Clothing meshing for dummies

[CmarNYC]

There are other custom clothing and meshing guides out there, but since I'm still a dummy when it comes to a lot of this stuff I thought I'd be qualified to write a tutorial that tries to be very beginner-friendly. Like you, I'll be learning some of this as I go along.

I'll be covering a lot of the same ground as an excellent series of tutorials by Wes Howe, but using some different and more recent tools. He goes into more detail and more advanced topics than I will, so I highly recommend going through his series also. http://customsims3.com/pedia/doku.php?id=custom_content_creation

All lessons will cover making a custom clothing part start to finish. The topics I hope to cover eventually are:

1. A simple mesh alteration (beginner meshing)
2. Adding a pregnant morph (morphs)
3. Adding vertices and faces to a mesh (bones, vertex renumbering, morphs)
4. Adding a new part to a mesh (more on faces, UV mapping)
5. TBD
6. TBD

Definition of terms:

CAS : Create A Sim - the game tool for creating sims and picking clothes for them
CC : Custom Content - what we're trying to make here!
CTU : CAS Texture Unitool - Delphy's wonderful tool for extracting the parts you need for custom clothing and putting them back together in a usable package
Mesh : a geometry file describing a three dimensional shape made up of polygons
Milkshape : a shareware meshing tool that most Sims meshers use, by Mete Ciragan
MorphMaker : a tool for converting morph meshes into useable game content, by me
Package : a .package file that contains the files for an item of custom clothing
Postal : a lovely tool for package exploration and editing, by Echo
s3pe : Sims3 Package Editor - an indispensable tool for working with packages, by Peter and Inge Jones

Tools you'll need:

CTU (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=364926") - runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Requires .NET Framework 2.0 (included in 3.5 for Windows 7 users) and DirectX Runtime - if it won't run, you probably don't have one or both of those correctly installed. (I also found it wouldn't work in a Program Files folder, probably because of Windows 7 file protections.)

Milkshape 3D (http://chumbalum.swissquake.ch/) - 30-day trial, after which you pay $35 USD or 25 EUR which includes all future upgrades. If you're serious about meshing for Sims3 or a host of other games, it's well worth the price. Windows only.

Q-mesh plugins (http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=357403) for Milkshape, by Wes Howe. You need these to import and export meshes to/from Milkshape, and for some other meshing tools.

MorphMaker (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=387348) - Windows only.

Postal (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=362599) - Java-based, runs on Windows and Mac
and/or
s3pe (http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=362412) - Windows, and Mac/Linux with limitations.

You'll also need a way to extract .rar files to install the above. Personally I use 7-zip (http://www.7-zip.org/).

[CmarNYC]

If you've just installed Milkshape you'll need to do a couple of things to get it ready for use with Sims3 meshes. First, install the Q-mesh plugins by opening the .rar file and copying or extracting the .dll files to C:\Program Files\MilkShape 3D 1.8.5\ or C:\Program Files (x86)\MilkShape 3D 1.8.5\ on a 64-bit system. If you've installed Milkshape in another folder you're presumably advanced enough to find it okay. If you can't extract or copy the files directly from the .rar, try putting them on your desktop first and then do a cut and paste into the Milkshape folder. (Folder protection may stop you from extracting directly.)

Then start Milkshape. Click on the Groups tab on the right side of the window, and clear the 'Auto Smooth' checkbox. Click 'File' on the menu and go to Preferences, click the Misc tab, and change the 'Joint Size' to something like 0.015. (If you get weird shading effects or if you open a mesh and see a mess of blue circles, you've forgotten to do one of these steps.) Optionally, you can click the Joints tab on the right side of the window and clear the 'Show Skeleton' checkbox, so you won't see the underlying skeleton while working with the mesh. (The examples will have the skeleton hidden.)

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy1/Tut1-1.jpg

At this point would be a good time to make a folder for your work files. I'm going to call mine DummyMesh1.

Now let's get a mesh to work with. For this exercise we're going to take the adult male Muscle Shirt and make it longer so it goes over the hips. Open up CTU and select Adult for Age, Male for Gender, and Top for Type. Either select ShirtMuscle in the Mesh dropdown, or just look for its picture and click the thumbnail.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy1/Tut1-2.jpg

Click the 'Extract Meshes' button and find your work folder to extract the meshes into. If all goes well, you should end up with a .vpxy file which we won't need, and three .simgeom files. The .simgeom files are your meshes.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy1/Tut1-3.jpg

Why three meshes? One of the ways the game saves on resources and processing time is to use a highly detailed mesh for close views, less detail for medium distance, and still less for far distance like town views. Exactly which Level Of Detail is used at what distance depends on your video settings. There are four levels of detail in the game, but only three are used for clothing. They are called lod1, lod2, and lod3. (Lod0, very high detail, is used for faces and hair.) It's highly recommended to modify at least the lod2 mesh in addition to lod1, even for small changes, since in a game running on Low Sim Detail that lod2 is going to show up pretty close. However, in these exercises we'll only be working with lod1.

Now we're ready for the actual meshing. Start Milkshape if it isn't still open. Click File, Import, and 'Q-Mesh Sims 3 GEOM Importer V0.16 - by Wesley Howe'. (You can't use Open because that uses the default Milkshape format.) Find the folder with your .simgeom mesh files and select the one starting with 'amTopShirtMuscle_lod1'.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy1/Tut1-4.jpg

You'll get a popup message saying: 'Unable to locate bone file - default skeleton used'. Ignore that; all it means is that the importer plugin can't find the specific skeleton for that mesh and will use a default instead. With some meshes you may also get an error saying 'Hashed bone not in skeleton'. In most cases you can safely ignore that too.

Now you should have a screen that looks like this:

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy1/Tut1-5.jpg

Note that the arms and hands are included in the mesh - it's not just the shirt, it's the entire top half of the body from neck to waist.

We'll mostly be using the Select and Move buttons. If the right side with the buttons doesn't look like the picture, make sure you have the 'Model' tab selected.

Click Select, and a 'Select Options' section should show up. Make sure Vertex is selected, and leave the Ignore Backfaces box unchecked. Take a look at the Milkshape screen - it's divided into four quarters showing different views of the mesh. You can change those views by right-clicking on a view and selecting a different projection. The bottom right view is the only one you can rotate freely.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy1/Tut1-6.jpg

To get a little more workable view, we need to zoom in and move the mesh around. Click on the top left (front projection) view and use your scroll wheel to zoom. Pressing shift will make it zoom faster. Then press Ctrl and use the mouse to drag the mesh into a better position. The lower right view works a little differently - moving the mouse will rotate the mesh in all three dimensions. Using the scroll wheel and shift-scroll work the same (except for me at least the zoom is in the opposite direction), and pressing Shift while moving the mouse up and down will give you a smooth zoom. As with the other views, Ctrl and mouse will let you drag the mesh to a better position. If you do something wrong and lose sight of the mesh (it happens!) right-click and click 'Reset view', then if needed zoom in until you see the mesh.

