Does anyone know how to import and export into Blender 2.8?
I've been trying to learn to mesh for years, and this is the first time I've felt like I've had any control over a program, but all the plugins I've found are out of date for TS2.
Is there a work flow that I can use that involves going through obj files? I'm concerned about bones and such, but I'm just not experienced enough to anticipate what problems I might encounter going that route.

Try 2.79 (2.78?) instead. I think the plugins are made for this version.

You can probably export OBJs from 2.8 to other programs, though. Not entirely sure how the export settings look in 2.8 but I use these settings in 2.79: https://i.postimg.cc/d0bRhWRH/Screenshot-New-159a.jpg

In 2.79, import/export is in the File menu. I'm guessing it can't be that much different in 2.8

OBJ files don't hold any info about bones/joints or bone/joint assignments. For TS2 you need SMD or some such, I think - the files exported from SimPE are named .5gd or .simpe when exported from Milkshape, but I'm not entirely sure about Blender. You do need the plugins.

If you make plain objects without animations, OBJ files are fine to use.

Well, that's not a bad start at least. Ah... I would not have guessed to check "smooth groups", with all the trouble "auto smooth" has caused me in Milkshape. Very good.

I figured I'd have to go through milkshape if I were doing an obj thing anyways. For now, I'll just figure on doing bone assignments and group comments in Milkshape as a final step.
(It is bodyshop stuff I'm ultimately after, unfortunately. Bodyshop has always been my jam.)

Thank you!

You don't need to go through Milkshape for OBJ items, as long as you make sure to use those settings and place the item in relation to where it's supposed to be ingame. Those settings generally don't give an error, like the default settings will do. I recommend to save the settings as a preset so you don't have to plot them in every time (the + next to where it says "operator presets", save with a new name)

If you don't use Blender plugins for body meshes, you might want to do those kinds of projects with the Unimesh plugins in Milkshape instead. Most tutorials are made for Milkshape, so there's a larger tutorial base to start with. Just keep in mind that while edits, frankenmeshing, conversions and similar are fine to do with Milkshape, it's an awful program for meshing and UVmapping from scratch (Blender is much better there), so which program is best to use depends a bit on what you want to do, really.

I haven't played around with the Blender plugins, but I seem to remember there was an issue with the smoothing, especially when imported into Milkshape and/or directly to SimPE. I think maybe it's a general issue with Blender, as I've seen several 4t2 and 3t2 conversions with seams showing where they shouldn't be. That's possible to fix, though. That's one kind-of advantage of Milkshape, as it allows for somewhat better normal smoothing between seams (has idisadvantages, too - it likes having actual seams where it's supposed to split meshes).

I've successfully imported skinned meshes into Blender 2.8 using the SMD format. Export through Milkshape, then import with this plugin: https://developer.valvesoftware.com...er_Source_Tools

However, there are two big caveats with this method:
- The SMD plugin as provided doesn't preserve the original bone order, which mean it'll be all wrong when you import it back into Milkshape. I made a fix for this, but I've yet to share my edited version of the plugin.
- It doesn't export vertex normals in a way Milkshape always recognizes properly. This leads to dark spot on the mesh. I've yet to look into whether it can be fixed.
My workaround for the later is to also export my model as an OBJ, then use the TSR meshToolkit to transfer the SMD model's bone assignments over the OBJ one with the good normals. Hopefully that makes sense :x

So long story short, editing CaS meshes in Blender 2.8 is doable, but requires a bunch of work arounds. I'd still recommend it because it makes skinning much, much easier.

Dark spots tend to appear between for instance the edge of a top and the flat area underneath, where the mesh has been smoothed in a way that makes it look like the edges are split but they really aren't. Milkshape doesn't always "get" this difference, prefering split edges (also a thing when imported in SimPE - can look fine in Milkshape but get darks pots in SImPE). If the edges are split, they usually won't do the black spot thing. Doesn't work for all meshes, but a clear split works if possible.

Milkshape and SimPE seem to understand when they're supposed to smooth normals when if there's an edge split, though (like between the torso and arms on sim meshes). It's the other way that seems to be the problem.

