ngPlant + Blender + SimPE = New trees and plants for Sims 2 ?

[m618915]

I do not have much meshing experience, and I have few (stupid?) questions,
I appreciate all replies and help.

I downloaded program called ngPlant last year but I haven’t used it until recently. It is very easy to create mesh for trees using this program. I made this tree mesh:



First question: This mesh has 18248 vertices and 12082 faces, is that too much?

I have imported mesh to Blender because I needed to make UVmap for it and I wanted to see if it is easier to make UVmaps using Blender than other UVmapping program. I have textures for bark and I´m going to use sakura flowers as leaves.

I found video tutorial that explained how to use custom textures in meshes, and I think I did it correctly, however when I pressed render button it looked like this


Second question: Does it supposed to look like this?

I have tried to search tree tutorial, that would also explain how to make trees Seasons compatible.
Third question: Is there tutorial that would help me with this project

[BlooM]

Well, the polycount is a bit higher then normal.
It is to high to make a small forrest out of them on a lot but it will give no problems at all if you use just one tree.

i dont know of a tutorial for it...
I do know that rendering your mesh isn't related to the textures, you render to give the mesh the proper shadows/lighting.

It is most likely that the trees that come with seasons use morphs to lose the leaves.
But if you clone a excisting tree with Simpe you should be able to figure that out.

[m618915]

I can reduce polycount, using ngPlant, maybe I make few Meshes more

thank for help.

[BlooM]

reducing often gives ya a less detailed mesh but you can try.

[m618915]

I edited mesh, tree does not look same but it is still good. Now it has 7142 faces and 9916 vertices

I still don’t know if I have uvmapped it correctly, because when I deselect textured faces textures disappear

[m618915]

So far I have managed to attach right texture to stem and branches I have also managed to attach right texture to leaves, however I haven’t figured out how to make both sides of leaves visible or how to make parts of leaves invisible.

Here is how it looks so far:

[m618915]

Leaves have now right texture:



but I still don’t know how to make both side (leaf) visible, it is important because right now I can only one side and tree looks too bare of leafless



Fourth question: How do I make both leaf sides visible?

[BlooM]

You can do this 2 ways.....
you can duplicate al the leaves and reverse the vertex order but in your case not very smart because you double up the polygons....

But there is a 2nd option, very easy.
If you want to have this tree ingame you have to clone another excisting Maxis tree with simpe's object workshop.
You give that new package its own guid so it becomes a independant object(and not overwriting the one from the game)
In that new package you will find the TXMT's, the material settings.
In the long properties list with all its settings you will find one line: stdMatCullMode
This is set to either Clockwise or cullClockwise
Set this line to none and both sides of the faces(leaves) will be textured ingame.

If you want to simple see how it looks in your 3d proggy you have to look if there is a option that let you view the backfaces(draw backfaces)


Edit....
Its looking great btw :thumbup:

[m618915]

ngPlant had option ”douple-sided” that I have selected  before I imported mesh to blender and I thought that both sides would be visible. (I think I selected it, not sure anymore...)



Anyway I’m going to try second option that you suggested.

[m618915]

I tried to import my mesh to Simpe, but I got error message, something about negative index?

[BlooM]

i am not sure wat that double sided option means, it can mean it will generate the same ammount of faces but reverted or it means it will texture both sides of the leave nomatter wat side the faces are pointed at.

I wouldn't tick any of those boxes as texturing both sides of the leave and the transparancy are set in Simpe later on and not in the mesh.

I have no idea how that error ocurred....
You can import 2 filetypes as far as i can remember, a smd file wich you import with skankyboy's plugin and as a objective file with the maya obj file importer plugin.

you click the gmdc file and in the bottom window you can import your meshfile.

[m618915]

Downloaded and installed smd plugin.
Started Blender again and exported mesh as .smd file. When I did that I got this message


I didn’t know that.
Is this why I got error message when I tried to import .obj file?

and if I triangulate .obj mesh I will be able to import it to SimPE is that correct?

[BlooM]

most likely

[m618915]

I still get same error message about negative index thingy something…

[BlooM]

strange

I downloaded ngplant and opened the palm tree example and exported it as a alias wavefont.
With the maya object file importer from Simpe i could import the palmtree(mesh) directly into the gmdc of a cloned maxis plant package.(only had to change the XYZ import order and renamed it back to maxis meshgroupname)

Unfortunate you need a 3d program like Milkshape or Blender to fix the uvmaps(or to seperate the leaves from the tree) so you can texture the leaves and tree seperate.
I dont have Blender but i didn't have any problems importing it into Milkshape.

I think your problem is the way the mesh is build, normally a mesh is build out of vertices and faces(3 vertices make one face)
but yours is build out of quads?(4 vertices making a quad)
http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-439925.html