I think I get the idea, Wes. I'll have a try - yes, I save loads of .ms3d files as I go, in fact there are 4 different ones for that mesh, saved at every stage.

Yes again, I'll certainly post the results.

I did as you suggested, and it worked.

Successfully exported the new mesh, and tried it in the game.

Works nicely, the animations are not "blocky" at all.

There is only one glitch, which has nothing to do with your plug-in.

I purposely chose to replace the left hand rather than the right, because the Sims all seem to be "right handed", that is they do most major operations with their right hand, so I thought it would look better if the non-bending hook would be the left hand.

But, I forgot one detail - the game puts the wedding ring on the left hand.

So, if Captain Hook is married, this wedding ring "floats" in the air where his left finger would be, if he had one...

I'm not sure what I can do about that....

Anyway, attached is a preliminary preview - I still have to make a proper skin for it, and possibly add some frilly cuffs and a neck-scarf type thing.

Once that is done, I'll put it up for testing.

==================

Oh, and a heads-up for anyone using this plug-in (well, I have had this happen with the Mesh Tool also, so a general heads-up)

I had a problem with my first export that there was a slight gap where the neck meets up with the Sim's head.

I fixed it by selecting all the vertices around the very top of the neck and moving them straight up just a tiny bit.

Test version now available for download:
http://modthesims2.com/showthread.p...2750#post312750

I tried to import gmdc of a hair with this plugin(v3.01) to milkshape, moved its vertices only and then export to gmdc with this plugin. An error message poped up and said 'BODYMOD1 not present or misordered.' Then I tried to replace the original gmdc with it. There is still an error opening the file.......How to fix it?

I just moved the vertices so I think there is no need to change assignment of bones.Is that right?

Can anyone who succeeded in using this plugin to make hair or clothing meshes post a detailed tutorial here(with screenshot)? I am just an amateur. I can't understand totally what you have said in this post.

Another (stupid) question, is it possible to import smd edited by other program, delete the material and the bones of the smd, import only the bones of the original gmdc, reassign all the bones and then export it to gmdc using this plugin?

I'll try to help, but I'm no expert either so take these as suggestions only until Wes comes along.

First of all, when MilkShape exports a file, first it creates an empty file with the chosen name, then the exporter puts the information into that new file.
So, if an exporter fails (you see an error message) nothing was really saved. Check your exported file's filesize - it will be very small because nothing is in it. Rule #1 - always save your work as a .ms3d file before exporting it in another format. That way you can open it up later if there was a problem, and correct it.

There shouldn't be any problem doing what you described, although I have only done a body mesh not hair. I did get that error message too, but in my case it was because some of the comments had been removed. Also, I am not sure about this but it may be a problem if you have changed the order of the groups on the Groups tab. When you were editing, did you make sure that both groups (or does hair have 3?) - anyway, you should be making the same changes to all the groups.



As I said before, I am an amatuer too, which in some ways makes me very good at writing tutorials because once I work things out I can explain in non-technical terms. But, at this point, these Plug-ins are still under development, so a lengthy tutorial would not be a good idea, it would become obsolete immediately and only confuse people. I will do one once Wes says the plugins are complete, or at least not apt to be changed for a while.



Questions are never stupid, it is only stupid not to ask if you don't understand something. Without questions, we would never learn anything...

The answer to this one is no, the plugins work by adding information to the files with extra groups, and comments, to overcome that lack of multiple assignments in MilkShape. So, you can only use these plugins as a set. You must bring the mesh in with the BodyChop importer, then out with the BodyChop exporter of the same version. You can save it, and open it again, as a .ms3d file in between. You can NOT export it from MilkShape as another file type because all the extra information will be lost. And you can NOT import another filetype into MilkShape and export with these plugins, again because the needed extra information would not be there. You also can NOT import with Wes' earlier plugin, then export with this one. In other words, you must always use thes plug-ins as a set. You also will have problems with missing comments even if you use another program which can open/save .ms3d file, because the comments in MilkShape are a very recent addition. This is how my comments got lost, because I used Lithunwrap to edit the uv map in between. I had to go back and re-do it using only MilkShape's built-in UV mapper because LithUnwrap doesn't even know there are comments in a .ms3d file now..

You might try this with your SMD file, although I am not sure it would work.

