A couple of things that may help -

1} On the Groups tab, there are a bunch of numbered buttons. You can select faces, then assign them to one of these buttons for later recall of that face selection - this doesn't change the actual mesh groups at all, it is just so you can later repeat a selection exactly, by clicking on that numbered button. The parts will still be in their original group. Kind of like the buttons on your car radio where you can save your favorite stations.

I haven't used this in a while, so I don't remember exactly how to "assign" a selection to the buttons, you'll have to look in MilkShape's help file. But this way you could select the faces, then before making the new copy assign them to a button. Then after you bring back and re-assign the new parts, you can select the original ones with the button, and easily delete them even though the new ones are right on top of them.

=================================================

2} I may be wrong, but I think the issue with "welding" and "smoothing" was fixed in one of the updates? I wasn't paying attention since just leaving the Maxis "normals" alone does cure the seams problem for me. But, if this was in fact fixed, and this is a nude mesh you are working on, smoothing the whole thing isn't going to cause a problem (since nudes don't have any of those inverted normals that cause shadows) and that is the only way you are going to get your new "normals" to co-respond exactly to the surrounding areas, since MilkShape really has no other provisions for editing the normals. But please check through the thread to make sure I remember this right, that welding no longer messes up the uv_mapping?

3} It might also be easier, rather than trying to keep track of what you edited in what exact order on all the morph groups to do this:

Make all the actual edits only to the real "body" group, ignore the morphs. Now when the body is done, make duplicates of it for each morph group.

Now use the original morph groups as references to re-shape these copies - it's not that difficult to do. - Then rename and re-comment the new morph groups, and delete the originals. The new ones will work fine, since they are duplicates of the "body" group, all the vertices are gauranteed to be in the same order, without you doing confusing multiple edits.

Unlike the BodyChop plugins, the morph groups carry no vertex assignments so for doing a complicated edit I think this would be much easier.

=============================================

I hope this gives you some ideas - Milkshape is actually a much more flexible program than most people think, because many of it's best features are not well documented.

vicvic, I looked at your mesh files - it appears to be properly "linked", but as you said it doesn't show up in BodyShop at all - unfortunately, I don't really follow too well the way all the stuff in the .package file works together, so I can't tell you why it doesn't work.

BTW here is my method for finding the correct 3D referencing file (see pic)
Look at the file listing in SimPE, with all files showing (the ... entry on the list)

Click on each Property set until you find the one you want - shown is the female teen's - the one you want is the one above it on the list - note that the instance numbers are also the same (the instance number inside the 3DIR file is always one less for some reason...)

But anyway, yours looks right.

Even if you linked it to the wrong 3dir file, it would still show up - for the wrong age group...

So I would suspect something else is going wrong. Did you alter anything else in the .package file? Outside of exactly how it is done in Brianna's tutorial, I mean?

One thing that can cause problems is that "University Ready" checkbox on the Fix Integrety window - it should NEVER be checkmarked when making body parts (and as I understand it, it is only used on very rare occasions when doing object meshes too) If you had that checkmarked when you used "Fix Integrety", your mesh will never show up in BodyShop.

Also don't ever use "Fix Integrety" after you have done the linking of the files, it will unlink them all.

Maybe someone who has more understanding of the SimPE end of things can take a look at it.

If you simply stretched out the Maxis mesh, it is not the uv_mapping - it might look funny in BodyShop, but it would still appear.

Oh, to get the uv_mapper in MilkShape to work, you must first assign and load a texture for the selected group - see the MilkShape manual for instructions on how to do this. Then you select a group, and go to the uv_mapping window.

The problem with the long texture names in MilkShape was fixed several updates ago, so you can use any texture name you like. Just copy one of the .bmp's into your "work" folder from the BodyShop Project folder and use it.

oh yea...If they are not the same,
do I change it??

