Hi there! You are currently browsing as a guest. Why not create an account? Then you get less ads, can thank creators, post feedback, keep a list of your favourites, and more!
Alchemist
Original Poster
#1 Old 10th Mar 2005 at 9:20 AM Last edited by tiggerypum : 26th Mar 2006 at 8:53 AM.
Default Body/Clothing Mesh Specific MilkShape plugins, V3.03 (28-Nov-05)
SUPPORT NOTE: The new "UniMesh" plugins have replaced these plugins. I have asked that this thread be locked, as I will not be supporting any further development of this plugin.

Unimesh is here: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=122399

O.K. After a lot of R&D here at Ranch Como, I am putting these two plugins for MilkShape up for people venturesome enough to try them. Warning: They probably have bugs!
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to help me make these into a good set of tools for working with body, and clothing, meshes. Or, if they are too awkward for general use, then together we shall hold a funeral for their remaining digital bits and bytes.

Here's the concept:
The importer brings in not only the main model, but creates one or two copies that have been altered with the morph data, and these extra models carry the additional bone assignments. This allow you to inspect the construction of the mesh.

You then get rid of these extras, edit the main mesh to final state, and make one or two copies. On these copies you pull the appropriate vertices to create the morph effect, change the bone asignments for the second and/or third desired assignments, and then export.

Sounds easy, huh? The devil is in the details, as always. There is a lot of detail work to make the extra models right. And they MUST have the same number of vertices as the original model (the software create the morph data by comparing the copies to the main model).

Please, please don't start modelling with these plugins. Use my other ones, or the MTS2 mesh tool.
These two do not replace the standard plugins posted here... they are designed to be used in parallel and only for body meshing. They will likely not create a usable object mesh.

Having said all that, let's see how they do. I'll be following as best I can to correct problems and take suggestions.
As always, thanks for the help. Without testers the software will never reach it's full potential, because I can't stress it enough on my own.
<* Wes *>

History: 10-Mar-2005: V3.00 "Body Chop" plugins.
11-Mar-2005: V3.01 - reduced skin weights. memory requirements
13-Apr-2005: V3.02 - Added MorphNames to Import/Export
28-Nov-2005: V3.03 - Allow user definable skin weights via .ini file
Screenshots
Advertisement
Scholar
#2 Old 10th Mar 2005 at 8:37 PM
This looks very interesting, Wes. I've grabbed a copy, I'll let you know what happens - I'll have to wait till over the weekend to have time to try it, but I'll give it a good stressing
Test Subject
#3 Old 10th Mar 2005 at 8:45 PM
Thank you once more, Wes!
(should probably hotkey that phrase)

I'm aiming to size teen bodies up to adult/youngadult in MS173 and this plugin set will make that possible. I haven't tested anything in TS2 or BodyShop yet but I figured I'd better along this initial experience with your latest toy:

1) Imported and exported single-group afbodyunderwear_ mesh without obvious error. yay!

2) Imported tfbodygothspikeneck_ but export failed. Symptom: an empty and corrupted package file is created but a plugin error dialog box message appears:
caption: TS2 Body Chop Export V3.00
ERR: BODYMOD.1 group not present or misordered.

3) On a hunch I tried afbodyhulaskirt_ mesh and got the same error as in 2).

Not much in the way of a test I know but there's a suggestion here that both the failures resulted from both having more than one group (body and body_reflected/body_alpha).
Alchemist
Original Poster
#4 Old 10th Mar 2005 at 11:22 PM
Thank YOU for trying it out!
You're right... as written, the plugin will not handle the afBodyHulaSkirt. It expects to handle only one main group.
I will ponder how to manage making that work in an update. I never looked at any of the multi-group meshes, consequently I didn't make any allowance for extra groups.
It's a starting point, though. With your help, maybe I'll get smartened up before this is all over.
<* Wes *>

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Lab Assistant
#5 Old 11th Mar 2005 at 7:23 AM Last edited by Saikatsu : 11th Mar 2005 at 8:17 AM.
I'm willing to give these a shot. <nod> Always love to tinker with files. I'm such a sucker when it comes to being able to customize things in games... should see my Animal Crossing save game and my big pile of textures for it XD XD XD

