Full Beginner Accessory Meshing Tutorial – Using Milkshape 3D/Unimesh Plugins

Even though there are a few tutorials on site outlining how to create accessories, I thought I’d write a complete tutorial pulling all the information together with the newbie mesher in mind.

This tutorial will take you through, step by step, how to create a basic accessory – a pair of stud earrings. Although this tutorial is written for a meshing beginner, you will be saving yourself a lot of headaches if you go through Tiggerypum’s excellent Beginner Body Meshing Tutorial #1 first, which you can find here: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=142305

With that tutorial under your belt, you’ll have a good idea of what I’m blabbering on about and should be able to fly through accessory meshing (relatively) stress free! Basic knowledge of Body Shop would also be useful before embarking on this tutorial.

And for those of you who know far more about meshing then I will ever know, please do read through and inform me (gently!) of any mistakes I’ve made.

The tutorial is in nifty PDF format for you to download (it's got to many images to upload into a post sadly).

Enjoy and happy meshing!

Thanks for this. Did you PM the mods and ask them to move this to the tutorial section? You should. I'll look through this when I need to make an accessory and if I have any comments to make, I'll post them.

First of all, I have to comment that although I haven't uploaded any accessories, hair, or clothing meshes here yet, I have been working through all the tutorials on them that are offered here, so I've actually done a few of each type. So, even though I may not have a reputation here for these, I am familiar with how to do them. That said, I was happy to see this tut, especially since it addresses the process of using the PJSE to extract and link the meshes.

Ok, a couple things I've noticed which you may not want to bother changing, but I thought worth mentioning. One, is the suggestion in one of the hair tuts that you move the temp bodyshop file from Savedsims, and put it in a working folder somewhere easy to find, then put all the mesh files in that folder too as you build them. I have found this helpful, and I think it does prevent some possible problems with SimPE getting confused about what links to what.

Second, in part III step 5, where you describe how to tell which 3DIR file is the correct one for that age and gender you are linking you say "To link our texture package to the mesh package for adult females, scroll down to the XMOL file that begins with the letters “af”. Select the 3DIR file directly below the “af” XMOL file – that is the one we wish to link." Two things with this. I haven't found that the 3DIR is 'always' right below the XMOL file, but the two *always* have the same instance number, something that was pointed out by the wonderful DJMur in his (her?) hair tut. Usually it is right under, but when I was doing a hair file I found that the YF one wasn't where it should be.

Your tutorial is wonderfully clear and easy to follow. I enjoyed reading it very much and will likely follow it when I go to make my next accessory. (I usually follow a tut when I do bodyshop meshing because I don't feel confident yet that I won't forget a step and end up with a mess.)

Great tut, very simple to follow and you explain alot. Thanks for taking the time to write this!

Thankies all!

DragonArts - thanks for the suggestions, I'll implement them when I've got time. I never realised that about the 3DIR files so, heck, I'm learning something too :P

To piggyback on dragonarts' point about 3DIR and XMOL files. An easy way to see which 3DIR and XMOL files match is to choose "AllRes" in the Resource Tree, and sort the Resource List by Instance.

Also in the latest version of SimPE, the necessary 3DIR files may not have 6 bits of data if you're creating a brand new mesh. A mesh I made based on a custom mesh had 6 bits. A mesh I created from scratch had only 4 bits of data. In Plugin View the data was titled:

Resource Node
Shape
Material Definition
Material Definition

BTW, thanks for this tutorial. I had a bit of a time finding it, but it's much clearer than the one posted in the tutorial forum. I love tutorials that explain "why" you're taking certain steps, in oppose to just telling you what to do.

hey, I read thrue this tutorial & it was very nice & easy to follow. Some area's were a little differnt than other tutorials as where to save extracted&saved docments but, overall it was very good. Thank you for sharing.