I've just made some wings for adults and children which I'm ready to submit but there's one issue I'm having with them that I have not been able to fix, and I don't know if it's even actually fixable. I'm not an experienced mesher and have only been meshing for a short time.

No matter what joint assignment I've tried, when the sim turns its body sharply to the side the wings go off-centre and an arm will clip through them, and when the sim bends very far forward or backward the wings sometimes disconnect slightly from their backs (and with children, sometimes stick out slightly through their chest). The wings do snap right back to the correct position when the sim straightens up, but it would be nice if they would stay put all the time. Is there a way to do that?

I've tried assigning them to Spine_1, Spine_2, a 50%-50% mixture of both, and also a 50-50 mixture of Spine and Head, but get the same result! Is there another joint assignment I should try, or is this something that has technical limitations that make it not possible to get the wings to stay in place better?


Thanks for any advice!

Nice!

Have you tried the clavicle? Maybe assign the top of the wing root to the clavicle and the bottom to spine 1 or 2, with the verts in-between going from mostly one to mostly the other.

Thank you! I'll try that! (Did you notice that those simmies are wearing your elf ears, BTW? Thanks again for those sliders! )

So they are! :D

Another good option might be to use the belly bone assignment.

I could be wrong but i think the issue your having is not the bones but the vertid's
you need to assigne a ID to every vertice and to make thing perfect you need to make Morphs and new Bgeo files for it.
Unfortunate accesoires are not supported(tried it an failed) so wat i would do is to clone a outfit and set it to accesoire and in the correct category.
I would mesh a simple box and position it on the place were you want the wings.(dont forget the comments!)
Then import a bodymesh and copy one vert id from the sims back to the 4 corner vertices of the box.(and give it boneassignements too, assigne it to spine 1 or both spine1 and spine2)
Delete the body and import the mesh in your package and see ingame how the box acts on that same outfit were you took the vertid from.
I think it will turn now when the sims turns.(the box may be deformed heavily tho )
If it now works you need to reassigne the wings with Wes his autonum tool, make new morphs for it and use BMM to make new Bblend and Bgeo files.
You still need to take a body/top or bottom mesh as base mesh.
I did make a few accesoires this way already, they are on the adult site.

Nice troubleshooting technique, Base. But if the wings don't have to move with the morphs are vertex numbers needed? I think the accessories don't have them. The issue with that would be the roots of the wings disappearing inside the backs of fat sims but that might look okay.

It might be cool to have a 'wing size' slider, though!

Didn't someone make sunglasses sliders? Copying their method could make sizeable wings a reality.

Thanks for your help, Cmar, Rez and Base! Unfortunately I'm nowhere near experienced enough a mesher to understand Base's advice - have no idea what Bgeo, Bblend, BMM etc mean or what to do with them, nor how to make morphs - I wish I knew. Base's advice does sound good but I don't know how to implement it.

But I have achieved a little success by playing with the joints as Cmar and Rez suggested - I assigned the two sides at the top of the wing root to r_clavicle and l_clavicle, the top of the middle root to spine1, the bottom of the middle root to spine2, and the bottom of the root to belly. They aren't sliding about as much as they were before - there's still some clipping of arms and shoulders when sims flail their arms about or turn sharply, but they do look less unstable. I wonder if that's the best that can be done?

For comparison, I had a look in SimPE at the joint assignments of a set of nicely made Sims 2 wings, and found that they were only assigned to spine2, yet when I tried that assignment on my wings (on which I shaped the root to be similar to the good TS2 wings), they were all over the place! Maybe TS3 is different somehow. I've only come across one set of TS3 wings so far, and didn't like the way they joined the body, with a long 'pin' shape sticking into the back, and they are pretty unstable on the sim.

Yes. you are right.
But unassigned verts do change position when ingame(not in CAS).
Although that might only happen with bodymeshes that have unassigned verts, not with accesoires.
Another problem she is facing is that the bones will act difrent if they are that far away from the skeleton.
Just thinking along...
A wing slider aint possible in my opinion, you need a unused bone for it.
she could assigne them to the breasts i wonder wat effect that will give using Jonha's slider!!
Its tempting to try something similar with Beos his angel wings...

May the dynamics of motion in Sims 3 is different to make hair and accessories swing with body motions? Just a thought.

Esmerelda - I keep wondering - if the two wings are not joined, whether adding a piece inside the sim joining them into one object might make them more stable. Not sure that makes any sense.

Base - a geom slider should work IF the verts are numbered with a range not used by anything else. Probably not worth the effort.

Hi, yes, they are joined - I've sort of tabbed the root of each wing through the other - do you think I should maybe add a solid piece to inside of the root, like an upright rectangular block or similar? I'll try that tomorrow (it's late at night now where I am!) - thanks!

that wont make any diffrence im afraid, every assigned vertice will operate independant.
Im still in doubt wether you need the vertID's especially when shapes are used other then the default.
The bones will act slightly diffrent on those.
If you cant manage Esmeralda i would love to have a look at your package(lol, that sounds bad.... )

btw, i had a look at Beos his angel wings.
The whole right wing is assigned 70% to the right clavicle, 20% to spine 1 and 10% to spine 2.
The whole left wing is assigned 70% to the left clavicle, 20% to spine 1 and 10% to spine 2.

Ah, thanks, I'll try Beos's wing assignments and see how that goes! And if that doesn't improve things, I'd be very pleased if you would have a look a my package (hee hee), thank you!

Base, that worked!!! I used your Beos wing assignments for each wing, and also used Cmar's suggestions for the root - I assigned the left side of the root to l_clavicle, the right side of the root to r_clavicle, and the centre of the root 50% spine_1 and 50% spine_2. They now stay centred *much* more nicely!

THANK YOU again everyone, for your help!

Good - glad to help!

Sweet