Ok, I have NO idea if this the to right place to post this, but I need some uber help. I will epicly fail at school if I do not get this right. NO JOKE.
So, I'm trying to make one piece of clothing. One measley little piece. I am assuming it will take me two months, but that's not the problem. I have tried using both TSR and CTU, and neither work for this. The problem is that for my main area of meshing, I hope to use Maya. Yes, Maya. I know WAY more about it than Milkshape, but I still downloaded them both. So here's what happens:
I open CTU (or TSR, but preferably CTU), find a base mesh from the drop down menus, load it up then extract it. I then import it into milkshape using it's respective file type. I check to see if its okay then I export it to maya using either 3ds, Fbx, Obj, or Ascii. When I get to Maya everything seems okay, but if I weave it back through Fbx or Obj, it looks fine in Milkshape but somehow it dies in TSR and CTU.

Really what I am asking for is someone who has used or is using Maya to create clothing piece to help me out here. If you aren't entirely sure, please, please, do not say "Have you tried X?" because I spent 6 hours with 2 of my mentors testing many different ways to fix this. One was a Maya expert, the other a Sims expert. No joke, and this is for school.

So please, is anyone out there a Maya user and a sims modder who can help me out here? or is my year long project destined for doom?!?!?

Sounds like your problem is that you're losing the bone assignments. The formats you're using aren't going to retain the bone assignments. IIRC, Wes made a plugin to import/export in Maya a while back, but I don't know how developed it is.

Alternately, you may be able to use the SMD file format, which should have bone assignments - import the sims mesh into Milkshape, export as SMD, import SMD into Maya, make your edits, re-export as SMD, reimport into Milkshape, export as sims mesh.

Thank you so much! I'll start up my PC and try right now. Also, do you have a link to the maya plugin? I'm willing to try anything at this point.

Half Life SMD?

I'm not sure Maya recognized SMD, i'll look it up.

No, maya doesn't support SMD. There were a lot of websites about SMD half-life exporters and importers for maya, but they require I have the Half-life SDK. Which I don't have. Has anyone actually used maya in the creation of clothes and got it to work?

SO i understand now that I am losing all the sims 3 joints when I export the way I used to, Is there any way to put them back, or another format that will work?

I came across a smd plugin for Maya some time ago.
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Maya

Thank You. I'll try that.

I can't seem to install it. It's for Maya 2008 or 2009, not for Maya 2010, which is by the way what I happen to be running. Did I forget to mention that? Sorry. Any other ideas? Please?

I think you should pick another school project, pronto.

All of Sims 2, and at least parts of Sims 3 were done with Maya. But the specific export tools used are EA proprietary addons and are not available for use by mere mortals.

There is a Sims 3 clothing mesh (GEOM) import/export plug-in set for Maya, but the latest version supported is 2009, and it isn't likely to be updated for 2010.

So absent using MilkShape or Blender to do the skinning with after meshing in Maya, you are probably out of options unless you plan to program something yourself.

Erm, does it have to be clothing, since it's for a school project? I don't know exactly the bounds of your project and what you can choose, but it seems like doing an object would be much easier as you don't have to worry about bone assignments. You could make a nifty chair or something in Maya and use the obj format - for TS3, objects need bone assignments, but that'd be easy to do in Milkshape as a final step before putting it in S3OC/TSRW to try in-game. Or you can skip Milkshape altogether if you do a non-animated TS2 object (tables and chairs, statues, plants) and just use .obj in whatever program you want.

Trust me, it has to be clothing. But this is very helpful. I have access to every version of Maya known to man, as well as plenty of established programmers. I will try to use milkshape if I have to, but for now I will learn Maya 2009. Plus, I have all 9 months to do this project, so it's okay. Do either of you have the link to the maya geom plugin?

Oh and I think I have access to EA's tools as well. I'll check with my mentors.

But seriously, the simgeom plugin would be awesomely helpful, no matter what version of maya it is.

By the way, You people are so freaking helpful right now. I would never have been able to do this without you.

I went to Google and searched for "maya sims 3 geom plugin".
Here is the first hit: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=363677.

Please read the thread discussion for some help about using it. It is a standard file translator plug-in for Maya, but it was made especially for Sims 3 modding, so objects that do not fit into the Sims 3 format will not export correct (and won't work in the game). All the rest of the particulars of obtaining a game mesh and putting it back in the game work the same as other modeling packages, lots of threads here you will find about that.

Clothing/body/hair meshes and object (non-sims) meshes in Sims 3 are different formats and use different tools. This plug-in is only for the clothing/body/hair meshes.

Not that this is any way helpful, but I would love to know what your project is!!

Thank you so much. Everyone.
My project includes a mass of sewing and sims, together as one. I know this sounds like a buddist concept, but there it is. I'm making a outfit in the real world that looks exactly like one i make for Sims 3. I have to use maya so that is looks awesomely perfect, and because I have two maya mentors. I've gotten a little help from EA, and from various other companies. If it works, I'll be able to do this professionally and work with Haiti to make clothes for kids there. But that is NOT part of stage one.
I'm setting up Maya 2009 right now, and if this works, i'll let you know. thanks for all the help.

I know its a some work but you also could use Blender to convert the files.
http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=11708

Hmm... I'm not sure how helpful that will be seeing that as of the last post Blender can't convert SMD files. I've tried the SMD way, but they were right, maya can't properly do that.

I think I've got it now, once maya 2009 is installed I can get the plugins up and fix the texture issue i'm having. Anyone have any tips for a new creator?