Unexepected error message reguarding GMDC file

[Nightywolf]

Can someone tell me what this error message means and if I should worry about it? I have that feeling that I probably should...attatchment below.

[Echo]

Er, yes, for a chair that's a pretty nasty error message to get. It's saying that it can't find the right CRES. You may have accidentally changed one of the filenames without using "Fix Integrity"... Can you post the object here?

[Nightywolf]

Yeah, it's kinda bad. It's my first object that I've made an intense effort to create with it's own mesh and I've been encountering a lot of problems with it. One look at the file and you'll be freaking out. While you're at it you could just fix it (I honestly don't know how damaged it is) and let me know what I've been doing wrong with the file (i.e. applying texture). I'm sure i've made a lot of harmful changes to the file trying to fix things. I'll probably have to end up rebuilding the package from scratch, however.

[Echo]

Hi Nighty,

Heh heh... Well I'll be completely honest, I rebuilt the package from scratch, because there were some seriously wonky things in yours. ;) A few notes for next time though:

While you certainly can have as many subsets ("groups") as you want in an object, that doesn't necessarily mean you should. Only two of the subsets can ever be recolourable by the player in-game, so mostly the reason people have more than two subsets is if they're planning on doing something clever with texture changes or joints, or the object is way too complicated to texture in just two images. This chair doesn't look like it's going to fall into either of those categories, so I fiddled the mesh a little bit (made the back into a single cube rather than two pressed against each other), combined your subsets into two logical groups, then moved the UV maps around so they wouldn't overlap with other subsets they were merged with.

As I said, I made a new package, so just like yours it only had one subset originally. I have added a second recolourable subset for you, and renamed the existing subset. There are tutorials on doing this, which I recommend you follow very closely next time you want to give it a shot, because it's a bit complicated. That said, if you're planning more projects like this I'd suggest trying to (a) use the same number of subsets as the original object, and (b) use the same subset names. When you change a subset name, it unlinks from all the textures etc, and there are about 4 or 5 different files which need to be changed to relink them.

Finally, as a tip for the future, unless you're absolutely certain about what you're doing and why you're doing it, you should not manually rename any of the file types to do with geometry, materials or textures, as they all link together by their names. Change one, and the whole lot unravels! If you decide you do need to change the names for some reason, SimPE has a tool to rename everything correctly - Tools > Object Tools > Fix Integrity.

Good luck!

[Nightywolf]

Thanks for the analysis for my doomed package! I actually really thought that just changing the names of the subsets would do nothing but make things more clear for me to remember what the subsets were. I also made multiple subsets because I have had a lot of troubles properly UV mapping files and other things, but from what you have told me, I have learned that I just need to be a "little" more careful before I plan on doing something to my package without knowing of the potential consequenses... oh well, you learn the hard way, you learn the hard way :D.

edit: I studied what changes you made to the package and I believe I know what I wanted to know. However ;) if I'm going to do anything I'll make a backup of this file before I test to see if I know what I'm talking about. I also exported the object file and I examined the UV you gave it. Now my theory of my problems "parsing" the file have been confirmed and I should just work a little harder with the UV mapping with the help of that useful UV mapping thread I recently found...