Will edit this post to give feedback once I toy with it a bit :3

EDIT: ... wow, was expecting to get further than I did.
With the plugins in the MilkShape directory, I can't import ANYTHING. MS3D immediately closes. Doesn't matter if I choose to import using your plugin or not. As soon as I deleted them from the folder, MS3D worked perfectly fine. I also tried redownloading the file, but they still don't work. I'm using MS3D 1.7.4 and the GMDC importer/exporter works just fine with it... but this doesn't. At all. @_x;
Test Subject
#6 Old 11th Mar 2005 at 7:04 PM
Seems that exporting is distorting the mesh a small amount. All problems seem to be in the upper body area. Neck doesn't line up with head mesh (off by a small amount). See attached. Using the BodyChop plugins I imported a freshly extracted Maxis mesh (afbodyunderwear_) and immediately exported it without changing anything (I had seen this problem with a mesh I had edited so I decided to do it raw without touching the mesh in Milkshape).

As you can see, it's moving some vertices around a bit in the chest, back, neck and arms. I also note what looks like a shift in the UVmap in all areas but it doesn't look like a show-stopper.
Screenshots
Alchemist
Original Poster
#7 Old 11th Mar 2005 at 8:44 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Saikatsu
With the plugins in the MilkShape directory, I can't import ANYTHING. MS3D immediately closes. Doesn't matter if I choose to import using your plugin or not. As soon as I deleted them from the folder, MS3D worked perfectly fine.


Interesting issue.
In the MilkShape install directory is a file called ms3d.log. It is a text file that MilkShape makes each time it is started.
Now I am using 1.7.4 here, although I only used features from the 1.7.3 plugin interface.
I would be interested in looking at your log if you replace the plugins, run MilkShape, the grab a copy of that file before running MS again and zip or rar it up and post it here. Or copy the text from it and paste it in a message. That will at least show where MilkShape was in it's startup process when it puked and died.
<* Wes *>

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Alchemist
Original Poster
#8 Old 11th Mar 2005 at 8:54 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Weji
Seems that exporting is distorting the mesh a small amount. All problems seem to be in the upper body area. Neck doesn't line up with head mesh (off by a small amount). See attached. Using the BodyChop plugins I imported a freshly extracted Maxis mesh (afbodyunderwear_) and immediately exported it without changing anything (I had seen this problem with a mesh I had edited so I decided to do it raw without touching the mesh in Milkshape).

As you can see, it's moving some vertices around a bit in the chest, back, neck and arms. I also note what looks like a shift in the UVmap in all areas but it doesn't look like a show-stopper.


It looks like the differences are skin weight related. The shoulders are pulled further down by the upper arm than on the original. Since there is no support in MilkShape to set skin weights, I had to generate them in software. It looks like the weighting on the shoulders from the upper arm is too heavy.
The UV coordinates shouldn't be touched, however. I don't see where that's evident in these two snapshots.
Will investigate.
Thanks for the report.
<* Wes *>

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Lab Assistant
#9 Old 11th Mar 2005 at 10:42 PM
Quote: Originally posted by wes_h
Interesting issue.
In the MilkShape install directory is a file called ms3d.log. It is a text file that MilkShape makes each time it is started.
Now I am using 1.7.4 here, although I only used features from the 1.7.3 plugin interface.
I would be interested in looking at your log if you replace the plugins, run MilkShape, the grab a copy of that file before running MS again and zip or rar it up and post it here. Or copy the text from it and paste it in a message. That will at least show where MilkShape was in it's startup process when it puked and died.
<* Wes *>

Got it. It's attached.
Attached files:
File Type: rar  ms3d_logfile.rar (2.5 KB, 410 downloads) - View custom content
Alchemist
Original Poster
#10 Old 12th Mar 2005 at 12:02 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Saikatsu
Got it. It's attached.


O.K.
Now according to the log, MilkShape loaded, and then you opened the "Body Chop" Importer, which is the last entry.
My final question to you is:
Did you get to the part where it displays the file open dialog, or did it die before then?

Supplying me with the log has eliminated an enormous amount of code to look through. Answering that question will help eliminate a lot of what's left.

Thanks in advance,
<* Wes *>

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Lab Assistant
#11 Old 12th Mar 2005 at 12:19 AM
Quote: Originally posted by wes_h
O.K.
Now according to the log, MilkShape loaded, and then you opened the "Body Chop" Importer, which is the last entry.
My final question to you is:
Did you get to the part where it displays the file open dialog, or did it die before then?

Supplying me with the log has eliminated an enormous amount of code to look through. Answering that question will help eliminate a lot of what's left.

Thanks in advance,
<* Wes *>

It crashes the moment I lift my finger from the mouse button after clicking on it. It doesn't get as far as the open file dialog.

