TS1 Modding

[ChickieTeeta]

thank you.
i would like an arm example.
..and yes. if id just done this earlier a year or two ago, it would have been easier to find the programs neccessary to do this. i think they brought on the sims 2 and so on too fast and in the wrong way, and ts1 should have been given the red carpet for a long long time, because thats how it wouldnt have started dying like its been. its also the meshers and website vendors who have moved on and/or let their links, and methods fade. :/
thats why the meshing thing is important right now.it needs to be brought back.youtube is always open for some REAL examples of this, as we know.the examples and tutorials for ts1 on there are nonexistant or a mess. ive been picking up the pieces again though, from here and there. its been hell.

Even a year or two ago, you'd be hard pressed to find stuff TS1 related. The game died for the majority of people around 8 years ago when TS2 came out, because it was so entirely different and much improved. The differences between TS2 and TS3 were to a lesser extent, some things were better, like the open world, and some things worse, like the whole look of the actual sims, which is why there is still a lot available for TS2, and partly why a lot of people didn't make a permanent move to TS3. Some went back to TS2, some moved completely to TS3 and some, myself included, play both.
Saying that, it saddens me how quickly all the TS1 sites disappeared, though there are still some out there who kept their sims 1 stuff available, and I believe Parsimonious Sims still put up new things for TS1 even now. Their object sets are fantastic, so if you haven't checked them out you totally should. Also, much to my surprise I discovered the other day that sim city mental institution still has their meshes and skins up for download, along with a few other sites I remember.

You said: "its also the meshers and website vendors who have moved on and/or let their links, and methods fade. :/"

You should keep in mind that part of the reason for their swift disappearance, was to do with most people were paying for their websites, and had a limit to how much space they could use on a server as well, or they had a limit to how much traffic they could have within a month...some people also had no cap but paid for all that traffic with no cut off point, which is very scary when you're just an ordinary person with an ordinary paycheck trying to support what is essentially just a hobby, so to move on and put TS2 stuff up, something had to go, and since only a minority stayed with TS1 it was the TS1 stuff that went. Can't blame anyone really when you're paying out of your own pocket to put stuff up that others can have for free.
The swiftness of the death of TS1 is not at all surprising, still sad though, but if they were given unlimited funds and unlimited space, I think the majority of people who ran TS1 sites would have kept their stuff available permanently just in case even 1 person wanted the downloads. We sadly don't live in that world, and where most people struggle to get through a month as it is, expecting them to carry on paying for a website that's of very little interest to anyone anymore is little more than selfish. The meshers and website owners are not the ones to blame for the sites disappearing. I'm sure everyone was heartbroken to have to remove items they'd poured years of their lives into.

Anyway....the skins showing the arm placement...

One arm to just above wrist
http://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/img/2/4/8/8/5/MTS_ChickieTeeta-1306846-Image1.jpg

Different colors for different wrists should allow you to see clearly which part corresponds to each arm
http://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/img/2/4/8/8/5/MTS_ChickieTeeta-1306847-Image2.jpg

Upper arm placement
http://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/img/2/4/8/8/5/MTS_ChickieTeeta-1306849-Image4.jpg

Shows the placement for 1 arm again, but also shows which part corresponds to the shoulder
http://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/img/2/4/8/8/5/MTS_ChickieTeeta-1306848-Image3.jpg

[ChickieTeeta]

know anywhere i can go for this?
been looking around. dont know if i should buy the full milkshape, or if unlicensed would be adequate.

You won't need milkshape for TS1 re-textures, all you need is your paint program....a program like simshow would be REALLY useful if you can still get your hands on it. It saves you having to load the game everytime you want to see your new skin on a model.
And file cop will pull out bad textures and misnamed meshes for you, again I don't know if this will still be available.
Not neccessary is simpose for TS1, not neccessary, but great fun for getting your models to pose for pics in your new clothes.

Downloads for Sim Show and Sim Pose at this page (http://www.simprograms.com/the-sims/the-sims-1/the-sims-programs/programs-the-sims-skinningcharacter-editors/)

Download page containing File Cop (yay, thank you SimSample for finding this one =D) (http://www.simprograms.com/the-sims/the-sims-1/the-sims-programs/programs-the-sims-miscellaneous/)

Pull out the base skintones...light, medium and dark, layer them on top of each other, and then paint your skin on to a layer or layers above these. Merge them when you're done, and save off the first skintone, naming it appropriately, then bring the next skintone up to sit under the clothes, and save appropriately again, and then do the same for the last skin tone.
It's also good practice to save your layers incase you need to edit them later.
Files for the game must be saved as bitmaps, and should be 256x256 (8bit)
If you have sim show you can then decide what mesh it sits best on, and name your files accordingly. If you don't you'll have to decide before hand.
Make sure your image file contains the mesh number, gender, body size, and skintone , then put an underline and your unique name for the file.
For example a female skin for the fit body on the light skintone using the B200 mesh would be named:
B200fafitlgt_uniquenamegoeshere.bmp
I'll stick with the B200 mesh as the example for categorizing......
If you want to categorize an item as formalwear, remove the starting B and replace it with an F, (so F200) rename the cmx too, then open the cmx and where it would say B200 rename it to F200....the x-skin must stay as b though, so don't change that.
Swimwear would be S200
Underwear would be L200
Winterwear would be W200
I'm sure there was a category for superstar but can't remember what it was off the top of my head....I think it was H though.
Remember to name inside the cmx accordingly to whatever you're categorizing the skin as, or it won't show.