Okay, now we should be all zoomed in to where we can see the waist part of the mesh clearly from the front and side. The little dots you see in the wireframe (dots and lines) views are the vertices. The lines between them show how they're linked into faces. The entire mesh is made up of triangular faces.

The next step is to select the parts we want to move. Click on the front projection (top left), and drag a selection box with the mouse around the bottom of the shirt. All the vertices inside your selection box should turn red.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy1/Tut1-7.jpg

Check to make sure you've got only the bottom three rings of vertices selected in the waist part of the mesh. (It's easier to see in the side view.) If you need to de-select a vertex or several vertices, press the shift key and de-select them with the right mouse button. To add more vertices to the selection, press the shift key and select them with the left mouse button.

Now, go back to the right side of the Milkshape screen and click the Move button. In either the front or side views, drag with the mouse to move the selected vertices down a little. Try to move them straight down, using the grid lines as a guide.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy1/Tut1-8.jpg

Then go to the right side again and click Select. Click anywhere in the wireframe views to clear your vertex selection, and then select the bottom two circles. Click the move button and lower them a little again. (If you mess up at any point, Edit/Undo is a lifesaver.) Follow the same steps to select and lower only the bottom ring and the ring of the edge of the shirt just inside it. You should end up with it looking like this, with the bottom three rings of vertices nicely spaced out:

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy1/Tut1-9.jpg

And let's expand the bottom of the shirt to make it fit over the hips and butt. Select the bottom two circles again, and this time click the Scale button on the right side of the window. Change the number over the X button to 1.05 and the Z button to 1.10. X is width, Z is depth (front to back), and Y is height, by the way. Click the Scale button next to the numbers and you should see those selected rows of vertices expand a little.

Switch to Move again, click in the side view, and move the vertices to the rear a little.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy1/Tut1-10.jpg

Now we're ready to save our work. Click File, Export, 'Q-Mesh Sims 3 GEOM Exporter V0.16 - by Wesley Howe'. Give your exported file a name - I'll call mine 'LongerMuscleShirt'. Now you should have an additional .simgeom mesh file in your work folder - LongerMuscleShirt.simgeom in my case.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy1/Tut1-11.jpg

All we have to do is package it up for the game. Go back to CTU. If you closed it or poked around with it, select the original ShirtMuscle again first. Then click the 'Designs' tab - we need to have a texture for the mesh to give it a design, colors, etc. Click the 'Add new Design' button and then 'Copy All From Base'. (If you want to change the default colors the shirt shows up with in CAS, You can do it in the Patterns tab. That's beyond the scope of this tutorial, though.)

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy1/Tut1-12.jpg

Click the 'Meshes' tab, and look at the section under 'New Mesh'. Enter your name for your new mesh in the Mesh Name entry and find the space labeled "LOD1:". Click the '...' button next to it and select your new mesh.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy1/Tut1-13.jpg

What are the LOD1_1, etc., you ask? Some clothing consists of more than one mesh - usually the additional meshes are separate parts like a pocket, a decoration, or so on. That's what the additional entries are for. We'll only be using the main mesh entry for LOD1.

Now click 'Commit' next to the Mesh Name field. Click File in the menu bar and Save As. You'll be prompted for a package name - I'll use LongerMuscleShirt again. Save the package in your work folder.

You need to get the package into your game - if you use an installer you can use that, or copy it into your mods\packages folder. (If you have trouble with this part, please read the excellentInstalling Package Files (http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Sims_3:Installing_Package_Files) section here on MTS.)

And here it is in CAS, with the original shirt right under it in the thumbnails.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy1/Tut1-14.jpg

Notes:

For a simple mesh modification like this, it's important NOT to add or remove any vertices or to create, remove, or reorder faces. If you do, the morphs will turn ugly. We'll get to that and how to get around it in the next couple of lessons.

Remember that we only did the lod1 mesh for this lesson. When you do meshing for real, you should also do at least lod2, and lod3 for anything more than a fairly minor change. Modify the meshes the same way as for lod1, and import all three meshes into CTU in the fields for LOD1, LOD2, and LOD3 just as shown above for LOD1. Then do your Save As and CTU will make a package with all three meshes.

Until next time, happy meshing!

[CmarNYC]

Okay, now we're going to do a pregnant mesh. This example will use the game pregnant shape as a guide. The same shape can be used as a rough guide for pregnant morphs for males and teens. This example is a full-body mesh but it's the same process for tops and bottoms. If you want to make a top or bottom that that has to match the game shape exactly, for example a bare waistline or tucked shirt, that's a story for a future section in this tutorial.

Let's start with some basics on how morphing works in the game and what it's used for. There are four body morphs in the Sims 3: fat, fit, thin, and 'special', which is pregnant. These are changes which are applied to the base or normal body according to circumstances - the fatter the sim gets the more the fat morph is applied, the more fit they are the more the fit morph is applied, etc. All morphs can be combined except the fat and thin morphs, which show up in CAS as opposite ends of the same slider. There are morph meshes in the game files which are not actually complete meshes; instead of vertex locations they contain the differences between the locations of the vertices in the base mesh and in the fully morphed shape. (They also contain the differences in the normals, which we'll get to in a later section.) For this reason, morph meshes cannot be opened in Milkshape by themselves; they must be loaded 'over' their corresponding base mesh so that the importer can use the base information and the morph information to calculate where the vertices should be.

Just to complicate things further, the morph meshes themselves aren't used in the game. The morph information for all the lods for a piece of clothing (or a face, or hair) is compressed and coded into one file, a BGEO file. In order to make a new morph, we need to first make a new set of morph meshes and then make a new BGEO file from them.

In order to follow the tutorial, you'll need to download the adult female pregnant guide mesh attached at the bottom of this post. It's the pregnant morph of one of the game swimsuits, changed into a full mesh so you can load it by itself.

Okay, let's start with a nice dress for adult/YA females. I'm going to use the short flared dress, afBodyDressShortFlared_folds. It looks like it should be a maternity dress, but for some reason it has no pregnant morph in the game. Open up CTU, select Adult, Female, and Body, and find the dress in the dropdown list or the thumbnails. Click the Extract Meshes button and save the meshes in a work folder.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-1.jpg

As in the first tutorial, we'll get three .simgeom files - we don't need the .vpxy file.

Open Milkshape, and import the lod1 mesh for the dress. (File\Import\Q-Mesh Sims 3 GEOM Importer... in case you forgot.) Again, ignore the 'Unable to locate bone file' message. You should now see the mesh in Milkshape.

