This tutorial will teach you how to fix hairs’ transparency issues. In this tutorial, I’ll use my conversion of Peggy Hair 5022.

What you need:
- Programs and plug-ins mentioned in HP’s Hair Basics Tutorial

What this tutorial WON’T teach you:
-How to convert a hair, for that, you have to read HP’s Hair Basics Tutorial.


Have you ever spent hours working on a hair to end up with something like this?



No worries! I’ll teach you to get rid of those annoying problems!

NOTE: This tutorial won’t work if your mesh is not separated in groups. If you didn’t save a copy of a non-regrouped mesh or didn’t change the group names on SimPE (when all the groups have the same name, SimPE regroups them while exporting), you’ll have to start all over again. Sorry!

1st Step ~ Recognizing the transparency issues
It’s very easy. First of all, you have to assign your mesh to a material, and make sure “Draw backfaces” and “Transparency>Depth Buffered with Alpha Reference” are activated.
Now, if you go around your mesh, you’ll probably notice something like this:



You’ll probably find blue lines (or whatever background color you’re using) and “ghost” groups (you can see trough them), those are the transparency issues you can see in-game.

2nd Step ~ Fixing the transparency issues – part 1
The technique it’s very easy, but sometimes it can takes a very long time.
All you have to do is, first, recognize the group you’re trying to fix, select it in “Groups” tab, and then press the button that says “Down”. Now click the 3D viewport. If it didn’t change, keep moving it until you see the difference.



If it looks all smooth like this, then the group it’s located in the right position.




Note: When higher it’s the piece of hair in the mesh, lower should be it group on the “Groups” tab. For example: strands coming out from the hairline and that are over all the rest of the hair, should be at the bottom of the “Group” tab.

Note 2: Sometimes you need to separate a group to the fix the transparency issue. For example: you have a strand at the top of the hair that doesn’t have issues and, in the same group, another strand that it’s somewhere else and it does have issues, you’ll probably need to separate them, so you can locate both in their right places.

Once you’re done, it should look like this:



Don’t forget to save your progressions in a MS3D file! (File>Save as…)

3rd Step ~ Merging normal’s data
Note: Do this step once you’re done with the hair and you saved your work!
Select all the groups, and go to “Vertex>Sims2 UniMesh Normal Data Merge V4.09”.



Your mesh has gone all black and wonky, so (in the same menu) use “Align Normals”. This way you can regroup everything without losing all your work with the transparency issues. This is VERY IMPORTANT! So make sure you did it!

4th Step ~ Fixing the transparency issues – part 2
Now you’re almost done, but you have to know that the undersides can ruin your hair as well. So, after you did them (Duplicate group, Reverse Vertex Order, Scale all by .999, Align normals), move the undersides up in the “Groups” tab, and click on the 3D viewport. You’ll notice that more transparency issues have been murdered.



At last, select the undersides if not selected, “Vertex>Sims2 UniMesh Normal Data Merge V4.09”, “Align Normals” , regroup and… your mesh is done!
Note: Don’t forget to import the comments, assign bones to the mesh and use the Extra Data Tool before exporting!

5th Step ~ Test, test and test
This is how it should look now:









Test the hair very carefully, make sure that you’ve fixed everything. If not, open your saved non-regrouped file (that I told you to save in step 3) and work with.

Feel free to ask anything you want.

I hope this helps! ^-^

Special thanks to Cazy and Savio for teaching me this. You're awesome, guys!

Last edited by whiterider : 31st Jul 2010 at 11:15 AM.

ANUBIS! ILY FOREVAH! <3 *sob*

/runs off to try

This is very helpful thanks!

Thanks "Anubis" ,Tried and True ...
It works marvels ,thanks for solving this issue and taking the time to explain it to us .
*now I'm off to convert all my Sims2 Hair Mesh for Sims3*

Oh wow. I will definitely try this. I am going to HP Hair Conversion first though. Thanks for posting!!

Sorry for the bump, but I'm vouching on this. Well, since I'm having some problems with my custom hair mesh.

This is really really helpful
Thanks you

How do we get the different groups before we export? I'm not converting meshes and that's what SimPE says its for. I use S3PE. How do we get the different groups from there?