This is probably a dumb question, but if you make LOD 2 and 3 (for pants in my case) using the DirectX Mesh Tools, as outlined in this post, how do you ensure that the first and last rows of the mesh (i.e. the waist and ankle junctions) have the same number of vertices as in the nude mesh? I think this is important because the waist and ankle vertices need to go through the vertex + normal data merge operations with the nude mesh (or other EA bottoms mesh) as reference in order for there not to be a visible seam in-game, if I understand correctly. Or maybe this is not necessary at all?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

I am using the same methode, using my lod 1 to create 2 and 3..and honestly, I never thought of this being a problem.
Try and test, see if your mesh needs anything beyond this. I haven't made a lot of clothing for sims 3, I am just begining, but I had no trouble with waist when I made shorts, with any lenght shirt paired with it.

@Rosebine

Thanks for the info; I'm new to this too. Just to clarify, when you made LOD 2 and 3 for the shorts, you didn't need to do vertex + normal data merge on the waist and ankles at all? For the mesh I'm working on, it was necessary for LOD1, so I assumed the same goes for the other LODs. Also, in the post I linked (by BloomsBase), fixing neck/ankle seams is mentioned as something "you still need to [do]" after generating the LODs. I'm confused.

For what it's worth, the pants' LOD 2 I generated using the DirectX Tools has 1 fewer vertex at the waist compared to the nude mesh, so surely that row will not match the bottom of the torso?

It won't match exactly, but do the best you can on LOD2. LOD3, by contrast, is meant to be viewed from far away, and it's not important at all to have match vertices on LOD3.

@spladoum

Thanks for your reply! I guess that's probably the most prudent course. But just for curiosity's sake, would adding a vertex to the waist row using Face --> Subdivide work? Or will it screw up vertexIDs or some other aspect of the mesh I don't yet understand? The new vertex will not get a bone assignment when the LOD2 mesh is welded to the LOD1 to recover the lost bone assignments in BloomsBase's instructions, but I think that can be remedied using Auto-Assign Bones from the Mesh Toolkit.

(I also looked at Divide Edge for adding a vertex, but cannot create the faces needed afterwards because Milkshape thinks I'm selecting more than one vertex whenever a vertex from the row immediately below the waist junction is selected. I'm not sure why, but suspect it has something to do with that row being an edge on the UV map.)

I am using this tutorial..which I find easier to read than the one you linked. (a question of taste)..and there is no mention of this either. But just as Spladoum said, it won't be noticeable. I would not add any vertices. But yeah, try it, and see if you like it.

Just a question for you...is your pant mesh a new mesh? or is it the bottom nude mesh?

@Rosebine

I read sciguy77's thread too (it's more clearly formatted) but ended up going back to BloomsBase's because sciguy77 references it, and because I don't use TSRW (it crashes on my setup.) It's good to know that no one seems to worry about seam data merging for LOD2; guess I might be overthinking it. As an aside, like someone mentioned further down that thread, steps 8-10 seem to yield problematic normals, not very different from having auto-smooth on. I find that, frequently, just selecting a subset of faces by hand and running Align Normals on them (I don't even regroup them beforehand) appears to fix the weird shadows in 3D view.

The mesh is a pair of cropped pants from TS4 Spa Day that I'm converting to TS3 (yeah, the ideal beginner project, I know ). For LOD1, I used vertex + normal data merge on the first vertex row at the waist using TS3 amBottomNude as reference, deleted the TS4 legs below the pant cuffs, and added the lower legs from TS3 amBottomNude. I also remapped the waistband of the pants to the second row of vertices, as the first row in TS3 pants seems to be mapped to the skin of the abdomen, whereas in these TS4 pants, the pants texture is mapped all the way to the top row of the mesh. Not sure all these steps are correct; I'm learning on the fly.

So, what you're trying is to fix these neck seams on the LOD2 - LOD3? Because even EA's meshes doesn't seem to have these applied to their own meshes (I mean the seam fix) The tutorial though, looks like it's written for GEOMS, and GEOMS and the WSO file are really different from each other. WSO Files are more like 'the whole package' (That has morphs, bones, etc) while GEOMS are more like this individual mesh.
LODS are, if you didn't know, are called Level of detail. That means that the farther away the camera goes, how less detailed the mesh becomes.
So, here is a great example of a LOD: http://simlicious.tumblr.com/post/1...nd-thats-a-good
(This is likely to be experienced if you use a HQ mod, but usually this is what it looks like from far away).

If you mean Morphs (meshes that includes the fatness, thinness, strength, etc) I had someone who told me that they fixed to completely, but the reason why it somehow kept showing a neck seam was because there was a second mesh really close on it and it wasn't splitted in two. Which cause weird shadows.

Though, looking at the tutorial, it's really different than I would do LODS. I usually prefer to select the mesh, use the Directx tool, just like in the tutorial, slide it to 50%, select the mesh again and use align normals and then just export it.

About the mapping, I would use this template! it's really useful and I keep using it daily ^-^: https://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/img/...ybloomsbase.jpg

And if you're not sure how to do stuff in Milkshape, I all demonstrated it in this conversion tutorial: https://youtu.be/ZLEMhKQ1OD0
(There is another bit about sims 3 Clothing creating with TSRW in the final part, just so you know ^-^)

Hope this helps you out a bit!

