Thanks tig for these amazing tutorials! i had so much fun doing them and i have learned a lot! So Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you for the tutorial!

I havent tested it in the game but i will do that now and edit the post to tell you about the result

edit:
I tested the mesh in Fat Morph and normal body and it worked perfectly! the animation of the sims was great! thanks again :D

Here is a pic of my work:

hiya, yet again another damn problem -.- what will we ever do without them lol. wasnt really paying attention whilest making this but somewhere along the line the smoothness has changed on this it was smooth before but now it looks like its been chopped and just placed beside each other help please hopefully its something i can resolve :-S

melanise you either updated and thus reset your settings and/or didn't have 'autosmooth' unchecked (tutorial #1)

OR - you hit the 'smooth' command from milkshape.

You could try and patch it up using demon's align normal after selecting some of the vertices along the seams, but you're going to run into trouble at the hem edge. Would be better to start over than to try and get rid of the bad seams.

nooooo lol i was dreading that, ahh yes i remember i did use autosmooth but i selected the alpha part not the whole mesh O.o but oh well i'll have to give it another shot thank you tigs ^.^

auto smooth is not availble for one part, it AUTO Smoothes the whole body when you import it

it autosmoothes *everything* it smooths all groups, hidden groups, everything. As does the milkshape built in smooth command.

To adjust only part of the mesh you need to use Demon's Align Normals tool.

Mookie I read your message. I dont know if you have gotten an answer yet on why it shuts down. But in many cases good "computer defence" programs will alert you and shut down the cause of any change in "Vital" programs or files. To stop that from happening I always kill my Zone Alarm Pro. OR you could put those programs in the trusted files list...(spacing the name of it right now) I believe you can even have it warn you before it shuts down the program. But adding it to the trusted programs would proably be easier and even easier when you edit meshes just simply turn off the Zone Alarm.

Sincerly,
Noobie

The end of this tutorial has info on alpha meshes, fusi0n556 (and the thanks button is at the end of the first post). You need to be well-experienced in non-alpha body meshes before attempting it, as animating them can be tricky even for experienced body meshers. Tig's info there is pretty much all the tips and info you could need, and the rest one learns through doing regular body meshes (and practicing at it). They're really not all that complex besides having extra groups to keep track of, and being a pain in the neck to animate.

Please use the Edit button rather than double-posting if you have something to add or change.

All body meshes are animated - it's getting an alpha layer to work right, not clipping through the body mesh underneath that's the trickiest part... that's the animation, and that's usually a matter of trying to line up vertices so as many vertices of your alpha layer overlay the body mesh's vertices as possible, then matching their bone assignments vertex-for-vertex... and then testing and tweaking and testing and tweaking.

You also don't necessarily need to make an alpha mesh to do an open jacket over a shirt. There are ways to do that solid - take a look at Maxis meshes set up like that (there are several layered shirt combos) and you'll see how that's laid out. You should only use an alpha mesh if you have to - just putting together two garments in a way you could do without alpha is not reason enough.

fusi0n556 - please use this thread to discuss actually DOING tutorial #3. For other projects, please make a new thread in the main area. Thanks

Hi Tiggerypum and Hysterical Paroxysm,

First of all thank you sooooooooooooooooooooo much for your excellent tutorials
and all your effort to help so many people.
I have learned a lot from you.

Last days I've been trying to attach Al's shoes to a mesh.
I got stuck......
Today I followed your handy tutorial.
That surely cheered me up :-)
In Milkshape everything looks just fine now.
There are no seams and the model looks great.
But in Bodyshop and in the game, there's still a seam.
There's no gap, but just a seam.

I used the extended manual edit and Demon's align normal.
Also I've fixed underweighted bones.
Like other people I can't use the Unimesh bone tool.
I even installed the drivers today, but the problem still remains.
Milkshape keeps shutting down... :-(

Does it always leave a seam when exporting the mesh with unimesh,
when you skip the step with the bone tool?

Could you please help me?

Thanks again and keep up the good work!

extended manual edit and the bone tool should do the same thing.
when you look at the uvmap, does your new leg section match up exactly with the other part of the leg?

Can you post a screenshot showing your problem, also your mesh in milkshape, and the uvmap?

Hi Tiggerypum,

Thanks for your quick response.
I made some pictures of my problem.
The first picture shows the problem.
The other pictures show what I see in Milkshape.
In SimPE I did replace the GMDC with the new version.
I would be gratefull if you could take a look at them.

Thanks!!