Hopefully this'll get cleared up without too much trouble. I know it's hard enough trying to eliminate bugs from my programs that're TINY compared to this stuff. o_x
Alchemist
Original Poster
#12 Old 12th Mar 2005 at 1:25 AM Last edited by wes_h : 12th Mar 2005 at 1:27 AM. Reason: forgot the pictures!
OK, I made an update that I am hoping addresses the problems both Saikatsu and Weji noted.
I reduced the skin weighting for the alternate joints, and I also reduced the memory requirements. With all the extra items I was tracking for morphs, etc., times 50,000 allowed vertices, times 3, times 4, etc. comes to a lot of memory.
I cut that to 25,000 vertices and faces.
Which is about 20 times what the average TS2 body model I have seen uses.
I am attaching a couple new snapshots of the afbodyunderwear from within BodyShop.
The first is a full frontal clothed shot.
The second is at a slight angle, because I had convinced myself on my first test that I wasn't getting my edited mesh into the game, so I pulled one vertice on the left arm out to make a visible difference, and that is what makes it look like a gopher pitched a tent inside her forearm!
<* Wes *>
Screenshots

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Scholar
#13 Old 12th Mar 2005 at 2:01 AM
I also tried a direct import/export without making any changes.

I also got the distortion, but on my mesh it is more obvious at the elbows - see the pic

Left is the mesh I had modified using the .obj exporter plugin, and the MTS2 MeshTool for importing.

Middle is the same mesh, imported/exported with your earlier plugin.

Right is imported/exported with the BodyChop plugins.

I also tried making the mesh go fit/fat

The Sim's arms move out a bit, as if the midsection had expanded - but, the midsection does not expand at all.

fit/fat does work correctly on the MTS2 MeshTool version, of course, since only the vertice data is imported.

==================================

I don't know if this will help, on that crashing problem, but I was getting that with the earlier version of your plug-in with MilkShape 1.73

It would crash if I tried to import, but if I first tried using a different plug-in, and simply cancelled the import and went to yours, it would then work ok.

So, after installing MilkShape 1.74, I tried the earlier plug-in again.

Now, it works fine, I can use the plugin right away after starting MilkShape - and when I go to import, before the File Request window, I get a message "Warning! Commercial License Required", and your name.
I OK this, and then it opens the Load File window. This message never appeared with 1.73 MilkShape, and I do not see it with the new BodyChop plugins with 1.74

Maybe this window is the problem?
Screenshots
Alchemist
Original Poster
#14 Old 12th Mar 2005 at 3:33 AM
I rediced the weighting on the secondary and third bone assignments, which seems to help reduce the deep creases at the joints... that's in V3.01 (posted below).
I'll see if I can get fat and pregnant to work... there must be some way to change the body state without playing for two hours force feeding a sim to do that. Or waiting forever to entice one into woohooing.
The "commercial" message only ever existed in the 2.00 version of the plugin. I dropped it because I decided I was unprepared to issue a commercial license, due to support time required.
The plugin does reserve a LOT of memory space. I reduced that somewhat in the latest version because I allocated space for a lot more vertices than are typically used in body meshes.
<* Wes *>

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Lab Assistant
#15 Old 12th Mar 2005 at 4:25 AM
I will give it a test, thank you for continue improving your plugin ,
for your old plugin,this is my tested there are just only 2 problem that I can't figuring it out how to fix it
the auto-smooth , even I turn off all those it did by itself
and a gab between the body and the head, someone already mention it, is it can be fix yet?
Alchemist
Original Poster
#16 Old 12th Mar 2005 at 5:32 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Dr Pixel
I also tried making the mesh go fit/fat


You are correct, the mesh does not go fat.
I don't think that fit is a seperate mesk... I think it is just done with texture mapping and bumpmapping on a standard body.
The output of the plugins works in the game, but it does crash BodyShop. I know one more trick that I thought was unnecessary to add that may correct both.
After the results tonight, I wish I had not yet released the plugins yet, but, I think that the audience had been friendly and helpful.
If nothing else, you can visually explore the way the fat/pregnant morphed meshes look, and also, of interest, is the way the multiple assignments are made.
When I get a better working plugin posted, you'll be ready to make more use of it. Please don't put a lot of effort in designing anything complex with it, unless you go ahead and save the results in the native MilkShape format, which I have tested here and found retain everything needed to reexport the same model. What I plan to do to the exporter will require the meshes be re-exported.
<* Wes *>

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Alchemist
Original Poster
#17 Old 12th Mar 2005 at 5:39 AM
Quote: Originally posted by MimeWhite
I will give it a test, thank you for continue improving your plugin ,
for your old plugin,this is my tested there are just only 2 problem that I can't figuring it out how to fix it
the auto-smooth , even I turn off all those it did by itself
and a gab between the body and the head, someone already mention it, is it can be fix yet?


