I hope someone is familiar with the XSI mod tool and can explain how to do what I hope is a very simple thing, because I have looked at it and I can see that by the time I could learn to do anything useful with it, Sims3 will be out (maybe Sims4)

OK, all I need to do is this:

Import a .smd file

Import a second .smd file

Somehow export these two as one .smd file, in other words combine the two separate meshes into one.

That's it, no editing, no changes involved, but even something so simple is beyond my grasp of this program, so any help is appreciated.

I don`t know how to do it myself, but a few website with tutorials on using Softimage XSI are:

http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?area=search&game=SOFTIMAGE|XSI%20EXP

http://www.hl2world.com/wiki/index....delingTutorials

http://www.xsiwill.com/ModToolsTuto...odCharacter.htm

you might also want to check out the XSI forums.

http://www.xsibase.com/netview_forum/

I also think that most of the features in the mod tool are the same as the full version, so anything you see about the full version on how to do things should work on the mod tool, and also if you see something saying Softimage XSI ESP , thats what the old version of the mod tool was called.

Sence this thread has been started already, maby we can use this one as a learning tool for softimage.
I don't have a clue how to use it, I am just now starting to learn.

There is a merge function under model -> create poly menu...not sure if that is what you want or not...

grykon has it...

Import two .smd files, select Create:Polymesh:Merge, and you will be in a 'Pick' mode. If you only had one of the object selected before Merging, you will need to pick the additional object(s). Then right-click to complete the operation.

The operation is immediately performed, and a property editor pops up that will let you modify the operation that was just completed. You can always go back and mod a previous operation up until you 'Freeze' the operation.

You will now have three objects in your scene. The two original objects, and the new polymesh that is the combination of the two orginals. So, you will want to select and delete the two originals, or move them out of position so that they don't interfere with subsequent editing of the new mesh.

OK, thanks, I'll give that a try. I'm sure I'll be back with more questions.

I'm a XSI Foundation user with the Valve Addon installed, so I can help some with any questions ModTool users may have. The XSI ModTool is just a stripped down or limited version of XSI Foundation. I believe the Valve Addon works the same way in both applications, although I have the option of importing/exporting .obj or .iges, saving my projects or models, and so on.

Miche is right about the tutorials. You could download the demo version of XSI Foundation, and also download the 'media' package for it. The tutorials that come in the media package are pretty decent, and then there is actually a pretty fair amount of free video and html tutorials on the web for XSI modeling.

The one must-visit site is www.edharriss.com.

I find that the mod tool cannot import OBJ. When I import OBJ, nothing shows up. What's the matter? I have no idea.
Can you guys import OBJ to the mod tool?
Also, how to hide skeletons in SMD?

I haven't found a way to import obj's...As for hiding the skeleton, when you import in the smd file, you select the skeleton lines (using shift to keep selecting) then once you have as many as you can get at that time, click view hide/unhide selection. There are a lot so you may have to repeat this process...I have also found that the best thing to do before importing your smd, click file new scene to make sure there isn't some object or something in the frame. Hope this helps.

I got a question for you XSI foundation folks...If you export out the mesh of the shortdress and then pull the hemline of the dress up a little, the polygons under it are black, not shiny like the rest of the mesh. I have figured this to be a result so that the underside of the dress doesn't have a flesh color and is instead dark. Is there a way to change this black color to the shiny color like the rest of the mesh? I am completely baffled by this. Thanks!

Can you point me to a simple tutorial, everyone I have checked out so far asumes you know the basic.
I don't even know how to move vertics lol.

moving vertices are easy, basicly you have two ways.
1: press "M" on your keyboard, then you just left-click the vertex and keep the the mouse button down while you move the vertex.
2 press "T" on your keyboard, this takes you into vertex mode, now you can select but not move vertices, when you have selected your vertics you press "V" on the keyboard, then you can move the vertics. When you want to selec new vertics you press "V" again to leave move-mode. if you want to work with polygons instead of vertics press "U" and for edges press "I"

If anybody is intersted I am think of making a very basic XSI tutorial, it is a very nice program to work with when you first get a hang of it

DivaDice 29

Can you give me your .obj file? I want to test if it will load into the full version of XSI.

Regarding selecting and hiding a skeleton in XSI, you can just middle or right-click or middle or right-drag around a single object or element, such as a joint, and the entire branch or tree will be selected. Middle-selecting will select all elements in the branch to which the selected element belongs. Right-selecting selects the whole tree. So if you have a skeleton or heirarchy of joints and bones, just right-click on one joint or bone, and the whole skeleton will be selected. Then just press H to hide it.

Click and drag on an empty area to deselect the hidden elements.

To un-hide the skeleton, press the Scene button in the Select panel on the upper-right side. This opens a pop-up explorer-style tree display of everything in the scene. You can tell what is hidden by a little yellow 'H' that overlays the icon of the element in the tree display. Middle-click on the top element of the skeleton to select all elements in the skeleton, and press H. Everything hidden should be displayed.

