Do you think you could please provide me with a quick walk-through of how to assign joints to a mesh with none and then get it in game or link me to a tutorial? I've been working at this for awhile and I am just so lost

Sure! Here's a walk-though. I'm working on a full tutorial on converting TS3 clothing to TS4 and planning another for hair, including bone assignments, but I don't know when those will be ready.

Before you begin, make sure your mesh (if it's clothing) matches the TS4 standard vertex positions and normals at the neck, waist, and ankle seams. You can find and export a suitable reference mesh as explained in step 2 below to use as a guide. If you need a more detailed explanation of how to do that in Milkshape, let me know. If you're working in Blender or another meshing program I can't help but I assume there's some function that lets you copy position and normals from one vertex to another.

1) First, clone a similar TS4 part. I don't know if you're doing clothing, an accessory, or hair, but the idea is the same. Open CAS Tools, in the Cloning Tool tab select the age, gender, and part type you want, and click "Clone Game CAS Parts". Click on each part to see a thumbnail, if one is available. (There will be some EP/SP parts listed that don't have a thumbnail - those parts are not complete unless you have the EP/SP.) You'll see that it lists how many mesh parts there are for each lod - pick one that has the same number of mesh parts as the mesh(es) you're converting. (See the next step for complications when doing a dress or skirt.) Check off the recolors you want to include in your cloned package, give it a suitable name, and click the Clone button.

2) If you're doing clothing other than a skirt longer than very short mini, you can skip this part. For skirts/dresses, accessories, or hair, go to the Clone Package Editor tab and select the package you just cloned. In the Mesh Manager tab, in the bottom right, click By Meshpart. This will list each mesh instead of grouping the entire lod. Then select 'TS4' as the export setting and click the export buttons to save the necessary meshes for use as references.

For most accessories it should be simple - one mesh per lod.
For hair, you'll want the number 2 mesh for each lod, which is the full hair with no hat cut. Ex: lod0_2, etc.
For skirts and dresses, it's a bit more complicated since most of them are in multiple meshes with the legs in separate parts. Unless you've chopped up your mesh the same way, you'll have to export all the parts for each lod and then go to the Mesh Tools / Combine GEOM meshes tab and combine them, two at a time, into one mesh. If your mesh is in one part and you don't want to chop it up, You'll have to clone one clothing that has only one mesh part to import your mesh into later, and a second one to combine into one mesh and use as a reference. It's important for skirts/dresses to have a reference that's the same length. A package to import into doesn't have to be that close.

3) Go to the Mesh Tools / Conversion to TS4 mesh tab. Select your new mesh in the "TS3, MS3D, or OBJ mesh to convert" space. (I'm assuming your mesh is in one of those formats.) If it's clothing other than a skirt, you can use the standard reference mesh. Otherwise, click 'Select reference mesh' and select the mesh you've prepared for that lod. Select the appropriate type, gender, age, and lod. This will adjust the settings and you should be able to leave them the way they are, unless for some reason you want to skip some of the auto functions. Then click the Go button, wait for it to finish, and save your new TS4 mesh.

4) Go back to the Clone Package Editor / Mesh Manager tab and import your converted mesh to the appropriate lod / mesh part (if there's more than one per lod). Click the Commit button. You can then see how it looks in the Previewer tab.

5) After the mesh is okay, you'll still have to work with the textures. Click on each texture image to export/import texture files. If you have to adjust UV, normals, and/or make minor changes only involving moving vertices, you can export the mesh - the whole lod at once if you prefer - to ms3d, use Milkshape, and import it to the same mesh. After importing, export again before making more changes. The shadow and specular textures are in the General CAS Part Properties tab; the material/diffuse texture and swatch are in the Recolor Manager tab. You can do custom thumbnails in the Thumbnail Manager tab. Click Commit after each change.

When done, save the package and test in game.

Let me know if you have questions/problems!

Warning - in the Conversion to TS4 mesh tab, uncheck the Clean Mesh option. It's messing up the UV mapping as I discovered after a day of banging my head against texture weirdness. I'll get it fixed later.

when i press go to transfer bone assignments i keep getting an error saying that the mesh format does not include bone assignments

I'm not getting this error when converting an obj. Please upload both the obj mesh and the reference mesh you're using.

Hi, I keep getting a couple error messages when I try using the cloning tool:

1. If I try selecting a custom package, it throws a "You have not selected a valid package file!" error. I've set my directories correctly, but no matter what I do, it throws the error message.

2. Whenever I try cloning a game CAS part, all it throws is a "Could not save cloned package!" error.

Are you sure the custom package you're trying to clone is a valid CAS part package? Please upload it so I can take a look.