Mime:
Please don't spend a lot of time yet on this one (see the previous post). Also, based on testing work I did today you'll not have good luck on hair meshes. Yet. But I think this approach holds some promise to improve the hair meshing, which has some quirks of it's own (it seems like every different type of mesh in this game has one little special thing about it).
The gap between the body and head seems much improved with the weighting changes I made in version 3.01.
<* Wes *>

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Lab Assistant
#18 Old 12th Mar 2005 at 6:22 AM
Quote: Originally posted by wes_h
I rediced the weighting on the secondary and third bone assignments, which seems to help reduce the deep creases at the joints... that's in V3.01 (posted below).
I'll see if I can get fat and pregnant to work... there must be some way to change the body state without playing for two hours force feeding a sim to do that. Or waiting forever to entice one into woohooing.
The "commercial" message only ever existed in the 2.00 version of the plugin. I dropped it because I decided I was unprepared to issue a commercial license, due to support time required.
The plugin does reserve a LOT of memory space. I reduced that somewhat in the latest version because I allocated space for a lot more vertices than are typically used in body meshes.
<* Wes *>

Unfortunately, MilkShape still crashes at the same exact place. :\ Should I upload the error log again?

I know that there's a hacked pink Snowman somewhere in the objects section that can handle the fit/fat thing, although I'm pretty sure that if you switch the debug mode on, you can get a menu on a sim by holding shift and right clicking (or was it left?) that has the option to change body type.
Alchemist
Original Poster
#19 Old 12th Mar 2005 at 7:10 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Saikatsu
Unfortunately, MilkShape still crashes at the same exact place. :\ Should I upload the error log again?

I know that there's a hacked pink Snowman somewhere in the objects section that can handle the fit/fat thing, although I'm pretty sure that if you switch the debug mode on, you can get a menu on a sim by holding shift and right clicking (or was it left?) that has the option to change body type.


I found that you can select fat in BodyShop, and in SimPE you can edit a sim for pregnancy and fat.
I know fat doesn't work, and I manage to crash BodyShop, so when I knock those two off I'll look at the pregnancy part.

Let me look over my setup for that project one last time. There is very little code that executes before the File Select Dialog opens up, and almost all of that is identical to the other plugins. The rest of the code is in a file that gets called after you've selected a filename. So I have a small area to look at, but since it doesn't behave that way for me (and no one else has reported that yet) I am a little mystified as to what obscure little thing the Windows gods have decided to dislike about my program on your computer.
Curses upon you, Mr. G!
<* Wes *>

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Scholar
#20 Old 12th Mar 2005 at 9:51 AM Last edited by Dr Pixel : 12th Mar 2005 at 10:09 AM.
Wes, the pics I posted were taken with the first version - I must have been writing my post at the same time you were, I'll try the newer version.

I had thought the fit/fat would work, because the two mesh groups that the plug-in puts in MilkShape looked to be the fit and fat versions of the mesh, maybe I misunderstood.

Oh, and you can use the Insiminator to make your Sims go fit/fat right in the game, as well as get pregnant.
http://modthesims2.com/showthread.p...ght=insiminator

And a dresser that allows you to try on any clothing without having your Sim go buy it:
http://modthesims2.com/showthread.p...ghlight=Dresser

Very handy for testing.
Scholar
#21 Old 12th Mar 2005 at 1:31 PM
Wes, I tried the 3.01 version, and again did the simple in/out test, with no editing to the mesh.

It works great, no more visible distorting of the elbows, etc.

I tested in the game - the animations work properly, no more blockiness to them as there is when using your other plugins or the SMD format with the new MeshTool.

I'm going to try an actual editing project, I'll be back - it may take a while, the MilkShape part of it is no problem, but the involved process of creating the new .package file takes me a while, I usually go off the tracks once or twice along the way...
Lab Assistant
#22 Old 12th Mar 2005 at 2:08 PM
Great idea wes I' just dl them try them after work.
Alchemist
Original Poster
#23 Old 12th Mar 2005 at 3:12 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Dr Pixel
I had thought the fit/fat would work, because the two mesh groups that the plug-in puts in MilkShape looked to be the fit and fat versions of the mesh, maybe I misunderstood.

