I've been working pretty much nonstop all day on a project. At first I was intending on doing it as a hair but after realizing that DABOOBS doesn't allow for hat hairs and not wanting to get involved with TSRW, I decided to do it as an accessory. Attempting to keep this as simple as possible for my first "real" Sims 3 project.

What I'm trying to do is create a baseball cap as an accessory -- simply taking the basegame baseball cap hair and converting it to an accessory so that it fits the shaved/bald head. The first time doing it, I had not a single clue what I was doing and crashed my game. That was only to be expected. I couldn't get the mesh to even show up in CTU, so why would it show up in game? Okay. I spent a couple of hours traversing the web and studying up on everything. Unfortunately, there's no step-by-step tutorial for creating accessories, so I had to kind of teach myself by reading up on several different threads and whatnot. After finally learning how to properly do this thing, I was able to create what I believed to be a working package based off the glasses accessory. I imported the glasses, reshaped the hat mesh (which I imported as an .obj), copied the comments over, renamed the hat group, and got it looking nice in Milkshape. And I figured out how to put it all together properly in CTU -- and lo and behold, I was able to get it to appear in the 3D preview and edited the textures and the masks. It looked great, well-put-together, and I was totally confident that I was able to get it to work right this time!

Unfortunately, my excitement soon died when I got in game and the game crashed the instant I switched to the Accessories section in CAS. Apparently I fucked up somewhere, and after putting so much effort into this simple stupid mesh, I'm about ready to cry. I took a look at my package again and can't figure out what the hell I did wrong. Does anyone have any clue where I screwed up? I attached the file just in case...

-Clone the earrings with CTU -extract the earrings meshes in CTU -Import the earrings mesh in MS
-import your obj file
-fix the comments
-give the baseballhat boneassignements
-delete the earringsmesh
-if you have a texture already apply it as material on the mesh
-check the UVmap(texture coordinator)
-when satisfied export the mesh

-import your new meshfile in CTU(under lod0)
-fix the texture files
-add a thumbnail
-Save as

Your main problem in your mesh truly is the fact it's missing boneassigments. You could see this hair tutorial also: http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php...s_3_Hair_Basics
so you'll know how to make boneassigments for anything that is for head (if you're not familiar with boneassigments), and to make good LODs because The LODs I checked out from your package seem to be odd. So I suggest you to take your LOD0 back to Milkshape and start over by following what Bloom just said so you will get your accessory work

Thank you so much, you're both so helpful! <3 I started over from scratch, redid the mesh, the bone assignments, and the LODs. And, well, my game isn't crashing now... but the mesh simply isn't showing up. The file is there, but when I click on it, the hat doesn't appear on the head. There's nothing there, it's as if nothing happens at all. *sigh* Maybe I'm just too dumb for this. Any thoughts on why this is happening now?

When you extracted the earrings from CTU, wat was its filename?
Lod0 or Lod1?
Some accesoires use the lod1 while others the lod0
Its possible you need to load your custom mesh in the lod1 box in CTU when attaching the meshes.

Note, you can not update your existing package, start over with a new earrings clone

Edit,
Had a look at the files and i think im right, you need to load it in the lod1 box

With my original file, I used the glasses because that had Lod0/1/2/3, but then I saw that you said to use the earrings, which only had Lod1/2/3. So I started over with a new earrings clone. So even though both the glasses and the earrings are accessories, they both don't use Lod0? I thought that all the accessories needed Lod0, but that might not be the case with the earrings. Could that be the reason the mesh is not showing up in game? I'm going to start over again, clone the earrings, and not use the Lod0 this time and see if that works.

Edit: All right, I got it to appear without crashing anything! But eek... it's not looking so good. D: It looks so much worse than it did in either CTU or Milkshape! Aughhh. I guess it's back to the drawing board to figure this out... again. It almost looks like a normals issue... but I didn't touch the normals except for aligning them after reducing the polycount for LOD2 and LOD3.

I believe it could be the Uvmap that's making it look like this, which means you have some meshparts sharing the same texture on UVmap. Each part has to be mapped separately. If it looks good out of CAS, in the actucal gameplay then you'll know if UVmap is your issue.

Mallow is right, with sims 2 alot of the meshparts were duplicated and mirrored and shared the same texture.
You can not do it with sims 3 stuff(only with sims 3 hair)

It actually is from one of the Sims 3 hair meshes, not the Sims 2, which is why it's baffling me -- but I'll take a look at the UV map and see if anything looks off!