That helps a ton, Doc... I'll give some of those a shot and see what happens. The AFNude mesh does do a little weird shadowing under the breasts when rewelding and smoothing, but it's nothing too serious and I may be able to work around it, if it works. Thanks!

oh,so its normal that the instance no. inside is different to the outside?
I also thought it doesnt matter if I linked it to the wrong age group,
so I linked it to both (those have 0x0000003 outside & inside).
I checked it in bodyshop again, the adult group did change --> into teen hair.
But just change the size of the original hair, its not what I made..

I didnt do anything else outside of Brianna's tutorial,
not the University box thing too...
But I might have used "Fixed Integrety"...
cause I saw it somewhere on here said use that function does no harm,
+ would always fix stuff everytime u do changes..
(I dunno what that button does..so I believed that..)

anyway, thanks a lot for telling me how to get the mapping tool working~
I'm going to try it now~!

I use the "Classic" interface of SimPE, so it doesn't show the numbers like in your picture.

All I can say is I have never changed any of those numbers in my meshes, I just link the BodyShop .package to the mesh files exactly as Brianna says to, and it has always worked.

I know many people who make objects say "Fix Integrety" won't hurt anything - but objects are different, all the references are to other parts inside the same .package.

Body meshes are different - the mesh itself is in one .package, the color files are all in other separate .packages. This is why we must do that "linking" part ourselves.

So, Fix Integrety must only be done once, at the beginning just as in Brianna's tutorial, before you do the linking. If you use it again later, it changes all the internal numbers in the mesh .package - but not in your color .packages, so they are all "unlinked" again.

These are MilkShape issues. Everything that happens between the end of import and the start of export needs to be requested over at the MilkShape website: http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/index.html



I don't think that is supportable. While there is only one bone list, each mesh group has it's own set of weights, stored on a per-vertex basis. Right now, the bone editor is driven by the selected vertices list, to determine what joints you want to see. If you want to select an area of the mesh to edit in only one group, just hide the unwanted group before making the selection.



Whew! Pretty complex request. What about a plugin 'bone selection request' that had some buttons that allowed you to select all the single or multiply assigned vertices (much like the underweight selection tool works)?




#5 isn't really doable with a plugin architecture. The plugin format passes a 'snapshot' of your work from the main proogram to the plugin, which can then make modifications and pass the changed model back to milkshape. While the plugin has control, MilkShape is sitting idle waiting for the copy to come back.

On the last, I'll try to find out how to setup the key combo for the bone tool.

<* Wes *>

I wanted to show a hair mesh I just finished - I was able to get good animations but using a fairly simple assigning method.

Everything from slightly above the shoulders on down is assigned 100% to spine_2

Everything from about the end of the nose and above is 100% head

In between, I simply selected 4 rectangular areas, and assigned them in 20% increments - that is, the ones just above the shoulders are 80% spine_2, 20% head

Next rectangle up is 60% spine_2, and 40% head, and so on.

No "neck" assignments at all, other than those few at the back of the neck.

I thought I would have to tweak these after testing in the game, but it worked so nicely that I just left them at that.

I also wanted to pass on a tip about mis-weighted assignments (ones that do not add up to 100%) I had hidden the "hair" group during my editing, and forgot to "unhide" it before I checked with the "show underweighted" tool so I missed a few underweighted vertices around the neck area - none of these was off much, either 1% too low, or 1% too high - but these cause a very strange problem in the game with "layered" meshes - it all looked fine in the game, until I zoomed out. Then there was a black "hole" showing on the hair in the area of these vertices - if I zoomed back in, it disappeared again.

Anyway, it seems it is very important that all vertice weightings in a hair mesh must be exactly 100% so be sure to do a "unhide all" then check with the "underweighted" tool and fix any you find on your mesh.

I see you got an answer. Group select selects the vertices and faces. The bone tool never looks at the face selections, because the bone assignments are stored per vertex. That's the difference you saw (the remaining red selections were to faces + the vertex selections you wanted.

