I am not sure if this is a mesh issue or not.


I remember when i used to mesh in Sims 2 that something liike this was related to the mesh.

It seems the ponytail goes somewhat invisible infront of glass or the shower.

This happens to be a donation hair from Peggyzone or whatever she calls it now, producing fabulous looking hairs which do odd things in game.

Perhaps the "fixing transparency issues" tutorial that Anubis posted in the tutorials section a few days ago might help?

Both the glass and hair mesh use material setting to make the mesh layer transparant and they blend with eachother.
With sims 2 we used a opacity number to let one layer overule the other.

Does it also happens with default hairmeshes?

The opacity settings in just one GEOM are controlled by how the meshgroups are ordered.
Its explained in the tutorial Whiterider mentioned.
But how to let a hairmesh overrule the glass, i have no idea...

If it's the hair, I think it's the creator's fault...

Don't you agree?

Either way, just don't look at the sim when they pass a window or mirror....

And besides, Peggy has been known to not produce...quality....hairs and the like.

Weeaboo:-Yes i know it's the creators fault as it was the the creators fault that it also wasn't shower proof which i have fixed
And honestly I have also fixed a fair few hairs when of peggy's, one of which the creator asked me to send to her so it could be replaced in the site for download even though there was no response when peggys sims was asked asked to fix hair prior.

I'm pretty much doing this for my own enjoyment and learning so I can get back into meshing again.

Base1980:-
The other default hairs do not behave in this manner.
Only Peggy hairs from what I have noticed so far.

I am pretty certain I have fixed a similar issue in the past and yes it was an opacity number in Milshape which solved it.
I think you gave me the heads up on the issue in sims 2 with an alpha mesh outfit I made just need to jog my memory.
Will take a look in milkshape and see what i can come up with.

Peggy has been known not to use the correct comments, she uses 6 (on a lot of hairs) instead of 7 which causes some issues, Idk about this specific issue though, it's worth a try, just replace the mesh comments with a Bg's and see what happens

Thanks for the thought....
I think you are most likely right.
Peggy maybe using a hair comment which conflicts with windows and showers.

If I recall correctly, the correct or better functioning comment makes the alphas look a little jaggy around the edges instead of a smooth semi see through look (except when in front of a window in this case)

So if I recall correctly there is a little trade off for functionality in game.

I'll have to extract the hair mesh and compare it with an existing one in game to see which the issue is.

EDIT:-
Took a look at the mesh in Milkshape and it appear the Mesh is one whole group and all the LODs are identical.

There also seems to be a lot more data in comments compared to sims 2.

Next step will be to compare it with a similar mesh from game or at at least one which does not behave strangely in front of windows and showers.

All you need to do is open a functioning EA hair and copy the comments into place.

In TS3 there are no more separate groups.

The LOD thing... well that's just Peggy's problem, the LODs should be different :P

If the defaults dont have it then repackage with DABOOBS.
And you might want to check if the hair is double layered and indeed copy the comments from a default hair.

That's why I usually try to avoid downloading stuff from her site.

Lest I be given a terrible hair thing.

Then again, I go to some sites that has her hair fixed.

Teehee.

Attempt failed and hair crashes CAS

Oddness in Milkshape

The first thing i get when importing is:-


Then I check out the comments and compare to a default hair mesh comment.
This is the first thing i notice which is different between the two.

Peggy hair comment:-


Default hair comment:-


I replace the peggy hair comment with the default hair comment and export then the next odd issue happens.
GEOM files size changes from 353kb to 164kb as if some data is missing on export.
Not sure whats going on.

Are there some steps missing that I have to tweak or add before exporting?

From the looks of it, she's missing references's.

I guess?

MTS Staff Note:

As this is a technical discussion trying to fix this item, please don't post unless you have some suggestions on how to fix these issues. Thanks.

Found yet more data missing...

Looking at HPs TS2 to TS3 hair tutorial I decided to check out the Sims 3 extra data just to see if it's not just the comments which are odd and yes there is something else strange.
The hair has absolutely no TagVals

0 through to 3 are all 0.

Makes me wonder what other values are stripped when importing this peggy hair into milkshape via the importer.

Most likely bone assignments too.

You might want to look over Peggy's commets for her hair, she might have messed up i have messed up the same with the windows but never the shower, idk how but yes the comments are a important part of the prosess

Peggy "locks" her meshes, so when you export them they will be full of errors.
I've seen that issue (glass thingy) with other hairs too, even with mine. I'd love to see a solution for this, so I'll be glad to test/help if you want ^-^

So you solved the transparent hair in front of windows issue when creating hairs?



That makes sense now.
Another creator must dot the same.
Although there are ways around it from what I can tell.

I've been testing and all hairs do this. Even EA hair. So I guess we can't fix it?

You're right!
Just haven't noticed it with the EAxis hairs as much as the CC hairs I have been using like the one I posted.
It is an in game fault, probably been there since the game was released.

It really should be resolved by EA but I wouldn't count on it.

Looks like it will have to keep in mind if some ideas come up during modding.

It would appear she has discovered some ways of assembling GEOM files that do not break the game engine, probably as a "watermark" to prove copying.

The comment "References" refers to a table at the end of the file that has a variable number of 16-byte long TGI values. These are used for a reference to the bonefile, the bumpmap file, the multiplier and so on. You can edit these numbers directly in the comments, such as changing the bumpmap reference, but most people use CTU for doing this task. The order of the items "TGIRefXX" in the comments is the same as in the GEOM file. This varies between mesh types, and Delphy did the research on this for CTU, so I don't know which is which, except the bonefile reference always seems to be the last.

From looking at exportdry's post, the material part (all of the "Embedded..." comments) is the same. However, a long list of garbage TGI references at the end of the file would swell the file size, and this is why my importer is reading a garbage value and then is unable to find the bonefile reference.

The original GEOM plug-ins had a non-commercial license restriction, and Peggy got publicly scolded for violating that. I dropped the license restriction after TSR developed their own toolset, as by then my original reason for having it was now moot. I don't know what Peggy is using to make her files, but it isn't my exporter, because it would choke on the huge References count. It is possible that she uses it and hex-edits the output, which is certainly something that anyone selling content would want to do. I refuse to argue about the ethics of that, it is irrelevant to the technical issue here.

To fix the file, replace the TableType and References from her file with a set of TableType, References and the proper count of TGIRefXX items from another hair. Copy/Paste will work fine, although remember that the values of the TGIRef comments will be used by the game for your textures and such, so they will have to be either edited in the comments or by using CTU to match the values up.

As for the TagVals, having zeroes is more common in store items than it was in the original game files, however there is a definite difference in the appearance of a hair in-game using different TagVals, somewhere I have pictures showing this. I never finished researching which byte did what, although I believe it is a per-vertex opacity value. If the values had no discernable impact, I would never have spent the time to write the extra-data editor to work with them. Someone else interested in discovering something new could experiment with this, if you select the vertices by group you can then set just one group to all be a certain value, and see what the impact is.