, and use the renumbered morph meshes to make new BGEOs.

[traelia]

When I renumber the LOD1 morphs the starting number is 30000 right?

[CmarNYC]

30000 is the standard starting number for shoes lod1, yes. You can either continue the same set of numbers for lods 2 and 3 (Milkshape will give you the next starting number) or start from 30000 again for each lod. If you have a lot of vertices starting all the lods with 30000 may be the best idea so you don't go really far into non-standard vertex IDs.

[traelia]

Alrighty, well I have to go painstakingly re-do all the morphs. I'll be back with an update in a while.

EDIT: Also Cmar I was wondering if I could get permission to clone your transparent shirt and use the meshes and such for a shirt I'm making?

[CmarNYC]

Absolutely, clone and use whatever you want. :)

[traelia]

Alright I created just a fat morph to test. It turned out much better than before, but there's still some exploding.
Also the fat morph doesn't actually do what I told it to do :/ And I used the "Add geom to package" button this time and followed the instructions to everything.

I'm going to try using the second version of the morph that I made cause the renumbering was being picky with me in MS.

EDIT: Okay second version was a no go.. I don't know what happened to it. :(
I've uploaded the version that is in the first picture.
I'm really starting to get frustrated with this stupid project.

On the number picture, does that mean that I should start it at 0 or at 30000? I have both the base and the morph in MS when I choose to renumber and it says it copies the values to the morph.. but I don't know I'm so freaking confused. Do I renum it with the base in there and start from 0 or delete the base and renumber it starting from 30000? I've tried both ways and neither is working in game very well.

Oh and now the mask isn't working at all to change the patterns. What the hell.

EDIT EDIT: Now I've gone and renumbered all the morphs I have, including LOD2 and LOD3 and now I'm getting this error when I try to make a BGEO. (Picture 3)

[BloomsBase]

if it is that confusing why not use TSRW?

edit,
The mesh itself is build not that good im afraid, it contains 3 times as much vertice as faces while it should be the other way arround.
With so many duplicate verts you ask for problems..
I redid the file with TSRW, if you want to have a look let me know.

Another thing, if you add new designs then duplicate the first one.
You now have many duplictae textures in your package

[CmarNYC]

In your pic #1 it looks like your boots aren't morphing at all.

Your BGEO is corrupted again. You can see it in s3pe - it won't do the usual listing of the resource contents. What version of MorphMaker are you using? A wrongly-numbered mesh in a very old version of MorphMaker MIGHT do something like this, otherwise I have no idea. For some time I've been using a slightly updated version which I neglected to upload, but I'll upload it now if you want to update.

Your base mesh is numbered starting from 0 and your morph mesh is numbered starting from 30000. They MUST match. Base and morphs MUST be loaded in Milkshape at the same time when you do your renumber. The message that MS has copied the values to the morph is what it's supposed to say. The base and morph vertex IDs not matching is why the fat morph isn't working in your first pic. (Besides that the BGEO is corrupted.)

The only morph mesh in the folder you uploaded which would load on the base was V1. I did the following:

Loaded the base mesh and V1 morph mesh in Milkshape
Used the Vertex Autonum tool to renumber starting with 30000
Exported and saved the base mesh and the morph mesh
Ran MorphMaker, imported the renumbered morph mesh, and created a new BGEO
Replaced the base lod1 mesh in your package with the renumbered one, and replaced the BGEO in your package with the new one

Results in the game are below. They look pretty good to me! I've also attached the revised package. IMO you may not need morphs for thin and fit - they look okay to me unmorphed, but that's up to you. You also need to do at least the fat morph for lod2 and (maybe) lod3, of course.

In Milkshape, make sure you load your final base and all its morphs and renumber ALL of them starting at 30000 at the same time, export all of them, and replace the base mesh in your package with the renumbered one.
After you do all the lods and all the morph meshes (including renumbering), in MorphMaker load the morph meshes for ONE morph into the Adult Female lod1, lod2, and lod3 slots. Fill in the name of your boots with the name of the morph at the top as the project name - ex: af_traelia_IndieBootsWSOCKS_fat. (You need to have a separate name for each morph so just add _fat, _thin, etc.) Click the Clothes/Hair button and create the BGEO.
When a BGEO for each morph is done, use the "Add Morphs to Package" button.


Hopefully it'll all work this time...

[BloomsBase]

Here you have a fixed mesh and package.
Your original had 4308 vertice and 1436 faces but after cleaning up it now has 977 vertice and 1434 faces.
The mesh(and morphs) is in WSO format, you need tsrw's plugin for Milkshape for them.
Did not made the lower detail morphs.

[traelia]

I'm using MorphMaker version 2.3
And thank you both for revising stuff for me. I'm just curious, Bloom, what did you do to clean up the vertices? I know there was many in there that could have been cleaned up I just didn't know how to go about that. I will try again at this in a bit, and make sure I'm doing everything exactly as you've said. Hopefully all will go well.
Thanks again, and I'll be back in a little while.

[BloomsBase]

They are great shoes :)

I welded the mesh together.(had to scale it a bit bigger to avoid faces got welded aswell.)
I usually use the model cleaner afterwards to split the vertice on the seams again.
On your mesh this gave me strange errors so i tried to import it welded in TSRW.
That worked out fine, guessing the WSO plugin fixed that part.

That welded mesh i duplicated 4 times for the morphs.
Base mesh and each morph i connected to the calves of a naked bottom(top row of the socks)

[traelia]

Thanks :)
And I'll have to make sure I clean my meshes after editing next time.
I am getting a weird error when trying to renumber the meshes you posted, it says Morph 1 has on less vertice than the base mesh, is there a way to fix that?

EDIT: I used "Clean" and after that it renumbered fine.

[BloomsBase]

tsrw does the numbering and makes the Bgeo files on import.
The mesh i posted is in the package.(so are your 2 lower polygon ones.)
You can not use these meshes with CTU!! They have a diffrent joint order(i converted the geom to be used by tsrw)

[traelia]

Okay I downloaded TSRW and I'm using it to make a new test package.

[BloomsBase]

start new project
new import
browse to my package/shoe file(set format to package in popup)
clone my file :)

I think you can do the same with Cmars fix