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Banned
Original Poster
#1 Old 26th May 2010 at 12:18 AM
Default @#$%^& Fat Morph!
I have been making some meshes with TSR Workshop. Most of the time, I am deleting vertices.

As many are aware, these meshes come in several morphs: base, fat, thin, fit and special. Changes made to one of the morphs have to be made to all of them.

So if I attempt to import a base morph along with a fat morph, but they do not have the same number of vertices, I get an error message. If I get the number of vertices right, but they are not identical vertices, I get an exploded mesh.

Manually making changes to the other morphs usually is not all that different. But then there is the @#$%^& fat morph. These things are so different from the other morphs, that it becomes really hard to do. Nothing lines up right and it is really difficult to see what one is doing.

Here's my question. Are there any shortcuts, secrets or tools to make sure that the vertices I am deleting from the fat (and other morphs) are the same that I am deleting from the base morph?

Right now it seems to be a matter of trial and error for me (with lots of error going along with the trial.) Getting this right seems to be a matter of a lot of guesswork and a lot of luck.
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Alchemist
#2 Old 26th May 2010 at 3:04 AM
The secret is to make a new morph mesh from the finished base mesh.
Finish your mesh to satisfaction, then duplicate it. Move the vertices to make it look like what type of morph you are making (@#$%^& or whatever), then export it. It is the only guarantee that the facelist and vertex count will be identical to the original.
Yeah, it is a lot of work, but that is how the morphs were originally made (duplicated from the base mesh).

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Sockpuppet
#3 Old 26th May 2010 at 10:42 AM
I often use the selPolyCount tool to compare the base mesh and its morphs, other then that i wouldn't know.
Finding the same edits on the fatmorph is difficult i agree but it is possible to make edits to all.
Inventor
#4 Old 26th May 2010 at 1:35 PM
I use both methods from Wes and from Base when making the morphs. I also make a copy from the base Geom00 mesh to alter, that way I always have a complete unaltered Geom00 on top of my list, in case I have to re-import a morphmesh.
If you are doing a lot of complicated changes to the mesh, you better use Wes his method and make a duplicate from the altered basemesh. It is very difficult to make the exact same changes to every morph, even if you do them immidiatly after eachother.
If you only deleted a meshpart or change a complete meshpart like a sleeve, you can use the SelPolycount like Base said, to check if the meshes are the same.
Banned
Original Poster
#5 Old 26th May 2010 at 1:57 PM
O.K. How do you make edits to all? Is there a plugin for this or is it on the menu somewhere?

I was afraid this would be the answer. I was hoping for some sort of tool that would allow the deletion of all comparable vertices on the other morph. (i.e. select the vertices you want to delete on the base morph, then go to a menu item that deletes those vertices on all of the morphs). I thought it might be possible because it seems that the programs are able to identify individual vertices, and perhaps why meshes tend to explode if you don't get them right.

I have started to use Wes's method on one project, but even at that, the @#$%& Fat Morph is real hard to see sometimes. So it is a slow tedius process, where one has to save A LOT. I moved onto another project, instead!
Alchemist
#6 Old 26th May 2010 at 2:42 PM
Here is another tip that may help. Templating.
If you save the original fat morph, when you are making the new one you can use it as a template.
You do it with selective hiding of groups. Since each mesh is just one group, it is easy for Sims 3.
On the groups panel is a button that says "hide" which will toggle the visibility state of any group. Hide everything but the template (your original fat morph) and the new morph (which you duplicated from a base mesh).
We will pretend for brevity that we just need belly fat altered. Hide the template, select two or four vertices in a small cluster from the belly area, then unhide the template.
Go to "move' mode and watch in the 3D window while you mouse move the vertices in one of the ortho-view windows (because that constrains the movement to specific directions).
You can also use the big X Y and Z buttons that show when the move tool is selected to limit how these vertices are moved.
But basically, you move them outward (-Z direction) slowly until they appear right at the surface of the template.
The rest is just more of the same... hide and select, unhide and move.
The great thing about this is that the meshes do not have to be identical. Want to add cuffs to some pants? Just copy them from another mesh with templating.

The original morphs were made as copies of the base mesh. In Maya they are called blendshapes, and they are always copies of the base mesh with only the vertex positions altered (the normals also change somewhat as the surface shape changes). That is not really a Sims 3 or Milkshape or WesHowe imposed restriction, it is just the technology that drives the morphing in the game.

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Sockpuppet
#7 Old 26th May 2010 at 3:07 PM
Another helpfull tool is Wes his Morph Mangle tool wich let you make edits to your base mesh wich can be copied to the morphs when satisfied.
This doesn't work when deleting verts or faces tho!
Test Subject
#8 Old 26th May 2010 at 8:55 PM Last edited by eronoel : 26th May 2010 at 9:43 PM.
I have a question too (basic, again... still learning):

if you just modify the "normal" mesh (like pulled from CTU, Lod1,2,3) does that mean that the texture (dds) is just poorly aligned when the sim gets fat?

or do you actually have to have the extra models in game?

(b/c I too have been wrangling with fat meshes)

in other words: does it make the game look nicer when you have the extra meshes made, or do you actually HAVE to have the extra meshes in there?



Sockpuppet
#9 Old 26th May 2010 at 10:12 PM
The morphs are not used in the game but its data is.
They are used to build the slider files(Bgeo)

Like when in CAS you see the base mesh(by default)
Pull the slider to the fat state and the game will use the fatmorphs data to change the base mesh.
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