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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 17th Jun 2020 at 6:57 AM
Default Mesh explodes in Body Shop
I'm back after a week, this time with a whole new issue! My mesh explodes in Body Shop.

I searched around for a bit and noticed some posts were saying it's caused by double skeletons. I noticed my mesh had some extra joints at the center of the mesh, so I deleted them in an attempt to fix it. However, I think it just made it way worse.

Here's my mesh in Body Shop before I deleted the extraneous joints:


Here's my mesh after I deleted the extraneous joints:


For reference, all my groups have been commented on, and I've made sure that they're correct. Here's one for reference (if you're wondering: yes, I did indeed name the group shoe instead of shoes):


I have a joint named "joint08", "joint56", and "123456." I know 123456 is from when I renamed auskel! I'm not sure about the other two, though. joint08, whenever I select it, is nowhere to be found. joint56 is in the same location as 123456: in the center of the mesh at the very bottom.

Oh, if anyone's wondering, I did account for the groups in the property set! 0, 1, and 2 because my mesh has 3 groups. There are no morphs because it sounds daunting as of right now.
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 17th Jun 2020 at 4:47 PM Last edited by simmer22 : 17th Jun 2020 at 8:12 PM.
First try naming 123456 back to "auskel", and export. If that doesn't work, read on.

Make sure you've extracted a BODY, TOP or BOTTOM mesh for the proper AGE and GENDER, depending on which kind of mesh you're making (AF/AM/EM/EF/TF/TM/CU, and for the last ones you'd only need body meshes - PU/BU. I keep a set in a folder, and use them for a bunch of things). Needs to be a completely untouched mesh directly from SimPE, as a Unimesh file (Age/Gender "bodynaked", "topnaked" or "bottomnaked" is fine, so afbodynaked for adult female if you're making a body mesh for adult female, for instance). For this you just need the skeleton, you don't need to import the morphs or worry about the actual mesh, and these are the easiest to remember the entire set for because they're the same name for all.

Name 123456 back to "auskel", then export as a Unimesh file (if you can't, that's fine, you may not have to worry about it).

Then open an empty Milkshape window.

Import the mesh you extracted from SimPE Import the (borked) mesh you exported. If you get asked about importing a second skeleton, click "NO". If you get asked about morphs, you may want to click no to that, too (you can add morphs later).

In theory, the skeleton should now be fixed, and there should only be one left (if it's not, try doing this over without renaming the joint). There will be a "joint 58" and "joint 08" but that's normal. All the others should have names. The joints in the baby skeleton all have "joint X" names, that's also normal (it's been mostly ifixed in a rig for animation, but not in the rigs exported from SimPE).

It's really when you start seeing double "auskel" or two sets of hair bones you should start to worry.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 17th Jun 2020 at 6:15 PM
There's already an auskel, so I couldn't rename 123456 (should I worry?)
Test Subject
Original Poster
#4 Old 17th Jun 2020 at 7:05 PM
Actually... it seems like I had deleted joint 58 at some point. I think that screwed up the mesh.

With that now present, the mesh doesn't explode. Yet, I notice some questionable things...

When the model poses with her hands on her hips, she has a seem at her neck:


When she T-Poses, the seem is still kinda visible but it's not that apparent:


Also... I notice some vertices whose weighting I need to fix, judging by how jagged they appear in Body Shop:


How would I fix this?
Mad Poster
#5 Old 17th Jun 2020 at 8:26 PM
Did you get the "skin weights need to be corrected" info box when importing the mesh? If you do, you can reimport (do the above again) and then click "yes" to this box. This could fix some of the issues. Otherwise there are a few other ways to fix it (some easy, some harder - but it would honestly be a bit easier to "diagnose" the mesh if I could take a look at it, since it's a bit difficult to see on the picture. If it's just a few stray vertices you could copy/pasta some assignments from nearby vertices, but if it needs a lot of fixes then you may need some other tools).

The neck gap I'm guessing is a weight issue too. It looks like the upper neck vertices are set as 65% neck and 35% spine 2 (in Joints tab). If they're spot on in the right place when in the T-pose and there's no normal issues, it should be enough to set them properly (mark, use dropdown boxes and drag the bars or write in numbers, make sure the "adjust other weights is 100), then click "assign"). If it's still visible, then you'd probably have to do a bit of editing with the Extended Manual Edit and another mesh with the neck intact (a bit similar to how you'd do shoe swaps and such, but copying over info instead of combining them and deleting the extra mesh afterward).
Test Subject
Original Poster
#6 Old 18th Jun 2020 at 12:14 AM
I did not receive such text box when importing the mesh into Milkshape again. However, I did notice that instead of being all blended, the weights appeared to be more harsh and apparent. I also noticed some weird joint stuff occurring.

Alright, I'll give you two files: one where the mesh is as I had it while working on it, and the other when I exported as a .simpe file.
Attached files:
File Type: zip  Diagnose.zip (1.34 MB, 3 downloads)
Description: Contains two versions of the mesh I was working on
Mad Poster
#7 Old 18th Jun 2020 at 1:46 AM Last edited by simmer22 : 18th Jun 2020 at 1:26 PM.
If you see any harsh lines (couldn't spot any, though), make sure Autosmooth is off under Groups BEFORE you import or export anything.

---

(Just needed a bit of sleep)

Anyway, there are some lines, but I think they're from the original mesh and not from Autosmooth, or the hands and legs would've been affected. Some areas are a bit strangely assigned, but I think that's due to grinding the mesh through the conversion process, which doesn't take into account the four levels of joint assignments TS2 meshes usually have in the more complex areas like the chest, and instead smashes it into three levels, causing a few strange decisions here and there.