*Transform it into a GMDC using the new MeshTool with the SMD support
*Import this into your .package file, as if you were all finished with the mesh
*Export the GMDC file again
*Import this new GMDC file using Wes' BodyChop importer
*Edit as you wish
*Export with the BodyChop exporter

Again, note that this is a suggestion only, it is NOT something I have actually done, so be sceptical...

great plugin wes I now have a perm preg edge smoothed fem she's got milk LOL

Thx a lot, Dr. Pixel!
I want to realize something. If a comment is removed, would the window poped up after I pressed 'comment' be blank? If your answer is yes, then I think none of the comments is removed in my case as I checked all of them one by one and there are 7 groups of digits for each of them as Wes said.

Also, I have saved it as ms3d, reimport and exported it before and I repeated these steps several times. The size of the exported gmdc is still very small (below 1 Kb).That's weird. I think it should be more simple for this plugin to handle hair as hair only has 1 morph......

Your answer to the last question sounds great but I am afraid that I can't tried it with the hair since it has more than 1 smd and I have problems with importing multiple smd (usually hair & some clothes have to be separated into several smd) to a gmdc with the mesh tool. So I want to find an alternative way to import them. But I will try your method and tell you the result tomorrow.

If you can see the comments, they are not lost. So this is not he problem.

There are also comments with the groups, as well as with each bone.

But again, I have not done hair yet - it is possible that the plugins do not yet support hair.

Yes, the exported file will be small if the export fails - because if you see an error maeesage, that means nothing was saved in the file.

I tested your method with a clothing having 1 group(so it only has 1 smd & I have no problem with importing it with the mesh tool). I am quite sure that the comments of groups and bones haven't be removed. For the group, I saw 'Model name:body' in the comment. Is it a comment of groups of clothing? Sadly the same error message poped up when I exported it.

Also, I have imported the original gmdc of the clothing, moved the vertices a bit, saved it to a ms3d file, reimport from it and then export it with this plugin. The result is still the same.

Does this kind of error happen randomly?
How many times have you exported the clothing with the body chop exporter?

Check to make sure you have the 3.01 versions of the plug-ins. I am using v 1.74 of MilkShape.

The very first thing I did was a quick check , to make sure the plug-in works:

*set up a new mesh .package as in Brianna's tutorial
*Import the body mesh with these plugins
*made absolutely NO changes to it
*exported it
*put this exported GMDC back into my .package
*started BodyShop to make sure it still was working

This was done using an unaltered Maxis mesh - because there might be something changed in an already edited mesh.

I would suggest trying this before trying to do any editing at all.
If this doesn't work, then something is not installed right, or incompatable, or something.

I have the same plugin and 3d program as you.
I have already checked it with the hair. Anyway, I listen to you and checked it again. It is fine in bodyshop but there is something not perfect. A small gap is between the body and the neck and the body looks blocky,as you said, but it is less serious than the problem of smd.

You made a very big change to your clothing compared to mine. Mine should work if I haven't misunderstood what you guys said. However,everything is not smooth for me and this drives me crazy.
Maybe I should be patient and wait until every modding program is mature. Unfortunately I am very impatient and stubborn. lol

Here is the ms3d file of the body gmdc I tested. Could anyone try to export it with the body chop plugin and tell me if an error message pop up?

First, about the gap at the neck - this seems to be a side effect of mesh editing - I have had this happen with these plug-ins, with .smd files, and with .obj file method. What I do is as my last step, I select all the vertices at the very top of the neck, and move them up (towards where the head will be) a small amount.

The "blockiness" (you mean it looks very angular, not so smooth and round as the original mesh, right?) of the exported mesh has to do with the normals I think. I'm not sure if this is something MilkShape does with them? Maybe Wes can answer this?

=================================

I looked at your file - you have only one group in it.

That is the reason for the error message.

When it was imported there should have been at least two groups - did you remove any groups?

The exporter requires that the same number of groups must be there when exporting the file.

The second group (and the third, if there was one) contain the information for the secondary assignments, and must not be removed.

What I do is to leave both groups visible while editing, and make the same exact changes to both. This will preserve the secondary assignments, they are what provides the smooth animations.

A different way would be to remove the second group, edit only the one group, then make a duplicate of it named the same as the group you removed.

But, then you would have to go to this second group and manually re-assign those vertices that would need a secondary assignment - very tedious and tricky to do, especially if you aren't familiar with how the animations work.