If it's a custom mesh you're using, make sure to drop it into the game folder with your skin. If you have file cop, it's a good idea to run your files and the custom mesh file through this. Quite a lot of custom meshes were named wrongly inside the cmx file, you can check it yourself if you don't have file cop. (I won't explain here incase you already know how, hoping to keep this short) At best a wrongly named mesh won't show, or will be white and shiny, at worst it will crash your game, it shouldn't do any permanent damage to your game though, so don't worry too much about it.

This is a texture I made (the part to the far left that hasn't been textured is the arms.... the dark bit in the centre is your divider line between the 2 arms. Above it is the right arm, below it is the left arm.The very top is the right wrist, very bottom is the left wrist both working their way towards the dark bit is moving further up the arm. I can do a skin that shows this if you want to see what I mean...not sure how clear that was lol and this image won't show what I mean since the mesh was mapped to have the sole of the boot and the laces in the place where the wrist normally sits. Most meshes kept everything in the standard place though, these ones were later meshes and few and far between.

http://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/img/2/4/8/8/5/MTS_ChickieTeeta-1306247-Bf03fafitlgt_suitbelt.jpg

When this flat texture was wrapped round the corresponding mesh, it looked like (not my best but the only one I could find at short notice)

http://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/img/2/4/8/8/5/MTS_ChickieTeeta-1306250-SUI_TBeltBf03.jpg

(The mesh used here was the Bf03, made by Sim City Mental Institution)
You can hopefully see from the images where parts on the texture sit on the mesh, TS1 skinning was really straight forward though, so I doubt you'll run into many problems, I miss it :(...let me know if you'd like an example of the arms.

If it's meshing you want to know about, I can't help you, I only made skins for TS1.
I saw your post to Cmar btw, it was so rude. Cmar is lovely and would have helped you if they knew how. The differences between TS1 and TS2/3 are startling. Everyone had to relearn how to skin/mesh etc for TS2 when it came out as it was so completely different to TS1, especially object meshing and skinning...and if someone never played TS1 or fiddled around with it's game files, why would you think they knew how to do what you were asking but refused to help you? I mean, you have the game files to hand and don't know what to do with them, but you expected someone who'd never seen them to tell you what to do with them just because they know their way round an art program? I've never seen Cmar be rude or unhelpful to anyone, it kind of makes me not want to help you. You really should apologize :(

Hope this post is ok with everyone :)

[Silverprinz]

To do some quick meshing for TS1 get a copy of the original Bodyshop, it was quick and easy to use. ChickieTeeta already did a very good job of explaining the rest so that is all I will add.

[ChickieTeeta]

I know the file download info says it cleans your bad mesh files and skin image files, I'd like to clarify that what it does is remove them from the game and put them into a folder called....bad files or some similar sounding name.
Don't run it, then look at the number of files it's cleaned and then run your game, you'll be missing skins and/or mesh information.
What to do is go into the 'bad files' folder when it's done (it will tell you how many it's pulled out, if any) to see what's there.
If it's a bmp, then it's most likely the wrong color depth, easily solved by opening it in a paint program and reducing the color depth to 8bit (256x256)
If it's a cmx file, it was normally because it wasn't named correctly inside. Check the name inside the cmx matches the name outside, which was the most common problem when these were pulled out by file cop, and also that the x-skin name is written properly.

I seem to recall that if the x-skin name was wrong then it would assume the x-skin wasn't in the folder and would pull the cmx out, just look for what the x-skin should be called and correct the name, or it's pulled it because the x-skin was indeed missing, find which one should be in the folder and drop it in.

If an x-skin is pulled out, this isn't so simple, this contained all the mesh info, so if there's a problem with it, unless you can spot something awry within the first 2 or 3 lines when you've opened it (open it with wordpad, I seem to recall they were too large for notepad to open), you've not got much chance of correcting this. The best checks were to make sure the cmx file it wants is there, that the skin files (bmps) it's using are there, and to see if anything is wrong in the first few lines....don't attempt to correct the info if you're unsure though.....or if you're adventurous go ahead, and do it, drop it back in the skin folder and run file cop again.

x-skins were very rarely pulled out so don't worry too much about these.

When you've corrected any bad files drop them back in to their relevant folders, run file cop again to check your changes were correct, it should all be okay this time.
You only really need to run file cop when you drop new custom items in, so if you haven't don't bother with it.
bmps corrupt occasionally so if you develop a problem and you haven't recently added anything run file cop to check your bmps.

File cop also checks walls and floors files.

The format inside the cmx was

0
1
"name of cmx here"
0
0
1
PELVIS
name of x-skin here
0
0
0

I only point this out as sometimes the numbers down the side were wrong, so if everything else is correct check these next.

Not all cmxs were like this inside but this is by far the most common, and most likely what you'll come across.


I just found out that file cop was provided by EA, I was shocked. Don't let that put you off lol, it's a really simplistic program, so easy to use and very very good at what it does.

[maxon]

I think my skin fixing tuts are still on the web. I was never much of a skinner but I could make the skins work alright. The best thing for skins and making them work was that skin programme and sim editor - I've forgotten the name of.

Edit: I remembered!! SimEnhancer:
http://www.simenhancer.com/
It used to be pay though I don't think it can be now.

Oh, and I thought you might find this useful. I found it on my yahoo group. It's one of the tuts - the How Skins Work tut.