Dangit. >< I should have known about the multiple bone assignment thing, it's just been so long since I've worked with 3D files.
Guess I'm stuck with Milkshape's horribly lousy UVW mapping tools. D:

Thanks for the info. :3

i've noticed with unimesh you can not use Bump maps why is this ? and can it be altered so its usable on meshes transfered through unimesh ?

Melanise,

Unimesh does not currently create working bumpmaps for your mesh. But there is a simple technique you can use to re-enable the bumpmap. If your original mesh had a bumpmap, when you are done editing your mesh.

Look at the gmdc in plugin view, and use EXPORT and export as a smd.
Then Import the file you just exported, making sure to enable the bumpmaps. Simple.

-- I just added that text to the tutorial. I haven't had time to do the detailed thing with screenshots, circles and arrows, but it's not too difficult to do.

ty so much ^.~ this tutorial is so detailed there is no way a mistake can be made during the process lol thank you tigger

Edit-- oh ya where would i enable the bump map when i export in smd format ?

Did you try exporting with smd and importing? It should be obvious when you do it, I think it might be on the import.

Wow, Tig! This is an outstanding tut. You absolutely rock

melanise,

As your project has shifted to involve a lot more than this tutorial covers and in more detail, I've moved the conversation to here: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=210013

I have a question..........

I am following your tutorial. But, I have a mesh that already has the fat morph. So, do I follow the same steps I did with the mesh in putting new shoes/legs onto it??

Cultjam, the instructions if followed told you _not_ to import the fat morph to begin with, and then we recreate it later.

I will explain why - if you are combining mesh parts (instead of say, just moving some vertices) the order of the vertices in the mesh can change as you regroup and combine pieces and all that.

In order for the morph to work, the order of the vertices in the morph must exactly match the order of the vertices in the body mesh. After I carefully did my edits multiple times on both the body and morph mesh, and then had the morph go explodey on me, I came to the conclusion that doing it that way is _too unreliable_ and I'd rather do the work once than 3 times. So that is how I teach it for advanced edits. Do your original work on your body only, get it totally working, test in the game, etc - then follow the steps to recreate your fat morph. As long as you only move/scale the vertices to make your fat morph, it will work perfectly and save you a lot of headaches.

Thank you. I will have to just follow your tutorial from the begining all the way instead of skipping steps.

I have a question............

I went thru this tutorial (step by step this time!! And I have learned alot more from this) I have made a new mesh, but what I want to do with this mesh is add the long bootcut jeans. I used the mesh from one of the formals, as it was easier for me to re-make the kind of shoe I like. But, the mesh foot doesnt match up with the foot on the bootcut jeans. There are more vertexes on my mesh than the one on the bootcut jeans mesh.

Is there another tutorial on this??

P.S. Thank you for the tutorials. They have helped me grow tremendously.

cultjam, I've run into that also sometimes, at which point I've pulled hair, sometimes collapsed 2 points into 1 and then fixed the uvmap, or gone looking for another mesh to use for the other part. Counting up those vertices and making sure they match around is the best/easiest way to get parts to join together.

I've also had some luck in uhm..... how to describe this w/o writing a tutorial, I've got a backlog on them... I've snapped 2 vertices to the corresponding other mesh part and left the stray one in the center between them -- if both of the two vertices can have identical bone assignments, this can work. Then I take the 5 vertices and I force them to be in a totally straight line with each other by using scale, set to center of mass, leaving 1 value to be '1' and setting the others to zero (I think). If you experiment with this idea, you should be able to get things to align on each other in a straight line. Then I might rotate the unit (still keeping all 5 vertices selected) as a whole, so that the perfect alignment is retained. Also all 5 have to have identical bone assignments, then there's no gap as the sim animates in that area, because they'll move as a unit. Course with this trick you still have to go and adjust your uvmap, as clearly there will be distortion in your final shape.

Tiggerypum,

Ill give it a try and see what happens.

Thanks

Hi Tiggerypum, wonderful tute, again. I know how long it's taking me to learn all of this; I can't even begin to express my admiration of you, HP, Faylen, Dr Pixel and the other tute writers, for how much work has gone into these.

They're very clear and easy to understand.

I have a couple of questions re the way things are done, just because my logical brain is going "why?" and I need to understand before it leads me around in circles or I'll get stuck the first time I try it without being hand-held. *grin*

In Part 6 (Step 37/8), we do the UV mapping, moving the second mesh downwards a bit.

In Part 7 we combine the two meshes.

Then, in Part 8 we need to move all of the vertices of the former second mesh for the UV map.

Can you explain to me why it's done in this order? And would doing Part 7 before Part 6 then negate the need to do Part 8 (ie, would joining the meshes mean the vertices move together while UV mapping? I have no idea). I don't doubt you at all, I'm just wondering.

Sorry, another q. When editing the fatmorph, do we need to assign weights again?

