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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 17th Sep 2020 at 9:05 PM Last edited by RainMilk : 18th Sep 2020 at 6:36 PM.
Default 4t2 Common dress Geometric and dark. (Closed)
Hello...Im back into the saddle and Im alittle rusty...I have a 4t2 dress im trying but after exporting as obj from blender, its geometric and dark at the top. I tried using cats normal smoother but I makes it TOO smooth (plus dark remains) Will link files. Thank you
Screenshots
Attached files:
File Type: rar  commondress.rar (169.0 KB, 7 downloads)
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 17th Sep 2020 at 11:26 PM Last edited by simmer22 : 17th Sep 2020 at 11:46 PM.
It's not showing up with a dark spot for me, but it is showing up unsmoothed. Is your "Autosmooth" ticked in Milkshape? If so, untick it. Creates a lot of issues, that one...

I think the problem is in the Blender export, not in the Milkshape file. Go back to Blender and use these settings when exporting, or it more or less destroys the OBJ files:



(Just an addition because it's an old pic - Some people swear by "Triangulate faces" too, but if they're already triangulated or square, it's technically not necessary if you export to Milkshape, because Milkshape auto-triangulates square faces when importing - it doesn't even want to deal with squares or odd shapes. It occasionally struggles with importing other shapes than squares and triangles, at least if the shapes aren't flat. If you import directly from Blender to SimPE, the settings above should be enough to not get error messages, but if you're not sure whether the mesh has other shapes involved, you may want to triangulate to be on the safe side)

If that doesn't help, do you have the Blender file, too?

Vulrien made a 4t2 tutorial recently - could come in handy
https://vulrien-sims.tumblr.com/pos...othing-tutorial
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#3 Old 18th Sep 2020 at 3:52 AM
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
It's not showing up with a dark spot for me, but it is showing up unsmoothed. Is your "Autosmooth" ticked in Milkshape? If so, untick it. Creates a lot of issues, that one...

I think the problem is in the Blender export, not in the Milkshape file. Go back to Blender and use these settings when exporting, or it more or less destroys the OBJ files:



(Just an addition because it's an old pic - Some people swear by "Triangulate faces" too, but if they're already triangulated or square, it's technically not necessary if you export to Milkshape, because Milkshape auto-triangulates square faces when importing - it doesn't even want to deal with squares or odd shapes. It occasionally struggles with importing other shapes than squares and triangles, at least if the shapes aren't flat. If you import directly from Blender to SimPE, the settings above should be enough to not get error messages, but if you're not sure whether the mesh has other shapes involved, you may want to triangulate to be on the safe side)

If that doesn't help, do you have the Blender file, too?

Vulrien made a 4t2 tutorial recently - could come in handy
https://vulrien-sims.tumblr.com/pos...othing-tutorial



There you go. I'm still having issues even after exporting the right way. The blender file is attached.
Attached files:
File Type: rar  commonmesh2.rar (2.13 MB, 23 downloads)
Mad Poster
#4 Old 18th Sep 2020 at 3:00 PM
Which game (guessing it's not an original TS4 mesh) and/or creator and/or is the dress from? Could be a problem with the original mesh, because looks like everything in the mesh has separated vertices, which probably needs fixing.

In Blender you can mark areas and do "remove duplicate vertices" (with care, because this can screw up the UVs in Milkshape if you're not careful - best to first keep within the UVs and fix the UV edges later).

In Milkshape, if Align Vertices doesn't work, then there's nothing much you can do there, and Blender is your best bet.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#5 Old 18th Sep 2020 at 6:35 PM
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
Which game (guessing it's not an original TS4 mesh) and/or creator and/or is the dress from? Could be a problem with the original mesh, because looks like everything in the mesh has separated vertices, which probably needs fixing.

In Blender you can mark areas and do "remove duplicate vertices" (with care, because this can screw up the UVs in Milkshape if you're not careful - best to first keep within the UVs and fix the UV edges later).

In Milkshape, if Align Vertices doesn't work, then there's nothing much you can do there, and Blender is your best bet.