"Could not save cloned package" typically happens if you cancel the file save or Windows fails to save the file for some other reason such as folder protections. Please describe exactly what you did that resulted in the error and where you were trying to save the package.

Hi Cmar!
I hope you're doing well!
I've tried to convert a hair (again) and I fell in some issues...
1st) While the layer separate option work fine I had some problems "merging" the groups after the order so that would be able to edit the texture coordinate editor.
Cause if you don't merge them then you 'll have to edit each group separatly and I don't know what goes where...
2nd) The textures work fine but they take some to be added to each layer.If I add the texture before I separate the layer will the texture be added to all layers automaticly?
3rd) There's a group that has a transparecy but I can't seem to find it...
I'll upload the packae so that you can take a look at it if you want to . (it has the groups in milkshape as well as the textures both S4 and S3)

~Thanks~

Hi there,

I apologize if this question has been answered so many times before, but I'm afraid I don't know where to look for the answer in the 36 pages of this thread.

I'm trying to recolour a custom accessory. I've used the original mesh in my game, and my mods files are very organized, so I know I'm selecting the right file (if that helps). I'm also using the most current version of the tool, and my game is up to date with patches, just ftr.

I can clone the mesh just fine http://puu.sh/qz6aP/8e1317093d.png
But whenever I try to select the clone, it gives me this message http://puu.sh/qz6eF/9b3f7fb37d.png
And then when I try to go into the recolour manager and click on 'add new recolour' I get this message http://puu.sh/qz6R3/bae6314c1d.png

The original mesh did look a little discoloured in my game, kinda patchy. I don't know if that means file is corrupted or anything, it doesn't seem to be causing any errors in my game, the colouring just looks borked http://puu.sh/qz7d3/56ee9aaaab.jpg

Any help/pointers in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Strange! Could you upload your cloned package and if possible the package you cloned it from? I tried to download it myself but the page was obviously full of phishing attempts and locked my browser up.

Hi! If you separate the layers, all the UV0 mapping will be preserved in the layers and if you merge them. It's best to work with the mesh as separate layers, except for merging ones you want to be in one layer, and then let CAS Tools merge them when you convert the mesh.

Milkshape meshes don't have transparency, that's in the texture and the viewing options you choose, so I'm not sure what you're asking.

Also - I thought if you rearrange the layers they would then be converted in the right order but it turns out that's not what was happening. I think I've gotten that fixed and can give you another updated version of CAS Tools tomorrow if it tests out okay. I'm trying hard to get everything working right and publish a couple of tutorials.

Sure, I've uploaded a zip with both files. The file labeled "toskami_fox_tail_AU" is the original mesh and the file labeled "jmem0_toskami_NotEgain_yuAcc_NightcrawlerTail_black" is my recolour.
Thank you!

A typical bonehead mistake on my part, making a fix for the gender-neutral patch not work with unisex parts. Kind of ironic. I've attached my latest working version with this issue fixed. New features may not be working right or at all.

@giannisk13 You might want to try this version too. I think it'll do the layers in the right order but it's hard to tell. And I've been having very weird errors with the layer separation while debugging but not when running the program directly, so let me know if you have any crashing.

I've had some time to play around with this and I think I have a better idea of your problem. First, I recommend making your TS4 texture and scaling the UV to fit it BEFORE you separate the layers. That way the uv is correct for all the layers and all you have to worry about is layer order. Possibly part of your problem was texturing.

I think CAS Tools is making converted meshes with the layers in the order you set in Milkshape now. I tried moving all the pigtail layers to the bottom of the groups and that made an improvement.

Basically what I did was:
Convert your ms3d mesh to TS4, import it to a package.
Export the mesh as ms3d, fix the uv, import it again. (And import the texture.)
Export it as TS4 and run the layer separation on it again.
Rearranged the layers in the new layer ms3d.
Converted the new layer ms3d to TS4, imported it to my package, and tested.

As you can see, it's better in-game but from the back there's still issues. I've been trying to think of ways to get around all the transparency problems like making two-part meshes with a non-transparent layer. We'll see.

Be sure to get CAS Tools v2.0.0.5 from the post above this one to fix keeping the layers in order in conversion from ms3d to TS4.

Can this tool be used to convert a particular custom set of eyes originally made for the Sims 4 to the Sims 3 if you haven't purchased the S4?

No, you'd need a Sims 3 tool to make Sims 3 content, conversion or not.

This tool is now (finally) in Downloads. This thread is closed and all versions of the tool are now removed.