Hi there! You are currently browsing as a guest. Why not create an account? Then you get less ads, can thank creators, post feedback, keep a list of your favourites, and more!
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#1 Old 5th Oct 2011 at 11:48 AM Last edited by EsmeraldaF : 21st Oct 2011 at 5:13 PM. Reason: Updated thread title
Default Problems with WA Scooter as clone, now using car as clone, etc etc - Finished! Thanks everyone!
Hi, I'm cloning a new vehicle from the WA scooter. There seems to be something buggy about that scooter in general, including a weird inability to import new textures into it via S3PE as normal - it just keeps using the original scooter textures (thankfully I got around that with Inge Jones's new Texture Tweaker, which solved the problem perfectly - Inge, if you're reading this thread, THANK YOU - your Texture Tweaker is a lifesaver!). The clone also categorises itself as a Debug item and doesn't show up in the vehicles category, had to use S3PE to recategorise it. WTH??

Now, the one last bit of weirdness of that scooter that I still haven't been able to figure out, is that it doesn't generate a thumbnail for the new item. I tried importing my own thumbnail (256x256 .png) in S3OC but the thumbnail still comes out blank. I can't figure out what to try next - does anyone know how to get a thumbnail into a package that doesn't seem to want to acknowledge one?

As a separate issue, is it possible to move the headlight glow? My 'new vehicle' is a rideable giant bat (yes, yes, I know I'm nutty) (well, it's for the Fantasy theme, that's my excuse, THIS time) and I wanted to have its eyes light up to be the headlights and I made the headlight meshes accordingly, but the glow still appears in the position of the scooter headlight:


IS this something that it's possible to modify, or is this some game-generated effect that we can't get control over via the package file? If it's not possible to change it, I was hoping that explaining it away as a mystical glowing orb conjured by the bat for the purpose of night driving would be acceptable, but I'd rather do it properly if possible.

TIA for any help with these two issues!
Advertisement
Sockpuppet
#2 Old 5th Oct 2011 at 12:29 PM
you can change the headlight in the RIG file, it is called FX_1(or maybe FX_2)
Those 2 are used for the headlights on cars.
I use Atevera's S3PE plugin for the edits.

No idea why the thumb isn't showing, S3OC normally does a great job, even on default replacements.

You can also change the hand position, _IKtarget_SteeringWheel_01 and 02
The arm will follow
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#3 Old 5th Oct 2011 at 2:00 PM
Ah, thank you for that, Bloom, I haven't tried the Rig Editor before (I remember we were discussing it a while ago on a thread where another member wanted to change the sim's riding position, but I never got around to experimenting with it myself), but I guess it's a matter of playing with the figures in the 'Position' settings under FX_1? Will try that when I get the chance later!
Sockpuppet
#4 Old 5th Oct 2011 at 2:29 PM
yup, you prolly have to adjust the Y axis, wich is the height.
Most of the times this will have the correct result but it is possible you need to adjust the same bone in other files aswell:

Quote:
The updates need to made in the SKINs of the MLOD and MODL. The values are under InverseBindPose, and are inverted. You have to change them for each group that has the joint(s) you've moved referenced in it's Skin.


But the light usually only need a edit in the RIG file
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#5 Old 5th Oct 2011 at 7:12 PM
Hooray, that worked, thank you! It was FX_0 for the scooter, and I lowered it -0.3 points. Now I get a nice ethereal-looking beam of diffuse light emanating from inside the bat's head, which looks pretty nifty, sort of like how real bats emit their 'radar' to help them see where they're going.

A million thanks again , it is so helpful to get an idea of how that rig editing stuff works!
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#6 Old 12th Oct 2011 at 3:42 PM Last edited by EsmeraldaF : 12th Oct 2011 at 3:57 PM.
Aaarrghh, just to update:

There's definitely something not at all right about that WA scooter as an object to clone from. Further to the buggy problems I already mentioned in my first post, I went to take gameplay screenshots for upload only to discover that: a) when a teenager uses it, it disappears afterwards (it's OK after adults use it) and b) when you go out to Edit Town, the game hangs forever and you have to force-quit TS3. Teens not being able to use it could be liveable-with, but not something that hangs everyone's game.

So, just be warned in case anyone reading this thread might be thinking of cloning from the scooter. I've never had such problems with anything else I've cloned from!

