ok got it.. and so i have created a new additional mesh to add to my sims mesh i have the UV map for it already through assigning a new texture do i do the same thing if i wanted a bmp map for my additional mesh ? or once i've made the first colour map does it automatically do this ??.. i'm so confused

Edit-- i read Dr pixels tutorial for UV mapping new items and i did this but when i save it as an object file (wavefront) and i open my sim mesh in milkshape then export the obj file that i was workign on and it has no texture with it O.o i dont get it .. is it because i have to assign it another one ? or will it go on the colour file for the sims mesh when i group it with the base mesh ?

Wow, I can barely understand what you have tried or what you're trying to do, it would need to be really step-by-step if you want me to say, give recommendations or corrections, because frankly, I don't know what part of what you're doing what with.

#1 obj files do not have bone assignments, so if you're building something fresh (and some of the tutorials here are on the old side) you can use obj format for your PIECES that you'll then need to add to your mesh. That also works if you're grabbing parts from an already created mesh. After that you'll need to do bone assignments on all those vertices still - use the body mesh or another maxis mesh as your guide for the values. (Al's shoes also happen to have been saved in obj format)

Or as you're using unimesh - just make a new group and build your parts there. Uvmap them in milkshape, and put their pieces someplace that's not being used by the sims' outfit, arms and legs, so that once you join your groups together they can all use the same graphic.

Then you'll modify the graphic to have all the textures on it. When your mesh is done, the parts and the comments must be the same as they were for the original mesh (when you regroup the name and comments are lost, so play attention to my instructions about that)

ohh okies i got it, sorry i was so fustrated yesterday i couldnt figure out why it kept telling them there was an error when i got into SimPE when i tried to replace the new GMDC that i had just modified with the original sims2 mesh. what i basically started doing was creating the mesh for the hood in milkshape on its own adding the UVMAP and adjusting it so it was the same hight as the sims shoulders (used your body templates), i then deleted those and exported the new hood mesh in *wavefront.obj* format i then got the sims2 mesh which i carried through the whole SimPE process properly as i know this off by heart and exported imported the GMDC using unimesh. After doing this i imported my hood mesh which i had saved as a (.obj) file and imported again with wavefront i noticed the material i gave the hood didnt come with it so that confused me O.o, but neither did the sims2 mesh i was altering so i just ignored that and assigned the verticie at the tip of each seam to a particular verticie on the front of the sims body, and i basically thought i was finished so i copied the sims2 meshes comments, regrouped the mesh and my hood together named it exactly the same as it was before and pasted the comments bac into the comments section, now i'm having a slight feeling that the error has something to do with me not adding the hood to the morphed meshes also but i was thinking if that is the case would i just import my hood again and assign the hood to the morphed body's exactly the same as i did the skinny mesh ?

melanise,

Hmm, well your mesh and the fat morph would have to have the exact same number of vertices - usually if I've made some major changes, I simply duplicate the body group, fix the name and comments, and then do some simple scaling (do not add/delete vertices, it will break the morph at that point) to make the morph group similar in shape to other fat morphs. (and I delete any other fat morphs I might have used for reference when I'm done)

You can reassign materials to your mesh and double check what the uvmap(s) look like.

On the other count, the most common mistakes that can make ugly SimPE errors is to try to import a unimesh-gmdc when unimesh gave you an error, because that file will not be complete -- or to accidently replace the gmnd instead of the gmdc (yes, I did that once myself!)

lol there's my problem, ok so i will duplicate the slim mesh with the new hood, make a new group give it the exact same name as the morph body and also add the comments from the original morph body and just basically alter the body so it looks fat like you show on your tutorial ? i can understand that thankyou tig i will give that a shot.

also will i have to change the pregnant body aswell ? seen as its there to edit in the groups menu.

Edit: ok i tried what you said and for all the body forms body, morphfat and morph preg but i still got an error for that saying unassigned bones excist i tried giving the hood the same specification as the uper half neck area of the sims body but still i get this message. in this image i have tried again trying to assigning the mesh to the body i regrouped and changed the comments and name but no luck. i changed the whole hoods bone assingments to match the back of the sim and the front pieces which are connected to the chest area i changed them so that match the vertixce i snapped it to on the chest

In the version you are showing, you just have 1 group body - which is fine for a start, you can debug that and then later rework that file to have all the correct groups and comments. You _can_ do pregnancy, but it will not be usable by anyone unless they are using one of the pregnancy hacks, the game will not by default use it, so most of the time you need not bother.

Someplace you have a vertice that doesn't have a bone assignment, let me check how to find it... You could try using the vertex menu and 'show underweight bones' and then look at the values on those vertices. (they should show up red/selected)

Only your <body> group must have bone assignments... the morphs do not carry bone data, they are only used to calculate the change in shape when the sim becomes fat (or preg)

okie dokie, would this by any chance have something to do with my hood ? because the part that i circled is the upper bac of the sim and i selected the hood also and assined that section in particular with the same bones as one of the vertices on the bac so the whole of thats section has the same bone asignment, when you say one might be missed out how do you mean ? i'm sorry its so hard to understand certain things sometimes >.< i will be over the moon when i get the hang of this. so your saying that a vertex from the hood was missed out ? should i snap together the bits i can then do a weight fix then check the value of the hood and the back ?

