Thank you for answering Wes. I've read your post several times and I'm having a tough time understanding. If you have time to answer I have a few questions (as always).

When you say, "I have not seen anything that works like morphs do in the TS3 objects..." are you saying that what you're seeing in the Sims 3 objects is not morph-like behavior (ie. the bookcase thingy is neither morph nor geostate) or that the Sims 3 morphs behave unlike the morphs you've seen before?

When you say. "The Objtool does not extract the alternate meshes, nor does it repackage them.." are you referring specifically to objects like the guitar stand, which has geostates, or to other objects like the bookcase which does not?

After looking at the bookcases do you think it's possible for them to be cloned and changed with the tools as they currently are or is it best to work on other things right now? I wouldn't mind continuing to try getting a working bookcase into the game...but if you think it won't work then I'd rather work on things that will.

I didn't look at all of the bookcases, but I did look at one that looked like your "problem child". It does not have geostates in it. Nor do the beds I examined. As there are maybe dozens of each, I can't state they are all the same, because that is too many to examine individually.

"Morphs", as used in clothing, do not exist for objects. Any changes are done by changing meshes or textures, or for some objects (cribs) by basic mesh animation.

The Objtool does not extract geostates, and does not add them in. Since the bookcases I looked at do not have geostates in them. In the case of the "BookshelfModernModularHigh1x1", there are 4 groups, the bookcase, 1/2 of the books, the other 1/2 of the books and the groundshadow.

I didn't check the textures, but that give you three basic combinations, a shelf with one set of books, a shelf with a different set of books, and one with all of the books, simply by enabling or disabling the individual book groups in a script. So far, I have deftly avoided fooling with TS3 scripts, leaving that challenge to others.

So whatever problems are occurring in the bookcase are not geostates issues. Seems that I have seen other bookcases cloned, on one for sure there was an issue I fixed in one of the older versions, pictures are in this thread, or one of the older "deprecated" ones. If it didn't happen last week, the details get fuzzy due to impending senility.

Now I will not discount the possibility of some unrecognized bug in my tool, or some mesh or texture part not being extracted by the object cloner, but I don't see anything peculiar about bookcase meshes, beside them having more groups than the tables and dishes.

Thank you very much for responding but I'm still struggling to understand here. Please forgive my questions if they're silly.

When you say, "So far, I have deftly avoided fooling with TS3 scripts, leaving that challenge to others..." are you meaning that the issue I'm having with my bookcase turning out as a 'problem child' (colonial bookcase clone) is in a script? (whatever a script might be)

or, alternatively, when you say, "I don't see anything peculiar about bookcase meshes, beside them having more groups..." do you mean that it is something I'm doing to the mesh in MS that is causing the problem?

I tend to believe you are about senile like a fox WesHowe ...the issue isn't a geostates issue...ok...so, after looking at the pics of borked bookcases in this thread...what do you think the issue might be?

Again, if you have time to post I appreciate your answer. I apologize if my questions are stupid ones.

I do not at this time know whether it is a meshing problem or an esoteric mesh-tool problem... but geostates are not in play on this.

Only some game scripting action would cause an object to change during game play. I fiddled here with some scripts, but people like Rick and Delphy and Pescado are much more knowledgeable than I.

The old saw about jack-of-all-trades rings true here. I prefer in-depth knowledge of a small sliver of the modding process to a shallow understanding of it all.

Certainly, something is wrong or you wouldn't have the problems you are having with the bookcase. But I don't see what is different between a bookcase and, say, a glassware item, except that the bookcase has more groups, and some of those groups appear to be able to be disabled during game play.

One of the puzzlers is the change of symptoms you describe from one game play to another. That is a hard one to guess at, because it could be any of a wide variety of things, from mesh tool issues to TGI definitions to graphics card issues to game bugs to who knows what all.

Well, if you don't know no one does. I'll wait this one out then...and I do appreciate your answering even if you can't pinpoint the issue right this second. I just wanted to be sure it wasn't some mistake I was making.

And I should add just for clarity...how the remeshed colonial bookcase looks varies within my game depending on whether or not I have placed other versions of the colonial bookcase and which versions those are. I can get different versions of my bookcase in the same house without exiting the game and without having saved.

Hmmm..keep getting this click going off in my brain...might just be the battery winding down, though

The showers I was messing with have 2 separate DDS for Dirty and Very Dirty, and that's 2 more DDS I had to UVMap in addition to the bumpmap, part mask, and the bits that has color.