I've now re-made the bat by cloning it from the car I used for my rideable dragon and UFO, and it all works fine and as expected. Sigh of relief!

At least some good came of this: thank you to Bloomsbase for the advice about rig editing - I experimented and found I was able to rig-edit the driver's position to rotate her forward rather than backward as is the default car-driving position, so that it sort of looks like she's holding the bat's ears similar to the scooter clone shots above,and for some reason this also causes the driver's legs to splay out so that they are straddling the bat's head rather than clipping through it, which was an unexpected benefit because the next problem was going to be how to get around the legs-clipping-through-the-head issue.

Just one question: Only odd thing is that the sim sits with one hand higher than the other, so one hand hovers just over one ear and the other is slightly clipping through the other ear - see below. Not really very noticeable in gameplay, but I'd like to get it right if it's possible - Bloom, or anyone, do you know if it's possible to use Rig Editor to change the position of one hand, and if so, how?
˙uʍop ǝpᴉsdn ǝɹ,noʎ 'oN
#7 Old 12th Oct 2011 at 5:32 PM
You should be able to change the _IKtarget_SteeringWheel_01 in the RigEditor to fix that.

"Part of being a mesher is being persistent through your own confusedness" - HystericalParoxysm
| (• ◡•)| (❍ᴥ❍ʋ) [◕ ‿ ◕]
Sockpuppet
#8 Old 12th Oct 2011 at 7:41 PM
yup, you can edit the hand positions in both IKtarget's
Move the hand and the rest of the arm will follow, same with the foot.
Screenshots
˙uʍop ǝpᴉsdn ǝɹ,noʎ 'oN
#9 Old 12th Oct 2011 at 7:52 PM
Ooh, the hand on the window is cool!

"Part of being a mesher is being persistent through your own confusedness" - HystericalParoxysm
| (• ◡•)| (❍ᴥ❍ʋ) [◕ ‿ ◕]
Sockpuppet
#10 Old 12th Oct 2011 at 8:03 PM
Looks better on the male, then it rests on the door
Instructor
#11 Old 13th Oct 2011 at 12:52 AM
The Sim on the bat ... her feet are backwards, if that's the position they use when driving a car, EA really have been lazy.

You can find more of my stuff here: http://www.blackpearlsims.com/downloads.php
Alchemist
#12 Old 13th Oct 2011 at 2:16 AM
I've looked at the pictures closely and I'm not seeing backwards feet. The bat looks great Esmerelda and I love the idea of it
Field Researcher
#13 Old 13th Oct 2011 at 4:36 AM
Quote: Originally posted by ~Dee~
The Sim on the bat ... her feet are backwards, if that's the position they use when driving a car, EA really have been lazy.

Thought that at first too lol. If you look very closely you can see they are not. Its just the boots are black making it hard to make out the details of them.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#14 Old 13th Oct 2011 at 10:44 AM
@cmo and Bloom: THANK YOU - I will try playing with the IKtarget settings and see what happens! I'm becoming intrigued with this rig editing stuff now and wonder what else it might be possible to do - it conjures up all sorts of ideas. I originally intended the bat to be a single-passenger vehicle, but now that I've had to clone it from a car, I tried out having the driver take 3 passengers just to see what would happen, and got the below:

It actually doesn't look too bad aside from a few things: With the front seat passenger, her left hand clips through the wing but the rest of it looks quite OK. With the back seat passengers, their legs clip through the bat, and the left-side back seat passenger's butt is hanging in the air - I'll see if I can figure out how to reposition the necessary body parts. It does look pretty amusing to see the bat flying around town with four people sitting on it!

Also @Bloom: I love your car! (And the new hand position) Is it a 57 Chevy Bel Air or similar? Love old classic cars.

@orangemittens: Thank you, glad you like the idea!

