Hi - new to the world of creating/meshing

[ressydm]

I'm a newbie, and was wondering what the steps were to take a maxis sofa called seatris by Ima Hack, and change the diamond shapes to a circular shape without destroying the rest of the sofa's integrity. I need a simple straight, 1, 2, 3 A, B, C to the point kind of style of how to do this.

There are a lot of how-tos here some more complex, some seemingly mentioning things I don't have or are missing and I don't know really where to begin. I've downloaded SimPe for starters and have asked people whose work I like here what kind of programs they use and what they would recommend for a beginner.

Can somebody help me?

[alchemist]

Do you want to change the pattern of the couch or the actual form? Is this your first mod or have you done recolors or the like before?

The first would be a recolor; that's not too difficult to do. You need to extract the image files which show the surface of the couch, change them with photoshop or a comparable program, and put them back in. This could be a starting point:
http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Tutorials:Object_Recolouring_Introduction

The second would be more work, because you would have to change two files: the mesh (that's like a chicken wire model of the form of the couch) and then the image file, because as it was, it wouldn't fit on mesh you originally had. You would really be creating a new object.

Recolor tutorials can be pretty straight-forward. Meshing tutorials not so. But in all cases, since tutorials are never written for a general problem, you'll get a bit more info than you are looking for. But as far as I can tell, it's all useful sooner or later.

[ressydm]

Hi Alchemist - thank you so much for your reply! I only want to change the actual shape of the cushions to the maxis couch. They are diamond shaped and I would want to change them to circular shape. A recolour I've done, but not of the sofa, which I would like to learn as well. I've just done my first ever recolour of a maxis poster, using Sim Pe, which I believed I followed crissi's how to guide which was very simple and to the point, and easy to follow. So now that I've done that, my appetite has gotten bolder and now I want to attempt to manipulate this maxis sofa, and I'm wondering if changing the mesh would be the way to go....how do I do this? Can I use SimPe?

Here is the original maxis sofa, someone did as a recolour.

http://i1228.photobucket.com/albums/ee448/ressydm1/seatrissofasims.jpg



The triangles or diamond shape cushions would be changed to circle to look like what's below, called the marshmallow sofa. The frame itself stays the same. Then once the sofa is done, it can be recoloured to red, black, or multi-color like this:

http://www.freshdesignblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/multi_marshmallow_sofajpg-300x300.jpg

[alchemist]

Hi ressydm,

right, now with the images I have a much clearer idea!

I only want to change the actual shape of the cushions to the maxis couch.

"Only" ? Just you wait. ;)

But really, having worked with SimPE will probably help a lot. I'm just working my way towards changing meshes, too, and finding all the right windows and buttons in SimPE is half the work.

What you want to do requires:
- changing the mesh :here: that takes SimPE to export the mesh files and then a meshing program like Milkshape
- changing the UVmap (that's the map which fits your texture on the mesh), there's a program for that, too.
- changing the texture, because you want those pretty redish colors instead of blue and green, and anyway, the old texture wouldn't fit on the new mesh :here: photoshop or similar program
- throwing all the files together and putting them into the game :here: SimPE again.

There's a pretty good tutorial that I'm working with right now,
(http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Tutorials:Sims_2_Start_to_Finish_Object_Creation_Tutorial)

the only problem I have so far is that it's written with an older SimPE version; therefore the "find the right buttons" trouble. Other than that I'd recommend it.

Best of luck and I'd like to hear how it goes! :beer: