I had the exact same thing happen as Marvine. I double checked to make sure i had done everything correctly and everytime a new part is added without welding the bone assignments and skin weights are lost.

BTW.....This is a great tool Wes, Thank You

Wes,

Your news is something else, ill tell you that. I didn't export this mesh anywhere or import it anywhere. Adam told me the best way to do it would be to just do all the work right there. And so I did. I saved my mesh right before I closed out as a .ms3d file and I have it open right now and I have the spine1 selected on the body it looks great. Now I’m exporting it and now if I import it back in all the assignments are gone. I hate to say it but it seems it might be a problem with the plug-in. but keeping the hopes up maybe I just did something really stupid! I usually do anyways.

Wes,

I tried something that I am pretty sure I am not supposed to do but I tried to replace the body part of the hula skirt mesh with the adult female swim body by importing both then deleting the parts I didn't need and renaming the groups.It didn't really work ,which I really expected , but part of the chest and back do show up in bodyshop with working bumpmaps.

I know the bump maps have been a problem so I thought I would let you know that the plugins can retain that data somehow even if I messed up everything else.

Edit: I posted a copy in case you want to look at it.

I had another try at editing a hair mesh, with great resullts.

I did a re-edit of a hair mesh I had done before with the old plugins, so I could easily compare the results.

See the pic - the one on the left is the original edit - notice the very angular look where indicated on the picture. The Sim on the right has the re-edited version (really just re-assigned).

I'm still experimenting to get the ideal assignments figured out, but for those who wish to try this, here is what I did:

* Import your earlier GMDC with the Unimesh plugins (NOTE - I don't know if this will work on a saved .ms3d file, probably not - I suggest doing a new Import of your old GMDC)

* Go to the comments for each group - the skinweights will show 1 - change this to 3 in each group's comments

* In the original edit, I had assigned the upper part of the hair all to "head" and the lower part all to "spine_2" I located the vertices near the "joining area" Now I selected the very bottom row that was assigned to "head" and went to the Unimesh Bone Tool - The first assignment shows 100% to "head" - I changed it like this: I set head to 70, then set the next one to 30 and changed it from -1 to spine_2. Note that you must enter the % first before it will let you choose another bone besides -1
Then I clicked [Commit]
Next I click [Change in All] and finally [Commit All]

* Now i selected all the upper vertices that were assigned to spine_2 (in other words, the next row of vertices directly below the ones I just did)
Again I re-assigned them, this time 70% to spine_2, 30% to head.

* Finally, I select the ones from both of these two rows, but only at the back of the Sim's body. I added a third assignment, to "neck" - I gave neck 10% on all of them, and backed off 10% on the 70% assignment (so it still comes to 100%)

For example, the ones that had 70% head and 30% spine_2 now have 60% head, 30% spine_2, and 10% neck

These are only experimental figures, but should get you started.

Doc, should we do 1 group of the hair at a time or can we do it with ALL groups unhidden/visible?

The bone tool works by copying the assignments/weights data for all SELECTED vertices to a buffer. You then are editing the buffer. If you change a bone, but don't press commit, the data is not copied to the buffer. If you change a bone, then press assign to all, that data is copied to every entry in the buffer.
Two buttons exit the bone tool. Cancel simply discards the buffer and closes that tool. "Commit all" copies the entire buffer, vertex by vertex, back to the game model.
In the edit menu is a "select All" choice. You can use that, perhaps you selected by vertex with "ignore backfaces" checked, in which case only the front half of the assignments got changed.
The bone tool ignores the selected faces and bones, operating only on the vertice list. After the commit all, go back to edit and choose "select none".
<* Wes *>

The earlier version of the .ms3d file should be OK to read in. But you would have to place the new comments into the group manually. By importing the old GMDC, you got that same coordinate data, but the comments were already made for you (so you only needed to change the number of skin weights value).
A lot of the old hair meshes had only two skin weights. Those could be changed to three if desired, and the third assignment used where desired. Many assignments in a 3 assignment GMDC (body or hair) are only to one or two bones anyway.
Impressive results.

