Hello there. I'm back... with another object question. I seem to have gotten into object creation for The Sims 2 way too late and all of the guides I've found are very outdated, so I run into problems every now and then... Anyway, I'm trying to add a bump map to an object mesh that I've created and I've been following Pixelhate's guide (http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=316260). Thanks to another one of Pixelhate's guides I was able to add transparency, but when it comes to bump mapping I'm stuck.

I'm stuck on step three of the guide where it says to export some sort of file in .smd format. I'm assuming that Pixelhate created the guide with an older version of SimPE, or perhaps I don't have some options showing on mine, or something, but everything that's being explained in this step I don't see. First I select the GMDC, that's fine. Choose plugin view, check. In the panel I see "blocklist" and "filename" but I don't see anything else, I don't see any tabs that say "cGeometryDateContainer", "Elements", "Links", etc. I also don't see anything listed in the blank window where, in the guide, it has "sculpturechimes_steel" and "groundshadow" (though I am aware that the names would be different for my object, so I'm not sure if I have to uncheck anything because there's nothing for me to check or uncheck.

Secondly, there's no "export" button anywhere on my panel. There's also no "import" button, "preview" button or anything else shown in the screenshot in the guide. I can right-click on the object in the resource list and extract it, but I can't select a different format to save the exported file as. So I'm rather stumped by all this and I'm really not sure how to continue. Does anyone know of a more recent guide to adding a bump map to an object (assuming that I'm not seeing these buttons because of different versions of SimPE) or if I'm doing something wrong or I don't have some sort of option turned on... or something?

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

I've still been working on adding bump maps to my accessories but still haven't been able to figure it out. I'm just... not seeing what the guide is explaining so I'm not progressing any. I just can't figure out what it is that I'm missing.

Though I have also ran into another problem, though this isn't about bump maps. I created another mesh of tips that fit onto the end of a Sim's fingers and I assigned each tip to a joint, but there is no ring finger joint and as I understand it's a combination of the middle finger and pink finger joints, so I assigned that part both joints (something like 75% right middle finger and 25% right pinky, but I can't remember the exact percentages). The part is a little off when the hand moves in-game so I probably don't have the percentages perfect but that's not the major problem... The bigger problem is that, for some reason, the ringer finger tip appears through everything. For example, if the hand goes behind the Sim's leg the tip can be seen through the leg even through it's behind the leg. I'm sure it has something to do with the joint weights but I'm not sure what to do to fix it.

I have a picture of what I'm talking about here... http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g...ngerError01.jpg

So now I have two things I'm trying to figure out. Fun. :P

I've moved your thread to Bodyshop recoloring, since you are recoloring in bodyshop.

If this is an accessary mesh, then it sounds like you're missing a mesh part. they should all be there, otherwise you get a floating mesh. look if there is a missing mesh part..

I was able to figure out both problems. The fingertip appearing through the body needed to be fixed through the Bone Tool (which I hadn't ever used before) and the bump map thing was... Well, I'm not sure what happened, but for some reason the window I couldn't find before started appearing. Not sure if I hit something or what I did, but I got it working anyway. :P