I'm working on a fat morph in MS3D and have all of Wes H's tools installed. I corrected the right side, mirrored it, and am trying to snap the verts from the original mesh to match the corrected duplicate. Under the groups tab I moved the corrected mesh piece above the fat morph and am trying to use ctrl+N to snap the verts together 1 at a time. My problem is that every time I snap 2 verts together, they both move. I need the corrected piece to remain stationary so I can use it as a template. I can't for the life of me remember what the trick is to make this work. Thanks in advance -- I know I'm gonna feel pretty stupid once I get this figured out, but with age comes senility and I think I'm falling victim to both.
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You need to copy vertex data, not snap together. Put the mesh with the correct position higher in the group tab listing, select the verts, and use the copy data tool.

Thanks Cmar! I knew there was a simple way to do this. I think the way its named in MS was throwing me -- it's listed as a Sims 2 Unimesh tool, and that wasn't ringing ANY bells while I was trying to figure it out . As soon as I saw the "C" shortcut it came right back, as well as the "N" key to copy nornal data. That'll save at least one more stupid question, because I'm pretty sure the normals will bother me once the verts are in place.

The shortcuts are there cos of the tutorial you once followed, they only show under unimesh data and merge tools by default.
Just to remind you
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=398865

When I made LOD2 and 3, the fat morphs did this. I'm assuming the problem is with vertex numbering. In the past when I had to renumber the verts, I was working with a single GEOM and MeshToolkit. With this one, there are 5 meshes in the WSO file, and the group is split in 2 pieces. In other words, I have a total of 10 meshes for each LOD. How do I go about renumbering just the 2 bad fat morphs so they'll play nice with all of the other meshes in their respective WSO's?

You can't renumber only a subset of meshes. You'd have to import your first lod1 wso, renumber and write down the next start number it gives you, export, delete, then import the second lod1 wso, renumber starting with the provided number, write down next number, export, delete. Rinse and repeat for lod2 and lod 3.

However, this shouldn't be necessary since TSRW renumbers meshes anyway.

That doesn't really look like a morph explosion to me. Exactly what steps did you go through that led up to it?

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Let's see if i can remember everything. The problem cropped up when I was tweaking the morph groups. I started with a top mesh and moved things around until I got it looking like it was supposed to. Then I imported a body mesh to use as a template for smoothing some of the body shapes. The reference mesh was split into single layers of polygons, and the vert data copied onto any verts that were too far out of place. I suspected a numbering problem because I may have switched out a slice of the template with the corresponding piece of the original mesh. The fat morph was the only one where the original was ever split and regrouped. That fat morph is the bane of my existence! Anyway, once I got the mesh looking nice I decided to try working with a 2 piece mesh. I already had the morphs done so I split them at a common seam and verified the face and vert counts with the MODEL INFORMATION tool. When I made LOD2 and 3 I used Toolkit again to auto-create the morph groups. Whatever happened, the problem exists with the LOD1 fat morph and is getting copied into the lower LODs.
I think that covers everything I did. I'm keeping this mesh fairly simple to re-familiarize myself with all the tools and basic meshing techniques. I'm also trying some new stuff, like working with a 2 piece mesh as well as relying more on textures to give depth rather than the mesh. The poly counts are WAY down from the meshes I made in the past, and in all honesty the appearance in-game is the same.

Hmm, TSRW only renumbers the verts if you let it, right? The popup warns allowing it to do so may cause problems, so I never let it do that! I only let it mess with the bounding box since I don't know what da heck that is anyway. When I get the chance I'll try running it through again and let the app do its renumbering thing.

EDIT: The problem came out when I let TSRW do the renumbering. There are 168 verts and 264 faces on all the bottom meshes except the fat one, which has 240 verts. I KNEW I checked this before, so I opened it up again in Toolkit. Sure enough, it shows the mismatch. Still, I know I checked it, and having a real aversion to being wrong I tried again with the "Model Information" tool in MS3D. Turns out it shows the counts to be correct! There's obviously something different about how the MS Model Information tool and Toolkit gathers the model data. I'll import the original mesh fat morph and reshape it again, being more careful not to allow stray bits to get attached somehow. There's also a different number for the bone counts in BOTH meshes. The base has fewer than the morphs in both WSO's. I'll look at the cloned item to make sure it has the same values before moving on too. Thanks for asking the right questions Cmar. I sure as heck won't rely on the Model Information tool any more!

its not important(like the uvmap), only the base mesh is used ingame

Sorry Bloom -- I deleted the previous post before I saw you had already responded. The mesh looks great in Milkshape. It's good to know the bones are like the UV map though -- only worry about the base and the morphs follow suit.

Anyway, after playing around with the bones some more, I really think I need to learn how to tweak them manually. When I use the bones from the halter dress, there's that odd split in the back that really doesn't work for this mesh. When I use the full body long shirt, the back looks awesome but the sides and front go all pear shaped. All the parts I need are present, but in 2 separate bone files. I've never done ANYTHING with bone assignments -- I got a little too spoiled by Toolkit I guess. Can someone point me in the direction of a good bone assignment tut? ANYTHING that will help me understand how bones are assigned and how they work would really be helpful. I'm an absolute beginner when it comes to them.

You are right, if you want things perfect you best manually assigne the problem area's.
This isn't a easy task tho.
Since you already have 2 reference meshes it is possible to use em both before finetuning manually.
Use one reference mesh to assigne your custom mesh, when done unassigne the vertice(boneassignements) you dont want to use from this reference mesh.
Run it again through toolkit but this time with your 2nd reference mesh and assigne only unassigned vertice.
Finetune them in Milkshape.