Now we'll duplicate this mesh and change the copy into a morph mesh. First, click the Groups tab and click the Select button under Group. (Not the one under Smoothing Groups.) The entire mesh should turn red.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-2.jpg

Click Edit in the menu bar, and Duplicate Selection. You should see white dots appear among the red, and a second entry should show up in the list right under the Groups tab.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-3.jpg

Click on that second entry to make sure it's selected. Now look under the Groups tab, in the middle section under Group, and click the Comment button. A window should pop up with a long list of unintelligible information. This stuff is very important - it tells what type of mesh this is, what texture images it's associated with, among other things - but that's again an advanced topic. In this case, all we want is to change this mesh into a morph. Fortunately, that's very easy. Just erase all the information in the comment, then take the following text and paste it in, then click Okay to save.

FVFItems: 3
TableType: 0
References: 1
TGIRef00: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-4.jpg

Next, we want to hide the original, base mesh so we don't accidentally change it. It's important that it's not changed because the GEOM exporter will use the information in it to calculate the morph data, and if you change both meshes your morph won't work. Click the top entry under the Groups tab to select it and then click the Hide button under Group. You should see the white dots disappear. And finally, import the guide adult female pregnant mesh you should have downloaded from this post.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-5.jpg

First, let's name our meshes to avoid confusion. Click on the second entry in the list under the Groups tab, which should be named Duplicate01 at this point, and look for the Rename button under Group. Change the 'Duplicate01' next to it to 'PregMorph' and click the Rename button. Then do the same thing to rename the third entry, your guide mesh, to 'Guide'. As an aside, the Up and Down buttons will change the order of your meshes, which can be important since the morph mesh(es) must come directly under their base mesh. You can have multiple morphs under one base, as we'll get to in a future section.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-6.jpg

Now for some meshing! First, select the Guide mesh under the Groups tab and click the Hide button again to hide it for now. Click the Model tab to get access to the meshing buttons and make sure the Select button is active. Using the techniques explained in the first tuturial, zoom in enough to be able to see the belly area in detail. Click back to the Groups tab and unhide the Guide mesh by clicking the Hide button again. This will show you the shape you're trying to get the PregMorph mesh into.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-7.jpg


Hide the guide again, go back to the Model tab, and in the side projection select the whole front belly part of the mesh. You'll get part of the hands too - go to the top projection, press Shift, and drag around each of the hands to deselect them. Now, with the entire belly and front upper part of the skirt selected, click the Scale button. Change the number over the X to 1.01 and the number over the Z to 1.1. This will increase the scale of the selected vertices 1% in the side-to-side dimension and 10% in the front-to-back dimension. Click the second Scale button that's next to the numbers and you should see the vertices move slightly.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-8.jpg

Click the Move button and use the mouse in the side projection to move the selected vertices forward slightly. Now, click the Select key and use the Shift key and right mouse button to deselect the top line of vertices and the bottom. Repeat the scale and the move forward. Repeat the entire process, reducing the area of vertices you have selected, until you have a nice round belly.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-9.jpg

Go back to the Groups tab and unhide the guide. As you can see, it's a pretty good fit. (I selected the Guide mesh to make it easier to see.)

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-10.jpg

After hiding the guide mesh again, use the scale-and-move or just the Move button to smooth out the shape and the front of the skirt. You can recheck against the guide whenever you want, just hide it again before selecting vertices. Try to make your mesh as close as reasonably possible to the guide to reduce animation and object overlap problems in the game. But don't expect perfection, at least not on your first try!

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-11.jpg

As a finishing touch, I'm going to select the vertices of the breasts in the side view, scale them couple of times, and move them a tad forward and down so they're closer to the breasts of the guide.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-12.jpg

And now, we'll export our new morph mesh. Click File on the menu bar, and Export, and Q-Mesh Sims 3 GEOM Exporter. You'll get a popup saying the GEOM format exports only one group per file. Click OK. It'll go through each of the meshes in your Groups, asking if you want to export. In this case, the only one we want to export is the second one, our PregMorph mesh. Click Yes for that one, and No for the others. Save the mesh in your work folder, and give it a descriptive name like "PregnantMesh_lod1.simgeom". If all has gone well, it'll be about half the size of the original mesh.

If you're going to make a pregnant morph to be used in the game, you should use the same process to make morph meshes for lod 2 and lod 3 also. They will probably come out looking lumpy, especially lod 3, because you have fewer vertices to work with. Just do the best you can. Close Milkshape when you're done.

Let's go back to CTU. If you closed it, select the DressShortFlared_folds again and click the Part Category tab. This screen will show you how the clothing is categorized. Under Extended Category, put a checkmark next to 'Valid for Maternity'. If you want this outfit to be able to be selected at random for maternity, also make sure 'Valid for Random' is checked. Click the Commit button.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-13.jpg

Now for some more background - exactly how the game picks maternity clothing is still somewhat mysterious. Most of the time just enabling maternity and adding a morph isn't enough, although sometimes that seems to work, especially in the case of sims for which the game has no built-in maternity wear. (Males and teens.) The only method I've found to be reliable, and which allows you to pick what clothes you want your sim to wear during pregnancy, is the one I'm going to use here. Unfortunately it creates another item of clothing in CAS, but we're going to modify the appearance of the dress so we can identify our maternity-enabled clothing.

You should still be in CTU. Click on the Designs tab, just like we did in the first lesson. Click the Add New Design button, and select Copy All From Base. You should now see three Designs in the top design box. Select the first one. Click the Patterns tab under the design buttons, and you should get the patterns options shown in the picture below. This is where you can change the default colors and patterns that show up in the CAS thumbnails. We're going to make some changes so we can recognize our modified dress - also because I can't stand that hideous purple. (YMMV, of course.)

First take a look at the pulldown right next to where it says Patterns: - in the picture below it's clicked to show there are four patterns: Pattern A, Pattern B, Pattern C, and Pattern D. These are the recolorable areas of the clothing. In this case Pattern A is the skirt and Pattern B is the bodice. C and D appear not to be used in this dress. Click the Browse Patterns button, and you'll get a popup that lets you select from a collection of patterns. You can switch to other types of patterns using the pulldown at the top of that window. I'll select the dark gray small herringbone for Pattern A, and then switch to Pattern B, click Browse Patterns again, and choose the medium houndstooth. If you have 3D Preview enabled (checkbox on the upper right) you can see how your choices will look.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-14.jpg

Notice how the Type: dropdown has changed to Pattern(HSV)? You can use patterns and you can also use solid colors. Let's go on and select Design #2 in the design box and use a solid color for it. Click the Colour box under Solid Colour Options at the bottom and a color selector will pop up. Choose a color for Pattern A, switch to Pattern B, and choose the same or a different color for it. If you want to match the colors exactly, look in the 'Hex color' box in that popup - copy the number there for the color you want, switch to the other pattern, and paste it back to get the same color.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-15.jpg

You can also change Design #3 if you wish. I went for a flowery pattern in the bodice and a matching pastel violet-blue in the skirt. :) Finally, click File from the menu bar, Save As, give it a descriptive name and save it in your work folder. You can close CTU.