@Dee and Odistant: Ha ha, her feet aren't backwards, but it does look like that in the pic now that you mention it - I think there's something about those boots. In the side-view pic above you can see that everyone's feet are on the right way around, but yes, I wouldn't put it past EA to do something that lazy, especially considering that the sim's feet aren't normally seen inside the car!
Sockpuppet
#15 Old 13th Oct 2011 at 11:38 AM
You can make em sit all 4 in front if you like or rotate them 180 degrees
Wat car did you clone? i never have people in the back of my cars....i did have 3 in the front(mom and dad holding the baby but the ones in the back always fade out)
Its a 56 Bel air indeed, you find it on TSR(got rejected here lol)
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#16 Old 13th Oct 2011 at 12:19 PM
Quote: Originally posted by BloomsBase
You can make em sit all 4 in front if you like or rotate them 180 degrees
Wat car did you clone? i never have people in the back of my cars....i did have 3 in the front(mom and dad holding the baby but the ones in the back always fade out)
Its a 56 Bel air indeed, you find it on TSR(got rejected here lol)

Aha, it's good to know you can make them all sit in front - I had been wondering if I could move the left-side rear passenger (the one sitting in mid-air) to the front of the right wing, so hopefully that should work. And maybe the person sitting on the bat's hindquarters could be rotated to face backward, so that their legs hang down behind the bat rather than clipping through it. Will try that later!

I cloned from the Wornado Triage. I too thought that more than 2 sims in a car would disappear, and was surprised when all 4 of them showed up on the bat!

Ah, so I was close with my guess that it was a 57 Bel Air! My mother used to have a 50s Bel Air when I was very little, which someone just GAVE her when they got a new car, because 50s Bel Airs weren't worth any money in those days! (Those were the days!)
Alchemist
#17 Old 13th Oct 2011 at 2:03 PM
Quote: Originally posted by EsmeraldaF
...@Dee and Odistant: Ha ha, her feet aren't backwards, but it does look like that in the pic now that you mention it - I think there's something about those boots. In the side-view pic above you can see that everyone's feet are on the right way around, but yes, I wouldn't put it past EA to do something that lazy, especially considering that the sim's feet aren't normally seen inside the car!
That's a good point about how some of the unseen EA animations can look...if you've ever seen a woo-hoo animation with the covers off you'll know what I mean...bizarre and hilarious

Quote: Originally posted by BloomsBase
Its a 56 Bel air indeed, you find it on TSR(got rejected here lol)
That's a sweet looking car Base...now I don't feel so bad my 4 channel LOVE wall sculpture with slots got rejected here too...lol...I ended up posting it at my site Indigo instead
Sockpuppet
#18 Old 13th Oct 2011 at 3:58 PM
Thank you Esmeralda, going to check that car out.
Finally found the shadow bug so i will upload more now

Oh, that is a very nice site OM! (i so suk at making them)
5 out of 8 uploads got rejected here so i kinda gave up haha
I all uploaded them to TSR, should really do something with my own site.....been a year orso....
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#19 Old 13th Oct 2011 at 4:31 PM Last edited by EsmeraldaF : 13th Oct 2011 at 5:05 PM.
Hahahhahahaaaaa, just rotated the back seat passenger (rotated 'seat03' by 180 degrees on Y axis) and, well, his head, torso and left arm rotated OK, but not sure what happened to his right arm (which now appears to be growing out of his stomach) and his legs (which seem to have turned to mush)...

I think I'm going to have to experiment further!

@Bloom: What is the shadow bug? I've had some problems with the shadow for this item - sometimes (rarely) it comes out the right size, but usually it comes out about half size, it varies each time I re-package the meshes even though I'm using the same shadow mesh, is that what you mean? And yes, you should update your site with your new creations, I'd like to see them, without having to go to TSR!

EDIT:
Have now rotated foot03 180 degrees and both arms are OK, legs look OK but her knees look weird and what's up with her skirt? It's formed itself into a tall pointy pyramid.

Is there a tool with which we can view these rig changes in real time, or is it a matter of having to just keep trying out different values blindly and sticking it in-game (which is what I'm doing)? At least this is all a good laugh!
Sockpuppet
#20 Old 13th Oct 2011 at 5:10 PM Last edited by BloomsBase : 13th Oct 2011 at 5:23 PM.
lol, the feet(03) you have to rotate also and prolly move backwards.
I am puzzled about the arm tho, there are no joints to adjust that one i guess, strange

Are you using TSRW?
If you import a custom shadow mesh you have to adjust the Possoffset for the shader, something TSRW does automaticly except on the 002 Mlod.
So although you might have created the correct shadowmeshes or let TSRW create them, they never displayed correct ingame because all Mlods kept using the Possoffset of the Mlod002.

