Store clothing moprhs - SOLVED

[Elexis]

Hello,
now I know that this question was asked before, but I didn't find it in the moment of need.
I would like to know if it's possible to extract Store clothing morphs? Preferably in the format that can be used with TSRW.
Please, if you know the answer, don't just put a brief sentence like "extract ODFGR* using G3FGH* and put it in DKGHT*", just because I'm not familiar how to work with morphs using S3PE.
I would be very grateful for your help :)


* Just a random letters to illustrate how well I understand different file types, they all look the same to me :D

[whiterider]

Well, the problem with morphs in the Store is that they're just too bloody tidy. The morph meshes, which us lowly creators work with, are just a guide, and aren't used at all by the game after they've been converted to BGEO format (Sorry, unavoidable. ;) Perhaps that will make more sense if I point out that converting the morph mesh into BGEO is what MorphMaker (or TSRW) does.). I have no idea why EA included the morph meshes in the game files, it is totally illogical to do so, but I'm glad they did, whatever the reason.

Unfortunately, with the Store stuff, they tidied up - they include the actual morphs (the BGEOs) but not the morph guides (the meshes). Because the morph meshes aren't needed by the game, EA have just deleted them. The only way you could get a morph mesh out of a Store item is to convert the BGEO backwards, and I'm afraid I can't dazzle you with jargon on how to do that, because as far as I know, there is no way to do it. You just have to remake the morph mesh from scratch if you need to edit it.

[Elexis]

Ah, thanks :) I guess I'll just have to make them manually then, as with my previous clothing :D

[CmarNYC]

I have a tool in development and testing that will do both: 1) convert a BGEO into morph meshes (BGEO tools/Convert to mesh), and 2) convert GEOM base + morph meshes into a TSRW mesh (GEOM tools/Convert to TSRW WSO).

If you use it I'd like feedback if you run into any problems. Just extract the zipped files into a folder and run the .exe.

[Elexis]

Thanks for the tool :)
The only problem is that I can't see any BGEO files in Store clothing packages, do they have them at all or I'm just using a broken one?

[CmarNYC]

I was wondering about that - the one time I poked into a store package it had no BGEO, but it had morph meshes. I think the store stuff does its morphing based on the morph meshes without a BGEO; I vaguely recall seeing a different structure for the morph links. Are there morph meshes in the package you're working on? They may not be labeled. I'm going to see if I can dig up the store package I looked at before.

Edit: Having refreshed my memory: In store clothing the body morph links in the CASP point to a BBLN, which links to a VPXY instead of a BGEO. The VPXY in turn links to the morph GEOMS. (Gibberish, I know.) If the GEOMs are unlabeled you could just extract all of them and use my tool to open them (GEOM tools / Examine) - the morphs are the ones with only Position, Normals, and Vertex ID. The higher lods are bigger file sizes.

Edit: Oops, I mean the higher detail lods!

[Elexis]

If I understood everything correctly, I need to extract every VPXY and test them with your tool? :)

[CmarNYC]

No, the GEOMs. Those are the meshes, and depending on the individual clothing there should be a minimum of 3 lods of base meshes and 3 lods each of fat, fit, and thin morph meshes. If there's a pregnant morph and/or if there's more than one meshpart, there'll be more.

[BloomsBase]

-Run the Store file through s3RC.
-Open/clone the file with TSRW.
-Extract the base mesh in the meshtab(you need it later.)



-Convert the Store sims3pack to package with Delphy's multiinstaller.
-Open it with s3PE or Postal.
-Export(to file) all the GEOMS you can find.
-Rebuild the files in Milkshape(base/fat/fit/thin and pregnant(if it is there) for the high/medium and low detail.
This can be tricky if there are many GEOM files.

When you have find the base mesh and morphs that belong together you can delete the base mesh and export the file as obj file or as
WSO(if you do export it as WSO file then it is wise to delete the skeleton to avoid errors.)

-Start new in Milkshape and import the base mesh that you extracted/exported from TSRW
-Import the OBJ(or WSO) file that contains the morphs.
-Rename the morphs( group_fat, group_fit etc)
-Export as WSO file.

This file you import back in TSRW again(wich will build the Bgeo files for it.)

If you understand how this works you can skip the part were you rebuild the GEOM meshes/morphs in Milkshape and import them directly on top of the base mesh from TSRW
You can look at the filesize wich morphs you need and wich comes first.
You will find 3 files(or 4 with pregstate) with the same size, those you need.
The 3 biggest files are the high detail, the lowest the low detail.(its not so difficult)

[CmarNYC]

My tool will convert directly from a base GEOM and its morph meshes to a WSO, converting the skeleton as well. I think that would save a few steps. The tricky part is still identifying which morph meshes belong to which base mesh, and you will probably need to import them into Milkshape as Bloom describes to do that. You can identify them by tracing the links in the CASP, BBLNs, and VPXYs, but that's probably more painful than just using Milkshape to see what they look like.

[Elexis]

I have the problem with some of the GEOM's in Store packages, they all are only 13kb after I extract them and neither Milkshape nor the suggested tool opens them. Just a blank window as if there are no files loaded.

EDIT:
I finally was able to load something into the tool, but when I try to make a WSO file it gives me an error:
http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/35350_120425184007Unrewtertwertitled-1.jpg

[BloomsBase]

i think you forgot to rename them

[Elexis]

It still gives me an error when I rename them. The thing is that I have no idea which morph is which (fat/thin/thick), because Milkshape refuses to load them.

[whiterider]

This is an interesting conversation! My comments about morph meshes not being included are based on experiences with Store stuff back in 2009, so I wonder if EA have changed their workflow, or if I just landed on an exception back then. Useful info here. :)

[CmarNYC]

That error means the conversion is choking on the data - could you upload the package and/or meshes so I can take a look?

[Elexis]

I attached the base and morphs GEOM files below.

[CmarNYC]

Those aren't the right morphs for that base. Looks to me like the base mesh is lod 1 and the morphs are lod 3. Morph meshes will have the same number of vertices and the same set of vertex ID numbers as the base they belong to.

If you upload the package, I could sort the meshes out for you.

[Elexis]

I will send it in PM if you don't mind, I don't want to share it here since it's the unmodified Store package.
Question: How to recognize the right LOD's? I thought I took the ones that had biggest length/size.

[CmarNYC]

Understood! I got the package, identified the meshes, converted them to TSRW .wso format, tested to make sure they import into TSRW, and uploaded them via PM. Please let me know if they work okay or don't so I know if my tool works.

BTW, if this comes up again - morph meshes are about half the size of the base mesh they belong to, and morph meshes will come in sets of 3 or 4 of identical size. So you can look for meshes that are the only one of their size and they're probably base meshes, then look for sets of meshes of about half that size to find the morphs. In this particular case there's a second mesh group that's so small most of them are 1k, so I had to look at the links in the VPXYs to quickly identify them.

[Elexis]

Thanks you so much :D The files are working perfectly, so now I 'm finally able to edit them without remaking all morphs by hand :)
The tool is awesome, thanks for sharing it too :D

[CmarNYC]

You're very welcome, and thanks for letting me know the conversion worked! :)