Hi !

I'm using the CAStool to create a new mesh and I have a small issue.

I did some frankenmeshing, everything is working very well, but I just have a small probllem. For some reason, I need to change the weight of some bone assignments (the parts I connected for the frankenmeshing don't exactly have the same, like 92/8 for one and 90/10 for the other, so in-game it creates a gap) So I converted my S4 mesh to a S3 mesh, changed the values on my vertrices on the S3 mesh and converted it back to S4 (with as reference my old S4 mesh). But it seems that it restaures the original values for the bones assignments. Is there a way to change that and save it ?

PS : I don't want to use the Sims4Studio and blender for that, it creates some weird light issues for the moment :/

Thanks and have a nice day !

Yes, when using the TS3 mesh format CAS Tools restores the old bone assignments and weights because TS3 and TS4 have different skeletons.

Get the latest version of CAS Tools and open your package containing your mesh in the cloned package editor tab. Then, in the Mesh Manager tab, you can export the mesh as a Milkshape .ms3d file. Open that in Milkshape, make your changes, save, and import it back to your package mesh. The bone weight corrections should stick.

I guess I did something wrong, because this is the result I got.

I tried two times. First time, I opened my package, I set the view by meshpart and exported a MS3D file. I edited it, and I replaced my mesh by the ms3d file. The result was nos as bad as the result shown in the attachment, but it was like the morph were messed up, as I guess the ms3d file doesn't contain those informations.

So I tried to convert this MS3D file to a S4 file using the convertor included in the CASttol. And I got the result above.

That's bad because exept a small gap at the connexion between the two meshes as one arm, the result was perfect

As a reference, I put the picture of the mesh. Is one of those non-sense of maxis where they separate the mesh in many parts for no specific reasons.

Thanks for you help all the same, It's me, I'm sure I messed up something!

Your picture looks like the result I get when I weld or unweld vertices across seams .. have you done something like that, or just edited weights?

Also, it is very important that you export - change - import *in one go* when you do stuff in Milkshape. If you make multiple adjustments, don't export, edit and import, then edit and import again .. try re-exporting your changed version and work on that if you want to make more changes. (It'll most likely throw errors at you anyway when you try to do the latter, but who knows)

Changing bone weights should work fine if you export the whole LOD to ms3d and import it back in .. not sure what exactly you did with your simgeom conversion, but there is a little label on the Mesh Manager tab that says "TS4 meshes are being imported as is" which to me means if they have some information missing, CASTools will import them anyway assuming the user wants it like that. If I were you I'd export the entire LOD, not just one meshpart, to do this (so that I can also see in MS what the weights are across the rest of the item).


Also take a look at the CASTools download thread -- I had a very similar issue by the looks of it (when combining several different items, not just changing weights) and after following Cmars step-by-step instructions in this post it all worked fine.

When you use the clone package editor functions and import an MS3D mesh, the morph information is recovered from the original mesh so if the morphs were working before they should be working after. What did you change when you edited the MS3D? And pbox is right; it's generally better to export the whole lod and edit it. Otherwise you may get small but noticeable mismatches in bone weights at seams due to the different ways TS4 and Milkshape store those numbers.

When you converted the MS3D to TS4, which function did you use? You should have used the one that takes a reference TS4 mesh, and used the original TS4 mesh as the reference. Otherwise all the morph and arm offset info is lost.

If you'd upload the package and/or more screenshots showing what the problems are, that would help us to help you.

Ah, do you mean the "Milkshape only stores a range of 1-100" phenomenon? If it is what I think it is (very thin, even hairline gaps where the bodypart one has made starts and ends, i.e. neck and ankles), one would see those mismatches in CAS against a contrasting background (at least I do), but not in game (at least I don't). But that probably also depends on the graphics settings, antialiasing and so on.

That's not to say your advice isn't good, just for the OP -- before you bang your head against something because AARGH SEAMS NOO, check in game to see whether you can actually detect them there =). This is the only thing I've come across so far where an issue seen in CAS is *less* of an issue in actuality .. usually it is the other way around. Also, when exporting the whole thing in one go reduces the likeliness of those seams (between different parts within the mesh I mean), all the better =).

For the arm, the issue was noticeable in-game, so I wanted to correct it (the diffrence in bone assignement was around 2%,so it was quite big)
I tried using the whole LOD like plasticbox suggested above, and it worked fine.. exept for the small issues you are talking about, I do have now very small gaps in the neck. i know it's very small, but it still annoys me!

Would there be a way to just have just a list of all the vertices and change thoses values manually ? The arm problem was caused by like only 10 vertex with a wrong value, and I now have the feeling by using this MS3D export that all the values for all the vertex are now approximate :/

Thanks a lot for your help, my main issue is solved I just hope that in the future there will be a way to edit those values in a cleaner way !

Yes -- THAT you would see, of course! What I meant (if I understood correctly what Cmar meant) were small differences that come about because TS4 has a range of 0 .. 255 (I think?) for bone weights, while Milkshape has 1 .. 100. So that's less fine grained and when you convert such values forwards and backwards, rounding errors will probably also happen.

Again this is not something I know because I know Milkshape that well (I don't =), I just saw Cmar explaining that somewhere, in the CASTools thread I believe.

Glad you got it to work (better) now =). And there is an "Examine MS3D" option in Mesh Tools > MS3D Tools tab (as well as Examine Mesh in GEOM Tools) but I think that only displays things, you cannot edit it there. Maybe being able to export and import that as text file would be possible to implement / useful for this kind of task?

Yeah, the difference I have now on the neck is way smaller than the one I had for the arm (That's what I saw on milkshape for the 0-100 range, but I didn't knew for the TS4 thing!). But in game, when I get close to my Sims, I get to see the gap on the neck unfortunatly.
That would be awesome to have a tool to use those datas, or to maybe change the way milkshape takes the bone assignements into account... but way beyond my skills! :p

Yes, the issue I was talking about is caused by rounding errors when converting back and forth and wouldn't cause those big gaps. I think what I'm going to do is hard-code the bone assignments for the neck, waist, and ankle seam vertices so the tool can force them to match the EA standard when importing/converting. That should fix those hairline gaps.

Oh yeah, that would be great! =D

That would be awesome, like an option where you can select is you want to fix one or some of those specific regions (neck, waist, and ankle) during the importing or converting, like you said

I've started working on it.