Insimenator.org

Well, I've followed Brianna's tutorial on MTS2 to a tee (I even went back and double-checked all the steps), but for some reason the new mesh is still not showing up in Bodyshop.  

I would greatly appreciate some help in this area.

*** Moved to Mesh Creation ***

Sorry 'bout that, thought I put it in the right place.

nbny, Sorry to hear you had some problems, I've been able to follow Bri's turorial and come out with positive results.

My words of advice, follow them EXPLICITLY, take your time, use a highlighter and mark down important points. Most of the time your new mesh is simply not being called by the clothing (as long as you got your new Geometric Data Container imported into your mesh and you can preview the changes, then most likely your instance id in your clothing mesh is not matching up with the new mesh)

*If* you were able to upload in this area, I'd suggest you send your body.obj , MESH_ and Clothing from your Download Folder So people could take a look and see if my guess was correct.

But for now, I have 2 suggestions
#1
Download SimPE 0.32 (downgrade perhaps, makes it easier to follow cause the tutorial is old and this version seems to provide me better results)
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/simpe/SimPe_32.rar?download

#2
just take your time and keep at it.
Good luck

I believe 0.35c was the last version I could use her tutorial with.  Beyond that, everything changed (for the better) with how GMDC's are imported and exported, but Bri's tutorial is still a solid reference for someone just learning how to do this stuff.

Maybe I should downgrade SimPE, although I was still able to follow along with the version I have.  I really don't want to lose the compatibility with Nightlife.

I'm at work right now, but when I get home I'll upload the files.  In the meantime, let me give you guys some more info.  

When following Brianna's Tutorial, I took an existing clothing mesh and modified it using Milkshape.  I then followed the rest of the steps in the tutorial and placed the new mesh in my downloads folder.  When I loaded up Bodyshop, the new mesh wasn't there.  I'm pretty sure I didn't miss anything.  I truly appreciate the help.

Did you happen to use the mesh tool? Also if you are using simpe 48c it has been noticed that the res and shape isn't noting the change.

But did you associate the mesh with a clothing resource?  You need to clone an outfit using body shop and then update the GMDC reference (specifically the 3DIR tables) in it to point to your "custom mesh".  I think Brianna's tutorial has an example of how to do this.

Yep, sure did.  

Hmm. That may be the problem.  



Yep, did that too.  Something interesting happened the second time around though.  I went back through the tutorial and made sure the clothing was pointing to the new mesh, then loaded up Bodyshop.  After going into "Create Parts" and "Load Project" the Clothing was Maxis clothing.  

Edit:
I was going to upload the files, but I don't see a link to attach them.

Are you by chance editing the clothing package file in your Projects folder instead of the one in SavedSims?

Uhhh... Yeah.   Somehow I get the feeling that I'm not supposed to do that....

Can I replace the one in my Saved Sims folder with the one in my Projects folder?

Yeah, Body Shop doesn't read the package files from your projects folder...it reads them from the Saved Sims folder.  That's why you're only getting the original Maxis stuff showing up.

Okay, I replaced the package file in my Saved Sims folder with the modified one from my Projects folder and now the original mesh is showing.  However, my mesh is not.  What did I do wrong?

sorry for the double post earlier...

I think the first thing to do is confirm that the right package file is getting loaded.  Go in and change the texture to some outrageous shade of pink or something, save it, and see if it shows up in body shop.  If it doesn't you're still picking up another package file from somewhere.

The other thing you can do, nbny, is put the mesh file RIGHT IN the clothing file.  SimPE will let you "File | Add" once package file to another.  Brianna's tutorial instructs you to keep the mesh file separate, but there is really little need to do this unless you want to distribute the mesh independently of the textures.  That way, once you determine that the right package file is being loaded by Body Shop (by using the trick I mention above), you also know that your mesh is being loaded (because it lives in the same file!).  If it still isn't showing up at that point, then you at least know that the problem is due to an internal referencing error, and not something silly like a file is in the wrong place.

Well, I didn't have a problem with this part.   I was able to change the color of the texture, and the color change showed up in Bodyshop with no problems.


Okay, as per your suggestion, I tried this too.  Like I said, the color shows up just fine, but it is still referencing the old mesh.

Jase, is there a way I can send you the file and have you take a look at it?

Well, that at least tells us the *right* package is getting loaded, so its evidently some kind of reference problem.  I sent you a PM with info where to send your file.