And now start up MorphMaker. At the top of the window, fill in your project name - this should be the name of the clothing plus the specific morph you're working on. In this case, I'll put 'afBodyDressShortFlared_folds_special'. Click the arrow button next to it, and the program will generate an instance number for your morph and fill in the Instance ID field. Then click the Adult Female button on the left side, and select your morph mesh files for lod1, lod2, and lod3. (If you only did lod1, that's fine - just select that one.) Note you must use Adult - Young Adults use the Adult clothing.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-16.jpg

Click the Clothing button under Make Morphs on the left. Click the Create BGEO button that will appear and save the .bgeo file in your work folder. Last, click the 'Add morphs to package' button and select the package you saved in CTU. Another screen will pop up to let you import your BGEO files. Click the Import BGEO button for the Special (pregnant) section and select the .bgeo file you just made. Click 'Save as a new package' and save it under a different name. This will be your final package, and you can delete the one made by CTU if you wish.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Tut2-17.jpg

You can close MorphMaker now, and at last we can install the package in our game and test it out. It should show as a separate clothing in CAS, probably just above or below the original.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/DressCAS.jpg

Have your sim plan her outfits so she's wearing the dress for Everyday and/or Formal before she has her "OMG I'm pregnant!" moment. After is too late - the maternity outfits are set for the course of the pregnancy. She should keep wearing the dress in whichever category you've chosen.

http://www.timelinefiction.net/S3Tutorials/MeshDummy2/Screenshot-dress.jpg

[CmarNYC]

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[CmarNYC]

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[CmarNYC]

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[CmarNYC]

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[BloomsBase]

This will be much appreciated!

[CmarNYC]

This will be much appreciated!

Thanks - I see so many people who are eager to learn but don't know the basics you need to understand the more advanced and specialized tutorials - this is for them.

[Winterayne]

It really help !!! Thanks , just some i don;t understand (casue my English is not good) and do i have to use S3P can i use TSR workshop ???

[CmarNYC]

Nhut1000: I've never used TSR Workshop and don't know exactly what it can and can't do, but probably yes.

[sims_reality]

It really help !!! Thanks , just some i don;t understand (casue my English is not good) and do i have to use S3P can i use TSR workshop ???



You can use TSRW, but some of the body meshes extracted with TSRW has a weird problem; It will WON'T import back! If this happens, you have no choice but to find a mesh that will import back.

[Aleesa666]

How do I preview it without going into the game? after im done with it and everything?

[CmarNYC]

How do I preview it without going into the game? after im done with it and everything?

I don't know of any easy way to preview - the only thing I can think of is to save the pregnant morph as a regular mesh and import it into CTU, but I've never done this.

[Aleesa666]

I mean the clothing. I made a AF Shirt and i went into game and my game crashed when i went into cas screen. So i was hoping there was a way to preview the clothes without going into game.

[CmarNYC]

Use CTU to preview.

[tjstreak]

Now, go back to the right side of the Milkshape screen and click the Move button. In either the front or side views, drag with the mouse to move the selected vertices down a little. Try to move them straight down, using the grid lines as a guide.


I am finding that using scale instead of move might actually work better than moving rows of vertices individually. You can limit the scaling to one dimension -- in this case the Y axis.

Another trick which is invaluable is the ability to hide vertices. When you have a trickier mesh, you can hide the vertices that get in the way of selecting the vertices you actually want to edit.

You can use TSRW, but some of the body meshes extracted with TSRW has a weird problem; It will WON'T import back! If this happens, you have no choice but to find a mesh that will import back.

I use TSRW all the time, but some outfits are a problem. When I look at the exported meshes, I find that the different morphs have a different number of vertices! Of course this will cause you all sorts of grief when you try to re-import the mesh. (Blasted fat morph is usually the problem!)

Sometimes I have experimented with exporting a mesh, then immediately re-importing the same mesh without any edits -- and getting an error message.

The nice thing about TSRW is that it is pretty slick and pretty easy to use. The bad thing is that it is still rather buggy. It's great for simple projects, however.

[Aleesa666]

i do but it stays the same. im doin everything right. is there a specific place to export and save it? I made a folder, user/documents/MESHES. maybe ill try again and see if anything changes.

[Sydlet]

http://i32.tinypic.com/21mcig4.jpg

So, I tried making that tank top longer, but then this happened. How much did I need to, for lack of a better word, widen the vertices?

[CmarNYC]

So, I tried making that tank top longer, but then this happened. How much did I need to, for lack of a better word, widen the vertices?

For the male tank top I used 1.05 for X (side to side) and 1.10 for Z (front to back). For the female version you should scale the X bigger, like maybe 1.15, and smooth it out a little at the waistline.

This whole process involves a fair amount of trial and error. One way to make it easier would be to import a bottom mesh so you can see how your lengthened shirt fits over it. Just be sure to move only the shirt vertices by hiding the bottom while you select and unhiding when you need to see it.

[iheartcowcapoos]

i'm running CTU on my mac using mono. when i choose adult>female>top an annoying box pops up asking me to find my sims 3 root folder. on no other tutorials did i find this mentioned and i cant find my root folder because the only option i get is "desktop" and my root folder isnt located on my desktop.. i cant get passed this step even if i press cancel. does anyone have any experience with this?? maybe i'm posting this in the wrong place..

[BloomsBase]

i'm running CTU on my mac using mono. when i choose adult>female>top an annoying box pops up asking me to find my sims 3 root folder. on no other tutorials did i find this mentioned and i cant find my root folder because the only option i get is "desktop" and my root folder isnt located on my desktop.. i cant get passed this step even if i press cancel. does anyone have any experience with this?? maybe i'm posting this in the wrong place..

My first thought was: click my computer and search your harddisk but i already read somewhere that it just brings you back to your desktop files eh?
Can you confirm that?

[masengo]

wow this is great. Finally someone willing to teach us beginners.

[jemon]

Wow, thanks!
I just tried to make a quick edit, but the mesh stays the same in CTU, if that's meant to happen, is there any way of previewing my new meshes without opening the game up?
Nope, I've fixed that, just open the .package up :P

Anyway, thanks :D I was expecting it to be a lot more complicated that it is :D

What if I want to convert something between ages, how hard is that?

And, I want to make a set of big bangles, I've got the meshes from the bangles from base TS3, but there's only three, will it work if I copy and move them? Or will the animations go funny?

[dede9197]

Omg!!!!!!! i like love you now!!!! (not in a weird way :D)

[eobaby56]

Hi excuse me will blender work for this because milkshape wont work on my pc and I cant afford it!

[CmarNYC]

Hi excuse me will blender work for this because milkshape wont work on my pc and I cant afford it!

All of the same principles apply, but the tools and interface in Blender are rather different. The step-by-step instructions and pictures in these tutorials will only work in Milkshape but you can do the same things in Blender. I know there are import/export plugins for Blender too but don't know details of how they work.

[zymish]

Does anyone know if there's a way to get Maya to recognise and/or import the mesh files? I'd really prefer to use the 3D software I've already paid for, with which I'm proficient, than pay for something new that I've never used before.

