Help with Sims2 Unimesh Bone Tool

[franciele]

I am using Unimesh/Milkshape Tutorial:Level 3 Combining Mesh Parts to combine Warlokk's Pinup red dress with Al's shoes.
I've been following the tutorial up to the part where I have to use the bone tool...but the thing is I don't know WHAT I'm suppose to do. The tutorial says "to make sure the first vertex has the bones assigned the way I want", but I don't know what that means.
Can someone explain it to me? What do I need to do?
Also if I don't do anything in the bone tool and continue on with the tutorial up to the export part I get a message that says "Unassigned bones exist. Export anyway?"
Help! lol

Thank you!

[WesHowe]

The UniMesh manual, located in message #2 of the sticky thread at the top of this forum, has some instructions on how to use the BoneTool. If you export an animatable mesh (clothing, hair, many objects) without assigning the new vertices to one or more bones, the new parts will not appear in the game, so the exporter warns against this.

If you don't understand what numbers to put into the bone tool, versus what buttons to click, then read through the postings in the UniMesh thread, the archived UniMesh thread, and also, use search and look for a posting, by HystericalParoxsym I think, that shows a pictorial of all the foot bones and the original Maxis bone assignments and weightings. There is a lot of stuff to learn about and not so much room to stuff it all into one message.

You can make assignments now within MilkShape, starting with version 1.8.0, for multiple bone assignments and weightings. I do not find it easy or intuitive, but it is possible.

<* Wes *>

[franciele]

Thank you very much!

[tiggerypum]

franciele - each vertex on a sim has to have a 'bone' assignment. Those values 'pin' the vertex to some location relative to the skeleton. Then as the game moves the skeleton - the display software makes the rest of the mesh move with it.

I discuss bone assignments briefly in tutorial #3 - what you need to look at how they work on a Maxis mesh and then make the bone assignments for your new leg similar. When we brought in the Maxis leg from a different mesh, it already had assignments, so the only thing to double check was where the two parts meet, because to make 2 (or more) vertices act like 1, they need identical assignments - otherwise you will have gaps as the sim moves.

[franciele]

I found the chart and read about the different assignment numbers and I was able to do it just fine. Here is a pic of what I got so far.

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n262/rforbaenrcti/Projects/ScreenShot004.jpg

The tutorial is extremely helpful! Thank you very much! Even though it's not exactly the same thing it still has tons of stuff I been using on other projects. :D
I do have a question though, are there Maxis clothing that cannot have the 4 files (shape, cres....) extracted from?
I was trying to get the four files from the kimono that comes with Holiday stuff pack and I got nothing. I did it manually and even tried using the extracting tool (that I can't remember the name) found here on MTS.
I exported and imported it in Bodyshop, opened Simpe, opened the kimono file from the saved sims folder, got the name, put it in the search box, hit enter and....nothing! lol Is it something I've done wrong or do I need to use some other method?
Thanks guys for all your help! I really apreciate it!

[WesHowe]

The four files in a standard mesh package (CRES/SHPE/GMND/GMDC) would have to exist for the original mesh to appear in the game.

Whether the body mesh plugin in SimPE looks through the Holiday pack files is something I do not know. This was a sort of mini-stuff pack thing, and has just two special files in it, not a whole directory of them.

You could ask at the SimPE site about this. It is possible to manually hunt those files down, extract them, put them in a new package and link them together, but that is a lot of work. Of course, a year or so ago, before Inge and Peter developed the body mesh plugin, that was the only way to do it.

<* Wes *>

[franciele]

That's what I thought too. I mean the kimono came with one of the game's ep! I thought it was strange. So how do I go about hunting them down? Any tutorials or info that you can point me to?

[tiggerypum]

Location of the Holiday Stuff items - which for some reason SimPE does not find. I asked about this on the simpe forum but quite apparently it's still not fixed:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=224759&highlight=holiday+pack

[franciele]

Thanks for the link! I used Simpe and opened the packages that Wes mentions and I found all four parts of it. The kimono is on H06.bundle. Thank you guys! Now let me see if I can combine the rave kimono shoes with the holiday kimono body. lol