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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 30th Aug 2012 at 10:59 PM
Seam/Normals Issue on Shirt Mesh
Hi everyone, I hope I'm posting this in the right area. Since I use a combo of Maya and Milkshape for meshing, I didn't think that the Milkshape category would be right, but anyway.

I took a request to convert this TS2 mesh to TS3, and it seems to look just fine in Milkshape.



But in CTU and ingame it shows up with really messed up shading (I'm assuming normals are the problem?), and it has open seams in the mesh. I've had this problem when editing a TS3 frankenmesh as well, and was never able to figure out how to fix it.



(excuse the horrifying textures, I haven't made any proper ones yet)

I'm at the end of my rope with this, so I really hope it's just an easy fix that I'm not aware of. Any help would be much appreciated.
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Sockpuppet
#2 Old 31st Aug 2012 at 12:01 PM
First eliminate the normalmap by either linking it to a blanc one or add a custom blanc one that you can update later.
If you still have those weird shading you might have duplicate meshparts wich still use the same texture(each part needs to have its own spot on the uvmap.

The gaps are boneweight issues on the vertice i think, you could try Cmar's new Toolkit wich has the option to reassigne the mesh.
Make sure the seam on the neck has the same boneweights as a original top.(50% head and 50% neck)
When testing do this with sims state in normal(not fat/thin or fit)
When satisfied you can continue and create the morphs(fat/thin and fit)


For a proper animation you best manual assigne the collar to the spine 0 joint while the neck itself uses spine 0, head and neck joint
Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 1st Sep 2012 at 4:59 PM
Thank you for the quick reply. I fixed the neck gap (it was exactly what you said - somehow the neck had ended up 65/35, derp) but the gaps on the chest and arms are still there, even though I redid the bones on the arms to match an EA shirt exactly. The gaps don't change no matter where I move the morph slider, so I don't think it's just that I'm testing it on the wrong sized sim or something.

I also subbed in a blank normal map and it's still giving me the same weird shading, so I guess I have to go with the mesh parts route. I'm not sure that I understand what I have to do there, though. I don't have any overlapping UVs, and everything is already laid out with each part having its own space and part of the texture.
Sockpuppet
#4 Old 1st Sep 2012 at 9:57 PM
Make sure you update the normalmap on all 3 lods(high/medium and low)
It wont work otherwise.

The gaps must be boneassignements then or maybe shared vertice having diffrent vertID's
Export the mesh again with FVFItems set to 6 instead of 7 to check wether its boneweights or vertID's
Test Subject
Original Poster
#5 Old 3rd Sep 2012 at 6:32 PM
The normal map was updated for all the lods, but still looks like this.



Exporting with FVFItems set to 6 took away the gaps and now everything looks fine in that department. Is it just as simple as keeping FVFItems set to 6? Or is there now a fix I need to do?
Ms. Byte (Deceased)
#6 Old 3rd Sep 2012 at 7:31 PM
FVFItems set to 6 means the morphs won't work. You can try renumbering the mesh either in Milkshape with Wes's Autonum plugin or with my Toolkit. If you already have morph meshes you should use either tool on the complete set of base and morph meshes. If not, you can renumber the base mesh and then create your morphs from it.

You don't see those shading problems in Milkshape and you've got blank normal maps on all the lods? Strange. I guess you could try smoothing the shoulders in Milkshape anyway and see if it makes a difference.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#7 Old 3rd Sep 2012 at 8:37 PM Last edited by Sanus Ex Machina : 3rd Sep 2012 at 9:01 PM.
Oh, great. I have your Toolkit (it is amazing, by the way, such a lifesaver ), so I'll try doing that. I don't have any morph meshes made yet because I wanted to work out the kinks with the base first, so it's no inconvenience.

As for the shading issues, it's possible that I'm doing something very wrong, ahahah. I am using extracted ea meshes as my lods for the moment (besides lod1), because I thought that it might have been me using lod1 for lod2 and lod3 (for ingame testing purposes only, was going to make official ones after) causing a problem with the shading. I've never gotten this far with a TS3 mesh before, so this part is really quite new to me.

Edit: Renumbering the mesh fixed all of the gaps, but created a new gap at the neck. This gap appears to change accordingly when I move around the morph slider though, so will it be fixed once I add morphs?

Sockpuppet
#8 Old 3rd Sep 2012 at 9:04 PM
yes, it will

Change the texture to one solid color to see if the shading is still wrong
Test Subject
Original Poster
#9 Old 3rd Sep 2012 at 9:53 PM
Here's how it looks in CTU with a solid grey texture and a white alpha.



Shading is still definitely messed up.
Sockpuppet
#10 Old 4th Sep 2012 at 8:28 AM
Realligne the normals with Demon's alligne normal tool
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=139859
Test Subject
Original Poster
#11 Old 4th Sep 2012 at 2:57 PM
I already did that, when I first imported the mesh back into Milkshape. Should I do it again? The shading initially looked screwed up like that in Milkshape as well when I imported it back in from Maya, but realigning the normals fixed its appearance, in MS3d anyway.
Sockpuppet
#12 Old 4th Sep 2012 at 7:36 PM
hmmm, can i see the file?
Something strange is going on with the display of the collar, the neck bleeds through the collar.
might be a texture issue after all
Test Subject
Original Poster
#13 Old 4th Sep 2012 at 7:57 PM
Sure thing. Thanks! I attached a zip to this post with both the test package I'm working with right now, and the simgeom of the hoodie. Are there any other files you'd need?
Attached files:
File Type: zip  hoodieWIP.zip (312.7 KB, 17 downloads) - View custom content
Sockpuppet
#14 Old 5th Sep 2012 at 9:36 AM Last edited by BloomsBase : 6th Sep 2012 at 9:27 AM.
The format of the normalmap was wrong so i replaced that texture with a correct one(with s3PE)
How did you add the normalmap, cos the correct link to it in the GEOM comments was gone?
If you load a custom normalmap its instance number(in the GEOM) gets changed, so you need to reexport the GEOM and continue with that one if you want to update the mesh.
Or you update the 1stTGI reference with a correct instance number in the meshcomments(its wat i did now)

Besides that its just a matter of fixing the textures.