EDIT: OK, I've looked at your mesh file.  And here's the good news: your mesh is being loaded!  The bad news: you have to start over.  There are a few problems with what you've done:

1. From the looks of things, it appears that you are using a version of SimPE newer than 0.35c.  Versions newer than 0.35c will not work with Brianna's tutorial.  Your Y and Z axes are inverted.  You'll see that your mesh does appear in body shop but that it's sprawled out over the floor (it's aligned along the wrong axis).  That's something that results from using a newer version of the mesh importer.  I'm not positive if you used Delphy/Miche's import tool, or if you used the one in SimPE but it looks like the one in SimPE to me, however.  You can futz with the importer's axis orientation in SimPE on the plug-in tab - but this is moot since we don't want to be using the plugin's importer or exporter here.

2. Second, the other reason I say this is that you're also missing all of your bone references (which is sort of important if you want your sim to ever animate :)  You can tell this if you load your mesh in body shop and the sim's arms are all outstretched instead of at their side.  You can also tell by looking at the Joints tab in Milkshape and finding it to be empty.  The import/export facility in SimPE doesn't know how to handle bones and can only be used on non-boned meshes.  

3. You're also missing your body morphs (fat, pregnant, etc.) which again suggests this.  When you look at the Groups tab in Milkeshape, you should see "BODY" and "BODYMOD.1" and "BODYMOD.2", etc.  

4. You also have a very hard seam along the side of the sim that runs the full length of the body.  This means your surface normals are not being interpolated properly.  Another artifact of the "old tools".

So here's what I am going to suggest.  Throw out Brianna's tutorial for a moment and do the following instead:

1. Download and install Wes_H's Body Chop Plugin-In for Milkshape v3.02 (I assume you're using Milkshape here) (available at MTS2 in the meshing forums)

2. Go back to the original Sims03.package file and re-extract your original mesh.  But when you do this, right click on the mesh in the file listing and choose "Extract" (NOT the Extract button on the GMDC plugin!).  The file will be saved as a .5gd.

3. Fire up Milkeshape, choose File | Import | TS2 Body Chop Importer V3.02.  When it asks you if you want to import groups, say YES.  

4. The first time you do this, your mesh is going to look like ass and there will be lots of blue lines going everywhere.  You need to scale your joint sizes down.  Go into File | Preferences | Misc and change Joint Size to 0.007500 or something thereabouts and click OK.  You only need to ever do this once.  Your blue lines should all condesnse into small blue spheres representing the model joints/bones.

5. For now, you want to hide all but the primary body morphs.  You can edit these later if you so desire.  Go to the Groups tab and select BODYMOD.X and HIDE them leaving only body and body_alpha visible.

6. Edit the mesh in Milkeshape as you did previously.

7. When you're finished, choose file Export | TS2 Body Chop Exporter V3.02 and save the file back out.  

8. Now, using SimPE open your combined package file (the one you sent me).  Right click on the GMDC in the file listing, and choose Replace (again, do not use the Import button on the Plug-In!!!) and replace it with the file you exported from Milkeshape.  Your mesh is now imported.

SAVE (and make a backup!)

You *may* need to run Fix Integrity on your mesh file again.  But before you do that, go and fire up body shop and see if its showing up now.

Let me know how that works.  The above procedure may sound more involved, but once you do it one, you'll realize its actually more expedient than the procedure outlined in Brianna's tutorial - and the results are far better.

J

PS. One artifact you may or may not notice (depends on the mesh) is that a slight break may appear between the head and the neck of the body.  This is an artifact of how Wes_H's plug in deals with bone weighting.  The neck verts are weighted down just a little too heavily.  If this happens to you, just go back into Milkshape, select the neck verticies, and nudge them up just a touch and resave/reimport.

Thanks Jase.  At least I was referencing the right file.  

I ran into a problem with my original mesh, so I ended up having to find another one to work with.   I was able to get it to where it shows up in Bodyshop properly.  I still have a little tweaking to do, but at least I'm making progress.

Thanks a lot for all your help.

What problems were you having with that other mesh?

Well only one big problem really.  When I went back to the original mesh and extracted the GMDC, I was unable to import it into Milkshape with the Body Chop plugin.  I could still import the mesh as a Wavefront .obj, but when I did that, the bone structure didn't show up properly.  
So, because you were good enough to tell me what I was doing wrong, for the sake of time I set aside and grabbed another mesh.  As far as the problem goes, I think it may be related to the way the original creator put it together.  She said something about it using a "blue map", not quite sure what that is, but it definitely prevents me from importing the mesh correctly into Milkshape.

Hi!
As i have the latest version of simpe i found the tutorial pretty outdated, but i believed i muddled along, until it came to importing my obj in milkshape, nothing appears?! Having read the instruction above  (and promptly went cross eyed and then passed out)  :shock:  i am now  totally confused???  I could really do with an updated and clear tutorial from start to finish and links to these other files i need to download, wes's something which i can't find on here, will this ever become easy or will my life be spent recolouring bodyshop clothes  :cry:

Help!

LIZ