Another thing to take into account, is that if you are NOT going to add or remove any vertices from the mesh, there is no reason to use these plug-ins. For simply moving vertices around, you are better to use the original method of using .obj files as in Brianna's tutorial.

Ok I will check it later. Thx!
So far I just succeeded in importing meshes which are saved as obj.
I really want to make bigger changes to the mesh but now I just check if it works. Once it works, I will add or delete vertices.

Oops......my mistake!
Actually I checked the plugin with a clothing gmdc but not hair and it works. Then I do the same thing to hair but it doesn't work. I didn't change anything of the hair gmdc but it has the same error as before when it is exported. The matter is that the hair gmdc originally doesn't have bodymod1 and it said BODYMOD.1 not present or misordered!???? :confused:
Would you mind checking the following hair gmdc for me?

OK, I tried the hair.

It only comes in with the original Maxis groups - I don't think Wes has made this set of plugins able to do hair yet.

I would use Wes' earlier plugins for editing hair meshes.

Sorry, I thought that plugin didn't allow add or delete vertices. If I know the latest version of that plugin allow it earlier, I would not try this plugin with hair gmdc. Thank you for awakening me!

After a bit of time away I just spent some time fiddling with the last build. I can tell that this will be very useful to those of us like to use Milkshape when we can. I was able to successfully combine parts from a couple of Maxis body meshes without any real trouble. Couple notes, though:

- Still have something of a polygonal distortion around the elbows of female adult meshes. It is minor but noticable in-game often enough to suggest more tweakage is in order. This is obvious in bodyshop only when you compare with a raw mesh (sorry, didn't think to screenshot when I had my packages setup correctly for such stuff - will do later if needed).

- Top-most neck vertices need to be handled better in that they don't line up with those of the head in (more or less confirming what I think someone else has already pointed out). Though it can be fudged to be hardly noticable it's enough of an issue that the compulsive amongst us will potentially spend more time correcting for this than they did on the mesh.

Thanks again for this, Wes! It's already very handy. Will post screenies of the stuff I'm doing with it when I get something done that's worth sharing.

I managed to add a set of Al's Sims1 shoes to a Sims2 mesh using these plugins!

http://modthesims2.com/showthread.p...9713#post319713

Couple o' things:


1) Importing the University mesh "afbodyletterman_" with BodyChop I get the following error: "ERR: Morph vert/normal group count mismatch".
The imported OBJ of the same mesh (extracted with Delphy's SimPE plug) has one group named "body" and doesn't appear to be anything BodyChop can't handle.


2) Since this may very well be a product of my not really knowing much about smoothing the following is probably more of a Milkshape question (that I should be posting elsewhere) than a BodyChop report. However, since it *,ight* be BodyChop issue I'll go ahead: I've wrestled a bit with smoothing when trying to correct some shading issues with body meshes imported with BodyChop.

Though I've been largely successful there are still shadowing blips here and there that I can't nix.

Here's my usual process:
- Import mesh with BodyChop (AutoSmooth is OFF);
- Delete BODYMOD.x groups;
- Edit (including import of OBJ stuff);
- AutoSmooth ON;
- Edit->SelectAll;
- Vertex->Unweld;
- Vertex->Weld;
- AutoSmooth OFF;
- Regroup all and rename "body";
- Conform joint assignments;
- Duplicate "body" twice and rename the copies "BODYMOD.1", etc.;
- Save As MS3D and export using BodyChop.

The output is generally just fine (other noted anomalies aside). However, there are sometimes shading artifacts that can be somewhat serious. This symptom is something I'd mentioned re: UVmap changes in an earlier post. I've turned edges and done some other adjustments to get it closer to primetime but I'm stumped. I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't something I should know how to fix in Milkshape but I've yet to figure out how to use smoothing groups (haven't needed to up to now) nor do I know how to
close-off a mesh I've chopped up. Attached is a primary-colored texture with no artistic contouring or shading that I would like to be free of shadows (some of which are marked). The mesh shown has a skirt that covers the original body mesh and boots that replace the original legs. The shadows on the legs above the boot and the lack of the same on the stomach or legs adjacent to the skirt shows why I conclude it's an open-mesh issue. Hopefully fixing these shadows is something that is done with Milkshape rather than something the plugin is doing. Since it's something I am wrestling with in many mesh edits I am going to need a fix for it.