Did you pull in all the txtc resources, OM? (uh..default resources unchecked? been awhile since I cloned new stuff with the corrected tool)

I can't say that I know the answer to that Ella...I'll try running it through again.

I need to revisit the bookcases anyway because in re-reading Wes's post I notice (bad me...I overlooked it the first time I read it) that, "In the case of the "BookshelfModernModularHigh1x1", there are 4 groups, the bookcase, 1/2 of the books, the other 1/2 of the books and the groundshadow..." where in the bookcases I cloned and looked at there were never more than 3 groups including the shadow group and most had only two groups.

I'm wondering Wes...were you using the TSRW or the s3oc/s3pe/ObjTool to look at that bookcase? I don't have the TSRW so all the ones I've looked at have been pulled out of the game using the tools from here...and I thought I had looked at them all. Is BookshelfModernModularHigh1x1 from the base game or WA?

I used s3oc/ObjTool plus MilkShape. I did not game test the output.

I also used HexEdit to examine the block0 MLOD to see if it had any geostate data, so I could post knowledgeably about that.

Ella I tried your suggestion and still the slightest change to the frame of the bookcase causes those weird triangles to show up even if no change is made to the IMG's or anything else. I may be misunderstanding what you said but if not, I don't think the dds thingies are the problem here.

Thank you for answering Wes...I'm still not finding a 4 group bookcase in the base game so I'm guessing the one you looked at must be from WA.

Small question somewhat tangential to the issue...does anyone know whether the obj format supports anything besides the actual mesh and the texture mapping? I'm curious because it's possible to change the colonial bookcase into an obj and then overwrite the MLOD and MODL with that (after assigning joints) and still have the thing work in the game as long as no changes are made to the bookcase frame itself.

I don't have WA installed. I copied and pasted the name.

Ok...I see it in the list. That's the bookcase I've been referring to as the Modern Modular. I forgot it has a longer name that includes 1 x 1 even though it is a 2 x 1 so I didn't recognize it when you used the full name.

I posted a pic above of what that one looked like in my game after I tried to change the frame while leaving the books (all the books) alone...to quote HL...it as'ploded.

But now I'm more confused than I was...when I clone that bookcase and decompile its MLOD it has only three groups: Group00 - the three thick vertical boards and all the books, Group01 - the shadow, and Group02 - the entire frame except the three thick vertical boards.

I have the most current version of all the tools...what could I be doing incorrectly that mine isn't coming out having 4 groups as yours did?

I give up. Now I only see three groups in the folder I stuck it in. So either I confused the name with something else, or someone put LSD in my granola.

Shwew...I'm glad it was you having the blonde moment for once instead of me...if you had told me I've been cloning this thing incorrectly all along I think my brain would have melted...that can get messy especially if you have to blow your nose.

Just to illustrate the issues with the colonial here are three that I've tried...the first is just run through all the tools, changed to obj, blah blah...and you can see it looks just fine in the game. The second one, all I did was cut off the decorative (or hideous depending on your tastes) wood thing at the top and you can see how the books are distorted. The third, I added an MS cylinder next to the bookcase without altering the bookcase at all and, although there is no distortion, the extra books refuse to show up.



The whole thing is perplexing. This bookcase *ought* to work but it just keeps not working.

Edited to add: "or someone put LSD in my granola..." Heh...not touching that one

The above illustration shows that this is clearly a geostate issue with non-matching geostate values due to the decoration vertices/faces data which is cut away in the middle of the 3D data. The third one has added 3D data at the end which seems to work for the set geostate values.

But maybe I took LSD as well when I looked at the geostate data for bookcases in TSRW.

Hi,

I don't understand all what you said but understand some things ...

Now I have a question (I've already asked to Orangemittens but we didn't find solution) : why does Orangemitten's bookshell not distorded in MY game and is distorded in her ?
She tried a bookshell I've made before too in her game and it's distorded too but not in my game .... It's very confused to me ...

Here are pictures of OM's bookshell in MY game and one of my new bookshell (which show distortion in OM's game but not in mine !!!) ; we can't see any distortion ...

I can't believe it ... I've just made a new mesh's bed and I've the same sort of distortion than OM with her bookshell (in game)...
It's surprising !! when nobody uses the bed all is ok but sometimes when sims sleep in it I see a big distortion which moves with the camera ... It is not the same distortion each time, it's changing and when the sims leave the bed, it's ok.
It's quite strange and confusing ... What do you think of that ?
I've now no picture of this but I can post some if necessary.