[Hermi1]

Hey I really want to thank you for your tutorial! :up: :up: :up:

I successfully (kind of ) made the male hoddie longer, yay~
but then I tried it in game and something's not right with the skin on the neck...It doesn't happen with the original hoodie or any other clothings though...is there any way to fix it?

Thankssss ! :)

http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/5232/bug001.png (http://img87.imageshack.us/i/bug001.png/)

Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)

[CmarNYC]

Hey I really want to thank you for your tutorial! :up: :up: :up:

I successfully (kind of ) made the male hoddie longer, yay~
but then I tried it in game and something's not right with the skin on the neck...It doesn't happen with the original hoodie or any other clothings though...is there any way to fix it?

Thankssss ! :)


Did you forget to uncheck Auto Smooth when you set up Milkshape? That could cause the seam effect at the neck. If so, you'll have to start over and do the mesh again.

If it's not Auto Smooth, did you do anything to the vertices at the neck?

[Hermi1]

arhh~~~the box has been checked again somehow
repeated the procedures and it worked great!
thankyou sooooo much! =D
now looking into UV mapping to fix the texture
lol can't wait to have my first work done :P thanks thanks~~ :)

[CmarNYC]

Glad to help! :)

[dawn1]

I just want to say that you're fabulous!!!
I thought meshing was going to be many times harder than it is.
I suppose it will be for changing something completely but now I can actually practice!!!
Thank you.!!!!!

[dawn1]

I have a question......or 2.
I wanted to make a sims3 long dress to flow out.
I changed the lod1, 2,&3 meshes as close to each other as possible by counting exactly how many times I scaled, moved etc.
I used the same base textures too.
The only thing is, when i try to open the file with TSRW, I get an error and the project won't load properly.
If I export the meshes as obj files, I can import them into TSRW that way.
My meshes look ok in CTU but not in TSRW.
Am I doing anything wrong?

Also if I want to put a pattern on my new item, it's all stretched out.
Is there a way to fix this?


Sorry for the questions!!!

[CmarNYC]

I have a question......or 2.
I wanted to make a sims3 long dress to flow out.
I changed the lod1, 2,&3 meshes as close to each other as possible by counting exactly how many times I scaled, moved etc.
I used the same base textures too.
The only thing is, when i try to open the file with TSRW, I get an error and the project won't load properly.
If I export the meshes as obj files, I can import them into TSRW that way.
My meshes look ok in CTU but not in TSRW.
Am I doing anything wrong?

Also if I want to put a pattern on my new item, it's all stretched out.
Is there a way to fix this?

Sorry for the questions!!!

I'm sorry but I've never used TSRW and can't answer that part of your question. Since TSRW works with the base mesh and the morph meshes together, my guess is that you have to use it for the entire process - export the meshes with it, work with them in Milkshape, and import. If you don't want to do that, stick with CTU for this project.

The reason your pattern is stretched out is that the vertices of the mesh are mapped to the texture. You've moved the vertices farther apart, so the texture is stretched to fit. What you need to do is change the texture mapping to get better proportions. I'll get to that in a future section of this tutorial, but here's a quickie using Milkshape:

Click the Materials tab in the right-hand section
In the bottom group of buttons, click New
In the middle group of buttons, click the top <none> button
Navigate to your texture image and select it
Right-click in the bottom right view (the solid view of the mesh) and click 'Textured'
Go to the Groups tab and click the Select button to select the entire mesh
Back to the Materials tab and in the bottom group of buttons click Assign
You should now see the texture drawn on the mesh.
Now go to the menus across the top and click Window, then Texture Coordinate Editor
You should see your mesh mapped on the texture in the window that pops up.

You can use the buttons on the right of this window to select and move the vertices to get a better mapping. I have to warn you, though, that the game maps specific areas of the body onto specific parts of the textures, and if you try spreading the skirt to the sides you may find something like the shoes textures showing up on the skirt. A really wide skirt may simply have to use a solid color. If you look around, there are various threads where people like Bloom have posted a map of the texturing areas, so you could see what the potential overlaps would be.

Hope this helps!

[dawn1]

I will try this out.
Thank you so much!!

Just one more teeny question!!!
If the item I've changed originally had straps and I don't want them.
I jst get rid of them in the multiplier and specular.
They can still be seen on the skin as if the skin is raised. :cry:
I've read that this is a 'bump map'
How do I get rid of this or change it?

:D

[CmarNYC]

Daluved1 did an excellent video tutorial on flattening bump maps, which is what you need to do to get rid of that raised effect. You can either flatten the whole normal as in the tut or just the straps. Here: http://thesimsupply.com/showthread.php?tid=244

She uses Photoshop. If you need to see how to edit the alpha in GIMP, I'm thinking of doing a mini-tutorial on alphas in GIMP since it comes up so much. I've talked about it in my tattoos tutorial so you could look it up there.

[dawn1]

Thank you so much for this Cmar!!!!
You have been a great help!

I do have Gimp as I find it easy to use.
I also have your tattooinator.

[CmarNYC]

Glad to help!! :D

[Oni Nephaelim]

I'll admit I'm completely new to the whole meshing thing. I've followed Tutorial II all the way to the end on several occasions now, but when I get to the "Create BGEO" part. The file either doesn't work (It won't let me make the file), or it says I don't have a morph mesh, or simply stops working entirely. I simply don't understand what I'm doing wrong. I'm following everything to the letter.

I know this probably isn't very helpful, but I'm confused as to what I'm doing wrong. I've redone this tutorial six times now, in an effort to get it to work. Since it seems simple enough, anyway. But alas, I can't get past the final part. Is there any advice or suggestions you might be able to give me?

[CmarNYC]

I'll admit I'm completely new to the whole meshing thing. I've followed Tutorial II all the way to the end on several occasions now, but when I get to the "Create BGEO" part. The file either doesn't work (It won't let me make the file), or it says I don't have a morph mesh, or simply stops working entirely. I simply don't understand what I'm doing wrong. I'm following everything to the letter.

I know this probably isn't very helpful, but I'm confused as to what I'm doing wrong. I've redone this tutorial six times now, in an effort to get it to work. Since it seems simple enough, anyway. But alas, I can't get past the final part. Is there any advice or suggestions you might be able to give me?

I'll need the exact error messages you're getting, with a screen shot showing the MorphMaker screen with your files selected if possible. Also can you post your morph mesh and the base mesh if it's not game clothing?

[Oni Nephaelim]

Actually I did manage to get it to ultimately work, and since I got one working I should be okay with fooling around with other types of changes.

As for the error(s), I never received a popup beyond "(insert file path directory.geom) is not a morph mesh." When attempting to create the BGEO file when the button actually progressed further than simply stopping at the point of clicking on it.

To elaborate on the won't allow me to make the file problem, it simply wouldn't process beyond after I clicked the "Create BGEO" button. After several minutes, it simply wouldn't progress and I thought I'd have to start over from the previous step. Which lead to the "stop working entirely" comment. I'm sorry if that's not descriptive enough, as far as I know it seemed I was just importing the wrong files (over and over).

