Where did the thread go to post busted meshes? THANK YOU!

[porkypine]

I thought I'd seen a thread somewhere where we could post our problematic meshes? I have an mesh that is a sash10.ms3d file that won't export. It tells me, " ERR: Unassigned bones exist".

I've gone back to earlier stages of the mesh and only the original will export to simpe. The problem occurs when I started to add parts to my mesh. the 1st one was the round badge off-center chest area. I assigned the vertices for that first to the breathe one and then to the spine, neither worked.
the 2nd addition was the metal collar. Then I added some tassels and garters and finally the long and short sashes.



As far as I'm able to determine, all the bones are assigned so obviously, I'm not doing something correctly. I've spent a lot of time on this one fiddling with the uv mapping for the new mesh parts and I would like to save it if possible. Would someone be willing to take a look at it and tell me what I did wrong and how to fix it? I don't expect you guys to do lots of work and fix it for me, just figure out what I did and tell me how to fix it so I don't mess up the next one.

Thanks. Any help is appreciated. :)

I'll upload the sash10.ms3d file. I'm just trying to export it to a body1.simpe file to I can reattach it.

If this is not the place for diagnostics, please move it and tell me where it moved to.

p.s. I just saw that Wes uploaded a new unimesh 4.07? I'll get that.

I'm using Simpe 6 and Milkshape 1.7.10

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Update - I upgraded Wes's unimesh and it finally exported but with errors. I reattached it to the package file and opened Legacy bodyshop. As you can see, the knee garters and the tassels on the end of the left legging are present and the round badge near the diagonal painted bandolier strap, BUT the right legging tassel, the Metal disk collar and the two long sash ends (Outlined in blue) are missing.
Also, there is a gap in the neck. There was a funky triangular piece which exists on the mesh. I'll have to pull that up higher.

Now,. I assigned the collar to the neck but it doesn't show up/export

Ideas?

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eeeeyaaa.... Hmmm. Perhaps those new mesh parts don't show up because the UV map for the new mesh parts is on the blacked out part of the alpha. (I sure hope that's all it is.) I don't like the fact that I can see one toe tassel but not the other one..... eh...

It's almost midnight and I have to get up at 6:30 am - i gotta quit playing with it for now - so I haven't tried to color anything. I' just happy I was able to export it finally and attach it to the package. I'll go back and replace his adams apple maybe tomorrow.. :0)

[HystericalParoxysm]

Well, I hate to always be the bearer of bad news, but... it looks like you broke it but good, porky.

Everything is assigned 100%, but a great deal of it is assigned 100% to nothing - at least half your vertices are assigned 100% to no joint... There are some assignments left in the pelvis, hands, and legs, but a lot of it is technically unassigned, even though it's at 100%.

Did you put this (or major parts of it) in OBJ format at any point? You can use Unimesh when you're frankensteining parts together to retain your bone assignments... just make sure to tell it OK when it asks if you want to exclude additional bone definitions when importing. It looks an awful lot like parts must have lost their assignments by being exported as OBJ, then got brought back in and you ran Fix Underweight Vertices on it, which gave them a 100% assignment to nothing.

Moved from Body Shop Skinning. We don't have a repair center like the object guys do, but you can just post a new thread going, "Halp, I brokeded it!" here for troubleshooting.

Lovely shapes... which do appear to have some fairly significant normals issues - darkening on the sets of tassels and the bottom of the "skirt" - Align Normals doesn't seem to want to fix them, though. How did you make the tasseled parts? Sometimes you just run into unfixable normals, but these seem... odd...

[porkypine]

I didn't export it as an obj files.
I betcha it might have been that fix underweighted vertices - I had wanted to click on underweight bones. - Or, it could have been double - fix integrity?

Shapes - I tried both boxes and planes and snapped other new shapes together. Then I rearranged the vertices to give them a 3D wavy look (I want to avoid the flat-painted on look) and I probably goofed when I highlighted too much stuff when I aligned normals rather than just that new mesh part. Then I snapped one vertice to the original mesh. Maybe I'm only supposed to align the new parts, not snap it?

As far as the leggings moccasins go. I just stretched the original boots out and rolled them under to get the legging edge.

On the tunic edge - all I did was drag down 'roundies' of vertices and scaled them. I had to move a couple which may have caused the dark areas.

After I arranged all the new mesh vertices around, I went into the groupings and grouped each piece in stages and corrected the UV maps, then grouped that piece to the Body assigned the bones and went on to the next new mesh part. I most likely messed up the selections when I tried to do the new bone assignments. Oh well. That's what I get for being ambitious - I'm trying to do the advance stuff right out the gate. :lol:

I did the assignments with the older Unimesh. It failed to export. The updated Unimesh allowed me to export, but it had errors.

So, Obviously, I need to learn how to assign the bones when adding new parts. Do I assign the bones before or after I attach it to the Body? I thought I understood the bone assignment tutorial and using Unimesh but obviously, I didn't get it. :rolleyes: :lol:

I'll go look at the pre-busted mesh to find the original bone assignments and try to reassign them on the new mesh. If not. Ill start over again.

As I think of it.. When I want to add a new mesh part to an existing mesh (Not replacement - just additional) should I build it away from the Body and move it into place when the shape is done? OR, should I add parts to the mesh directly as I build?

On the long sash. I built up several planes front and back and snapped them. (I probably should have just left them aligned and not snapped), then I grouped the individual chunks into one piece, then I mapped the UV, then I added it to the Body. then I aligned normals on it. It looked fine until I aligned it - no shadows. Perhaps I should have just not aligned the normals? I had to shuffle the sashes - they may impede into each other - which may cause the shadows?

You can betcha - I'm keeping track of all these goofups to turn them into a "How NOT to blow up your mesh" tute. ;)

I just hope my project team members remain patient with me while I learn how to mesh. :rofl:




Thanks for your help. It gives me some clues.

[tiggerypum]

I see a spot where things might have gone oddly....

When you uvmap things, your stuff you're uvmapping should be in a separate group from the already created mesh *at that time* So when you make your parts to add (you can grab them from your edited version) you should have them in a separate group while you're working on them. In the end you can combine things, but don't do that to begin with.

When you uvmap 'pieces' of a mesh, milkshape chops those pieces apart in some way I don't understand fully, but I remember this came up before.

So to retain all the good mapping and normals and bone assignments on your original mesh never 'remap' parts of it. *Adjust* the umapping as instructed in some of the tutorials, do not remap.

Probably the order should be make the shapes in a new group, uvmap them, do bone assignments, regroup (remember to save the comments before regrouping, and then name the new group that of the original group (like body))

How to do bone assignments is covered in unimesh tutorial #3. I believe you've got some experience with objects. It probably wouldn't hurt for you to sail through tutorial #2 and #3, a lot of concepts are covered, although not some of the issues you've been hitting. Often if I teach to 'do it a certain way' that's because there might be pitfalls to do it differently, but I don't always list them all, it's hard enough for many to get through the tutorials as written.

One thing, the screenshots and steps are for the older unimesh, not the brand spanking new one. So some of them are gonna be a bit different. I'm going to have to look and see how different when I have a bit more time.

There's at least 1500 vertices in a typical body mesh. I suggest that what you do is delete everything but your *new parts* Get them looking right, including hopefully having the 'normals' on them looking smooth and not oddly shadowed. Give the group a NEW NAME (this is important, don't leave it body) and export to wavefront obj.

Like in tutorial #3, because this has a LOT of edits, do NOT initially read in the fat morph for your base body. Get the fit body totally working, then recreate the fat morph.

Start new with the base mesh and redo the changes you made, and adjust the uvmaps, do not reuvmap anything. (yeah, I also hate redoing, but every time I'd had to do it my second mesh actually comes out a bit nicer than the first and takes less time, cause I have a better feel for exactly what I'm doing)

Now read in the obj file. You should be able to see it's still uvmapped. Now compare the bone assignments (this is in tutorial #3) of the body to the vertices that correspond on the new pieces, and make all the bone assignments as similar as possible. This is the time to also keep asking for 'underweight bones' or we have another procedure that was recently mentioned in another thread that works well for finding them.

Save your milkshape file for safekeeping. Copy the comments from the body group, regroup, give it the comments and name 'body'. Now try to export this new gmdc.

[WesHowe]

Well, the software doesn't really care when you assign the bones, provided it is prior to export. When you create an new part, it is already selected. If it is the only thing selected that makes it very easy to use the BoneTool because only your new vertices will show up (rather than oodles of others).

Fix Underweighted bones should never change the bone assignments. If there is no first bone assigned, it does show 100% when you display the unassigned vertices, but this is an implied weighting.

Now, if you use the buttons in the joints panel incorrectly, you can wipe out bone assignments double-quick. By way of illustration:

* Import a body mesh (any one, we won't need to save anything).
* Hide any morph and alpha groups.
* Go to the model tab in MilkShape and click on 'Select'.
* Make sure that 'vertex' is selected.
* Go to a view window and click-n-drag a small selection across the middle of the mesh.
* Go to the joints tab and click on 'Clear' (right next to 'Assign').
* Now, go to the vertex menu and select the BoneTool.

When you review the data in the BoneTool, you will see that the first bone assignment is gone. The weights are still there, as well as any second, third or fourth assignments. But without a primary assignment, the model will not export anything useful. The parts of the model unselected should still have all their original assignments and weights.

Now, perhaps it is a natural talents kind of thing, but I would think fixing the bone assignments would be easier than doing the nice meshing you did on the new parts all over again.

In my tests here, I can run two copies of MilkShape at once, each with the BoneTool active simultaneously. While arranging the screen real estate so that it is easy to swap between them is a small issue, you could do this with the original in one copy (as a reference) and your broken mesh in the other.

Keep your chin up. Your work looks nice, just a small setback.

<* Wes *>

[porkypine]

Hey thanks guys! I appreciate your tips, comments, experience and insights. Now let's see if I can incorporate the information and fix it. :0)

I think the big thing to do, which I hadn't done before, is to do the bone assignments BEFORE I attach the new mesh part to the mesh. That will prevent me from accidentally reassigning the body mesh vertices.

[porkypine]

One thing, the screenshots and steps are for the older unimesh, not the brand spanking new one. So some of them are gonna be a bit different. I'm going to have to look and see how different when I have a bit more time.



Hi Tig! Thanks for your help and the pointers. I appreciate it.

When you get around to re-working your tutorials, the Unimesh AND Simpe has changed in a few places. That may throw off novice users.

One thing I noticed with the SImpe6.x - You don't have to ADD the 4 extracted parts one by one to the new mesh (cres,shpe,gmdc.gmac). You can select all of them and ADD them all at once. Also, (I;m not at my home machine right now) there ARE a couple of places in your tutorial where the new Simpe don't match at all. I'll grab some screen shots tonight, if I remember. Updating those particulr spots will help newcomers greatly.

Oh! By the way. Both you and HP did a great job on the Tutes.. Meshing is a beast. I think only insane people can grasp it well.. :jest: Just kidding. :jest: on the insane part that is.... :lol: This is why you shouldn't :Pint: and mesh. :rofl:

[porkypine]

Hi! I redoing the mesh because of the shadowing. I've noticed on this particular mesh that when I align normals on a large section, it makes it dark, so I'm just leaving the normals alone. :0)

The interesting thing is that the FAT morph lacks several vertice bone assignments. Is that normal? I know I didn't change anything there.

When I've created new mesh parts, I'm keeping it away from the Body and fixing the UV and doing the bone assignments, then I move it into position.

[WesHowe]

None of the ~xxMORPHMOD.x groups really have bone assignments. If you're making them, you are wasting effort, here's why:

The morphmod groups get converted from a mesh into a set of 'deltas' or values that are added to the vertices in the 'base' mesh. All the faces and vertices in the morphmod group have to stay in the same order as the base mesh for this to work.

But, the bone assignments (and skin weights) from the base mesh are what are used when the output file is generated. A single base mesh with a single morph is really only one mesh with some added features that allow the game to change it's shape from A (the base) to B (the morph) during play.

<* wes *>

[porkypine]

hmmmm... If you take a look at that mesh photo above, you'll see that there is a long sash which hangs down from the waist.

Now the normal and fat morph locations for the belt area in separate mesh morphs. The two mesh morphs combine about mid-thigh.

If I make a sash that attaches to the belt and free hangs to mid knee area, How do I attach them correctly so the morph parts mesh together correctly?

There is also a metal neck piece - Do I have to make two copies? One for the thin and fat morphs or just one for the thin? Looking at the meshes, there are objects attached to both morph sets. On the UV map, do I just put the fat morph under the thin morph to get them both to recolor correctly? OR, will covering one uv with another cause it to be blank?

(ok... I'll stop now and bang away at it until someone can understand what I asked. maybe I'll either fix it or break it again. :lol: ??Did I hear someone say. 'psst porky! baby steps first!' :rofl: )

[WesHowe]

I'm struggling to understand the question.

But you can have a fat morph on more than one group. Each would be a separate group. If it has the same morph name "botmorphs fatbot", the morph for both groups will happen at the same time.

The group list might look something like:

body
~00MORPHMOD.1
sheathandsash
~01MORPHMOD.1

An example is the amBodystBaller mesh (I think this was from University or Nightlife). There are two groups in the mesh, one of the ball player, and another of a ribbon and medal that goes around the neck and lies on top of the chest.

Each of these two groups has a fat morph, too, with the same morph name (the morph name is a pair of names saved in the MORPHMOD group comments, not the MORPHMOD+number name invention of mine). The ribbon and medal are almost the same, or even identical, at the nape of the neck. But they vary a lot down by the belly, where the medal has to be located further from the center to stay on top of the belly.

So what Tigs and Dr. Pixel and I have always recommended is to finish the normal mesh group(s) and then duplicate the group, then select vertices and use Move (or scale) to get the desired bulk added to the model. Give the duplicated group the right name and comments and it will work.

<* Wes *>

[tiggerypum]

porkypine,

I did recommend you have your additional pieces in a separate group to begin with, so that you get them in there, get them looking right regarding the normals, and get them mapped.

In the end, that mesh should have one body and one morph group, there's no need to add additional groups to the mesh. So like I state in tut #3 - when you're done, you need to have the same number of groups with the same comments when you're done as what you started with.

In this case, you'd be doing something LIKE what happens in tutorial #3 to add different shoes, but you'll be combining a base mesh with your new belt. (or your modded base mesh with your new belt parts)

So, start with just your regular (fit body) get your parts in there and looking right. (this means starting with the maxis mesh and not importing the fat morph) Then you need to regroup them to be 1 body (no autosmoothing or such) and before that copy the comments so you can restore them after the regroup. Then you can export and test away. Once you have that working well (good bone assignments, no gaps, etc) then you can make the fat morph.

(Re)Making the fat morph:

I'm typing this in off the cuff, look at tutorial #3 to verify steps.

Start NEW. Import the base maxis mesh you started with as a reference _with_ the morph. Now import your new gmdc with your modded mesh. This whole routine is covered in the unimesh 3 tutorial with pics

1) copy the comments from the maxis (body) and put them onto your (body)
2) delete the maxis (body) and move your new (body) up to the top of the list
3) select the entirety of your new (body) on the groups page there's a nice button that does that
4) duplicate the group
5) make sure only the duplicate is showing. I usually hide everything so my screen is blank, and then hit the 'hide' button again on the duplicate.
6) unhide the morph. That's your reference for 'fat'. Now you can convert your duplicate (which will have the belt on it) to look appropriately fat by selecting rings of vertices and using 'scale', and sometimes just pulling individual sections of pixels out a bit. You'll need to hide and show the two groups to select only the vertices you want, but it's really not too difficult to get something that is sort of like the original fat morph's shape. It doesn't have to be exact for a FULL BODY mesh. (waistlines must be exact for tops and bottoms, and you can use the extended edit tool to fix such things)
7) When it looks 'fat' and right to you, copy the comments from the maxis fat morph to your duplicate. Copy the name of the maxis fat morph and rename your duplicate to that name. Delete the maxis fat morph.

The fat morph _must_ have exactly the same number of vertices in similar positions with the same order as the fit mesh it will correspond to (which means no deleting, adding, welding (I think)) Wes' plugin takes the 2 meshes and compares them and then creates a string of numbers that are the 'fat morph' data, which tell the game how to move the vertices to make the mesh appear fat. That is why I have people get the 'fit' version working correctly, and then remake the fat morph, because they need to be identical for this bit of 'magic' to take place.

On meshes where there is very little editing happening (like the deleting of the same vertices on both meshes in tut 1, and the moving of vertices and widening of skirt in #2) it is possible to simply do exactly the same thing to the fat morph as to the fit mesh, and everything will be fine. But once one begins adding and deleting vertices or regrouping different mesh parts together, that can go wrong very easily, including the milkshape simply ordering the vertices date slightly differently. So that is why we do the 'duplicate the finished mesh' thing to make the fat morph mesh.

[porkypine]

Oh! Copy the whole mesh not just the parts! Of course, I was doing it the hard way... making the parts, UV mapping them and grouping them onto the thin body then wondering how to copy just the necklace over. I couldn't figure out how to COPY the mesh part. So I just made another necklace for the fat morph.

What I'm going to have to do is just follow the tutorial exactly - I'm cutting corners because I don't want to take the time making something I don't need, so I'm trying to apply your tutorial to what I'm doing.

I'll be good. I hope MTS2 is online when I get back to the drawing board so I can see the images. I think I need more time in my life for 'fun' things like meshing. Working 40+ hours and doing the rest of the susie-homemaker thing just doesn't leave much time to do anything else. But I hafta be careful what I ask for. I NEED my job! I don't want to find myself with plenty of 'free-time' and no income! :rofl:

[tiggerypum]

I know people hate to do projects that they don't need, like a tutorial project, but time and time again I say - if you are getting confused, do the tutorial as written. I had to break up the info into 3 tutorials and #3 covers a LOT of stuff, it assumes basic editing skills and jams 90% of what people still need to know all in that last tutorial. I suggest setting your project aside for a bit and 'relaxing' and doing #3 tutorial as written. Some more important things will hopefully click into place then and you'll have a better idea of what to do on this project. If nothing else, when I make a suggestion we'll more likely be speaking from a common place.

[porkypine]

HI! I just wanted to let all you guys know what an enormous help you've been!

Here's a sneak peak at our project - It's just an incomplete mockup of a clothing presentation - notice how nicely that long dress folds under and her knees don't pop out. :0) Correct bone assignments! :D And all those stripes and such match up on the seams.Correct UV Mapping!

http://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/images19/MTS2_465437_porkypine_sampleframework.jpg

THANKYOU!

[WesHowe]

Wow. Impressive.