One tricky but neat thing in XSI is their special shortcut key mode. (I'm not sure what they call it.)

To move verts, you can press and immediately release 'M', and the Move Point Tool will be selected. The cursor changes from its current state to the Move Point icon. You can select on a specific point and move it. Their special mode is that you can press and hold a shortcut, such as 'M', and the Move Point Tool will be active only as long as you hold the key. It will revert to the previous mode when the key is released.

So to edit verts real quick I would:

1) press T to go into Point (vert) mode,
2) rectangle-select or shift-select some verts,
3) press 'V' to go into Translate mode,
4) drag with the mouse to move the verts,
5) drag on the X, Y, or Z axis of the Translate Constrain tool to move in an axis,
6) press and hold 'M' to just move a single vert,
7) release 'M' to go back to the previous mode (Translate in my case; note that the previous selection of verts is retained),
8) press and hold 'S' to Pan, Zoom, or Rotate the view,
9) press and hold 'X' to go into Scale mode, drag in window to scale
10) press and hold 'C' to go into Rotate mode, drag in window to rotate
11) etc.

There are 'constrain tools' that pop up in the Scale, Rotate, and Translate (Transform panel) modes. This is a red/blue/green icon that allows you to constrain transformation to an axis or plane. Click directly on an axis of the constrain tool while in Translate mode and drag, and you will be constrained to one axis. The cursor icon will change to indicate whether the transformation (scale, rotate, translate) will be in X, Y, Z, or a combination of the three. Axes can also be enabled/disabled in the Tranform panel. Exact numerical transformations can be typed into the Transform panel.

Another thing to keep in mind is that all of these changes are being kept in a 'history', so instead of performing a second rotate on a unique selection that you are not even sure you can duplicate, you could go to the history, select the first rotate operation you performed, and edit the numbers for the amount of rotation you need. This is a really powerful feature. However, after lots of editing the history can get very long, and eat up a lot of resources, slowing down operations. On the lower-right side of the screen, the Freeze button will basically delete the entire history and speed things up again. All the changes are kept, but you can't go back and edit any previous operations anymore.

Common Shortcuts:

Selection modes:
F7: Rectangle (standard)
F8: Lasso (draw a lasso around the verts or entities)
F9: Freeform
F10: Raycast

T: Point (vert selection with rectangle)
I: Edge raycast (Edge selection with raycast)
U: Polygon raycast

Transform modes:
X: Scale
C: Rotate
V: Translate (move)

View:
S: Pan side to side & up or down, Translate in/out, Rotate
Z: Pan, Zoom,
O: Orbit view around model

I downloaded all the tutorial from the official site of xsi. I only found getting started with xsi and part of the tutorial about editing a scene useful. They are quite easy to understand.
I haven't read all the tutorial on the site given by Jaycephus yet but I think tutorial 6 may be good for beginners.

I wonder how to cut a face (like scissors )of a model

Mabelline I think what you want is the "split edges" tool. Press "\" on the keyboard, that will change the cursor into a little pen, then just draw new edges on the mesh. If you want to split a lot of edges at the same time, pick the edges you want to cut and then go into the modify -> poly. Mesh menu and press "split edges (with split control)".
I hope that was what you needed.
DivaDice29

Thanks guys, I knew it had to be simple. just not for someone use to milkshape lol.

Thx a lot, DivaDice29!
I have 5 more questions.
1.how to apply the extrusion tool? When I select a face of a model, the selected face can't extrude along axis and curve. :fight:
2.how to subdivide a face? (like the smooth tool in milkshape)
3.how to spherify a face?
4.how to apply subdivision at a point? I select create>poly. mesh>subdivisions but no subdivision! Ahhhh!!!! :fight:
5.how to view the mesh in shaded form with wireframe overlay?
Any smart guy can answer me? lol

Hi Mabelline,

There is a quick way to 'extrude', but in my version of XSI, I had to add a shortcut to do it the way I want:

Quick: Press CNTL-D with one or more polys selected. This 'extrudes' the poly (face) with a zero distance. Then press & hold 'V' to activate Translate mode & move the face in or out. It can be moved relative to world or 'local' coords, which is what you want if you want to extrude out along the normal of the face.

Add Shortcut: The problem (or benefit?) with 'CNTL-D' is that no property editor pops up. You can look in the history of operators (actions) and see that 'CNTL-D' performed an 'Extrude Op'. (Look in the scene Explorer and you will see a tree structure that includes every 'object' in the scene. Your mesh should be present, though it may be named something odd. In your mesh branch, there will be a marker called Modeling, and by default every action that you have performed, such as extrusion or moving geometry, will be listed. As you edit the mesh, the list of actions under the Modeling marker grows. You can always open one of these actions and edit an operation that you have previously performed. If this list gets too large, you should 'Freeze' your model, which clears your history, setting all previous edit in 'stone'. However, you can also selectively Freeze parts of the history & keep certain operations so that you can continue to edit them later, or you could roll your
model's edits backwards to a certain point in the history.) You can open the property editor for the Extrude Op and change things like distance of extrusion, subdivision, inset, etc. BTW, almost all the commands you will need to use on a TS2 poly mesh are in the Modify:Polymesh menu on the left side of the screen. Note that 'Extrude Along Axis', 'Extrude Along Curve', and 'Inset Polygons' are all 'commands' that use the 'Extrude Op'. In other words, if you do an Extrude Along Axis, you can also edit the inset amount in the Extrude Op property editor that pops up, without performing a separate Inset command. Strangely, there is no default shortcut that I know of for any extrude operation. So I added a shortcut for 'Extrude Along Axis'. I made it CNTL-SHFT-E or something that didn't use a pre-existing shortcut key combination. Now when I want to extrude or inset polys, I use my new shortcut and the property editor pops up.