[CmarNYC]

The 'not a morph mesh' does indicate that you were probably importing the base mesh instead of the morph.

The freezing problem seems to be a bug in the platform I use to make these programs, or maybe an incompatibility with Windows 7. Most, maybe all people using Win 7 get the same thing. If you wait a minute it should start working again. :(

[brillo_pad]

Hi, I'm not getting the 'Q-Mesh Sims 3 GEOM Importer V0.16 - by Wesley Howe' in the import menu, and I have installed the .dll files in the correct MilkShape directory. Have any clue why this might be?

[CmarNYC]

Hi, I'm not getting the 'Q-Mesh Sims 3 GEOM Importer V0.16 - by Wesley Howe' in the import menu, and I have installed the .dll files in the correct MilkShape directory. Have any clue why this might be?

No - all I can suggest is that you double-check that they're in the right directory, and restart Milkshape.

[barbiegirl2u]

If I wanted to make a shirt shorter how do I do that without making the body underneath disappear too?

[CmarNYC]

That's a much bigger project - you would have to do what we call a Frankenstein: combining parts of two meshes. You'd have to take the shirt mesh and chop off the lower part, take a nude mesh and chop off the arms and upper part, and fit them together. Then you'd have to rebuild all the morphs.

There are now tools to do all that fairly quickly and easily although it's not a beginner project. I do intend to continue this series of tutorials with a section on Frankensteining, especially now that you've asked about it.

[CmarNYC]

Here's a good guide to using CTU that should tell you what you want to know about custom patterns, among other things: http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Sims_3:CTU_Guide_Designing#Patterns

It's tempting to think of the clothing meshes as parts that go over a sim body, but that's not the case. Each clothing mesh IS the body, shaped to look like the clothing. It's all hollow inside, with no separate body underneath. This is why when you cut off part of the skirt you get a hole - there's nothing there to replace the part that's gone. If you want to make any mesh reveal more of the body you have to supply those body parts. If you want to make a skirt shorter the best way is to cut it just below the length you want, take a nude mesh and cut the hips off, and join the two by bending the last row of vertices of the skirt inside and up to meet the tops of the legs. (A little hard to visualize, but look under the skirt of a game skirt mesh to see what I mean.) As I said above, you then have to rebuild all your morphs.

You can extract the nude meshes using CTU like any other mesh. There's a top nude and a bottom nude for each gender.

In the case above, you'd modify your meshes as described and import them into CTU as lod 1 and lod 1_1. Repeat the chopping and joining for lod 2 and import as lod 2 and lod 2_2. Unfortunately at this point there's only one slot for lod 3, so you could try just shaping the mesh to make the skirt shorter and the legs longer. You can also manually edit your package to add another mesh for lod 3 - here's the tutorial if you want to try it: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=445332

[sionelle]

First of all, thanks SO much for posting such a simple and easy to understand tutorial for beginners like me. I figured a pregnant morph would be an easy place to start with customizing content for my game, so I have been practicing away, making pregnant morphs for a number of expansion pack items that were not enabled for pregnancy. I was pretty successful at first, and had lots of fun seeing things I did show up in game. However, I've since run into a problem and I cannot figure out what's wrong, despite my best efforts at reading through everything I can find about morphs.

For some of the items I've created with this tutorial, everything works fine (well, except for some weird clipping issues on the tops and bottoms that are purely the result of my novice meshing skills -- but now that I've read through everything I can find about morphs, I know how to fix that!)

Anyway, for some of the items I have created, following the same instructions, the clothing shows up in CAS with my new color schemes, I can select it with no problem, and it stays on the Sim as maternity wear, but the morph never shows up. The Sim just stays flat-stomached until birth. I've verified (as far as I can tell) that the CASP file points to the right Blend file which points to the right BGEO file in my package, and I've re-done some of the items two or three times to make sure I haven't inadvertantly left out a step somewhere, but each time I have the same problem...

The only thing I can think of (again, as a COMPLETE novice) is that I am mistakenly using the lod2 mesh as lod1 or something, because the GEOM files are not easily labeled when I extract them. (I have been using S3PE to extract the CASP file for each garment as a package, following the instructions here: http://www.sexysims2.com/wiki.php?title=Tutorial:Cloning_EP_content_with_CTU , and then opening that package in CTU to extract the meshes.) After I open each of the GEOMs in Milkshape, though, I check the number of vertices, and assume that the one with the most vertices must be lod1, etc.

Any suggestions? Is this a common problem that other people have had, or am I just borking things up with my newbie's touch? :)

If you have a chance to answer, I'll really appreciate it. Thanks again for the great tutorial!

[CmarNYC]

I don't think I've ever done a morph for expansion pack stuff, and while it should work the same way, you never know. For example, I found recently that the store items appear to use the morph meshes instead of a BGEO. Possibly it's a vertex numbering issue, or just an incorrect link in the many steps that have to be right in order for morphing to work. Could you upload one of your problem packages for me to look at, with the CASP, the bblend, the BGEO, and the pregnant morph meshes?

[sionelle]

OK, I think this should be everything you asked for: the original mesh is afBodyPatioDressSweater from Outdoor Living Stuff.

It occurs to me now that the only expansion pack items I have had any luck with have been from World Adventures. None of the others I've tried (Town Life, High End Loft, Late Night or Outdoor Living) have worked. And only about half of the ones from World Adventures. One of the ones from WA that worked OK was afBodyEGPGellabiya and another was afTopFRNJacketScarf. But afBodyFRNFashion1 didn't work (I've attached the files for that one as well, in case it's any help.)

I really cannot thank you enough for using up some of your free time to take a look at this. All of you who volunteer to help people learn to get more fun out of the game are so generous!

[BloomsBase]

Both files are missing the meshes and a few other files.

Are these made with CTU?
If so im guessing you tried to update the meshes more then one time with CTU?
If you create a package with CTU you can attache the lods only one time, updating the lods(after edits in Milkshape) is done with Postal or s3PE

[CmarNYC]

Hi, Bloom. For a simple added morph a BGEO linked from the CASP is all he needs. The CASP links back to the original meshes, like a recolor.

Sionelle, I think I see the problem and this may need a revision of MorphMaker to handle expansion pack stuff. If you look at the link in the CASP for the PatioDress (number 0x12 in the TGI) the group is 0x30000000. The bblend (BBLN) that MorphMaker added to the package has group 0x00000000. That number (30 for the PatioDress, 18 for the Fashion dress) in the first byte of the group is the expansion/stuff pack ID. Did you use MorphMaker to add the morph to the package? If so there's a flaw in my code since it's apparently putting one group ID in the CASP TGI and using a different one for the actual file.

