I don't want to offend anybody, but in my opinion so far every attempt to make
a floor level bed failed. Sure, you can shift the bed through the wall like a painting,
but then the animations become messed up.

I'm not sure if someone ever tried to just create a lower bed and at the same time
lowering the slots accordingly, but I've got the feeling that it wont work either with
animations (it doesn't work well with chairs, so I guess it's the same).

So, my solution is simple: f**k the bed, let's use the sleeping bag from Generations EP.
Sure, we can only make single beds/futons (at first, at least) and they wont allow to relax
(who cares) or woohoo (but maybe that can be added using a custom script), but they'll
work as they are supposed to work.

If cloned, the sleeping bag can be used in the basegame, the script and the animation+jazz
are already in a patched basegame, but of course it wont be legal to distribute its original
meshes+textures. That's not a big deal though: let's just change/modify the meshes and
use brand new textures.

Unfortunately, I'm terrible in all those things, so here's the result:

I kept the original textures and simply made the mesh larger and longer.
It went all right with the MODL, but when I exported the modified MLOD
from MilkShape I got a warning about unassigned bone[s] (I think the
joints are used to... ehm.. "place" the sim's limbs and to "animate" the
mesh giving the impression that the sim is pulling the sheet/blanket).
EDIT: the joints in the mesh are also used to animate it and simulate
the sims' breathing while they sleep
Everything seems to work fine despite that warning.

EDIT: I also updated the bounding box (VPXY) and the footprint (FTPT),
I didnt change the object "barycenter" or focal point so the two routing
slots (one for children and one for the other ages) still work perfectly.

The "enter the bed" animation plays pretty well, the one to get out of
bed also but, of course, to make a floor level bed or futon, we also have
to change the original rolled bag mesh, we can use the same mesh used
before but with the sheet/blanket rolled at the bottom of the bed (I didn't
do it, it's too hard for me). We should also remove the "put in inventory"
interaction and leave the "opened" bed/futon always placed, that can be
done using a custom script for the object (I think I can handle that).

Anyone want to give it a try?
Can we cross post this in the meshing and/or object creation subfora?

I got permission to use wonderful meshes+textures to make a working
japanese futon, unfortunately I'm not good enough to replace the original
meshes and re-assign the joints to the vertices of the new mesh.

If anyone is interested I'm willing and available to collaborate for the parts
I think I can do (coding, cheering and enjoying the final result).

EDIT: for obvious reasons I can't share what I've done so far, but any
decent mesher (is that a word?) can do it better in 5 minutes.

EDIT2: See? This is what happens when you leave me unattended at the meshing booth:

Note to self: remove the feathers special effect from the animation.
Where before there was the rolled bag, now we have to put the rolled sheet/blanket
so the animation will still make sense.

I still have to fix some details (presets and shadow) then I'll upload a futon, but since
I'm a lousy modder I'll settle for a simplified version because I lack the skill and the
patience to solve some issues. But if someone will ever want to improve my mod or
make another one, I'd like to write here some notes that maybe can be of some help.

I copy/pasted the sleeping bag script to create a custom one in order to remove the
"Put in inventory" interaction, use a custom jazz script (so I can use my own version
of some animations) and make other minor changes (remove the debuff you sometimes
get, like the backache, for example). I made copies of the sims's animations to get in the
bed and leave the bed in order to remove the feathers special effects. I made copies
of the sleepingBag animations cause I needed to make some changes there too and
this is were I failed.

In case you are wondering about legal issues, even ignoring the [minor] changes
I made, all these resources make part of a patched basegame, they were not
been taken from the Generations EP, so they are redistributable as a mod (right?).

In the last post I said that I got a warning from MilkShape when exporting the "closed"
(I'm wrongly using this word as opposed to "rolled") sleeping bag modified mesh
(it seems that if you move a vertex it loses its "link" with the joint it was assigned to),
well, that's part of the problem too.

What I mean with "simplified version" is that I eliminated the object animations and since
it's difficult for me to clearly explain the reason with words I'll try to show you what I mean
graphically. Here you can see some frames from two animations that run simultaneously
and perfectly synchronized, on the left there's my prototype and on the right the regular
sleeping bag.

[the tag-lines refer to the image below them]

Routing to the object completed, the sitting animation is coming and will be followed
by the "get in the bed" animation.

Feathers special effect removed, even when sims wake up (had to "clone" the CLIPs,
fortunately those resources are relatively small sized, and use S3PE's "Grid" to delete
that specific special effect entry). As you can guess looking at the shadow, the "sheet"
is bending (and I don't want that), but I'll explain that better with the next image.

This is when sims wake up, but happens also when they go to sleep as mentioned.
As you can see, the bed sheet (not sure if it's the right word, I mean the part of the
bed under the sim) bends like it does for the sleeping bag, but that looks awful since
we're trying to do a futon or floor level bed.
He didn't have a nice dream, that "angular monstrosity" is probably due to the warning
I mentioned earlier about an unassigned joint.

This is the first frame (as showed in MilkShape left viewport) of the CLIP
a2o_sleepingBag_stop_sleepingBag. To avoid the "blanket's bending" I though
about two solutons: edit the animation leaving in all frames the joint at its initial
position or unAssign the joint in the sleepingBag mesh. None of them worked,
I also tried some variations (for example keeping at the same position other
joints, like _bind_1_top that seems a "father" joint).


I probably made some mistakes and maybe stopped trying too soon (after modifying
the animation I saw some changes but after several attempts without good results I
got discouraged - keep in mind that meshing and animations are not my thing) and
I decided to remove the animations completely, so in my mod you'll see a sudden
change of the futon mesh instead of a more smooth transition granted by an animation.

Another reason why I give up on the object's animations is that I'm now using a new
mesh, completely different, and I don't have the skill (and, again, the patience) to
correctly assign the right vertices to their respective joints.