I'll keep that in mind in the future, and maybe I'll add code to deselect bones (select all) and faces when the tool is used. But the way it is now reflects that it is only looking at selected vertices.

<* Wes *>

Actually, the problem is that the MilkShape developer forgot to add code to some built-in support functions to copy the new vertices (this happens on File Merge and Duplicate Selection, also).

I've reported this for you guys, but I don't know when there will be a fix (it has to go inside MS, not in my plugins).

Also, starting in 4.03 I added code that unwelds situations where you welded the seams, and left the model with a vertex that is claimed by multiple faces with different UVs. But when the weld job occurred, the normals were merged. The new code does put the seam back in, but with both points sharing a 'smoothed' normal. It makes the welded model export without losing the seperate UV data for each, but the shadows problem will still be there if you weld the seams.

This all happens this way because the GMDC format maps everything to the vertex. Each vertex has 1 UV and 1 normal, plus, optionally, 1 set or up to 4 bone assignments, 1 set of up to 3 skin weights, and 1 set of bumpmap normals (which do not work right in the exporter). When you want two parts of the mesh to be in the same place, but have their own UV or own normal, the because of the way the data is stored in the GMDC, you need to duplicate the vertices. Welding merges the vertices back into one, and in doing so loses the normal, UV and other data that was sotred for the other one.

<* Wes *>

That’s what I did. I changed all the bone assignments comparing them with Maxis body mesh. But I get the effect described above (see attached pictures). Suggesting there would be a problem with weighting I adapted the skin weights to the original ones for example:
Weight Bone Index Bone Name
53 24 l_clavicle
24 25 l_upperarm
21 4 spine1
After exporting and re-importing in Milkshape via UniMesh plug-in I get
Weight Bone Index Bone Name
100 24 l_clavicle
0 -1 (no joint)
0 -1 (no joint)
The bone assignments stay the same in the simpe-file. The saved ms3d-file held both, the changed weight-size and the bone assignments.
Sorry, perhaps my English is too bad to explain my problem. :sorry:
Nevertheless thanks for the answer.

The neck gap is the milkshape rounding bug - take the top neck vertices and drag them up just a tiny bit and that will close it.

I'm not sure why you're not getting the bones set correctly. Are you exporting your gdmc with the unimesh plugin (and not the older one?)

Oh also - the most recent change to this plugin required you to NOT use your saved milkshape file - you must start fresh and read back in the gdmc (you can use your previously edited and saved gdmc) in order to have the milkshape file have all the right bone comments. Perhaps this is what's giving you problems with the bone weights?

The problem happens because of errors in MilkShape not copying the extra weights when you use the regroup, file merge and copy selection functions built into MilkShape. Any of these three 'lose' the extra assignment data.
Unfortunately, it was never noticed in time to be fixed in 1.7.7A.
I have requested Mete from MilkShape to fix these in the next patch, to date that has not been released.

Those that own MilkShape can also take up MilkShape bug issues in the forums at the MilkShape site. I have but nominal influence on my own.

<* Wes *>

Hi.

I'm new to this game and I'm playing around with one of Walokk's lower body meshes but Milkshape keeps crashing on me. If I select SOME of the vertices, Mikshape crashes the second I choose the BoneTool from the Vertex menu. Since it only happens with some of the vertices it seems like there is some combination of "vertice data" that causes the problem.

I will attach a mesh extracted with SimPE, imported to MilkShape 1.7.7a with UniMesh plugin 4.0.4. I have removed the fat and pregnant morphs and saved it as a ms3d-file. I can crash Milkshape by trying to use BoneTool on almost any vertice between the lnee and ankle (and a few more). Im running W98 SE if thats of any interest.

Thanks!

Thanks for the good report.
Unfortunately, it doesn't crash here on any combination of vertices selected.
I have never tested the plugins, or MilkShape, on Windows 98. I have been running Windows XP for the entire time I have been working on the plugins, about a year or more.