It is similar as when you load a new normalmap for the high and low Mlod but forget the Mlod002, the game will then use the Mlod002 normalmap by default

To fix this you either load or let TSRW generate the shadow meshes and export the file.
Convert it to package and open with s3PE.
Either export the Mlod0001(shadow) and import it in the Mlod0002 or change the Possoffset of the last chunkentry into the one from Mlod000 or 0001
Then clone again with TSRW if you want it as sims3pack..

Well. maybe i gave you bad advice when i said you could rotate, i did it a few times with sims 2 passengers and know it can be done in sims 3.
But if you keep running into these problems you better keep the existing pose.

That skirt joint is indeed strange, it should be in the animation(pose) Rig for the adult to object Rig but looks like it isn't.

I am doing similar edits on this AC Cobra
It is a old screenshot and you see the shadow is totally off while the meshes are ok.
Screenshots
One horse disagreer of the Apocalypse
#21 Old 13th Oct 2011 at 5:25 PM
Don't forget you can get a plugin for TSRW from our site http://dino.drealm.info/den/denforu...php?topic=193.0 which opens individual resources in S3PE so you can bypass the step of exporting to package and of course you don't then need to clone again to get a sims3pack

In fact you don't need to clone again anyway even if you do export as package. Simply export and reimport via the Project Contents window.

"You can do refraction by raymarching through the depth buffer" (c. Reddeyfish 2017)
Sockpuppet
#22 Old 13th Oct 2011 at 5:46 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Inge Jones
Don't forget you can get a plugin for TSRW from our site http://dino.drealm.info/den/denforu...php?topic=193.0 which opens individual resources in S3PE so you can bypass the step of exporting to package and of course you don't then need to clone again to get a sims3pack

In fact you don't need to clone again anyway even if you do export as package. Simply export and reimport via the Project Contents window.


Exept that TSRW doesn't update real time, untill exporting the package.
So you can not see wat your doing or if you have done it ok.....

I did some tests once to see if i could export a Mlod(through project contents with s3PE) and load it in Milkshape with Wes his plugin.
Then make a edit and import it back into TSRW, it did work but i got all kind of UV errors from Wes his plugin on export.
So both plugins still using a diffrent setup i guess.
One horse disagreer of the Apocalypse
#23 Old 13th Oct 2011 at 5:53 PM
Quote: Originally posted by BloomsBase
Exept that TSRW doesn't update real time, untill exporting the package.
So you can not see wat your doing or if you have done it ok.....


That's not been my experience. Sometimes you might have to switch views and back again to force a refresh the preview, that's all.

"You can do refraction by raymarching through the depth buffer" (c. Reddeyfish 2017)
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#24 Old 13th Oct 2011 at 6:18 PM
@Bloom: No, I don't use TSRW, I was never able to get along with that app - everything I ever tried to make with it always had problems and I gave up on it. I use S3PE for objects and CTU for CAS items, they both give me reliable results so I'm very happy with them. I haven't had a problem with shadows coming out wrong, but they often turn out too small when I make cars (other objects have been OK). Sometimes they turn out the right size, but it's not consistent as to why they do or don't. If it's too small and I try making the shadow mesh larger, the shadow cuts off on the sides. Baffling!

I LOVE your Cobra!! Hope you can solve the shadow problem.

@Inge: Are you saying that TSRW actually lets you preview the changes you make to the rig, using the plugin on your site? If so, I'll have to try that, at least use TSRW to see what I'm doing while I experiment, and then finish it off with s3pe/s3oc - would save having to keep booting up TS3 constantly! EDIT: Oh...the link you gave to your plugin has no download attached, just says 'attachment deleted due to old age'...??
One horse disagreer of the Apocalypse
#25 Old 13th Oct 2011 at 6:53 PM
Oh, no, afaik there is no tool that lets you preview rig positions. But they should agree with the bones (editable seperately), which are previewable in TSRW.

Oh! I didn't realise we had uploaded that as an attachment. Usually I only attach temp images to posts and have the download elsewhere. Let me try and retrieve it. I am sure there will be a backup somewhere...

"You can do refraction by raymarching through the depth buffer" (c. Reddeyfish 2017)
Page 1 of 3
Back to top