Well, really, I have a question about this accessory I just made. Supposedly, all accessories are supposed to have two sets of CRES and SHPE files, (haha it is Resource Node! I know it now.. not that I remembered it though--dont ask) but mine only had one. I replaced those with the ones from my mesh and it seems to work in bodyshop.

(bptw- how in the world does a mesh with only one age and one gender have 13 3DID files?!!?! I'm used to like, one per age for hair..)

Also, it's shiny. I'm assuming that's because the mesh I cloned from was shiny, but how do you fix that? Actually, I like it for the mesh I made, but for future reference how do you change it?

Oh, and how can you make them alpha-editable?

well... the ages constist of elder, young adult, and adult plus all the genders! But for all the rest of the 3 DI's i have no clue!

Ok and for the alpha part find a pair of glasses with alpha files then combine the part that you want to be alpha with the alpha file in the glasses mesh. I think thats it

Mkay, well, first, which pair of glasses did you clone from? Before you get too far along, let's make sure you're using the right ones (or at least, not using the wrong ones). I personally love using sunglassesevenmorehip as they have several parts.

Are you sure you replaced the right stuff in the 3DIRs? Yes, there's a buttload of them for accessories, but most of them you don't need to do anything to unless they're associated with an age/gender... When you go to replace them, sort the resources by instance and then look for the 3DIRs with the same instance as the Property Sets for the right age/gender. Those should be the only ones you need to replace... The rest that are associated with an age/gender, you can get rid of the same way you'd do for removing the extra ages from hair - there will be some that aren't that I usually just leave alone (I don't know what they do but leaving them in hasn't hurt anything thus far).

But they really should have two sets of CRES and SHPEs... the trick to getting accessories non-deforming is just replacing the first set.

I know there's got to be a way to get an alpha together with your image in your graphics editing program (so you'd have a lovely transparent .png like you get when exporting a combined texture/alpha from SimPE), but I'm at a loss on how to do it in Photoshop. Me, I use SimPE to combine them. Use Build DXT to import the actual texture, then import the black and white overtop of it to cut out what you need. It worked fine on my sparklies - though apparently you can end up with image degradation that way. I don't know why I didn't... Also, not 100% sure on it, but if you make a new project from your recolour and it has alphas in the project folder, you could combine 'em that way.

if you don't need the shiny texture, you will have to remove those two lines in each TXMT you want to change:
-stdMatSpecCoef:0.53,0.53,0.53
-stdMatSpecPower:1e+002

for the 3D ID files, the only important thing to know is what line you'll have to remove if you don't want your accessory to be available for all gender or all ages:
Basically, the number correspond to a specific age:
-1001:ef
-1002:em
-4001:yf
-4002-ym
etc....
when you link your rec to your mesh, you have to change the corresponding 3D ID files, just like hair. Don't change anything else. But if you want to remove some age, click on the 3D ID files with "0x00000001,2,3etc" value and you will see in the editor wich Mesh Overlay XML it goes with. this allows you know what corresponding Binary Index to delete too, those one which have a matching instance number.

as usually, my english is awfull, but I hope it answers part of your question lol.

Ciboulette

This thread explains, with pictures, about the multiple 3DIR files
http://www.modthesims2.com/article.php?t=139586

For making a part "alpha-able", just edit the Material Definition file for that mesh part.

There are two ways to go - the first creates a full alpha, where you can go all the way from invisible, through semi-transparent, to solid. The drawback to this is that it can not be used on parts in the same mesh group that will ever be able to be seen in front of each other (because that will cause obvious graphic glitches) so it is more suitable for small parts like ear-rings and that sort of thing.

Just open the Material Definition file for the mesh group you want to be "alpha'd", and change the line:

stdMatAlphaBlendMode:None
to:
stdMatAlphaBlendMode:Blend

The second method creates what I call a "solid alpha" - that is, it is either fully visible (lighter parts of the alpha) or fully transparent/invisible (darker parts of the alpha).

The advantage to this method is that it can be used on any part, no need to worry about it overlapping some other part of the same mesh group

For this type of alpha, leave
stdMatAlphaBlendMode:None

And change:
stdMatAlphaTestEnabled:0
to
stdMatAlphaTestEnabled:1

And yes, of course, your image must have an alpha - which you can easily do in the usual way in bodyshop if your part is the one that BodyShop exports.

Or do as HP suggests, adding the alpha with SimPE.

In PSP, I make a semi-transparent .png simply by making the bottom layer fully transparent, then using the transparency adjustments and/or using blurs around the edges of the other layers as appropriate. I could use the actual alpha-channel in PSP (similar to BodyShop's method, with a black/grey/white image) but I find this way easier because you can easily see exactly how the alpha's image will look, transparency and all.

I think this would work in PhotoShop also.