As a final note, I have a better understanding now of what happens when you "weld". I believe I can cure the weld problem in the exporter.
Mete and I are still exploring the interaction problem with the bone tool and the 1.7.7a update. I believe it has something to do with the DialogBox() function, and how I am using it, as this is the only plugin that actually uses any windows and resources (the rest of the plugins, if they have anything to ask or report, use a function called MessageBox().
Of course, if I get some resolution on these issues, version 4.01 will be posted.

<* Wes *>

Thanks you for sharing this information with me. If I can figure out how to make it work for you, I'll return the courtesy.
<* Wes *>

Okay, I've been playing with this new tool for two days. I made a mini skirt mesh with no deleted/added parts, just rearranging vertices. I didn't use smooth all or weld together AT ALL. I uvmapped in Milkshape. It worked perfectly. The mesh looked great and had no blockiness, no seams. It was great.

On the second mesh I used the Hula Girl out fit to edit an alpha layer. I took several tries, but I finally ended up just doing a straight edit of the hula girl to get the alpha to work properly. One problem I had was that I can't do a TRANSPARENT alpha. It's either ON or Off. So, it will do lace, but not sheer material. (Hope that makes sense.) You can't make the layer see-through. I'm sure that's just me not knowing quite how to do it. So someone else may know exactly what to do for that. Any way, this suits my needs almost perfectly. Again, thanks Wes.

Oh, I forgot to say that with the second mesh I did delete vertices and still didn't use weld together OR smooth. I also ALWAYS uncheck autosmooth because it makes seams.

grizelda to make that work you have to make two changes to the MATD for that part..First stdMatAlphaBlendMode:blend second stdMatAlphaTestEnabled:0.

I left all the groups showing while I did this.

I did some tweaking and found the best results for this particular mesh were these (see pic)

Section 1 - 100% head
Section 2 - 75% head, 25% neck
Section 3 - 65% head, 35% neck
Section 4 - 65% head, 25% spine_2, 10% neck
Section 5 - 65% spine_2, 25% head, 10% neck
Section 6 - 100% spine_2

Of course this will depend on the particular mesh you are editing. If there are parts dangling down the front of the Sim's shoulders you would want to change the "neck" assignments in sections 2 and 3 to "spine_2" instead.

Also keep in mind that I am not saying you need to edit your mesh with the old plug-ins first, you can do the exact same things all with the Unimesh plugins. I just posted about this because I know a lot of you have already released hair meshes you would like to update for better animations.

Just be sure that you do change ALL the assignments because it is necessary to get rid of any b_hair, c_hair, etc assignments {if I am understanding correctly} to avoid having parts of the mesh disappear.

Also note that I didn't bother doing anything with those troublesome assignments at the back of the neck since that area never shows with this mesh. If the hairline area does show at the back of the neck on your mesh, you will want to be sure to exactly duplicate the way they are done on a Maxis mesh to eliminate the infamous neck-gap problem

And do not do any welding!

Oooh, thank you!

Don't blame yourself. But please check the installation for me. Here's how:
Open your MilkShape 1.7.7 directory, and look for the file msS2MExp.dll. It should have a file date of 1/16/2006.
Otherwise, please send me the .ms3d file you saved. If this is happening for some reason, I need to chase the problem down. No body models will display any parts that don't have a bone assignment. If you don't want to attach it here, PM me for my email address.
<* Wes *>

I figured out the problem with the bone tool and the MilkShape 1.7.7A crashing. The problem was related to my incorrectly defining the window, but since 1.7.7 kept the DLL loaded always, it caused no problem.
1.7.7A unloads the DLL after use. The invisible window behind the dialog box was being let open, but the code to handle the messages had been unloaded, which somehow interfered with the proper operation of the main window for MilkShape.
I am breaking tradition and releasing only a piece of the next version (4.01) by attaching a replacement Bone Weight tool 4.01. I prefer releasing an entire updated package with all the same release number, but this is ready now, and some of the other fixes I need to do with the exporter may be some days away yet.
I left several pieces of debug message reporting code in the tool active, so if you get an error message, please copy the message down fairly carefully. This seems to work fine with the 1.7.7 release also... it was a problem that was masked until the DLL was unloaded, which never happened before 1.7.7A until you exited MilkShape normally.