I see. Okay thank you then.
Alchemist
#6 Old 21st Sep 2020 at 4:13 PM Last edited by Sunrader : 21st Sep 2020 at 4:27 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
I think the problem is in the Blender export, not in the Milkshape file. Go back to Blender and use these settings when exporting, or it more or less destroys the OBJ files:



(Just an addition because it's an old pic - Some people swear by "Triangulate faces" too, but if they're already triangulated or square...


As to the triangulate faces, the game will not show a plane that is an n-gon. I suspect that's where this idea comes from. I prefer to triangulate those faces myself so I can choose how they are done, but, then, I also uncheck apply modifiers because I certainly would not want them applied if I have not applied them, yet, as that could cause unpredictable results. I also don't have include edges because it doesn't appear in Blender 2.8, anyway. @simmer22, are you quite sure, though, about smooth groups, because, afaik, smoothing groups must be assigned to certain faces to tell a program how to render them. I think of them as something like vertex groups. To my knowledge, no one would be using smoothing groups for meshes with Sims 2, and, in any case, I do not believe that smoothing groups has any affect on geometry at all. But I'm new to Blender. Perhaps this refers to something else?

@Rainmilk
This mesh has a lot of intersecting faces (1944). I think that's most of the problem. That's difficult to fix, but I know a few causes. Do you have an original mesh that does not have this problem to go back to?
Mad Poster
#7 Old 21st Sep 2020 at 4:26 PM Last edited by simmer22 : 21st Sep 2020 at 4:38 PM.
I prefer to triangulate faces myself, too (but most of the time I don't...). Milkshape (and SimPE) manages as long as the faces/polys are square. Not so much if the Ngons have 5 or more vertices (will try to split them up, sometimes doing an OK job - but if it can't figure it out, it usually removes the face entirely or causes an error, so you do want to be sure there are only squares and/or triangles present).

I had problems with meshes being exported inside-out and/or unsmoothed when I used default OBJ settings, so I tried and tested a bit. These were settings that worked fine for exporting directly to SimPE or to Milkshape without getting errors or strange artefacts in the meshes, and it's worked for me. It's possible some other settings can be ticked and/or left out without it being a problem (I'm using 2.76 for TS4/S4Studio compatibility), I just know these settings work fine and don't seem to cause any problems. Not entirely sure if "Smoothing groups" needs to be ticked, and it's possible it doesn't have an effect, as it seems everything needs to be edge-split for Milkshape and SimPE to see them as "smoothing groups" (at least when you export them from Blender).

Pretty much everything in Rainmilk's mesh is edge-split, which is causing the normals to misbehave. It's easiest to fix this in Blender, because it's easier to mark large areas and remove the extra vertices with "remove duplicate vertices". It's quite the large and tedioius job in Milkshape.
Alchemist
#8 Old 21st Sep 2020 at 4:37 PM
I've not had any trouble triangulating n-gons, so not sure what you mean about that, but I have only been using Blender 2.8 a couple weeks.


Quote: Originally posted by simmer22

Everything in Rainmilk's mesh is edge-split, which is causing the normals to misbehave.


I don't know the usage of the phrase "edge split" so certainly could be. I'm looking at it with 3DTools which is useful for analyzing any mesh, and I see no bad normals or reversed faces, but it shows intersecting faces (which may be the edge split) and zero faces which I've also had trouble with and looked like this. One cause of these "bad" faces can be making transformations in object mode, particularly changing the scale of the object and then not applying that scale before further editing or modifiers. I agree that welding or removing doubles earlier in the editing, before this happens, often helps. I've had to use that quite a bit when editing body meshes to make statues. Maxis meshes are full of double faces that distort into intersecting ones or "explode" on posing, but it's easy to fix with the remove doubles or, as it's called now, "merge by distance."
Mad Poster
#9 Old 21st Sep 2020 at 4:40 PM
Edge-split as in all the edges/vertices being standalone, so when you grab just one vertex nothing follows and it leaves a hole. Normally, the faces next to it would move along with it if they were connected. This often creates problems with smoothing. Unless you want the edges to be split, of course (it's one of the ways you make sure Milkshape smooths meshes properly - or doesn't smooth edges, I guess...).
Alchemist
#10 Old 21st Sep 2020 at 4:48 PM Last edited by Sunrader : 21st Sep 2020 at 4:59 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
Edge-split as in all the edges/vertices being standalone, so when you grab just one vertex nothing follows and it leaves a hole. Normally, the faces next to it would move along with it if they were connected. This often creates problems with smoothing. Unless you want the edges to be split, of course (it's one of the ways you make sure Milkshape smooths meshes properly - or doesn't smooth edges, I guess...).