The easiest way to fix it for now is to open the package with s3pe, double-click the BBLN file, and change the group ID to match the link in the CASP. (Do NOT change the BGEO group ID unless you also change the link in the BBLN - not worth the effort.) I made that change to both packages and uploaded them for you so you have an example. I only tested the Fashion package since the Patio one (I think) is from a stuff pack I don't have.

Thanks for pointing out this problem for me!

[sionelle]

Hooray! It works! I changed the BBLN as suggested in the patio dress, and the morph showed up as it was supposed to. Whew! That resolves a TON of frustration. And now I know how group numbers relate to EPs. Thank you so much!

I did use your (absolutely awesome) MorphMaker program to prepare the packages, so you may be right that it's not handling the EP group numbers correctly. If my blindly flailing around has helped you at all, I'm glad I was able to "give something back." ;)

Thanks again! And thanks also to BloomsBase for trying to help. It cannot be said enough: Y'all are fantastic.

[CmarNYC]

Glad it works, and glad to help! :) And sorry my program caused the frustration in the first place. :faceslap: I'll be uploading an updated version of MorphMaker in the next couple of days.

[bobinrobin]

I have a question: If it's possible to make pregnant morph bodies for males, why wouldn't it be possible to make one for an elder female?

[CmarNYC]

No reason at all, as far as I know. Give it a try! Keep in mind you'll need a mod to make an elder female pregnant - probably the MasterController Pollinate function would be easiest.

[bobinrobin]

No reason at all, as far as I know. Give it a try! Keep in mind you'll need a mod to make an elder female pregnant - probably the MasterController Pollinate function would be easiest.

I've never done anything like this before. I'm kinda leery about trying it for fear I might mess up my game. I guess I was looking for someone who might be willing to try it for me. I would be eternally grateful if I could find someone who could.

[CmarNYC]

First, these forums are not for requests so don't get yourself in trouble. :)

Second, making a pregnant mesh using this tutorial is not going to mess up your game. You might mess up the mesh and see it 'explode' (get large spikes) but that won't affect your game. If you make a mistake, just exit the game (don't save if you don't want your sim wearing the outfit for the rest of the pregnancy), delete your cache files, and try again.

[danceofthesnow]

First, thanks for making the tutorials here! I followed your first tutorial fine, and the longer male top worked well in-game. However, I'm now on the adding a pregnancy morph tutorial and I seem to have done something extremly wrong, however I'm not sure how!

As you can see, I seem to have got a males body mixed in somewhere, which is also affecting the original dress and the version I downloaded by you ages ago. My version only shows the top half of the dress in the thumbnail, but they all now show as the sim is demonstrating.

First I thought I had selected the wrong setting in the morph maker application and redid it, but it appears the same as before. Any help you can give me on how to fix this would be much appreciated! :help:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v17/danceofthesnow/e118134c.png

[CmarNYC]

It looks like you have a male top mesh in there as a female body mesh somehow. Possibly it's a mixup in the TGI assignments. Could you upload your package here so I can take a look?

[danceofthesnow]

Thanks for your time and help. I wasn't too sure which file to upload, so here is both the one after the CTU stage and the completed one after using the Morph maker tool

[CmarNYC]

You have what appears to be the male t-shirt mesh from the first tutorial in the package, which explains the male shape and invisible bottom. For the maternity morph you should not have imported any mesh into CTU since the base mesh is not changed - in CTU you should have just selected the dress, enabled it for maternity, set up patterns, and saved a new package. Then you should have used MorphMaker to add the BGEO you had created from the morph mesh you also created. It looks to me like you either imported the male t-shirt like in the first tutorial or maybe used the same package you created in the first tutorial. Maybe start again from scratch in CTU and make your new package without importing any meshes, then add the BGEO?

[danceofthesnow]

Thank you so much! Yeah I must have just continued on in the CTU instead of starting a new project. I tried it again and it now works perfectly. Thank you!

[CmarNYC]

You're very welcome - glad it worked! :)

[theblondeboss]

this is super awesome, love the simple explanations and detail involved in this tut. thanks a bunch!

[Mariana70]

I loved this tutorial! I've been trying to get into meshing clothes in the last days and it hasn't been easy... I was looking to make a designer dress, but I don't know how to do it... I wanted to make the pattern of the dress the same as the designer's, like all about style designer dresses. I already did the mesh (I think lol) but I just don't know how to do that :/

[CmarNYC]

Sounds like you need some help with making a custom pattern: http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Tutorials:TS3_Pattern_Tutorials

[aoimagi]

@CmarNYC
I found your tutorial very useful :D, but where can I find this two tutorials?

3. Adding vertices and faces to a mesh (bones, vertex renumbering, morphs)
4. Adding a new part to a mesh (more on faces, UV mapping)

Thanks before~!

[lasorope]

I am aware that I am VERY late (haha) but I'm trying this and have run across something odd. My computer refuses to download the mesh from CTU. It always displays a message saying:

"Unhandled exception has occured in your application. If you Click Continue, the application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. If you click Quit, the application will close immediately.

Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.
Parameter name: index."

When I click Continue, it does it again...
Is there another (free) tool that does the same thing as CTU? I am beyond confused, but I REALLY want to learn! :help:

[CmarNYC]

@aoimagi: Sorry I didn't see your post until now! I haven't written those tutorials yet, and yes I'm being extremely slow.

@lasorope: What are you trying to do when you get that message? Extract the meshes? Unfortunately I can't help you if there's a problem with CTU, but I suggest you try asking for help in the Create / Sims 3 / Modding Discussion forum. Meanwhile you can use s3oc instead:

Download from http://www.den.simlogical.com/denforum/index.php?board=20.0 (Look for the links at the top under the 'S3OC' header and click either 'Latest Public Release' or 'Latest Test Version' depending on how brave you are.)

Install and run s3oc. In the Cloning menu click '(experimental) CAS Part'. It'll take a few seconds to load up.

Find the item you want to work with and highlight it. (All items start with an age/gender-species classification: a = adult, y = young adult, t = teen, c = child, e = elder, p = toddler, b = baby; m = male, f = female, u = unisex, h = horse, c = cat, d = dog, l = little dog. Examples: am = adult male human, af = adult female human, cf = female child, pu = unisex toddler, ah = adult horse, cc = child cat, etc. Remember that young adults use adult clothing so you won't see any yf or ym clothing. Also, all tattoos and a few accessories and makeups start with uu - universal unisex.) When you highlight an item you should see a thumbnail in the right side of the screen helping you identify it.)

Click the 'Clone or Fix' button at the bottom of the right side. If following the tutorial, leave the 'Renumber/Rename Internally' checkbox checked.

s3oc will create a new package for you. Close s3oc.

Now open the package with s3pe. (http://dino.drealm.info/den/denforum/index.php?board=19.0) If you're using s3pe for the first time, look in the bottom section for Display: and make sure both Names and Tags are checked. You should find at least 3 GEOM files in the list of resources, labeled with the CAS item name and the LOD. Right-click each one and click Export / To file...