Very handy for testing.


They are the fat and pregnant versions, I believe. Pretty certain on the pregnant... even fat women don't look that way unless they're pregnant.
There is an entity (0x7c4dee82) that is present in the original packages that is not in the plugin output. To date, it has defied analysis, but I had dummy copies created that the game would read in one of the development versions. I am planning on trying to see if their absence is what is disallowing the game from using the morph data.
And thank you for the testing pointers.
<* Wes *>

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Scholar
#24 Old 16th Mar 2005 at 1:47 PM
I tried doing an actual edit, using your 3.01 version, and MilkShape 1.74

But, I get an error when trying to export

"No Quaternion Valures Stored"

Here is what I did, step by step - maybe you can see where I have gone wrong?

The project - add a hook instead of a hand...

* exported the Male Adult pirate body, as per Brianna's tutorial
* Imported it with your plugin
- it comes in as two groups, body (looks to be the normal body)
and BODYMOD.1 (looks to be the Fat Body)

* Leaving both groups showing, I selected and deleted the left hand from both

* Created a new hook and base "hand"

* Assigned the bottom of the base (the part that touches the sleeve) to the left wrist

* Assigned the rest of the hook to the left_hand

* Duplicated this group (the whole hook)

* Combined the first hook and the body group into one - this changes the name to Regroup1, so I renamed it back to body

* Combined the BODYMOD.1 group and the duplicate hook group into one group, and renamed it back to BODYMOD.1

* tried to export, and got that error message...

I checked both groups, the assignments all look to be the same...

Any ideas? Did I go too far outside the box by deleting the hand?
Alchemist
Original Poster
#25 Old 17th Mar 2005 at 2:51 AM
Oooh, Oooh, Oooh, Oooh, Teacher! I know, I know!

This is my fault for not documenting things well enough.
If you look in the joint tab, select a joint, then pick "Comment" (this is a 1.7.3 up feature in MilkShape).
You'll see a text box open up with a line like this in it:
ImpQuatDat: -0.0000 (etc., 7 values total)

When you were arranging the bones, in the process you ended up with a bone that had that line deleted.
I had to do some creative programming to figure out a way to store that information, or else I would have to read the original gmdc during export to get the data.
What it is, this data is the translation (1st 3 floats) and a quaternion (4 last floats) that describe how to rotate and move all the bones in the model from location 0,0,0 to where they go. I have a little more information on this I posted on the Wiki here about exactly how to do that.
On export, of course, the process gets reversed.
You can save your work in a .ms3d format, reimport the original gmdc, copy that line, dump the import, reload and paste it into the comment field of that hand bone (if more than 1 is missing, obviously that needs repeated several times).

I apologize for not describing this mo' betta.
There are also comments in the groups tab for each group that hold the original group name. I did that because MilkShape chops long names off at 32 characters, and many mesh names are quite a bit longer. The exporter puts the original name back... which could create problems on heavily modified projects, I guess, but helps on 'reproducing' original gmdc values.

I *THINK* I figured out why the crashing was going on in these plugins. I had _MBCS defined (multi-byte character set) and had a Title for the plugin that was about 34 or so characters long. The buffer for this name is 64 bytes in size. 34*2 is a little larger than 64, so the data just above the title in memory was getting trashed. Apparently, some machines arrange the data when running this program differently, and cause the random crashes.

I don't believe this is what you were experiencing, because the title in the older plugins was shorter (it happened when I added "Body Chop" into the name.

I am revamping the plugins to generate seperate meshes for the bones and the morphs, instead of combining the process into two models... it'll be something like "BONEMOD.1", "BONEMOD.2" and "BODYMESH.1", etc.

I hope that by doing this, it will create greater flexibility for example for hair meshes, which sometimes have two skin weights versus three for bodies. And this way, if you have only one morph, you can still have three bone assignments.

I am a little behind on the revamp because at the same time I am moving from here to Texas. Just never seem to have enough excitement in my life!

Try fixing the lines like I described. I think you are smart enough that you had your work already saved in .ms3d format, so you don;t have to redo the whole thing. I'd like to see/hear how "The Hook" turned out.

<* Wes *>

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Locked thread | Locked by: tiggerypum Reason: Locked at Wes' Request
Page 1 of 15
Back to top