I expect that you somehow missed a vertex on your hood (or more) but it could be *anywhere*. Read what I wrote carefully. Did you try the 'show underweight' command. Did anything turn red?

i will give that a wurl and hopefully that solves the problem

wooohoo alright! i finally figured out how to assign a new mesh and everything else thank you so much for your support tigger i appreciate it so much ^.^, it looks great and connects to the back perfectly and moves with the sim (thank god >.<) my other crazzy issue is the gap i see on my sims neck which i never saw in bodyshop (i never moved the body in milkshape i hope O.o) also the arms look quite wierd not sure how to explain how funny they look lol take a look as hopefully there is a solution for this i tried checking the assignments on the arms to check if any had been left out and there were a few at -1 so i changed those it change one arm tried it for the other arm and didnt get a good result i'm totally stuck and as the for the neck GRRRR its a nightmare lol nothing goes right does it O.o

Okay.... hmm, I'm seeing something that looks odd in terms of the uvmapping on the front of the outfit also.

This is what I suggest you do.

Take your current project, delete everything but the hood. Export as a gmdc with a new unique name - like 'hoodonly' or something.

Now start NEW. Import an original maxis gmdc. Are you doing this as a full body outfit, or a top only? Import it without morphs, let's just get your fit version working correctly.

Now import your hoodonly gmdc, and don't add more bones (that would be the skeleton).

Copy the comments from the body group, regroup your two groups into one, paste in the comments, name the group body (I'm assuming this is a full body mesh) and then export your new gmdc.

Now go ahead and put that into your mesh file and test it in game. Make sure the hood behaves well. Go ahead and recolor your new mesh with a temporary texture, preferably with a pattern on it, just to make sure that the uvmap now works well for the hood and body.

Now go back and start modifying your gmdc further, make one set of changes at a time and save your gmdc with a new name each time, so that you can go and test and if something gets really broken, you can revert to your previous version.

So if you're going to give that outfit some sleeve shape, go ahead and change that, then export again and test again, and so on.

Your edits on the replacement body will go faster than the first time, you'll have a better idea of what changes you want to make (at least it's always the case for me, when I start over and redo a project)

Besides the UV issues, it looks like parts of the mesh have a single bone assignment, while the rest is fine. For example, look at the shoulders (which looks just like the pre-BodyChop plugin versions).

This would likely happen if new vertices were created, and were assigned via the MilkShape joints panel. Since there would be no extra bone assignments or skin weightings like BoneTool inserts, the exporter would export those vertices as being assigned 100% to whatever bone was selected in the joints panel.

Using the BoneTool will, of course, fix all that, even now, as long as she goes over all the new vertices. The first assignment showing in BoneTool is always the same one that is assignable in the joints panel in MilkShape, and the exporter is smart enough to know that if there is only one bone with no weight specified, then the weighting will be fixed at 100% (this allows single-assignment [animated object] meshes to be made without needing to use the BoneTool).

<* Wes *>

Good point Wes, and I have no idea how some of the bone assignments got the way they did, because I _never_ instruct people to use the milkshape tool, but the unimesh ones (this thread was split off from the Unimesh 3 tutorial) There was also no reason I could think of for any of those bone assignments on the arms to be touched, which is why I recommended starting over.

ty tigger and wes and yes the topic started to drift lol erm i will start over keeping the hood but how and what assignments will i give the hood ? i gave the hood verticies the same assignment as the upper back of the sim body so even i dont know how the arms became involved but come to think of it i selected the whole upper half of the body (above the chest area) and did a unimesh bone tool check and where i saw (nojoint) -1 i changed it which wasnt totally smart but i couldnt think of what was causing an error unassigned bones exist message from showing up.

Edit: also tig when you said to keep the hood, do i delete the body off my hood so that it still has assignments or shall i start over and maybe copy the assignments from the previous hood and put them on a new one ? that way i dont have to touch the new imported body mesh, just snap the two front pieces of the hood to the chest so they are not sticking up in the air.

ok everything is sorted it works perfect thank you so much wes and tig i really appreciate the help i knew i would gett he hang of it with great help thanks a load i will show working pic up on here when i am done so others can see the results lol 1 quick question though i need to know the process of enabling bump maps to the mesh seen as unimesh dont cover that >.< please any help ? i exported with smd format then imported back using the export and import button on the SimPE gmdc tab area and when i imported it didnt ask me if i wanted to enable bump maps just stuff about weights so i deleted the file it made and continued with my unimesh

Edit: Never mind i have resolved the issue i'm really happy thanks alot!

OK! been ages lol i havnt found time to take screens and post so here it is thanks again wesh and tigger for helping me those tutorials help so much this is what i've always wanted to persue and you've made everything much clearer lol can only imagine how many tutorials i've read over the past 2 years >.< thanks again Bump Maps enabled and fat Morph oh and not forgetting nthe neck is fixed lol guess that was all part of the assignment mix up >.<

I'm glad you got ot working. I wanted to add a little trick, just for future reference -

The easist way to find un-assigned vertices is to use MilkShape's "Joints" tab - do NOT try to assign them with it, but it does have a way to select only vertices that are completely un-assigned, instead of having to go through a bunch of them in the bone tool looking for -1.

Just make sure all morph groups are hidden (they should have no assignments anyway), then on the Joints tab click the button [SelUnassigned]

Any un-assigned vertices will turn red, and then you can open the BoneTool to fix them.

ty for that Dr Pixel ^.~ your tutorial is what i started off on lol then found tigers and branched from there thanks alot and your way of finding un- assigned vert's is better i'll defenitely use that technique