I'm looking to find a way of creating some really large hoop earrings for the base game. I've found some quite big ones in various places, but none of them are really quite big enough for what I want, and I'd like to increase their size by about 50% to 75% or so.

I'd like to know if there's a simple way of enlarging the ones I've found. Looking at the package files in SimPE, it appears that they're mapped onto a glasses mesh, and I can't find anything that actually shows them as hoops - The texture and alpha files are just squares of uniform colour, the mesh overlays seem to point at glasses meshes and, when imported into a 3D editor, the extracted mesh does show a pair of glasses with no sign of any earrings...

So, I'd like to know if it is possible to increase the size of the ones I've already found, and if so, how do I do it?

(And, when I do increase the size, what I want to do is increase the overall diameter, but without increasing the thickness of the "tube" cross-section...)

The extracted mesh shouldn't be showing as a pair of glasses. If they show as hoop earrings in the game, the mesh should look like a hoop earring.

I've found part of the problem - They use an external mesh, which I've found. I've also been able to extract the 3d image and edit it to get the size I want.

What I think I now need to do, and am a bit unsure of, is create a new mesh file and map the same texture as in the original earrings onto it. I don't want to simply replace the old ones in the game - I want to have both sizes available at the same time. (And, rather than having a seperate mesh file and various different textures that map onto it, I'm happy to have an "all-in-one" package with the mesh etc all together...)

So can anyone help me with what I need to do to take the 3d image and create the new earrings from that? - I've read the tutorials on creating accessories, but I'm still very unsure of things as I'm essentially creating from scratch rather than just modifying an existing item.

You will need to do Fix Integrity on the mesh file and rename it there to make it a new, unique mesh - and of course, Save As to save it as a new .package with a new filename. Then link it to a new recolour file of the existing earrings, made in Body Shop. Then edit the GMDC on your new mesh - you should be able to just scale Y and Z to increase the size of the hoop without increasing its thickness. Replace the GMDC in your new mesh file and it should work fine - it's pretty similar to making a new mesh, only you don't have to gather the parts as you already have them.

An all-in-one package is not advisable. It makes it a real pain/impossible to recolour the mesh later - Body Shop gets real confused.

OK, I've tried doing that, but the earrings aren't showing in Body Shop, so I guess I've done something wrong somewhere... (The thumbnail shows an unaltered version of the original, but nothing at all shows in the main part of the window.)

I'm wondering if the problem may be in importing the new GMDC - As I'd already got a working 3d model, I imported that file into the mesh file, and it had a different name from the other three bits, even after using Fix Integrity (the first part of the name was the same, but the rest was different...). Could that be causing the problem? Should I forget I've already got a working 3d model and start over again?

I'm really struggling here, which is a shame, because the earrings look good in the 3d model!

As far as I know, your GMDC should have a different name. Don't use Fix Integrity again. That may be what's messing things up. You should only be using that once, in the beginning, before you import your new GMDC.

When creating a mesh, here's what I do, and it always works for me.

1) Create a new package.
2) Import CRES, SHPE, GMND, GMDC.
3) Save your package. Close it! Reopen it. If you don't close, SimPE has some errors when doing Fix Integrity. Idiosyncracy of the version of SimPE I have, I guess (latest).
4) Do Fix Integrity on the *entire package*, use the menu item Fix Integrity.
BEFORE you click Fix Integrity, make sure you type something into the text field, then press Update to change the names of all the resources.
Then press Fix Integrity. You should now have 4 resources with updated TGIRs and your text prepended to their names.
5) Now, you can replace your GMDC.

I'm also using the latest version of SimPE, so maybe the problem you're having is also what's causing me trouble. I'll try that the next time I have a go at getting the mod to work - My brain is a bit fried at the moment, so I'm having a few days break from it to concentrate on other stuff...

OK, I've now tried the above method, and it doesn't seem to have worked...

I've followed the methods given in every tutorial I can find on editing meshes etc, and none of it seems to be working for me. I really am stuck here, as it seems like I'm doing exactly what the tutorials say, but it just doesn't seem to work and when I go into Body Shop, nothing seems to have changed.

Can anyone help figure out why this isn't working for me?


Edit:
I've tried going to the new mesh and extracting the 3d model from that, and it's the new larger size that shows up, so it looks like it may be that there's no problem with the mesh itself - It seems to be a problem with linking the recolour to the mesh. Again, I've followed the instructions in the tutorials, but it doesn't seem to make any difference and it's the original version that still appears in Body Shop (even after I've made sure the new mesh has been copied into the Downloads folder...)

Can anyone think why this may be happening or what I'm doing wrong?

Last edited by lather : 17th Sep 2010 at 08:41 AM. Reason: Adding additional info