Those are the meshes. You can pick up the tutorial now at the parts on modifying the mesh. When that's done you can open the package again with s3pe, right-click each GEOM, click Replace and select your new modified .simgeom to load it in the package. Then you can try opening the package with CTU and going to the Designs tab to set up the presets. Unfortunately I don't know of anything besides CTU that's good for previewing and presets for a package although that's on my looong and slow-moving list of software projects.

[Lady Aran]

First Off, I want to say thank you to cmar for doing this wonderful, beginner-friendly tutorial. Unfortunately, though I've followed the second portion of the tutorial (adding a pregnant morph) to a tee, I've run into a bit of a problem. Over the past two or three days, I've been making pregnant morphs for some male clothing from Showtime, Generations, Pets, etc. but only Tops - no bottoms as of yet. Anyway, as I said before, I've followed the tutorial to a tee. However, once in the game, my male sim doesn't have a "baby bump" throughout his pregnancy. The only thing that changes is that his forearms get bigger, and the top (shirt) stretches horizontally. What could I be doing wrong? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated, as I'm at the end of my rope!

[CmarNYC]

First Off, I want to say thank you to cmar for doing this wonderful, beginner-friendly tutorial. Unfortunately, though I've followed the second portion of the tutorial (adding a pregnant morph) to a tee, I've run into a bit of a problem. Over the past two or three days, I've been making pregnant morphs for some male clothing from Showtime, Generations, Pets, etc. but only Tops - no bottoms as of yet. Anyway, as I said before, I've followed the tutorial to a tee. However, once in the game, my male sim doesn't have a "baby bump" throughout his pregnancy. The only thing that changes is that his forearms get bigger, and the top (shirt) stretches horizontally. What could I be doing wrong? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated, as I'm at the end of my rope!

Could you upload one of your packages so I can take a look?

[Lady Aran]

Absolutely. Forgive me, but I'm still very new to uploading. Anyway, here are the packages I've done as of now; they are all marked "MMaternity" and any information you can provide is greatly appreciated. :)


Also, I've done bottoms as well, but did not do any LODs for them, just used CTU to flag them as Valid For Random and Valid For Maternity and S3PE (to avoid making them default replacements) Do you recommend I do the LODs for the bottoms as well?

[CmarNYC]

:( Crap and headdesk. I saw this problem with clothing cloned from EPs and SPs months ago and in the process of fixing it very cleverly managed to make it much, much worse in the 2.4 version of MorphMaker.

Version 2.5 of MorphMaker is now uploaded with what should be a genuine fix: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?p=3020879

I've fixed your packages also and attached them, trying to make up for causing all this trouble! :rolleyes: I didn't test them, so if there are any more problems please let me know ASAP, and thanks for bring this to my attention. Can't believe no one complained before this!

[Lady Aran]

Aha, I see. Thank you so much for figuring out what was wrong. I'm so happy right now :D And don't worry, it's still an awesome program :D

I'll test the new fixed packages out later tonight. Unfortunately, if there are any furter problems, I might be a little slow reporting them, as I currently have no internet at my house. Hoping to get it soon though. I'm sure everything will work just fine though :)

Thank you again Cmar!

[SakuraAngel1]

*raises hand*

I have a question, Teacher! :)

I've been following your tutorial and I'm wondering if there's a tutorial somewhere if I wanted to edit CC meshes? What I'm in the process of doing is making a mesh for a male child, however, if it's possible, I would like to remove something from the clothing itself without ruining it (it was originally for a female child, but I'm making the clothing more unisex-friendly).

Also, (please forgive me!) how do I go about finding and editing EP clothing? I think I've seen a tutorial or discussion about it somewhere, but I can't seem to find it again.

Thanks in advance! :D

[CmarNYC]

Sure, it's possible to edit CC meshes. If you want to change the CC itself rather than make a new piece of clothing, you'd extract the meshes and the BGEO/.blendgeoms from the package, remove whatever you want from the base mesh, use my Toolkit (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=481950) to update the morphs and make new BGEOs, then import the new base meshes and BGEOs into the package to replace the old ones. (Keep a copy of the original package just in case!)

This tutorial (http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=482467) may help you - it's the same process except in your case:

You'll be using the CC package instead of cloning a package using s3oc,
You'll be modifying one mesh instead of two. The Frankenstein tool will still work on one mesh or you can use the 'Match Morphs' function instead and check the option to renumber,
Depending on what you're removing, you may or may not have to edit the textures.


If you want an easier option, try just moving the part you don't like inside the body of the clothing mesh in the base mesh to hide it. The existing morphs should still work.

EP clothing can be cloned using s3oc, as shown in the tutorial above. Once the clone is made, you can use CTU to import meshes and textures, set up presets, etc., but it needs to be set up to be able to reference EP resources, and here's a tutorial on how to do that: http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Tutorial:Cloning%20EP%20content%20with%20CTU (The tut shows how to clone using s3pe but I find it much easier to use s3oc.)

[SakuraAngel1]

Oh wow! Thank you!!! :)

I have another question, if you don't mind.

I'm currently working on another CC mesh to make it available for female teens as well as adult females. However, when I try to extract the mesh from CTU, it doesn't show up at all and all of the options are greyed-out or empty. Am I doing something wrong? I tried following the cloning procedure for EP/CC content, but nothing happened. :(

Oh, before I forget! :) I've been checking out posts and noticed something, so I'm just going to ask:

Is it against the rules to post store content, if it's been modified on to MTS? I haven't started on my store content yet, (because it seems complicated to edit them), but as I was reading posts, I noticed that store content seems to be off-limits here. Does this includes recolors of store clothes too?

Sorry if I'm being noobish, I've been here since MTS2, so we never encountered store content until Sims 3, LOL! :)

Thank you so much again!

[CmarNYC]

If you open your CC package in CTU and then set the age, gender, and part dropdowns to the right values for the clothing you're working with, you should be able to export the meshes. (For example, you open a CC package for an adult female top, then set the dropdown selectors to Adult, Female, and Top. Do NOT click on any of the thumbnails that show up.) However, you'll get meshes exported with only the TGI and no other identifier. If the package has names for the files, you're better off opening it in s3pe and export the files that way.

I really don't know the rules of posting store content - I'm not a site mod and haven't done it myself. I've seen quite a bit of clothes and hair on MTS that are edits or conversions of store or EP/SP content, though, so my feeling is that you can't post straight store stuff but you can post stuff based on it if you've made significant changes/improvements. I don't know if a recolor/retexture would be considered a significant change. Don't go by me; best if you ask in the Creator Issues forum. (Create / Creator Issues)

[orangeache]

When are you planning on updating this? U really want to know how to add and deltete vertices!

[CmarNYC]

I'll put it next on my list of stuff to do. :) Been meaning to get back to it.

[orangeache]

Yea! Thank you!

[midnight_radiowave]

This is the best meshing tutorial ever! Funnily, my test mesh is so good-looking I plan to upload it - I created flare pants. Thank you!