Yes, I understand. I believe that we are describing the same thing. What you are calling edge split is being labeled as intersecting faces in my version of Blender.



I had a problem like this recently. I would not attempt to fix this one, but start back on one that is not messed up. I would merge these by distance before attempting to pose/transform the mesh and then be careful to transform in edit mode or to apply transformations done in object mode. 3DTools is very helpful in showing you which faces are problems, though not all of the things it finds are relevant to us. We don't care about overhang, for example. It's also available in 2.79b.
Screenshots
Mad Poster
#11 Old 21st Sep 2020 at 5:17 PM Last edited by simmer22 : 21st Sep 2020 at 5:31 PM.
The best option is using a mesh that isn't messed up. If that isn't an option, I tend to use the UVmap as a rough guideline, especially for vertices that aren't supposed to be welded (you can fix those in Milkshape later).

It's possible to fix this, it's not extremely difficult, but not beginner-level either, but it's got a lot of explainy bits in it (Sometimes I wish I could just make a video tutorial and be done with it, but I'm not good at explaining things on video).

Quote: Originally posted by Sunrader
I've not had any trouble triangulating n-gons, so not sure what you mean about that, but I have only been using Blender 2.8 a couple weeks.


Usually it's not a problem, but I have seen some instances of it with exports from certain programs. Those Ngons were rather unusual, though... I have seen a few cases with 7-8 sided Ngons in Milkshape bugging out, but it could have been a program to program translation bug in an OBJ file or some such (Milkshape didn't like the files, and imported them with large holes). Had a few with holes in them in Blender yesterday, but those were OBJ conversions from a Sketchup program or some such that had gone through a really old version of a meshing program through an web converter, and not everything made it through.

Most of the time the Ngons manage to triangulate fine, without any bugs. Sometimes the triangulating does end up looking a bit funky in a bad way, but nothing so bad it can't be fixed...
Alchemist
#12 Old 21st Sep 2020 at 5:29 PM
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
The best option is using a mesh that isn't messed up. If that isn't an option, I tend to use the UVmap as a rough guideline, especially for vertices that aren't supposed to be welded (you can fix those in Milkshape later).


That's a good idea. referring to the UV. But, if it's not going off topic, why would you go back to Milkshape? I haven't tried it, but Blender is doing everything I need. I agree, it's fixable, I just found it way more time consuming on mine than just going back to the good mesh and making smarter edits.
Mad Poster
#13 Old 21st Sep 2020 at 5:36 PM
Blender did still have a few issues with normals the last time I had anything to do with the bodymeshing plugins. Not sure if those were properly sorted out. Assuming you're using the newest Blender plugins, and the normals issue in the plugins was sorted out at some point, I guess you wouldn't need to go back to Milkshape to fix anything.

I'm used to Milkshape, so I tend to swap between them for various projects, but still use Milkshape for bodymeshing (which I don't do a lot of - and the little I do of it I can do in Milkshape).
Alchemist
#14 Old 21st Sep 2020 at 6:32 PM
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22

I'm used to Milkshape, so I tend to swap between them for various projects, but still use Milkshape for bodymeshing (which I don't do a lot of - and the little I do of it I can do in Milkshape).


Ah, got it. I'm still using my old graphics program for the same reason, just used to it.

I haven't tried the bodymeshing plugins. I was just using resources directly from the game and making them into statues so perhaps I didn't need them.
Mad Poster
#15 Old 21st Sep 2020 at 7:31 PM
Ah, then you'd just need Blender, no reason to go messing about in Milkshape.
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