MESH

[hannahmhunt]

Ok so I've been trying for a long time and I just cant figure out meshing. I know that you have to download the mesh to get certain things and you have to save it to downloads, but when I get on my game I dont see anything. Can someone teach me all about meshing?? Thanks

[Theraven]

The mesh won't be visible unless you have a recolor of it (clothing, hair, and other bodymeshes). Object meshes usually have a recolor included, so they will be visible.

Meshing in itself can be hard to learn, and it often takes a lot of tries to get it right - and learning the basics of SimPE and recoloring are probably the first steps you'll need to go through, because there are quite a lot of things you'll need to understand before you manage to make your own custom objects or recolors visible ingame.

Learning about meshing is a whole project in its own (it took me several months). If you want to learn, I suggest you take a look through the tutorials at Modthesims.

[hannahmhunt]

thank you. i looked online and downloaded a mesh for a dress and the recolor thing but i dont know where to find it. do you know what i should do?

[Theraven]

Did you enable custom content ingame, and restart the game? (If you've got no clue what I'm talking about, see here, or in the general help area, here)

[hannahmhunt]

thank you for all of the help. sorry i keep bugging you. i was just wondering where im supposed to view these items. do i go to a community lot or something?

[Theraven]

Depending on the items.

Clothing - Create A Sim/CAS OR buy on a community lot OR find a mod that lets you buy them on residential lots. When they're bought, choose a sim, click on a dresser, and choose the outfit.

Accessories/makeup/hair - mirrors --> "change appearance". Toddlers have to be carried to a mirror.

Furniture/build items - buy/build mode

[hannahmhunt]

thanks. its still not working but i guess thats all the questions i can think of.

[gazania]

About the only advice I can give (and it's worth 2 cents, if that) that you haven't already received is to ponder the following questions:

1.  Do you have the expansions for the dress to show up? Some require that you have a particular one, such as Nightlife.

2.. Are you sure you're looking in the right age group? I can't tell you how many times I tried looking for adult dresses on young adults ... they don't necessarily apply to each other.

3. Is it a recent mesh? Occasionally, the creator messes up and later posts a correction.

4. Is the outfit a two-piece when you thought it was a one-piece, or vice versa? I have done THAT numerous times!

5. Did you look in all categories ... sleepwear, PJs, etc.  Sometimes, either the creator wasn't clear if the outfit was a pajama or not, or gets a little sloppy.

You've probably done all these already, and if so, I apologize.

Sometimes, by the way, the outfit is a bad outfit. The mesh is messed up, for instance. In that case, you can politely let the creator know this via private messaging, chat, e-mail, etc.

[Theraven]

Did a couple of changes to my previous post. And good advice, gazania

[gazania]

And I had to change my last sentence. Sorry about that ... someone kept talking to me about AIM and MSN Chat while I was posting, and I stuck that into my post instead of the correct words!

My point was that if the mesh or dress is bad, try contacting the creator and politely tell him or her that you can't see the dress on your end. List your expansions. I had an incident where a house I downloaded didn't come out, and the creator didn't realize that it needed OFB to work. (I didn't have that at the time.) "Politely" is the key term. 99% of the time, this was an honest error on the creator's part, and most of the time, it's fixable.

[caffeinated.joy]

Is this with all custom content you download or one item in particular? It would be helpful if you could clarify that and, if it's with one item, provide a link to the problem item.

I know that you have to download the mesh to get certain things and you have to save it to downloads

Are you saving the compressed file to your Downloads folder or are you saving the compressed file to your desktop and extracting the contents of the compressed file to My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Downloads (and is your Downloads folder spelled exactly as I have it spelled here)?

[hannahmhunt]

its all of  them. and yes. im doing that

[Theraven]

Recap:

Exactly how are the items not showing up?
Clothes: Have you checked CAS (Create-a-sim) or tried buying clothes downtown? Did you make sure you looked in the right age? (Teen clothing won't work for adults, and male clothing won't work for female sims, and so on)
Objects: Have you gone through buy/build mode to see if the items are there?
Makeup/accessories/hair: Have you checked if the items appear if you take a sim to a mirror?

Did you download the meshes, and at least one belonging recolor to each mesh (for hair/clothes)?

Did you unpack the rar/zip files and put the ".package" files in your "My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Downloads" folder?

Did you read what the creator said about the items? Sometimes the items have special download or installation  instructions.

Did you look through the step-by-step CC installation instructions at Modthesims?