Hi all,

So I have abandoned my dress and gone back to attempting to create new shoes using Blooms' sexy feet (with permission).

My question is this - How many vertices do I need to merge to keep the foot stuck to the shoe? If I just group and go you can see a gap below the foot.

Also, on a previous version I had a vertex ID range of 0 to a negative number. That seems wrong, right? Also, how many vertices should you have in proportion to faces? I seem to have 3 times as many...

I couldn't find too much in the way of shoe tutorials other than the sims 2 remapping, which I've done fairly easily. I just can't seem to find recommendations on how many faces/vertices are allowed and how elaborate you can get so that the Toolkit still works in creating morphs and things.

Thank you in advance!

B

I've never done a shoe mesh, but I can't imagine why there'd be a difference between a shoe, piece of clothing -- whatever. I also work almost exclusively in TSRW now, so I haven't had much reason to keep up with Vert ID's since the app does all renumbering automatically. Start using it if you aren't already and a lot of stuff will be handled for you. If you're getting proportions way out of whack, you more than likely have duplicate verts and faces in your model. Us the MODEL CLEANER tool to clean that up. There's no set ratio that I'm aware of though.
I can't help but get the feeling you're using the vertex merge tool more than you need to. I rely on it a lot, but only for closing gaps between my new mesh regions and parts that can't be moved. Almost never do I merge more than 2 verts at a time. Use it as much as you need to in order to close any gaps between the shoe and the foot/ankle; If the tool is creating gaps rather than closing them, you're doing something wrong. When you're working with LOD1 especially, every vert on the ankle/foot should be attached to a corresponding vert on the shoe. If you leave any gaps, even very small ones, you'll be able to see through your mesh in-game. There's no set and fast rule on how many faces/verts a mesh can have. Find something similar to what you're making and see how many faces it has. That'll give you an idea of what you should try and stay close to. And ya don't have to worry about TooKit working with your mesh. I've thrown custom body meshes at it with over 15,000 faces and it cranked out the morphs with no problems.
There are some good tutorials that deal with making clothes. If you haven't done those, that would be a good place to poke around in and find something that deals with things you don't know how to do yet. Frankenmeshing a top by combining parts from multiple meshes will help you get a feel for how to use the Data Merge tool to close gaps properly.

I've done Frankensteined meshes recently, my problem seems to be when I want to create a new element. I was building a shoe around the special foot, but I may have had too many faces and vertices because I didn't want the shoe to be blocky (9k vertices with 3k of faces). There ended up being more vertices on the shoe then I could merge with the foot.

Do I use the model cleaner before or after regrouping the whole thing? I've only ever used the Model Cleaner during my failed attempts at making lods...

One foot has 643 vertice and 1038 faces, no idea how you manage to increase those numbers

Wat i do is to take a dress with 2 meshgroups(there are a few in formal section), then i recat it as shoe.
I use one meshgroup for the feet and one meshgroup for the shoe.
Much easier to work on both that way.


Also forget the morphs till your done testing, you dont need them till finished.

Okay, I got it down to 1329 vertices and 1827 faces with both the foot and the shoe. My vertex ID range is 0-922. Should that be the same for all lods?

Update: I found a tutorial referencing the vertex id, so that's fixed. I just wish I could figure out normals. I've tried align normals, normal merge, auto smooth - nothing works right. I had the normals perfect on each section of the shoe before I regrouped, but once that was done, boom - funky normals again!

Just a quick note. When one of the tools in Milkshape stops working, save whatever you're working on as an ms3d file and reopen it. Sometimes a tool will "hang" for lack of a better way to describe what happens. The subdivide faces stops working on me pretty often and this is how I recover. Your poly count will be lower on each LOD. Don't worry about those yet either, You can use DirectX tools to lower the poly count when you finish the mesh.
If you're making planes to add to your mesh, make sure you don't put them in backwards. Turn off the "Draw Backfaces" option. If its backwards you'll see through the side that should be opaque. When that happens just select the backwards faces and under the FACES dropdown, select "Reverse Vertex Order". It's a lot easier to make sure things aren't backwards when first putting them in than correcting them when the mesh is done!