Also, you have to add comments to both the dress and the body group, or they'll get weird joint assignments when exporting. All groups you export as Unimesh need joint assignments, and everything attached to a body need "NumSkinWgts: 3" or they'll totally screw up. You'll also want to put the "body" group at the top, then "shoe", and then "dress". If all the layers are meant to be non-transparent it doesn't matter, but it can matter if there's transparency for the Shoe or Dress groups.

ModelName: dress
Opacity: -1
HasTangentArray:
NumSkinWgts: 3

ModelName: body
Opacity: -1
HasTangentArray:
NumSkinWgts: 3

(At first I got borked joint assignments, but then I saw the missing comments. When I fixed the comments, the trick about importing the skeleton from another mesh and then importing your mesh did indeed work fine, and all the borked/extra/missing joints were fixed - so definitely try this).

The lines on the shoes and skirts are possible to spot-fix, so it shouldn't be a problem. You basically separate out the faces/vertices that need fixing (can be a tedious process) and then align normals. I also hide parts of the mesh and such to make it easier.

The mesh also doesn't have the mostly neat look of an EAxis TS2/TS3/TS4 mesh where all the vertices are in neat rows which is the ideal placement for joint assignments, but instead has the rougher triangular look of "whatever" that usually comes from for instance when a creator makes a high-poly mesh in Blender and use the Decimate tool to reduce the polycount (or a similar method - there's plenty of ways to get that look), causing the polys/faces to scramble in all directions instead of staying put in neat rows. This makes for somewhat uneven joint assignments and the occasional weird bit poking out where it's not supposed to, often due to lack of geometry. Unfortunately there's not much you can do about it because fixing it is not easy. There are far better ways to reduce polys while keeping the neat look, though some of those do require a bit more work and patience - but end up looking a whole lot better and are much easier to work with, so it's totally worth the time and effort.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#8 Old 18th Jun 2020 at 11:39 PM
What would be these ways of reducing polys? I might redo the whole conversion, so I can get a better result.

I was mostly worried about poly count because I was like, "TS2 is an old game... Can it really handle that?" but it's 2020 and most graphics cards can run it at high settings, so...! I might not even need to lower poly count. Would that be advisable?
Mad Poster
#9 Old 19th Jun 2020 at 2:01 AM
Some pictures:
Mesh flow: https://i.postimg.cc/LXLyxR0R/Flow.jpg
Good = mostly clean lines and mostly square polys (two triangles meeting in a square), and mostly vertices with only four edges. You can't always completely avoid "bad" areas, but the fewer the better (they tend to disrupt normals, create weird shadows, end edge loops, etc.)
Bad = Edges going in all directions, Polys/faces in all shapes and sizes, vertices with more than four edges, impossible to make edge loops, etc.

One way to reduce polys without causing "bad" areas (edge loops and "dissolve edges")
https://i.postimg.cc/Pr5L3Fg9/Screenshot-New-161.png
https://i.postimg.cc/WbYdQwj3/Screenshot-New-162.png
(I can write up a bit more detail later)

It seems TS2 has a limit on just below 30.000 for CAS items without shaders enabled (with shaders it's higher), and any higher will cause meshes to show invisible.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#10 Old 19th Jun 2020 at 3:58 AM
I do have custom lighting... I can't wait to hear your extra details, though! I'm very curious.
Mad Poster
#11 Old 19th Jun 2020 at 11:51 AM Last edited by simmer22 : 19th Jun 2020 at 8:37 PM.
With shaders I mean a graphic effect that's either enabled or turned off ingame. There's some more info in the link here http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php...aps_and_Shaders - you can spot it in action (or not) by looking at pools or on reflections on cars or if there's fish in aquariums and ponds, and I think it's also needed for bump maps to show ingame (at least I got a really "ugly" shock when shaders were suddenly enabled on my new stationary about 11 years ago - everything looked so much better than on my old laptop except all those really awful clothes with borked bump maps - oh boy!). Unfortunately, shaders on also sometimes come with the unfortunate little demon called "pink hell" which turns the game into an unplayable flashing pink screen if you're really unlucky.

With shaders on, the game seems to handle 30.000+ polys perfectly fine, but without shaders, the limit seems to be somewhere below that, roughly in the 25-28.000 area, so it's a good idea to not go too far past that. High-poly and large textures combined with shaders on tend to send a lot of games into pink-flashing hell these days...

Anyway, to do the edge-loop method you need to eliminate triangular faces, so you have only (or mostly) square polys in the areas you want to remove polys. Why? Edge loops don't work for triangular faces. (Why? I Honestly don't know, but it's a good question, and would cut down SO much work). This you can do relatively easy (if Blender is nice) by marking faces and clicking "J". If Blender is not nice (removes edges at random instead of the ones you want it to remove) you can mark the mid-edges manually and do "dissolve edges" on them. I tend to combine these methods a bit, depending on how cooperative Blender is. I do suggest to use Orthographic view and the see-through marking tool (it's next to the vertex/poly/edge selection). Depending on how much experience you have with Blender it could take some time to get the hang of it, but it probably will come in handy later.
(If you need help with the shortcuts, let me know. Dissolve edges is "X", which results in a popup menu with the option, as shown in the pictures above)
Test Subject
Original Poster
#12 Old 19th Jun 2020 at 8:00 PM
Oh, I have custom water, and there are fish in the aquarium. The water has ripples and everything, so I think I have bump maps enabled, actually.

Honestly, I have no experience with Blender, so I'll watch some tutorials later when I have time. Thank you!
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