Hair meshing fail. Scalp disappears?

[twisted FATE xx]

I'm working on hair, for the first time ever, and I'm already beating my head against the wall in frustration. Arghh. After this, I'm sticking with body meshes and objects. Jesus.

Well, the situation is this: I've finally cobbled together a mesh that looks pretty decent in Milkshape. But no matter what, whenever I build my new mesh package, replace the GMDC with my new hair, and link it to the recolor, the scalp disappears. And I end up with this:



ARGH. My brain is fried from trying to fix this so many times. Google and searching around the forum has failed me, and I can't for the life of me figure this out. Can anyone who's more familiar with hair help me out here?

[Theraven]

Have you gone through the base hair tutorial at MTS2? I think it should explain most of the hair meshing. I've not made any hairs myself (went straight at accessories), but those tutorials should explain most of what you need to know.
And you did bone assignments, right?

[twisted FATE xx]

Oh, I have all of the hair meshing done, that's no problem. I just can't get it to show up in Bodyshop. >.< I'm thinking it might be because I have several extra groups? I'm not sure, but I don't think I'm building the packages or whatever right. Ah well. Thank you for your quick reply, theraven! <3

[Theraven]

you should really use as many groups as the original package had. Also, it's a good idea to name the groups the same as the original ones. Otherwise problems can easily happen.

[twisted FATE xx]

It's got about twelve layers, and none of them can be merged without screwing it up. There's just no way that you can make it work having just three layers like the plain Maxis hairs have. I know that a long time ago, Nouk had a fifteen group hair mesh that she let you clone from so that you can easily create a new hair without having to go through all the trouble. It's a shame that she's not around anymore, I could definitely use her help, since she has so much experience with creating hairs. 

[Theraven]

I'm definitely not an expert on hair meshing (I do know some of meshing in general), but isn't it so that you need one layer for the base hair, one for the top alpha layer, and one for the bottom (maybe even two or four extra layers if you've got a very detailed mesh)?
If you UVmap it correct, it could work like that. The less layers you have to work with, the better it is (usually, anyway)

[BlooM]

If you have more meshgroups then the original maxis hairmesh you do have a problem
Every meshgroup is linked to a txmt file wich is linked to your texture file.
This linking is done in your recolor file.

I discovered and wrote a tutorial on how to add more texture files(and txmt's) to your recolor file here:
http://www.insimenator.org/index.php/topic,51352.0.html


However, in your case you should atleast see the original meshgroupsnames.
The head itself should be visible, that is a basic meshgroup you always use.
So, fix those names first if you named them difrent.
when using Milkshape you must name the meshgroup(and its settings) in the comment box.
If you can not solve it, then upload the mesh and recolor file here so i can have a look.

[Tenshii~Akari]

I'm definitely not an expert on hair meshing (I do know some of meshing in general), but isn't it so that you need one layer for the base hair, one for the top alpha layer, and one for the bottom (maybe even two or four extra layers if you've got a very detailed mesh)?
If you UVmap it correct, it could work like that. The less layers you have to work with, the better it is (usually, anyway)

My thoughts exactly.    

Twisted, just as a helpful tip, having each part of your hair mesh as completely separate groups may seem easier, but it's actually making more work for you and potential retexturers of your mesh in the future.    Even Nouk claimed that having so many different alpha groups was one of her biggest problems earlier on, as it was a beast to do retextures or alpha edits of her earlier alpha meshes.  (Trust me, I can also agree with that part from experience... as much as I love her earlier alpha hairs, the amount of work required to texture them was, and still is, quite overwhelming and at times frustrating...)  

It's very possible to fix your mesh so that even all twelve parts can be assigned to at least two groups, just like theraven mentioned.  Nouk explains how to optimize such hair meshes in this tutorial, which of course would require you to edit the Opacity values in either Milkshape or in SimPE* to have them appear correctly.  

*(Not elaborated too much in actual tutorial: Click on the GMDC resource, and then go to the tab that says "Groups" above the Models checklist.  You can click on the group names in the "Group Section" list, and edit their opacity values.)

Of course, if you have parts of your mesh that absolutely require more or separate mesh groups, and the hair you plan on linking the mesh to doesn't have that many available, the tutorial BlooM made will surely become your best friend for that part.  