Edit: This is what the UV map looks like. It looks fine to me, like every part's mapped separately...

Did you fix the meshcomments when going from glasses to earrings?

Yes I did! And the problem's still there. Ugh. I'm beginning to think that maybe it has to do with the DiffuseMap and SpecularMap listed under Mesh TGI Links -- they appear to be the same as the earrings. But there's no "Replace" button under Meshes to fix those, only "Find." How can I replace these with the hat's DiffuseMap and SpecularMap?

And I'm so sorry for bombarding you with all these questions and being so stupid all the time. Ach.

Those TGI links are links to the original basegame textures(exept the last one wich is the link to the skeleton) and will be overuled by the custom ones you import.
The issues your having can be a:
-duplicated meshparts wich share the same texture
-missing or incorrect linked textures

Can you upload the file?

Love to help people if i can so dont worry bout that

Ahhh, I see. I was unsure on what exactly they were, so it's good to know that. I uploaded the file below -- thank you so much, you're such a great help! <3

Now I do wonder what really is the reason for this, as it can't be the UVmap anymore when all the mesh pieces are separated. Are you sure Bloom it's incorrectly linked or missing textures that's causing this?

I have encountered the same issue with some accessories I've made as well. Even if UVmap is perfect, comments, texture formats, links have been supposedly all correct something just seems wrong when the accessory is in the CAS. But I've seen many others's CC having the same issue - Although it's not as clearly shown as this Cap's issue.

It's as if the accessory if still showing those original textures even if they have been replaced. I tried Starfish baseball cap mesh with different comments and plain gray textures to check if there was problem with her textures but no the cap looks horrible in CAS.

i know this was comming but one of my harddisks died.
I wont be able to check the file.

Man, that sucks. Wel hopefully you get your comp up and running soon

Oh no! Good luck with your computer, Bloom! And Mallow, at least it's comforting to know that I'm not the only one having issues with it! I'm really baffled, I've tried everything. It's so bizarre. :/

You know, I decided to attempt doing this is as a hair rather than an accessory and see if that changed anything. I did not have high hopes at all for it, since hairs are a lot more intimidating than accessories, and I was sure I'd screw up, as I screwed up so many times with this. It took longer to do than the accessory did, but believe it or not, it actually worked perfectly on the first try! The mesh itself actually looks decent enough, and there's none of the weird issues I had with the accessory looking strange. I'm pretty pleased. The only downside is that because it's a hat hair, I had to use TSRW and export as a sims3pack when I'd much rather use CTU and package files. But at least it worked.

It's kind of hilarious that I had an easier time making a hair mesh than making an accessory mesh, since accessories are supposed to be less complicated than hairstyles in general.
Of course, the fact that it's a shaved head with a hat rather than an actual hair probably had something to do with it. xD But still, I'm glad I know the principles now. It was an incredibly frustrating experience, but I'm thrilled to have actually completed my first real Sims 3 project. Thank you so much to everyone for all your help! I just wish I knew what was causing the problem with the accessory in the first place...

Glad to see it worked out for you as hathair, Looks great
But for accessories, I really have to try to find out what causes that problem you I and many others have had, for it is pretty irritating issue

Please do keep me updated if you do find out what the issue is! I'd love to work with accessories again, and this issue is indeed rather... irritating, haha. xD

Gotcha

I haven't checked your file yet but you should check if the hat is double layered.
Hairs all are double layered and EA might have done the same with the hats that are part of a hairfile.
Its not a problem when creating the hat as hairfile but when converting it to a accesoire things go wrong with the display.
Accesoires, clothing and shoes can not have duplicated(and face reversed) parts sharing the same texture.

I've been trying to make the same exact thing believe it or not! I don't know how on earth you pulled this off. Ever think about uploadin that hair?

Redid the baseballcap and it looks fine in CAS.
You must have overlooked something i guess, maybe the 3 or 4 recolor option?(both use a diffrent DDs format)
Here is my file if you want to have a look.

Oooooh! Bloom, you're a genius. I never knew that about double layers, and I'm ecstatic that you were able to get it to work. Thank you immensely for all of your help with this!

Aiswen, I'd be glad to! I'm afraid it's a sims3pack because I couldn't figure out how to get it to export from TSRW as a package file, though. D: If that doesn't you turn off, I went ahead and attached it to this post! I hope it's the right one... I have a bazillion files laying around from the million different times I tried to figure this all out. xD

P.S. Thank you to Mallow for PMing me to let me know that Bloom figured it out! <3