Dang! I was afraid of this. My post didn't save. I was in the middle of posting my mesh question when MTS2 went off line last night. Anyway... I don't have the exact names now cuz I'm not at my home computer. Sorry, I'll try to be clear.

I want to extract the toddler child animal cap. The one with the eyeballs on top but no chin strap. I went through the Bodyshop steps, but when I opened it in SimPE and tried to use Finder to extract the resource, shpe, cres, gmdc, etc. it didn't exist. I could only find the package parts for the hair, not the cap. So I tried several of the hair files and they were just hair.

puchildanimalhat? I think the name was... there are several 3ID files in that project.

What I really want to do is make a simple band that wraps around the head that will have an even UV map for the band. I want to make a geometric design on the band and the hairmesh UV is just plain wrong for what I want to do. I tried to create a little frankenstein head on the toddler (lol) but the UV map was warped. There was just no way it could convert to what I want to do. Could someone point me to a better hat base for a toddler?

Think of a hat without a brim that stands up on the head. Here's a pic of the boys hat I want to make. So you can see that a hair mesh UV map that wraps over and around the head won't lay flat for this hat style.

I could make some vertexes and wrap a band around a head but I'm not sure how to assign the hat to the head without exploding the mesh. (I'm good at exploding meshes. )




Sorry, I'm having delay problems updating this post - I have the newest Milkshape 7.10 and SimPE 6.0 alpha

Last edited by porkypine : 27th Dec 2006 at 9:51 PM. Reason: clarification

Maybe this will help -

If you are using MilkShape, and you make the hat part from scratch as a cylinder, it wiil by default be created with the UV map exactly as you want -

That is, it will be automatically uv_mapped into a flat rectangle, as if you cut open a soda can at the seam and flattened it out.

I would make a cylinder 1 "stack" high, and as many "slices" as you think will be needed to fit up properly to the head.

The only thing you will need to do is to select the faces of only the top of the cylinder, and UV_map those from the top (so it looks like a circle).

Then separately, uv_map the faces of only the bottom of the cylinder - these will be barely visible, I'd just make it all black, so if the hat isn't an exact perfect fit to the head it won't be noticable, it will just look like the shadow under the edge of the hat.

Leave the sides part alone, don't re-map them, just scale their uv_mapping as necessary to fit onto your texture image the way you like.

Thanks! That's exactly the hint I need. :0)

Note that as far as hats go, you have 2 choices - the game implements hats as hair meshes; many creators make them as accessories.

Depending on what you want to implement, you'll need to either use hair as your base mesh then, or glasses (accessories, and don't use the 'harry potter' style, they are broken). Hmm. Toddlers don't have glasses, and this is a toddler outfit. So you might find doing it as hair easier to implement. (unless snowstorm or boblishman offer their toddler accessory to work from)

There is even a third option, which would be the easiest and possibly the most appropriate if you are making these as entire outfits.

You can make the hat a part of the clothing mesh itself. This avoids all the complications of hat/hair meshing and of accessories altogether, and also has the advantage that your clothing recolors will always have the correct matching hat with them.

Here is one I did for toddlers, bib overalls with a "trucker" style hat included in the mesh.

It works nicely as long as the toddler isn't wearing a "big" hairstyle, which would stick out through the hat.