As usual, place the unzipped file in the MilkShape diectory. It should already have a file by that name in there, so say "Yes" to replacing it.
<* Wes *>

I hope this isn't going to be that big of a deal for you wes but thank you so much for looking at it.



I wasn't to sure on what you meant here. But on my file it says the last time it was modified was the 6th.

I agree losing bone assignments is a SERIOUS problem. I just need some help to investigate what is happening, and whether it is in the exporter or in MilkShape, or in the usage. I will see that it gets fixed whichever way, if you can help me.

I want to make sure I understand the problem, because it may or may not be in the exporter code. The exporter gets the data from MilkShape and translates it out into GMDC, mostly a translator/reformatter tool function. Perhaps the regrouping function is not copying the extra data from the original groups (the extra data space never existed before 1.7.7), which would then mean the problem is inside MilkShape. The other thing that can happen is that comments are maybe not copied on regrouping. If the comment
"NumSkinWgts: 3" (or 1 or 2) isn't in the group comments, the code in the exporter may be (and probably is) skipping the steps to copy the bone assignments to the output file. I seem to remember issues with BodyChop and regrouping not copying group comments... UniMesh depends heavily on the group (and joint) comments to add levels of complexity to the mesh when it decides what it is that needs to be exported. One of my goals was to have a single plugin set that can generate a model as simple as a golfball mesh to a full body mesh in one tool (plus all the extra assignments and weights, too).
ForwardMotionIs posted a similar problem, I downloaded his invisible mesh, and none of his groups had ANY bone assignments for his main or the two alpha groups. Perhaps he, too, is regrouping. For a body type mesh, nothing that is not assigned to a bone will display.
Step one would be for me to ask you to look in the groups section of the file you exported, select a model, click on the "comments" button, and see if there are any there? For a body mesh, the importer would have created several in the original group, looking something like this:

ModelName: body
Opacity: -1
HasTangentArray:
NumSkinWgts: 3

The "ModelName: body" was the only comment (for a base group) that BodyChop ever used, and it was there because MilkShape only allowed 32 character group names, while Sims2 names can be up to 127 characters long.
Joint comments are very important, but mostly you would never want to fool with the joints because moving or deleting them will make the mesh unuable in the game.
Since the comments are just text, you can copy and paste if regrouping is losing them. I'll address the issue with Mete, and maybe a future version will act differently.
If you do have these comments in the regrouped file groups, then it's a different issue. If so, can you make and post a .ms3d file (not the ascii version), complete with assignments, then give me a step-by-step to regroup it in a way that will cause the problem to happen? It need not be a complete creation, just something that demonstrates exactly how to reproduce it? Simpler is better.
<* Wes *>

Wes, the loss of the assignments when re-grouping happens right away, in MilkShape. It is definately not a problem in the exporter.

But thanks to the posts here by everyone, and some experience in doing workarounds, there is a way to do this now (see pics)

It shows a mesh edited with the Unimesh plugins, with an added part (a simple belt buckle) - to the right is the original Maxis mesh, for comparison.
Notice that there is no shadowing on the new mesh, no texture mapping issues, and no problem with the finger animations. Also no problems where the neck meets up with the head.

I didn't show it in the pictures, but the "fat" morph also works correctly

OK, here is what I did:

* BEFORE importing the mesh, go to the Groups tab and un-check "autosmooth" - as Grizzelda said, if you leave it checked you will get seams - if you leave it off, no seams. Reason being, I think, that leaving it off prevents MilkShape from altering the original normals, and Maxis set them up so the seams won't show.

