Help needed: assigning bone weights to alpha mesh

[Laura5676]

I am almost done with my alpha mesh, but I seem to be having some problems with the bone weights. I am not sure how to fix this. Whatever I do doesn't seem to be doing anything or makes it worse. I appreciate any help.
Edit: for some reason the images disappeared, but they were there before. I have attached them.

[fakepeeps7]

Copy the bone weights from the legs to the skirt. There's really no other way to do it, other than trial and error. You can use the Animation tool in MilkShape to test whether the legs are going to poke through the alpha piece. (Make sure no vertices are selected, and then click on the Rotate button. Go to the Joints tab and double click on a joint -- a leg joint would be best for this. Then click the "Anim" button in the lower right. Now if you click and drag on the mesh, it should move... and hopefully, you'll be able to see where the legs are poking through the skirt.)

[BloomsBase]

Assigning those alpha's are a pain, i spent days to set them up correct.
I made alot of them, download one and copy its settings.

The inside of the knee(leg) will always poke through a alpha layer unless the legs themselves are edited also becos a sim crosses there legs when walking.
You can copy most from my alphaskirts and for the crossing, the innerleg bones are assigned(15%orso) to the oposite leg so that the innerleg moves away from the alphaskirt when crssing their legs.

Here you find alot of them: http://www.insimenator.org/index.php/board,764.0.html
In both adults/elders and custom bodyshapes.
All are located in the meshes subsection.
Most are called Multimeshes as one mesh often contains both a alphaskirt, alphapants and several shoes.
They are pretty complicated tho, just delete wat you dont want.

Edit,
You best use this one as it is the same hipsize: http://www.insimenator.org/index.php/topic,54091.0.html

[Laura5676]

Copy the bone weights from the legs to the skirt. There's really no other way to do it, other than trial and error. You can use the Animation tool in MilkShape to test whether the legs are going to poke through the alpha piece. (Make sure no vertices are selected, and then click on the Rotate button. Go to the Joints tab and double click on a joint -- a leg joint would be best for this. Then click the "Anim" button in the lower right. Now if you click and drag on the mesh, it should move... and hopefully, you'll be able to see where the legs are poking through the skirt.) Thank you so much. The anim button saved me a lot of time. :)

[Laura5676]

How do I snap my alpha skirt to the waist properly?It appears that I have snapped too many vertices together on the hips, because when I apply material there, it looks distorted. I can't undo it. How can I fix this? I did the uv map right. :help:

[fakepeeps7]

Distortion of the texture is usually caused by the UV map. If you snapped vertices on the skirt together, you need to snap them together on the UV map as well.

You can easily snap the vertices to the waist by selecting a vertex from the skirt and a vertex from the waist and (making sure that the body is above the skirt in the Groups list) use the Vertex Data Merge tool. However, if you've already snapped alpha skirt vertices to themselves... I don't think there's a way to undo it. I'd just start that part over.

[Laura5676]

I have attempted at making an alpha mesh. Oh, what a headache! I've never worked this hard in my life. :rofl: Anyway, I made a little booboo. I snapped two of those vertex thingies together, by accident! Now my skirt is messed up. I didn't know until I got into the game. Oh, what a disaster! How do I "unsnap" this terrible booboo I made? :blink: :faceslap:

[fakepeeps7]

I just answered this question for someone else yesterday, but they removed the thread (I hate when people do that!).

How did you "snap" the vertices together? If you welded them or somesuch, I'm not sure there's much that can be done. If you used Vertex Data Merge or Extended Manual Edit, you might be able to fix the problem as your vertices should still be separate (they'll just be in exactly the same place). Select the vertices you snapped together (it'll look like you're selecting one, but you'll be selecting two or more). Go into Extended Manual Edit and change the X, Y, and Z coordinates just slightly on one of the vertices. That should allow you to see them separate again. Then you can select just the vertex you changed and move it into a correct position.

I hope that's right. I don't have MilkShape on this new computer, so I'm trying to give advice from memory!

[Laura5676]

I was assigning bone weights in my alpha skirt. Parts of the body were sticking through. I had manually tried to copy the bone weights from the legs. Now I am not sure what to do. :faceslap: :( How do I fix these booboos? :(

[HystericalParoxysm]

Manually copying the bone weights from the legs is the first step - you should match the weights of the skirt as closely as possible to the legs underneath. Then you can use this technique (http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=288985) to preview the animation of the legs in Milkshape and adjust manually - try changing the weights 10% in either direction (i.e. if it's 60/40 now, try 50/50 or 70/30, see which works better and tweak from there). It's a bit of a painstaking process and there is no way to get it absolutely perfect for all animations, but if you can get it so the legs don't poke through 95% of the time, you'll be doing about as good as possible.

[Laura5676]

I have tried about 500 times and several hours, but I still can't get it to work right. What do I do now? Thank you :)

[BloomsBase]

To avoid this you best create a alpha skirt out of the nude bottom.
This might be strange but that way you keep all vertices/faces in line with eachother(dont scale them out of line!)
When done you split up front and back and uvmap them properly.