I always used wes his unimeshbonetool to assigne meshes in the past but due a error with windows 7 64bit i started using milkshapes tool(not very user friendly imo)
but it works.
Use MS ANIM mode to check your edits(unfortunate this can only be done with GEOMS, not WSO's cos they dont import with a skeleton)
With WSO files you best open my file first(included) then import your WSO.
After making a edit you go into ANIM mode, and select a joint close to your edit and rotate it so you can see wat your meshpart does.
clicking it again will reset the pose so you can continue.

I made several outfits you can view/or use as example
here: http://www.bloomsbase.net/index.php...egory/6-clothes
and a few on SS2

I'm glad to hear my theory about bones being the cause of my problem was correct. That stupid split on the back of the full body halter dress has caused me to trash MANY meshes -- I thought my mesh was bad! Now its time to figure out how to determine what bones are working for me and which ones aren't in the 2 different packages. Sounds like I need to use the Halter dress as the main bone file, and reassign the joint(s) on the back of the skirt itself. The split is the only issue with it -- all the other joints seem to work. All I know how to do right now is open the joints tab and turn the 3D view pretty colors. I have no flippin' idea what any of it means. I looked at a Sims 2 Unimesh tut last night and found a little info on how to inspect bone weights, but really didn't understand everything. Since the Unimesh tools don't work anyway, I'll head to the Chumbalum site and look around there for some tutorials. I do have a question already though. You said that the MS ANIM tool won't work with WSO's because they don't import with a skeleton, but then you included a WSO skeleton. The ANIM tool still won't work, even if I load the skeleton before BEFORE loading a WSO?

There's also a way to force Win7 to emulate a different OS for a specific program. Have you tried running Milkshape in either Vista or WinXP mode to see if the Unimesh tools will work? I've used this in the past to run some older games and the like. It doesn't always work, but when it does it's pretty sweet! If you want to give it a try, go to C:\program files(X86)\MilkShape 3D 1.8.5\ms3d.exe. Right click and select "properties". At the top of the popup box select "Compatibility". Tick the "Run this program in compatibility mode for" and the dropdown box will become selectable. Open it and pick the last version of Windows everything worked on. Just a thought --

On some of my outfits i fixed that strange split on the back, just a matter of assigning to the legs if i remember correct.

Wes his plugins work fine with the latest beta version but im not creating anymore.(only few payrequests)

The file i included is a adult female skeleton GEOM file were i renamed the joints as in the WSO files.
It will only work as Ms3d file cos as soon as you export as WSO the rigdata gets lost.
But you can use it to animate your meshes.
-open my file
-import WSO file
-hit ANIM button at bottom right
-select joints and rotate

I had a hard time assigning this schoolkirt but it has the settings you want: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=510529

Thanks for the help Bloom. That skirt is awesome by the way. I came across it on a Sims site a few weeks ago and had no idea it was yours! I don't remember where it was though. At least credit was given to sims4.me. I think I have all the tools I need to start learning about bone assignments now. I've located a few tuts that deal with joints and animation in MS, but they aren't associated with the Sims 3 at all. This is going to be similar to what i went through when I first started meshing, I was as clueless then as I am now! I'm also thinking about giving Blender a try once again, especially since Cmar's ToolKit Beta does .obj conversions. When I have specific questions I'll be sure to ask, but until then I think I have plenty to keep me occupied. Thanks again!

EDIT: I just tried opening the micro skirt in TSRW, but it crashes with this error:
.
What do I need to do in order to get the bone assignments I need from that package into my LOD1_1 and LOD1_2 WSOs? I'd planned to use Toolkit to auto-assign bones like we'd discussed a couple of posts back, but I can't get any WSOs out of the skirt package. If I pull the GEOMs out and do some conversions with ToolKit Beta to make a WSO, will the bone assignments stay intact?

Bone assignments should stay intact with conversion to WSO, but obviously I didn't test with every mesh. Certainly worth a try.

WSO files are a pain to reassigne with toolkit, you best use the GEOM format(and GEOM reference meshes) and convert them to WSO later.
Here are a few meshes you can use.
By default i used basegame skirts/dresses to assigne skirt and bottom/butt(giving the bottom, butt and legs assignements of a skirt to get a decent animation.
If you use my examples as reference in Toolkit you prolly can skip a GEOM conversion and any finetuning in Milkshape.
The shortdress is a adult mesh(es) but in GEOM format(my preojectfolder is a mess, had to extract them from the package)
These cant be exported out of tsrw either due a 3 group setup, seems latest tsrw no longer can handle those....

Thanks again to both of you! I apologize if some of my questions seem way off base, but I truly know nothing about working with bones, PERIOD. Finding any relevant info that discusses how to make changes or what the numbers actually mean is tough. I did get the mesh working properly, and will have a much better understanding of bones before making anything new. Hopefully I can use the default rigs as a reference of sorts and compare these modded setups to get a better understanding of how it all works. It's back to the tutorials for me for a while, as soon as I dig up the info on how to change the in-game icons for this new mesh. I've loaded the new package and let the game generate the basic ones so far, but can't remember exactly how to find them, or what I have to change (aside from the images) before putting them into the CC package. I've got plenty of stuff laying around and I'm sure I'll suss it out, but it gets frustrating when something as second nature as this once was is giving me so much trouble.

What's the problem with WSO bone reassignment in Toolkit, Bloom? Maybe I can fix it.

All WSO meshes have their vertice assigned to 4 joints, even when a vertice is already 100% with 3 joints the plugin automaticly assignes a 4th joint without any weight on it.
That 4th joint is a random joint and doesn't make sence at all(you see toe joints assigned to the fingers for instance)
But since there is no weight on them they dont do any harm.

But, if you use such a WSO mesh as reference mesh in Toolkit Toolkit will put a few % weight on that random joint causing all kind of distortions.

Thanks, Bloom. Should be fixable for the next version.