* So, I imported the body mesh, and did some edits (enhanced the chest and butt a bit on both the basic body and the fat morph)

* Before adding any new parts, I now save this as a .ms3d file

* OK, now I made the new belt buckle - when it is first made, it comes up all black (because autosmooth is off) but don't worry, this will be fixed. While it is still selected, I use the menu "smooth all" - yes, this makes the seams appear on the body but this will be fixed too - anyway, now I uv_mapped the buckle. Then I fitted it up to the body mesh - this alters the direction of the lighting, so you need to again "smooth all"

* Now I make a duplicate of the buckle, and fit this up to the "fat" morph.

* now we have 4 groups, body, morph, buckle, and buckle morph.

* rename buckle to "body" and the buckle morph to whatever the name of the second morph is - make sure it is exactly the same, capitalization and all.

* delete the real body and morph groups, leaving only the new parts groups.

* also be sure to delete the material from the materials tab - there should be nothing showing in the materials list, or the next trick won't work.

* export this now as a wavefront.obj file

* Close MilkShape to be sure everything is gone and start it again

* Import the edited body .ms3d file you made before.

* Import the .obj file with the new parts - HEY! Since the group names are the same, MilkShape sticks them right into the existing groups, which is exactly what we want! No seams, the new groups are properly lit.

* Hide the morph group, select your new part (and a bit of the surrounding area) and go to the Unimesh Bone tool - the vertices of the body mesh are still correctly assigned, and the new parts also show up (un-assigned of course) Just assign the vertices of your new parts as needed, and export.
No, you don't have to bother assigning them in the "fat" morph - unlike the BodyChop plugins, the morphs don't carry any assignment information.

Not as convienient as being able to merge the groups right in MilkShape, but it does work.

Here is one of the meshes and a texture that I made with the tool. Now, The top is black, so you can't see a shadow that was created when I tried to get rid of that stooopid coconut bra. I'll try another method tomorrow.

Dr Pixel, a HUGE thank you for the tip, your method for regrouping without losing assignments works perfectly!
I never noticed before that Milkshape behaved that way when importing a group with the same name as the existing one. And it's not a very big change to my habits, since I usually build my new parts as obj.files and map them in LithUnwrap before importing them in the main mesh.

Wes, I still uploaded an .msd file with a body and a part waiting to be regrouped in case you didn't already identify the problem - which is barely one now that Dr Pixel has showed us a very simple workaround.
It's a very simple mesh with only primary assignments (which I intend to fix, of course) and no morphs. To regroup, just select both groups in the groups tab, then hit "regroup".
Yes, the comments get deleted when regrouping, but copying them before and pasting them back afterwards don't make any difference - the vertices still show as assigned but all the weightings are set to 0.

Thanks Dr. Pixel!!

I have a regrouped file in .ms3d format from ForwardMotionIs that is doing exactly as you say, it has primary bone assignments (in the original MilkShape location). His comments are copied over. All the secondary bone assignments are missing, and it is generating zero skin weights. It SHOULD, at least, generate 100/0/0 for skin weights, the way I intended to make it, because I always intended that the first weight in the bone tool would be the same as the primary bone assigned to the joint.

A: I am glad there is a workaround that will help you right now, courtesy of Dr. Pixel.
B: I have an example to see if Mete can fix it from doing that.
C: I have an example to work on my own code so that we never have 0/0/0 skin weights.

If no one noticed, I put together a 4.01 Bone tool that doesn't crash 1.7.7A. It's not inside the main download, but in a later message, because I have several more tasks to complete before reissuing another general release. Your and ForwardMotionIs's example files have extended the task list [NOTE: that's not a complaint (maybe an excuse for taking longer) because I want y'all to have a good set of tools to work with.]
<* Wes *>