It is hard for me to believe a simple regroup will mess up the normals, it only recalculates when autosmooth is on.

If autosmooth is on and the normals were correct the whole time working on it then you must have welded the mesh at some point in order to mess em up

If a mesh is correctly mapped(meshplanes as seperates on the UVmap) autosmooth will smooth out those individual meshplanes nicely.
If you have done this but autosmooth messes up the normals then you might have welded the edges, maybe by accident i donno.
To correct that:
-put autosmooth on
-go to Tools and choose Model cleaner
-click no on the popup quistions
-click ok at the end.
-You might have to select the whole mesh and mirror it back and forth before changes are visible.

I figured out what it was - I was attempting to lower my poly count with the DirectX tool, and then when I aligned normals again that's when the issue would happen.

So I've been working on them all day, they were okay with just the toe strap when I tested but then I added a couple of straps and then this happened:

Direct x can mess up alot of things, you best use the model cleaner after it.
The picture shows just distorded vertice wich are assigned to the opposite foot.
Reassigne with Toolkit with mine or any other shoemesh as reference mesh.(pretty simple to fix.)

Thank you Bloom! That worked!



Now I just have to fight with the textures because the shading is horrible and the nail polish isn't coming out right.

Update: I made the nail polish colorable, but it picks up whatever color the shoes are - so the black and white shoes look funky. But my peev now is the lines on the toes. I tried changing the skin ambient and specular in CTU, but it doesn't show a difference at all.



Also, could you tell me why the shoe looks fine in game but in CAS looks like this? This is from the test version, but the problem persists.

The area at the ankle is a seam mismatch. You need to load an EA mesh to use as a reference, and then copy its seam vertex position (C hotkey) and normals (N hotkey) onto yours. Its very fast and easy to do, there are only 8 verts on each ankle. The lines on the toes also look like bad normals. Do the same thing on those verts, copy their positions and normals from a reference. The blockiness on the foot is the mesh itself. A few tweaks in MilkShape can clear that up. Sorry but I can't help with the color. When one area of a mesh is picking up the color from another, there's usually an overlap somewhere in the mesh or the texture. I'm totally unfamiliar with how the shoes/toes are mapped though.

The black lines on the toes are caused by the skintone used, nothing you can do about it.
The default skintone, and others from creators who used my feet meshes in the background will not have this.

Als check if the file has a normalmap, update or relink it.
But looking at you screenshot i think you have duplicated the shoe and mirrored it?
If you do that without giving the duplicate its own texture(give the mesh its coordinates its own spot on theUVmap) you get ugly kinda shadow/light issues in CAS.
Only in CAS tho.





You are referring to the meshdistortion ontop of the foot bamani?
I am afraid this could be due the WSO files having random joints assigned to some vertice.
You might have to export the mesh as GEOM(under project contents)
Then Use Toolkit and a other GEOM reference mesh to reassigne it.


I also got the idea you still trying to adchieve a simlift build in the shoe?(not really necesarry imo tho)
If so then you need to lower the shoe, feet and ankle so it fits the lower calve.
A part of the shoe will dissapear into the ground then but that gets fixed the moment you lift the sim.

I'm actually just using the sim lift slider. I figure once I get the hang of making things well enough to actually offer to other people then I would try to figure out all of the instant lift in the shoe package.

I'll have to try and find a different skin tone then - the lines ruin the loveliness of the feet!

I did duplicate the shoe, you are correct. I probably should have duplicated before regrouping the top, bottom and heel. At least the straps were separate.

I think I need to look at bone assignments again though. We he crouches to pet the dog the back of the foot stretches because the heel stays flat on the ground. Unless it does that with any shoe?