I did update the mesh a little(fixed some normals) and attached the neck
Also deleted a floating face and snapped(deleted inbetween faces first) the meshpart that closes the sleeves.

The last design(5) is using a updated multiplier, looks ok in CTU now(have not seen it in CAS!)

Next is fixing the textures and test it ingame and finetune the mesh if necesarry
Then create the lower lods(medium and low)
Then make the morphs and Bgeo files for all
Test Subject
Original Poster
#15 Old 6th Sep 2012 at 12:40 AM Last edited by Sanus Ex Machina : 6th Sep 2012 at 5:22 AM.
I added it with CTU, at least I thought I did. :x It has that option to load a bumpmap when you're subbing in the lods of the mesh, so I thought that was where you're supposed to do it. I will follow these instructions when I do it next time though, I certainly wouldn't want to end up stuck like this again.

If I may ask, which normals were a problem, and how did you fix them? And that's embarrassing about the sleeves, I was going to close those and then forgot I hadn't yet, hahaha.

But in any case, thank you so much! You and Cmar have been a really great help, I've filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge.

Edit:

It looks really great ingame. Textures are still a wip, but they appear to be transferring over pretty well overall.

Sockpuppet
#16 Old 6th Sep 2012 at 9:21 AM
Export the mesh and have a look at it in Milkshape.

You often have to regroup the parts before you can alligne the normals properly(it divides the vertex on the seam that you want)
So i grouped:
The hoodies outerlayer
The hoodies inside
The neck
The top
The hands
The meshparts that close the sleeves
The meshpart that closes the top with the bottom.

On each part i alligned the normals and then grouped all back into one.
For me that is the quickest way
You still want check to tho, alligning seams is personal taste
Test Subject
Original Poster
#17 Old 6th Sep 2012 at 7:10 PM
Ahh, I totally forgot that was even an option! It definitely is a quicker way to go about fixing normal issues, and it looks like it gives superior results to just running align normals over the mesh as a whole, judging by the nicer edges on the hood and arms now. I forget way too many things about Milkshape when I'm using Maya most of the time. XD

I feel bad asking another question after you've already helped me out so much, but I'm making the morphs now (With MorphMaker, using morphs generated by Cmar's Toolkit), and I was curious about whether I need to choose AF or YF under the import meshes option in MorphMaker. Does it matter? I thought it was just a ticky box in CTU to enable AF clothes for YF or vice versa, but I wanted to make sure before I continue.
Ms. Byte (Deceased)
#18 Old 6th Sep 2012 at 7:57 PM
Technically, there's isn't any separate YA clothing so you should import in the AF tab. But all clothing morphs are enabled by default for all ages/genders so it doesn't really matter.

It looks really, really nice, BTW. :D
Sockpuppet
#19 Old 6th Sep 2012 at 8:03 PM
Quote: Originally posted by CmarNYC
Technically, there's isn't any separate YA clothing so you should import in the AF tab. But all clothing morphs are enabled by default for all ages/genders so it doesn't really matter.

It looks really, really nice, BTW. :D


Would it be posible to mod the YA(by default) like they did with the teen?
Test Subject
Original Poster
#20 Old 6th Sep 2012 at 10:31 PM
Thank you, Cmar!

I'm actually having an issue with MorphMaker now, it's refusing to save out the BGEO (says it saved but there's no file saved anywhere). It only seems to cooperate when I have one lod loaded in, if I load in all 3 lods it pitches a fit. I also tried the Make Clothing/Hair BGEO in the Meshing Toolkit, and it threw me a couple of errors. It says there's a gap within vertIDs, which I said okay to, but then it gives me a message that says the BGEO creation didn't complete because "Index was outside the bounds of the array." All of the morphs appear correctly in Milkshape (bar a few misaligned normals), but I'm guessing I did something wrong when I created the lods. I used the DirectX mesh tool to pare them down, and after that I realigned the normals, reassigned bones, and re-added the comments. The lods themselves seem to work okay, but their morphs do not.
Sockpuppet
#21 Old 6th Sep 2012 at 10:52 PM
You can not use the direct x tool on the morphs if that is wat you did?
It groups the faces diffrent on morphs then on the basemesh wich makes them corrupt.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#22 Old 6th Sep 2012 at 10:59 PM
No, I only used the DirectX tool to create lod2 and lod3 themselves, I used the morph creating thing in the meshing toolkit to generate the morphs for them, the same way I made the morphs for lod1.
Sockpuppet
#23 Old 7th Sep 2012 at 8:35 AM
you best weld the whole mesh before using direct x.
After that you use Model cleaner to divide the seams again(click no on both popups)
Test Subject
Original Poster
#24 Old 8th Sep 2012 at 5:40 PM
Hm, I remade the lods and welded first, then divided seams like you said, but I'm still getting an error when I use the MeshingToolkit to generate the BGEO. MorphMaker still doesn't work either, but I'm not sure if that's the fault of the file, or the fact that I'm running it on Win7.
Ms. Byte (Deceased)
#25 Old 8th Sep 2012 at 7:58 PM
Did you renumber the lod2 and lod3 base meshes after making them with DirectX? Sounds like the numbering is off.

Can you post the error messages you're getting, and one of the sets of base and morph meshes you're having problems with?
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