Hey, I haven't installed these plugins yet but I have been watching this thread and noting the issues other people have been having before I try them myself.

I saw the issue about more than one group in a body mesh not working? I was just curious if there was a possible fix for this yet. I have been trying to import a modification of the afbodyhula mesh for days with all the different methods and the only one that works at all is Wes's other plugins, but there is a gap between the neck and head. I tried moving the mesh up, down, forward & back several times and it always looks the same when I preview it in Body Shop. It doesn't look like it moved at all.

I was hoping to try it with these new plugins but then I saw that multiple groups aren't supported.

faeriegurl: until Wes can get back to work on the plugin (I think he's away from home or something) we still can't work directly with multigroup meshes. That said, I've been able to work around some things. For example, the neck misalignment.

The neck is the last mesh editing I do and I do that after I've finished editing everything else and exported with Wes' plugin, loaded it into package and tested it in Bodyshop. If all (except the neck) looks ok I export the OBJ from the package with SimPE/Delphy (this will be edited, exported from Milkshape as OBJ and put back into .simpe after the neck is fixed). Find a default Maxis OBJ mesh that has correct neck vertices and save/export a new (template) OBJ copy of it with the "body" group renamed to something else (ex. "bodytemp"). Import the OBJ to Milkshape that needs a neck adjustment and also load the template OBJ. I then line up the neck vertices on "body" group to the "bodytemp" neck verts. Only takes a few minute to do. Delete the "bodytemp" group, export the edited mesh OBJ and use the MTS MeshTool to get the fixed OBJ into .simpe file and SimPE to replace the package GDC. ... That's what I do, anyway, and it does fix the neck issue.

I just got on to post another issue: BodyChop plugin will NOT export a mesh from an .ms3d file that has been edited with LithUnwrap (error is: "No quaternion values stored").

I also had a problem trying to import a "University only" mesh using these plug-ins. I haven't tried enough to say that it is common to all University meshes, but the two I tried also gave that error.

Maybe there is something different in a University-only mesh, additional flags to mark it "University only" or something that the plug-ins do not account for?

==========================================

The Lithunwrap issue is because Wes uses the new "comments" sections in MilkShape to store information.

Although LithunWrap does "understand" .ms3d files, it is an old program and so does NOT keep the necessary "Comments" fields when restoring the .ms3d file information.

Workaround, if you want to use LithunWrap - edit and export using only MilkShape

Then replace the edited GMDC into your .package file, and export again as an .obj just to do the UVmapping.

==========================

As for the shadows, I also use the "Weld Together" technique like you do, but I never put on the "auto smooth"

I still get some extra shadowing, but nothing like what you show.

I also NEVER delete the second mesh group, since that one has all the secondary joint assignments. Isn't it a nightmare to try to replace those? I wouldn't know where to start.

I just make corresponding edits to both groups, and any new parts I make as a new group, do the assignments, then duplicate it and add one into the original body group, the other into the second body group, to keep the vertice count identical.

======================

For the neck problem, when I am finished I select all the vertices at the top of the neck ad pull them straight up a bit. I can't give you an amount, I'm not very sceintific about these things, I do it mostly by how it looks - but I find it faster to do it that way, then check in BodyShop and go back and drag it up a bit more, then to go through the whole export as .obj, edit, import with MeshTool, routine. It actually doesn't have to be exact, if the neck is a bit too "high" it doesn't seem to matter.

[QUOTE=Dr Pixel]

* Created a new hook and base "hand"

* Assigned the bottom of the base (the part that touches the sleeve) to the left wrist

* Assigned the rest of the hook to the left_hand

QUOTE]

Dr. Pixel, when assigning the hook, you say that you assigned it to the l.hand, but what about the finger joints, i.e. lthumb1? Does it matter that those relationships no longer exist?

Wes, what is the purpose of removing the morphs, such as BODYMOD.1, and then recreating them? Looks like Dr. Pixel did not do that for CaptainHook. Is this for a particular purpose? Possibly you mean if I wish to have a different morph? But why wouldn't I just alter the vertex positions of the original BodyMod.1? Thanks.

Wes,

I received an error from the import plugin when trying to load the tfbodynaked gmdc:

Err: Morph Vert/Normal group count mismatch

Then nothing is imported. If I answer 'No' to the Display Blend Groups then it
does load the main Body part.

I wonder if it has to do with only having a Body and one morph for fat and no morph for pregnant.