I think it's an issue with the .5gd format in particular. I've imported a ton of Maya OBJs directly into the game without ever needing to worry about their hard edges. I don't think it's the only issue with the .SMD exporter, though. I tried meshes both with and without split edges and had the same results. I plan on diving into it more when I have the time.

Re, the weird seams on conversions: as far as I've observed, they come from how the object is extracted. Most Sims4Studio meshes somehow end up with split edges. You can usually fix it by selecting the duplicated vertices and merging them together.

I know. It's annoying, but at least there are workarounds. Only problem with merging the vertices is that on occasion the meshing program will throw a tantrum and mess up the UVmap. I don't think I've seen this happen in Blender (smart enough to figure out there are UV seams, I guess), but I have seen it in Milkshape (you get spikes from where the vertex jumps from its original place to the location of the other vertex it was merged with - Milkshape also struggles with UV islands with merged vertices, and will mark and move the marked vertices around both seams even if you just mark one of the seams, so it's better to fix normals or split edges instead of merging vertices whenever Milkshape is in the loop).

Ah, thanks so much for talking this over further, folks!

Azelanne: Great. Those are exactly the kind of details I need. On the offchance you ever feel like that plugin is ready to be used by others, I've followed you.
Yeah, Milkshape is way too hard to do any kind of real meshing in. It's like the MsPaint of modeling programs. I will gladly suffer through some work-arounds to be able to do the creative work with better tools.

As someone who's tried to use Blender exclusively for meshing (still contemplating Milkshape) object meshing is BEAUTIFUL in Blender, so you don't really run into issues there.

However, using SmugTomato's plugin for clothing meshes, it's a little wonky. If it's a Maxis mesh, you can easily import it in, but there is no way to turn off Auto-smoothing with it, which means all (and I mean ALL) of the normals that came with the meshes get taken away (they do get replaced with new normals from Blender, but they're not the same, obviously). That being said, it is possible to mesh with Blender (I'm still trying to figure things out, so bear with me, please!), but so far I'm not having much luck trying to make alpha-editable meshes (which is the primary reason I wanted to do clothing meshes in the first place.)

And Heaven help you if you try to use a custom mesh by someone else: most of the time Blender won't recognize the custom mesh, and instead pull the base mesh it was cloned from. For example, there was a pretty gown I wanted to modify, only to find a jumpsuit waiting for me. And on the off-chance you DO get the custom mesh to show up, it's not pretty. I've been told this has to do with internal naming in the package, but I'm not sure how to fix that so that the right mesh shows up in Blender.

Therefore, if you have Milkshape, might just be better to use it for clothing, and Blender for objects at this point, until we figure out more for Blender (because Blender's features do make clothing-meshing a lovely future possibility).

You can fix the normals in Milkshape, either by having it split up in Blender and then fixing the seams, or by having everything merged together and splitting up in Milkshape. Or a mix. Depends what works best for you, really.

I don't do a lot of clothes, so I tend to use Milkshape for simple clothing edits and Blender for objects. I sometimes use Blender for clothing details, but not so much. Whatever works, really. I haven't tested out the plugins, so I mostly do whatever works at the time. I know how to do bone assignments manually in Milkshape, so it's not a big problem as long as it's not in a difficult area (upper torso and pelvis/hip area are more complex, while arms, legs, head, and small details are usually relatively simple).

Joselle: I'm not clear under what circumstances Blender would be able to pull meshes from the game itself (re: pulling the base mesh it was cloned from.)

simmer22: It seems like building components in blender and assembling in milkshape is the way to go.
I've only done a couple simple object edits so far to get warmed up, but I'm starting to get the hang of it.

@AlfredAskew It's kind of weird: I tried to export the mesh from a converted outfit (either a 3t2 or a 4t2) and wound up with a completely different mesh. This happened with several meshes, so I really got confused and frustrated; SmugTomato stated "The add-on just imports what it can read. If it loads a tracksuit the GMDC was a mesh of a tracksuit, probably something on the SimPE side or a mixup with filenames." The only meshes that work consistently are non-custom meshes from the Sims 2 for me, hence why I figured I'd warn you, in case you ran into the same problem.

Whoa... That sounds super weird!
I haven't gotten around to trying the plugin at all, but I'll let you know if that happens for me, and track what I'm doing. Maybe if I can reproduce it we can figure out what's happening.