I am not sure if there are memory allocation issues causing this, or something related to the window usage by the plugin; it does allocate a nice chunk of memory, but then I would expect it to crash consistently if it was a memory allocation issue, as the plugin uses the same amount of memory if you select 1 or 20,000 vertices (about all it is designed to handle at this time).

<* Wes *>

Thank You for Your answer.

I have narrowed it down a bit more. Attached is a MilkShape file with three vertices. If I select the uppermost one and start BoneTool everything is ok. If I select any of the lower ones, crash.

I don't suppose it's possible to get some debugging info out of BoneTool?

A most curious problem.
I have no trouble opening the file, and then the bone tool, on any combination of those three vertices selected.
The only pattern I can see is that the top one has 2 assignments, and the bottom ones have only one each. If you have seen single bone assignments there (and there seemed to be plenty in the old mesh you uploaded) then that probably isn't the pattern.
I compiled all the plugins as 'Release', with no debug info, so they would be smaller for downloaders. I have attached a binary of the 4.04 bone tool recompiled with the debug info attached, if you would like to try it & see what the details of the crash says.

I can't believe how much air WinRAR squeezed out of that file... 109Kb down to 8Kb!

<* Wes *>

OK, by request I have attempted to make a file splitter/combiner tool to work with the UniMesh 4.04 plugins to help with using external tools for UV mapping (or whatever).
These two tools I have called the ObjXSplit Importer and ObjXSplit Exporter. They are designed to work in conjunction with the MilkShape "Wavefront OBJ" importer and exporter (built-in). They depend on the external tool not reordering, adding or deleting vertices or faces. The vertex location, normal data and UV data can be changed, as long as it still aligns with the original model data.

To avoid repeating the whole step-by-step usage instructions, I ask you to read the objxsplitreadme.txt file included with the distribution (attached).
If you're too smart to read the directions, you must at least know that when re-assembling the file, the .obj must be imported before trying to use the ObjXSplit importer tool to import the .objx file the exporter produced.

I have released this seperate from the main UniMesh package as a trial toolkit. If the two tools work right and are useful for people, I will include them in a future update of the plugins. If this turns out to be a bad idea, well, it was an experiment, and not much to be lost except your time trying it.

I have successfully been able to split a clothing mesh into two files (.obj and .objx) and reassembled them and then exported the mesh (using the UniMesh 4.04 exporter) and placed it into BodyShop. So, while there may be some model format issues I have overlooked, it does work.

Any comments or issues on these, as well as the rest of the UniMesh package, you can post in this thread where I will check first. If you post them anywhere else and I might not see them on a timely basis.

<* Wes *>

Thanks, Wes!

How do you download mesh......What is Mesh exaclay i never got what mesh IS. and with milksqake or whatever its called all i got for it was a female skeliton.....how to i mod their boobs to make them big....im confused?

OK, I'm stumped, and it may just be something I have to wait for until the Normal maps are figured out. I'm still trying to increase the vert count to allow better stretching of the breasts for my size project, and I got it technically working, but it looks like crap due to shadows etc. I've been using Dr Pixel's obj import trick, but it still seems to distort areas I'm not even modifying.

I've attached a few files here from my WIP, the aftopnaked_hi is what I'm starting with (it was imported using Unimesh 4.04). Then I import the breasts_hi.obj, weld the areas modified, then clean up the old faces being replaced. It looks pretty decent in MS, but in SimPE and the game it looks dreadful. Is there anything I can do with it at this stage, or is this all known issues?

The packages included are the mesh and a top referring to it for test, to see what I'm getting at this point.


Thanks!

The only unimplemented normal right now is the bumpmap normals, which are used to map the surface during bumpmapping. Their presence or absence does not affect rendering of objects that do not have both the proper alpha texture map AND the proper 4 lines in the MATD to flag them as bumpmapped.