I believe your problem is with your uvmap. Sim feet (up to that ankle seam) are mapped separately from the leg. Look at the original uvmaps from various dresses, you will see that there is a gap at the ankle. By connecting that section, you are including part of the skin texture that's not supposed to be included and might have who knows what in that little area.

For examples, look at this thread at a glance for various uvmaps.
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=214890

how to fix? You could try using a uvmap of a bare legged sim having it as your texture. Then see if you can separate your seam back to the two parts where it belongs. Otherwise, you might need to reattach those feet.

THANKS!!!

I'm so happy, you have really been a big help and solved my problem.
Now I can finish my outfit.
You are a great teacher!!
Thank you for all your effort and kindness.

hey tig and all, i needed to find out soemthing, i sorted out the tone problem and finished my mesh i used the hula girl outfit as a base for my mesh so i could use all the comments, the only thing i did do is import a bare body into it seen as the hula one has coconuts. ok just wondering weather i need to change any Materials or anything in SimPE O.o i'm gonna go ahead and see if i can recolour as normal but i just wanted to make sure ty

melanise, the material defs are in the bodyshop recolor file in saved sims. If you want to do the same thing as the hula, except with non-coconut breasts, then you should be set.

Thanks again tiggs well i have another final problem i hope xD well i have finished everything i know how to make a normal alpha editable outfit and make the material have a see through effect but is there anyway of making it so i can alta my alpha outfits transparency using the body_alpha~stdMatBaseTextureName_alpha, i tried this because i wasnt sure and when i changed it grey slightly from white it disappeared so i didnt know what to do, i just left it with a transparent effect which is an option for the whole outfit (see picture) please if there is another way can i get help ty loads

Melanie

This outfit is made transparent using SimPE chaning the MATD file alittle, but i want to know if i can make my alpha have transparency using the body_alpha~stdMatBaseTextureName_alpha sorry for repeating this slightly but its just in case it makes more sense than the first section...

its confuessing me more T_T

Firstly thankyou both for making such an easily understood tutorial <<bows reverently
I finished the first two tutorials with no problems but kept hitting the snag of using the bone tool in milkshape,after browsing different threads came upon the solution I had to delete duplicate bones or joints whatever they are called. I am definitely proud of my final result Now all I have to work out is how to get my custom avatar to show and I will be happy as larry
Anyway thanks again to all those who make such tutorials possible
Kat
*ooops my bad my custom ava is working <<does snoopy dance

melanise

You need 2 things, first, that the alpha area is set correctly in the matd....

THIS sets things to make a see-through garment with alpha
stdMatAlphaBlendMode:blend
stdMatAlphaTestEnabled:0

This sets things to alpha on and off only (which is how hula probably was set)
stdMatAlphaBlendMode:none
stdMatAlphaTestEnabled:1

NOTE - the first set of settings are very fussy about the order in which things are layered, it's like hair - layer it the wrong way or have oddly intersecting pieces and you'll get funky bleed-through displays that won't look right at all. Also note that alpha pieces with hems need linings (tutorial is found in 'milkshape the insides' which is linked in the milkshape tips article in the faq area)

Once your matd is set correctly, to USE the alpha property, you need to make the texture and alpha file match what you want to do. For the hula settings, your b&w alpha graphic should be a sharp b&w shape, because it's an on-off alpha (either 100% solid or 100% invisible, which is how hula is).... or you can use grayscale alphas to make semi-transparent clothing if you set the alpha to blend.

i am so very lost... ok tigg so right now my aplha MatD has been set to stdMatAlphaBlendMode:blend
stdMatAlphaTestEnabled:0

before as you said it was
stdMatAlphaBlendMode:none
stdMatAlphaTestEnabled:1
i thaught with the second setting in SimPE i could change the Transparency through the body_alpha~stdMatBaseTextureName_alpha file but it never worked, when i changed to grey it just disappears ... i'm really confused now...do you think the first setting i have it on is correct or have i done somethign wrong here ? i can cut parts away etc but cant change transparency on the normal setting:
stdMatAlphaBlendMode:none
stdMatAlphaTestEnabled:1

with blendmode:none and alphatestenabled:1 you can change the *shape* of your graphic - like how the hula skirt is, with the grass leaves. So you can use a black and white alpha graphic.

blendmode:blend means you can use a gray alpha.

Ty so much tig so if i want to use the gray alpha do i just use:
blendmode:blend
alphatestenabled:0 ??

melanise, yes - use black to make any shape changes, gray to have it transparent, white for solid.