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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 19th Dec 2020 at 2:52 AM
Default Can i just import/export the Obj file if all I'm doing is lowering the polycount?
I found some nice-looking custom hairs but their polycount is completely absurd - one was 60k polys according to SimPE. I would like to make them have fewer polys than that.

I exported the adult-female mesh for one of these and loaded it up in Blender and could Decimate it down to 4k polys with barely any visible change; do I just import this .obj back into the package, or do I need to use extract to get a GMDC (sp?) file and Decimate that? Also, do I need to do anything with bones when all I'm doing is reducing the polycount a bit? Every tutorial I can find is "Here is how to make a new mesh!" (aside from one that was "you must never add or remove even a single polygon while mesh-editing, only move them"), with all of them seeming to assume that your mesh will inevitably be so differently shaped from whatever you started with that you'll have to re-animate it and I'd like to skip that step as I'm not making something new, just removing a few polygons.
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 19th Dec 2020 at 4:10 AM Last edited by simmer22 : 19th Dec 2020 at 4:33 AM.
CAS meshes (hairs, accessories, clothes) need joints, so you have to import the full Unimesh/SimPE mesh into SimPE.

You can export them to a meshing program as OBJ, but you have to fix the joints before importing them back to SimPE as Unimesh. Preferably with Milkshape, but Blender with plugins can work (not sure if the Blender exporter still has issues with normals).

If you export the mesh as OBJ from SimPE, also make sure the UVmap doesn't "jump" up or down from the marked UV square, because when you export CAS meshes as OBJ from SimPE they sometimes tend to do that, which will make the mesh show up without texture if it isn't fixed (the sim material shaders don't tile). It's easy to fix - you can usually move the entire UVmap one full square up/down with some kind of auto tool, it's possible in both Milkshape and Blender.

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A somewhat quick "what to do with OBJ-exported hairs" tutorial:

- If you export the original hair as a GMDC/SimPE/Unimesh file and import it to Milkshape, you'll have the skeleton and the "hair" group (back of head), plus the original hair for comments and group names (very useful)
- Keep the "hair" group for the back of the head (should stay unchanged)
- delete most of the geometry in the "hair-alpha" (but keep the actual hair group for now, this is just so Milkshape doesn't flip out when you import the OBJ file).
- Import in your OBJ file.
- Place the OBJ group where the hair-alpha was in the group lineup.
- Copy the name of the original "hair-alpha" over to this group (probably has a different name than hair-alpha, I'm just calling it that here).
- Also copy over the comments from the original group to the new one.
- Copy over the joint assignments. If you want to keep it simple, mark the entire new "hair-alpha" group, go to the "joints" tab, choose the "head" option from the first (!) dropdown list (there's four of them, don't do anything to the others), crank it up to 100% and choose "assign". If the original hair had more fancy assignments, you can try to copy it, but that requires a bit more finesse.
- Now you can export the file as Unimesh/GMDC and import it into SimPE.
- Rinse and repeat with the other ages.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 19th Dec 2020 at 7:44 AM Last edited by Wingyl : 19th Dec 2020 at 7:47 AM. Reason: new info
Thanks! Since all I'm doing is making some unreasonably big hairs, like the 60k bobcut, not unreasonably big I think I won't go to install paid software.

...Although the addon won't install and I've tried three versions of Blender so far :/ I also heard you can use zbrush, and if that works better and also doesn't need Milkshape I might switch to that. Do you know how to export as SMD from SimPE? I can't find the plugin anywhere, but if it can be found it might be easier than figuring out why selecting the Sims 2 GMDC Plugin zip to install it does literally nothing except close the "open file" menu.

EDIT: found the problem with the GMDC plugin and this specific version of blender, it was hilariously stupid: i was clicking on the wrong MTS zip with 'blender' in the name
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