@Greenplumbbob

I finally got some time to work on this again; sorry I was gone for a bit. Thanks for all the tips! You're right that seam matching is not needed for LOD2/3. I'm working directly with GEOMs since TSRW crashes every few minutes on my computer. It's actually pretty straightforward.

There's still some work to be done on LOD1, as there is a seam at the waist that might be caused by the UV mapping (the vertex coordinates, normals, and bone assignments all match, so I don't think those are causing this problem). Question: if I remap the mesh, do all the morphs have to be redone? I'm hoping not, since morphs don't contain UV information, IIRC.

Hmmm well not exactly, if you don't want to spend lots of time on your Lower LODS, you could leave them that way, but if you want to make it really perfect, you should. It's just your decision to make. Usually when that happens to me, and I actually only changed something in the UV map but already loaded all the LODS in TSRW, I only replace the edited Highest LOD of them all.

About TSRW, are you using it on Windows 10? Because TSRW seems to have trouble with Windows 10. >-< if that's not the case, maybe trying my version out would work? Because the latest TSRW versions... well they're more compatible for the ts4 and are really broken when it comes to the ts3.

http://greenplumbboblover.tumblr.co...005426/tsrw-172

@Greenplumbbob

Thanks for your reply! Sorry if the question wasn't clear: I plan to adjust the UV map on LOD1--does that mean all the morph meshes (for LOD1) have to be recreated? They were made with Auto-create Morph Mesh (not BGEO) in Mesh Toolkit, but had significant clipping in some areas that took a while to fix, so it'd be great if I don't have to scrap them just because the base mesh's UV map gets changed a little.

I'm not on Windows 10 and don't run the latest version of TSRW, since I don't mod for TS4. I started with an older version of TSRW that also crashed incessantly, then updated once or twice in the hopes that it would get better, before finally giving up on it, so I'm still on an older-than-latest version (not at my computer now, so can't way which.) I've grown to prefer other tools like CTU and S3PE because they're faster and more transparent. That said, TSRW is quite useful for troubleshooting, and for things where visualization is important, like adding slots or checking mesh holes when the sim moves. Its instability is not a deal-breaker for these shorter tasks.

If you adjust or change anything on the LOD1, then yes. You must redo the meshtool kit, to recreate the other 2 LODS to that new one.

@Rosebine

Good to know--thanks! For LOD1, would the morphs (not the other LODs) have to be recreated too?

Well you could also just use the directx tool in milkshape 3D. I've never used the meshtoolkit LOD tool one. It might be because I work with WSO files. But in theory it must work with GEOMS too. Though, the directx tool will delete the bones so you'll need to assign them again.

If you change one LOD, the other LODS will just stay the way you left them. So say you edit LOD1. LOD2 and LOD3 won't be the same as LOD1. (sorry if i'm not clear >-<) But I guess whatever works comfortable with you, both ways are fine ^-^

Morphs in this case, say you changed the LOD1 without it having any Morphs in it, (when it comes to TSRW, it would have called as 'base', the regular mesh you're working with) and THEN assign the morphs to it, you're fine! If you change anything to the LOD1 with the morphs, well... you need to do a lot of work to also 'copy' that over to the other morphs.

1. So say, there is a hole in the mesh and you want to fix that, but you imported all the morphs with it in whatever 3D program (milkshape included) and of course you would start with the 'base' morph, you'll need to do the exact progress on 4/3 other morphs as well.

2. (This is what I usually do) Let's go back to the hole story, but in a different progress. Say you import your mesh and it does include Morphs, I usually delete the morphs except for the 'base' morph. Now I would fix the hole in the mesh (or in different cases, just edit it) and when i'm done, I do the whole progress of 'model cleaner, align normals, fixing seams' all over and then export it as a WSO (GEOM in your case, make sure you still have the 'comments' exported with it) and import the file in Meshtoolkit.

Both progresses both have the same 'path they share at the end' (if you know what I mean) Both progresses end up with Meshtoolkit, adding bones,(for example 2, you'll need to add morphs through meshtoolkit) (if you want to, LODS as well). Things are different, however, if you have custom morphs. For this, there is a pretty nice example. Say you have a skeleton arm or something like it. You don't want the skeleton arm to get all fat, fit, or really thin, because... well it's a skeleton arm. Then, you want edit the arm in every morph. This is a great example you want to use the first example I explained.

I hope this answered all your question marks! ^-^

@Greenplumbbob



Fixing a hole is a big change, so I understand why the morphes have to be restarted. But what if I only change the UV mapping, without changing anything else about the base mesh--do the morphs have to be recreated too?

Thanks for your patience!

Yup! Because things would get really weird then if someone has like the in-game slider set to the 'base' morph (like set to the middle of the slider) And when they want a thinner or fatter sim, the texture goes all crazy, if you know what I mean. So I would recreate the morphs as well. ^-^

Got it; I'll do that then. Thanks for clarifying the process. You've been a great help!

You're welcome! Took me a while to figure out how these stuff works too >-<