It gives much less trouble with animations.

[BloomsBase]

As fakepeeps explained.

You also can select that vertex and choose unweld or unweld radial from the vertex menu.
Then snap the correct ones back together.

[Laura5676]

This may sound silly.How do I shape the nude bottom into a skirt? Many thanks.

[fakepeeps7]

Move the vertices and adjust the UV map.

[Laura5676]

Can you please help me? I've been working on an alpha mesh for a whole week now. It's driving me crazy. The legs keep popping through. I used the auto joint tool. I have been adjusting it from there. Whatever I do seems to be making it worse. :wtf: :blink: :cry: :blink:

[fakepeeps7]

Can you please help me? I've been working on an alpha mesh for a whole week now. It's driving me crazy. The legs keep popping through. I used the auto joint tool. I have been adjusting it from there. Whatever I do seems to be making it worse. :wtf: :blink: :cry: :blink:

Lots of new members creating alpha skirts these days!

Try this tutorial (http://stonegod.org/sims2/tutorial/alpha%20skirt%20tutorial/index.html) if you're stuck. You should be using the Bone Tool. I'm not even sure what the "auto joint tool" is, but you shouldn't need to play around with joints at all.

[HystericalParoxysm]

Lots of new members creating alpha skirts these days!

Or rather, one user with at least five different accounts, asking the same question over and over. :wtf:

[fakepeeps7]

Or rather, one user with at least five different accounts, asking the same question over and over. :wtf:

I wondered about that. :wtf: Thanks for merging the threads. The answer's still the same! :lol:

[telefen]

Can you please help me? I've been working on an alpha mesh for a whole week now. It's driving me crazy. The legs keep popping through. I used the auto joint tool. I have been adjusting it from there. Whatever I do seems to be making it worse. :wtf: :blink: :cry: :blink: I ain't no expert on this although when the time is right I'll share some of what I've made. What I can tell you is that Blooms is right & out of wanting to make something unic I came up with the same Idea a couple of days ago & it will save you lots of headache. I made a mini skirt which reaches just about one inch below pelvis are. I start by selecting a nude body& choosing the face botton to select alll the faces from waist down to a couple of inches below pelvis & use edit to duplicate it. In the group area in the top right pannel, you'll see the new group which looks like a pair of short pants. You'll be using that to kreate your new alpha skirt & the advantage is that you won't have to mess around to much with bone assignment as the new group( the duplicate) has exact same bone assignment as the body you stated with & that will save you about 90 percent of the work. . However, you'll have to select all of vertices of the duplicate mesh & use vertex menu ( in the top left pannel), to unweld the vertices to be able to move faces in the middle back& the front, to shape it into a skirt. Once you did that and it's beginning to look like a skirt, then using vertex data merg |weld them together of course before you'll have to correct the uv mapping especially in those area's were you moved faces to form the front& back middle part.. OPTION 2: If you still wanna use the mesh you've got, then to begin with look at the vertices in the back view & try to move them around so, they match the body one's as close as possible, before doing any bone assignment changes. As I look at the pictures you've presented, there seem to be ample space between the skirt& the bottocks but they still touch so, either the veritces of the skirt are too far apart on a horizontal line from that of the bottocks, or their weights don't match up close enough. So, to beginn with, look at the back view&, see how far off are the vertices that form those vertical & horizontal lines running from top to bottom &left to right of the skirt, from those of the body. Alpha skirts is no big deal really cause, the problem you're enountering has given plenty of headaches even to the expert meshers & you can encounter body parts protruding even with a none alpha let's say you take a pair of legs up the middle of the thighs from one body, & try to combine them with a dress from another mesh. You can still encounter thighs sticking out when she walks. I observed a few days ago that walking animation I did in milkshake was not at all like in the game. As in the game the lady's right foot when moving forward it tends to go to the left in the same time further complicating what I did in milkshake with bone assignment. So, to do the right thing in milkshake & see exactly what would protrude thru the skirt, I move the right thight forward& in the front view I moved it toward left sort of .In the game you use cheat ( slowmotion 4) to observe their walking animation best. :turtle: At the end I was so exausted, that I tried unwiilingly move all the vertices in the front away from the thighs making her look a bit fatter than she is just so, her thighs would not stich out while walking.This is after several days of hair pulling experiment with differnt bone assignment. If milkshake had a feature of adding a few move vertical line of vertices just in the problem area, this whole thing of bone assinment wouldn't be such a pittyfull problem. Blender can do that but, the problem is that there are not enough people workin with that nowadays & you won't get any help. Try what I just suggested & also take a break & maybe play some other game & come back to it. That's what I do & it helps clear my thoughts. :turtle: Good luck to you. & Btw if you need more help,I'll be checking around I see what I can help with. I'm still learning but I've already made several meshes which I'll share someday when the time is right. :turtle:

[BloomsBase]

And do NOT use the autojoint tool, it will only make things worse.....
Download one of mine and do watever you want with it ;)