[twisted FATE xx]

Update on the sitch: Originally, I was modifying for my own personal use a conversion of a Peggy hair (fitting a hat to it). Then I said, "Screw it all, there's too many groups to do anything about it." I've used Bloom's tutorial on adding new groups multiple times for body meshes, and even have my own comments about it in a file somewhere around my computer, but the whole thing was just too unwieldy and I knew that I would mess up somewhere and it wasn't worth it. So I poked around my Bodyshop to find a similar enough hair that I could use, and found that the curly OFB hair by Maxis would fit the bill pretty well. Last night, I decided to clone the AL Witch Hat hair and was thrilled to find that it had the exact number of groups that I needed, hat and all. So I switched around all the groups and matched up their comments, built the mesh by replacing the GMDC like always, fixed integrity, and linked the Bodyshop recolor to it. I was confident that it finally worked this time.

Damn. It didn't. Still a face without a scalp or any hair at all! It's really baffling me. Thank you so much for your replies, Bloom and Tenshii! And thank you for your offer, Bloom, it's much appreciated! <3 I uploaded my mesh file, the saved sims recolor that's linked to it, and my MSD file. But I have SO many versions of this hair littered about my desktop, so I really hope I didn't give you the wrong one by mistake. I think they're correct, though. Slap me if they aren't. Thanks again, you guys are wonderful!

[Tenshii~Akari]

When you linked your texture file to the mesh, which way did you do it... the old way ("good" ol' fashioned manual linking) or new way (using the PJSE plugin)? It's possible something could be going on if you're doing it the old way, but wouldn't be too sure how and why it would keep appearing as "invisible" if your doing it through PJSE.   

And you have a link to that download, right?  I can check it out as well if you'd like.   

[twisted FATE xx]

Oh. Wow. I forgot to give the link there, ahaha. xD;; Sorry about that, my fault. It's up here!

And I've been using the new, quick way with the PJSE plugin. I don't know why it's doing that either.  And thanks so much, Tenshii! <3

[Tenshii~Akari]

Question:  You have 2 GMDC resource files... is there a reason for that? Just curious on that part.

Also, whenever I click on the preview button for each GMDC resource, it seems to think that the parent CRES is missing. (the data essential for the bone assignments to work).  I don't use Milkshape, so I can't tell you for sure which options to use in order to check and see if each part of your hair mesh has the proper skeleton assigned.  BlooM will most likely be able to offer assistance with that.  

(And no problem.  I'm just glad to help expand your meshing abilities to hair meshing.  It's "fun" once you get the hang of it, though I don't have too much physical proof of my own exploits with it other than the cornrows mesh I did several months back.  I do have many "test" hairs, though... hopefully I'll fix them up and share them some day, but I've been busy and lazy lately...)  

[twisted FATE xx]

Well, I used the witch hat from AL as a base because it had all the correct amount of groups and the hat and everything. But I did notice that it come with 2 GMDCs, 2 GMNDs, 2, CRES, and SHPEs -- which seemed a little odd to me, but I shrugged it off. But then when I tried to link the recolor to the mesh, it wouldn't let me because it had more than one CRES and SHPE (I can't remember the exact error, but that was the gist of it), but it worked fine when I deleted them. One GMDC corresponds to the actual hair mesh and the other GMDC corresponds to the adult close-cropped hair. I'm not sure why Maxis did it that way, it seems rather redundant. Maybe that's the problem with this particular version, but I was still getting the invisible scalp when using other Maxis hairs as a base (that had the same amount of groups, that is). I think this is the sixth version of the hair I made. It's frustrating! I'll have to take another look at it in Milkshape after I'm done with my work for the night. *shakes head*

And you definitely should poke around with them some day -- I love your cornrows! 

[Theraven]

That might be one of the problems. That hair is meant to have two meshes, so if you delete one without linking it correct afterwards, it will probably treat the other mesh as deleted (aka. disappearing scalp). If that made any sense...  

You should try to use a simple mesh, that has only one set of GMDC, GMND, SHPE and CRES.
Also, sometimes (when you've messed up a file a lot), it helps to start all over again

[BlooM]

It is very normal that there are multiple gmnd/gmdc/shape and cres files.
With hair meshes(and accesoires)there are files for every age and gender.

Also alot hairmeshes have seperate files for the young adult male.
ill see if i can fix them