Grykon’s Dirty Little Milkshape Tutorial:

 

 

Now first and foremost you need to get this tutorial and learn its steps as well, New Clothing Mesh Tutorial by WDS BriAnna Pictures by Windkeeper.  It can be found at http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=43092.  A lot of hard work has gone into discovering the secrets and tricks to doing these things, please remember to thank these people in their threads including Delphy, Miche and Quaxi…Many more have done things to get the processes to where they are…and while I don’t want to leave anyone out…I can’t possibly remember or mention everyone…know that if you have done something for the game community I thank you!

 

The tutorial is going to be as simple as possible and as basic as possible…this is only going to cover some simple ideas about how I use Milkshape to edit a body/clothing mesh for Sims 2.  First the basic setup for it.

Very important to do this step!

 

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!

Click the Groups tab on top right of the program, you should see roughly what is displayed here…See the Auto Smooth check box?  Ensure it is unchecked!  If you don’t your mesh will turn out kind of funky and you will wonder over and over what is wrong…trust me…I speak from experience!  I spent the better part of 8 hours trying to trace down the problem with my meshes after I had to reinstall the program and forgot to uncheck it.  You only need to do this once it should remember your choice…I would exit after un-checking it so that it saves it.

 

 

 

 

Okay, first step to do when starting Milkshape to edit a mesh.

Example one:

 

Basic start up of Milkshape…first thing I do is set the 4 windows to how I want my mesh displayed like so:

Right clicking in the bottom right opens the menu, select Projection it gives you another menu, I set this one to Top

Top is the front of the mesh, I then do the same thing in the top right window, setting it to Bottom.  Bottom is the back side of the mesh.  Top left window I set to Left.  Left is what it sounds like, it shows the mesh in profile on the Left side.  The bottom left I set to Right and yes it is the opposite of Left.

 

 

Next you click File -> Import -> Wavefront OBJ

Browse and find your obj file you extracted in the WDS BriAnna tutorial.  I am using the AF_Swimwear mesh for this tutorial.

 

It is important to note here…You can not delete vertices (what are vertices?  Vertices are the little white dots that appear on the mesh, they are what I manipulate the mesh with.)  The mesh MUST have the same number of vertices and polygons when your done that it did when you started, any more or less well cause you a headache.  (This does not include Wes_’s plugins which will allow you to add or subtract vertices and polygons from the mesh.)

 

Basic key commands:

 

Ctrl-z undo

Ctrl-r redo

Ctrl-a Select all

Ctrl-shift-a Deselect all

 

Ctrl-left click (in window you wish to work in)-hold move your mouse/track ball to move the image displayed around until you have it in the window where you wish to work.

 

Shift-left click (in window you wish to work in)-hold move your mouse to zoom in or out on the image.

Make sure that none of the tool tabs are selected when you perform the last 2 items, you can be in for some problems.

 

Left Click-hold-drag with the select tool highlighted will select all vertices inside the field you draw.

 

Shift-Left Click-hold-drag with the select tool highlighted will add the vertices you are surrounding to the ones you already have selected.

 

Shift-Right Click-hold-drag with the select tool highlighted will remove the vertices you are surrounding from any others you have selected.

 

 

Here the mesh is loaded and displayed as I like to work on it.  As you can see the select tool is selected the only difference between this and yours should be the little checkbox at the bottom that says ignore Backfaces.  This box has its uses and should almost always be checked, only have it unchecked when you want to grab part of the mesh from all sides…such as giving the mesh heels, or adjusting how much the butt sticks out.  You also see the Select Options is set to Vertex i.e. Vertices.  Faces are also called Polygons, there are also Group and Joint we will only be dealing with vertices.  The other screen to familiarize yourself with is the Move Tool.

 

 

 

Yours should be the same as it is shown here.  Note the X Y and Z co-ordinates, seldom should you work with anything greater then .0x x being a value from 1 to 9, I seldom work above .01, if I need it moved more I will just click the move button more then once.  A lot of my movements are done as .005 or .0025 both negative and positive.  X represents the body left and right…negative values move the vertices left and positive values move them right.  Y represents the depth of the body (front to back), negative values move the vertices away from the body towards the back, positive values move it away from the body towards the front.  Z represents the height of the body, negative values will move the vertices down towards the feet and positive values will move them up towards the sky.

 

Lets move the image around in the four windows so we can see better.

 

 

 

Now I have the mesh large enough that I can work on it with ease.  First thing I have to do is click the select tool and then select the vertices I want to use.  As you see here, I have the ignore Backfaces box unchecked.  And in the top left corner you can see the box I drew around the area I want to work with. 

 

You can see the vertices I have selected are now a pinkish red and with the checkbox off I have select all the vertices from the left side to the right side, now some of them I don’t want, I just want a little bigger chest on this model so I have to go in and deselect the ones not needed.  Using the shift-right click-hold I unselect the vertices I don’t want.

 

I have now unselected the very tops of the breasts and the bottoms and the vertices between them, next is to switch to the move tool.

 

 

Prior to the first move, setting the movement values.

 

 

Not bad, but I want them a little bigger, you’ll also see that at the same time I am making them bigger I am adjusting how high they are on the chest.

Always keep in mind what your designing for…a bathing suit is not going to provide a great deal of support so there has to be some ‘sag’ to the breasts unless you are designing them as implants.

 

One more smaller adjustment I think will make them just about right.  Remember as you expand the polygons/faces the skins applied to it will lose detail as it is stretched over the mesh, so you or your skinner should double check the areas stretched and add finer detail to the skin to compensate.  Also as they expand curves become more angular so you want to pay attention so that you don’t lose the curves completely, as you can see in this pic the curve of the bottom of the breasts is almost straight into the rib cage.

 

Here I am going to take steps to adjust the underside of the breasts to try and make it look more natural.  I deselect all the vertices (ctrl-shift-a) and then I select all the vertices just under the breasts themselves.

 

 

Here the line has been moved down the body giving the breasts a more natural look.

 

 

I want to make a slight adjust on the side of the breasts here…I need to check the ignore backface box first.

 

Before moving the vertex I have selected it is best to make sure you didn’t get any you didn’t want, so you use the shift-right click-hold-drag over the rest of the breast area to ensure the rest are unselected.  Then we can move it…not a lot…just a little.

 

 

Then repeat for the other side, same vertex.  Now I am going to adjust the actual width of the breasts…Note the ignore backface box is still checked…don’t need to change the vertices on the back of the mesh.

 

I am going to adjust from the inside of the left nipple almost to the breast bone and I am only going to adjust it a little…+.0025.  After that adjustment, I unselected the 3 center nipple vertices and I adjust it over one more time +.0025.  I repeat this process to the right side, but this time, I use -.0025 for the adjustment values.

 

 

Finished breasts adjustments.

 

 

A couple of more adjustments and we’re done here…I think the butt could look better.  So I adjust the views, turn off the Ignore Backface checkbox and select the butt vertices.

 

 

One adjustment back for the 16 vertices.

 

Selecting 4 vertices of the 16 and making a small adjustment back for more shape.

 

Adjustment made.  Selected the 2 vertices at the bottom of the butt to give it a better curve…

 

 

And that is really how simple it is…at this point I click file -> export -> Wavefront OBJ and select a name to represent the new obj, in this case TutorialMesh.  I hope this has been of some value to you…it is really just a basic guide and I hope it gives you enough information to dive in and have fun!

 

Sincerely,

Tim aka Grykon