Marvine (and ForwardMotionIs) I want to thank you both for helping solve this.
What was happening was bones were assigned, in the ususal fashion, only by way of the joint panel. What should have happened was you would get an export with one bone assignment per vertex, and a one skin weight sized skin weight section with all the entries 100%.
Because of a coding error, you got either no bone assignments and zero weights, or a single bone assignment with one weight of 0%, depending on the state of the comments.
Now, it works as it should. Bone weight #1 is always the one from the joints panel. If you open the Bone Tool, it quietly makes sure that, for all selected joints, if the extra skin weight section was empty, that the weight for bone 1 is set to 100%, making the bone weight tool work as it was supposed to from the beginning.
Without using the bone tool at all, even with the extra assignments empty, you get the proper bone assignment in the bone section and a 100% single skin weight size section.
If you set the comment "NumSkinWgts: 3" (or 1 or two) in the group comments you get a 1, 2 or 3 weight group, but unless you use the bone tool to make split up assignments and bone weights, to mirror the way Maxis uses them, you will still have blocky single bone assignments with 100% weighting, only with skin weights 3 it comes out 100/0/0, giving the same effect, put taking up more disk space to do the same job.

I made a boo-boo in my coding, for which I apologize for not catching here, mainly because I never created anything from scratch, always just modifying existing meshes (I am a poor artist, but I SHOULDA/COULDA made a simple object out of cubes of spheres and ensured it exported correctly). My bad.

Please download 4.01 from the first message in the thread. The bone tool I posted earlier is 4.01a in the package. Please replace ALL the old files with the new ones (easiest to just place the .zip in the MilkShape directory and unzip it there, saying "Yes to all" when asked about replacing.

Then, you may now apply the 1.7.7A patch. The bone tool will no longer cause MilkShape to crash.

<* Wes *>

p.s. Don't weld anything. I know how to make the exporter safe from welding, but for the Sims2, essentially it will duplicate the vertices that were combined unless the UV coordinates are also identical, because the format requires matching sets of vertice, normal, UV (optional: bone assignment, skin weight, morph data). Always in sets. That is why, when welding now, some of the UVs get lost when the duplicate vertice disappears. The good news is, the data is still in your .ms3d file, and the next version will fix that issue (but it will take more work and testing than the bone fix, and I didn't want anyone to have to wait for both things, because the bone issue is a big problem and only took a few lines of code to fix (once I had isolated the issue).

Excellent, Wes! I'm glad we could be of some use to you, and that you got that issue fixed so quickly.

Hi, I'm new to modding the sims 2 but I thought I would try this great new plug in for Milkshape. I was hoping you might be able to help me resolve a minor issue. When I try to import the .SIMPE files I get the following error message: ERR: Unknown File Type (not OxAC4F8687). Thanks for whatever help you can send my way.

Only the Geometric Data Container (GMDC) can be worked on with these plugins. Other types of files extracted from SimPE may have a .simpe suffix on the file, but if they aren't a 0xAC4F8687 file type (which is data inside the file indicating it is a GMDC), then it will not contain any data that MilkShape can operate on.
The way I get my original mesh data to import is to open a .package file (C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Sims3D\Sims03.package, in the game install directory) contains most of the mesh files for the original game.
Now Neptune Suzy describes in her tutorial on meshing a way to find the mesh you want, and go through the whole modification of a dress, but I'm not going to ATTEMPT to explain all that in one reply!
I open that file, find the mesh (GMDC) I want, then I right click on the file in the center listing box, and choose "extract". Then I navigate to a directory where I am going to work on it at (and I recommend you make some place in "My Documents" for your workspace) and I save it there. SimPE leaves two files this way. One ends in .xml, and I delete them. The other is a copy of the mesh data that came with the game.
It probably ends in either .simpe or .5gd, depending on what version of SimPE you are using (I keep an older one around for some work, because it is faster for a simple job like this, although the features in the newer versions are nice).
Either way, you should get Neptune Suzy's tutorial, which currently mentions an older set of plugins I called "BodyChop". These are almost the same, but more powerful (I think).
There are a lot more steps than I described to making something that you can put back in the game, but that's how to get ahold of a file that you can load with the plugins into MilkShape 1.7.7.
<* Wes *>