The ordinary Normal Maps have been figured out for quite some time. One normal per vertex, no more and no less (for Sims 2). By that, I mean you cannot share one, even identical, it must be paired with the vertex. If you have the same coordinates, but want different normals for different faces, you need to duplicate the vertices.

But there is no manual edit normal editing available in the less-than-overblown-price-range 3D editors.

If you want to try looking at your normals, here's how:
Export the mesh using the DirectX (JT) expoter plugin (from MilkShape).
Then you can use the "MeshView" (Mesh Viewer) from the DirectX SDK to open the .x file you exported, and use the menu to select normals.

A bunch of yellow rays will mark each normal, and will point where the normal is pointed. That's how I analyzed what was happening with the shadows under the skirt hems, etc. Of course, the normal is used by the rendering engine in the game to calculate the direction 'out' from the faces. When you smooth normals, you are having the normals set to a midpoint between 'out' on two or more faces that share a common vertex. This way, on rounded objects, the game can calculate the lighting for all the points between the normals in a fashion that eliminates the sharp edges, giving a smooth, rounded look.

If you're welding vertices at places you don't want smoothed, like a dress hem, you'll end up with one normal, which seems to be set by MilkShape about midway between the two previous normals that were there.
Anyway, I got your file and I'll look at it here, but don't know if I'll be as much help as Dr. Pixel on this issue.

<* Wes *>

Alright, I know what is wrong with your model, but I don't know how to tell you to fix it. Since uploads are still off-line at this writing, I cannot attach a screenshot of the normals to help explain it, either.

The normals from the underside of the breasts have been smoothed such that where the breasts join the belly the normals point straight down, and, of course, on the upper belly right under the breasts the normals point more-or-less as you would expect, straight outwards from the body center.

It's those smoothed normals from underneath the breasts pointing downwards that trigger the rendering engine to cast a shadow on the areas just below the bottom of the lower bra line.

I guess that you could try various combinations of smoothing and not smoothing on your .obj import. Smoothing would rearrange the normals from what was imported in the .obj file. I don't know a definitive cure.

I did notice that the vertices where the breasts join the body are not welded. You could try welding them and then combinations of not resmoothing and resmoothing to see if you can make a difference.

BTW, that's a nice piece of modelling work.

<* Wes *>

Thanks a ton for looking at it, and for your explanation of the normals... things make a lot more sense now. At least it sounds like it's fixable, I just don't know the in's and out's of the more advanced aspects of the modelling tools. Up till now, all I've done is move vertices around, this is the very first time I've tried creating new parts... but knowing what Marvine was able to achieve with the Bodybuilder mesh, I know it's possible to really bump up the detail on these models.

Thanks for the compliments... Divide Edge is a wonderful tool, so far it's pretty much all I've used for this one. Have to do it one edge at a time though, the Subdivide 2, 3 and 4 features don't divide the faces properly for what I'm trying to achieve, and doing it by hand gets me exactly what I want where I want it. I'll have to check the welds though, I thought I got everything... maybe I missed a few. I'll keep experimenting, and hopefully one of the expert modellers will come along and save me

It seems to me there has to be a tool to Smooth Selection or something, instead of just Smooth All... I haven't found it yet though. Maybe I should read some of the documentation on MS3d...

The way to smooth ony selected faces:

* Checkmark "Autosmooth" on the groups tab.
* Select the Faces
* Use Vertex/Weld Together

Make sure to un-check "Autosmooth" to avoid having everything that you weld smoothed too.

But as Wes pointed out, this is a rather hit-or-miss kind of thing, since you really can't control how the normals are "aimed".

BTW, you can also use the built-in "Selection Editor" on the Tools menu to view the normals (among other things) - it's quite handy, since it allows you to hide/unhide the different groups while you are viewing. So, you can see right away what affect your editing is having on the normals - unfortunately you don't have much control over them, but at least you won't be in for a huge shock later in the game. It's fun to play with, anyway.