Also, with the new version of Milkshape, every time I open a new mesh, just after the "Do you want to INCLUDE additional bones?" [sic, I'm not yelling ], there's another box "Some skin weights do not total 100% Do you want these corrected?"

I've been hitting "no" and doing it manually as stated in the tutorial, but should/can I hit yes or no there?

Bethgael, easy part first, Wes added the 'fix underweight bones' routine to the beginning of the newest unimesh and you can just say 'YES' and skip it later. I will update the tutorial, soon as I get time :S

The morph parts of the meshes are only there in order to show where the vertices will move - bone assignments do not matter. Wes' plugin will take the original mesh and the morph mesh and recreate the morph data (which contains the numbers regarding the new placement of the vertices). It's just that we can't edit a messy string of numbers by hand and make sense of it, thus he gives us a mesh to work with

The reason why I have you pull the vertices down a bit and then individually back up is so that you can tell them apart and make a consistant and accurate rejoining of them. In this case it _might_ be that your vertices would line up perfectly, or be just a tiny bit off - but trying to grab vertices in the uvmap that are just a bit off can get really messy. Also, if they're just a bit off, you might move the vertice from the top mesh one time, and the vertice from the bottom mesh another time, thus adding unnecessary distortion to your uvmap.

If you start 'frankesteining' more complex meshes or say, the legs of pants, you'll probably appreciate that they aren't showing up tangled together - the move away is a quick one (when they're not yet regrouped). When you do that you might also find yourself realigning entire columns or rows to accommodate the different mapping of the two original meshes, but I believe you'll get it figured out if that happens.

OK, that makes complete sense to me now. Thankyou.

Is it possible to use this method to combine two meshes if one of them is saved as a milkshape project? Would it work to follow all the steps the same but instead of Unimesh importing the milkshape project using the merge option?

Ameliiya if you import the sim mesh first with unimesh and thus get a proper skeleton, yes. BUT if you additional project has a skeleton in it, that will be a problem and you'll end up with 2 of them. How was this milkshape project created? You could save your additional project out as obj and then import that - but be aware that you must make all the bone assignments on the new pieces.

The Milkshape project was created during one of the meshing tutorials (not this one) where it said to continuously save it as a milkshape project incase you stuff something up. I indeed stuffed it up but now can't figure out how i can use that milkshape project.

Is there a tutorial somewhere that explains how to make bone assignments?

Also thankyou for the fast reply =) Much appreciated.

Edit* I'm also unsure of whether or not it has a skeleton and how to figure that out. *feels stupid*

Well this tutorial covers the mechanics of making bone assignments. To 'fix' bone assignments you'd compare to a working mesh, but that's a lot of bone assignments (like 1500-2500 on a body).

What tool were you using at the time? 'Bodychop'? 'Meshtool' ? I think you can check for a skeleton by looking at the tab about joints and unchecking the thing to show joints/skeleton. Blue circles mean 'skeleton'. Problem is if it was an old tool (from over a year ago?) then it might not be easily salvagable in its current form.

Ok the milkshape file does seem to have a skeleton. I used body shop and followed one and two of these tutorials.

However i have discovered that i do have the milkshape file as a SimPE file. But when i import it with Sims 2 Unimesh importer V4.07 i get this error:

"ERR: Too Many P4 Block A Data Items"

Almost always, that error comes from a second copy of the bones in the joints panel.

A Sims2 body mesh has 65 joints in the GMDC, always (they are not all assigned to anything, but they need to stay there). If you imported a second mesh with skeleton, there will be 130 joints. You will see a set that starts with "auskel" and then later you will see the whole list repeat. If you want to salvage the file, carefully delete the SECOND set of joints.

What you want is the original 65 joints, which are the first on the list, all in the original order. You don't want 65 that have two of one and another name missing.

<* Wes *>

Ok done and done. After deleting the joints i followed the tutorial and everything looked like it was lined up properly, i checked the bone assignments etc etc followed every step, but my mesh has come out all weird with a combination of both meshes (even parts that were deleted). Any ideas?

Thanks for the help Wes, it's very much appreciated and i must say i admire your knowledge.

You can hide groups and not have deleted them. When you load you mesh, go to the GROUPS panel and check how many groups you have there. If this is a huge edit, I usually suggest not importing the fat morph to begin with (how this tutorial is written) at which point there should be only 1 body group and that's it. Or you might see 1 body and one fatmorph. If you see more than that, you'll need to carefully click on the different parts of the mesh there and the 'hide' button to hide and show them (it toggles) and figure out which groups are extra and delete them.

The other possibility is that in SimPE you didn't say 'replace' but used 'add' to read in your new mesh parts. So double check that you only have 1 gmdc in your file. I have no idea what it'll do if there are 2 gmdcs in there.

Another question............

I have used Al's shoe and leg in this tutorial to make my mesh. When I import, it says theres something unassigned. Which, is my legs. Should I use Dr. Pixels direction in assigning my legs??
I used the bone tool as well. Everything matches and weights. I must have missed something, again??

Thanks