SHFT-D will subdivide selected faces.

If you are having a problem with a given mesh, just try doing it on a primitive from the Get:Primitive:Polygon mesh menu to verify that you are doing the right thing.

There is no way to subdivide a point, but I'm sure that you mean something else. Can you explain what you are wanting to create? You can Bevel a point, which creates three or more points (and a face) in place of the selected point.

As for slicing, you can add an edge that goes all the way around an object with a couple of picks with the knife tool (']'), or you can pick and choose exactly where new edges are cut in at with the Add Edge tool ('\'). So you can add density to arms, legs, torsos, etc. very quickly.

A really cool feature is moving and merging points with a single operation. Press 'T' to go into Point mode. Press & hold 'M' to go into Move Point mode, and also press the ALT key simultaneously. Drag a point to another point. It will snap to the positions of other points. When you release the mouse button, the point you moved will be merged with the destination point.

To display edges on a shaded object, just click on the place that says 'wireframe' at the top-right of a view. A pop-up menu will allow you to select another display mode for that viewport. Select 'shaded', and then select Point, Edge, or Poly edit mode. On the top-left of a view, it will say 'Top' or 'Front', for example. Click on this to get a pop-up menu that lets you choose a different type of view. You can change what is viewed in a viewport. You could display another Camera or perspective view, a permanent Property editor view, or you could choose Explorer to show a tree view of your entire scene. In the upper right corner of a view is a 'expand' button. Left-click to toggle between Maximize the view or return to default. Middle-click it to expand a view horizontally. You can right-click it to get a menu that lets you expand the view vertically.

ok I guess I'll be doing that tutorial soon then

but to answer your questions

1, extrusion: the easiest way to extrude a polygon is to just select it and press "ctrl"+"d" which will duplicate it, then you can translate, scale or rotate it afterwards, this method works with, point and edges as well, so this actually answers your 4th question as well.
If you want more control, use the extrude options, they should work, pick the polygons you wish to extrude the press "alt" and at the same time right click anyware on the model the select either extrude along axis or extrude along curve.

2, subdivision of faces(polygons): this depends on what kind of result you want, if you just want to see how you object looks with some extra meshsmooth just press "+" on the numpad, each time you press "+" will add an extra level of meshsmooth, but since we are modeling for games 1 time should be enough "-"-key will take it away again, this is not permenet it is just to see how the object looks with meshsmooth. if you want the same effect but permanent select the polygons you want to sudivide and do the "alt"+right-click thing again, this time select "local subdivision refinement". subdivide polygons will still add subdivide the polygons (doh!) but it will not add the smoothing.
3, spherify: I am not sure about this one, tell me what you want to use it for and maybe I can figure something out.
4, subdivide point: I covered this under number 1
5, change displaymode: if you look in the right corner of all of the viewports you will se a button saying something like "wireframe", "shaded" or "textured", press it and try selecting "hidden line removal" this is one of my favourite display modes try it out. if it wasn't what you wanted press that display button again and this time select the option second from the button called "display options" take a look at the "shaded mode wireframe highlight" section and try out some different options I think this could do the trick.

I hope it helped
DivaDice29

Another cool tip:

If you have performed a certain operation on your mesh such as Modify:Polymesh:Bevel, and you want to do it again to some other selection, you can just middle click on the Modify:Polymesh button. This shortcut works on many pop-up menu buttons in XSI.

Diva Dice mentioned the Display Options, and at the very bottom of the Display Options property editor, there is an option that you should turn on. It is called Headlight. Since there is only one default light in a scene, when you are modeling an object and rotating the view, one side of the object will be very dark. The headlight is a light that moves with your viewpoint.

Was you speaking to me about the obj file Jay? Sorry if you was...I didn't realize. I am attaching it...this obj imports into the game fine, except for the area of thigh under that hem shows up extremely dark...Just can't find a way to change it.

Grykon, I looked at the mesh:

The vertex normals on the black polys are all pointing down (to the feet of the model), while the face normals are 'normal'. I'm pretty new to modding Sims 2, but since you pulled these down from what used to be the bottom of the dress, I am pretty sure that this is by design. I think it is a trick used by Maxis to make the area in question appear black in the game without actually having to texture it.

I'm not sure how to change this yet.