Just another question in my quest to make a hair mesh that can be used through-out a sim's life.

I made a new adult hair mesh that has three groups. I went and found an existing adult hair mesh that also had three groups. It works great. So I want to make the teen version. I looked in the associated recolor package for the name of the related teen hair style, then I looked up that gdmc. It only has one group.

What can I do when I need three groups in a mesh, and the other age group meshes don't have the required number of groups? Is it possible to link an adult hair style to my choice of teen/child hair style?

Hm...let me clarify. I want to use a single recolor package and a single mesh package to hold the files for all the ages, instead of a recolor and a mesh package for each age group. I know this can be done for accessories, and believe it can be done for hair too.

I hope I explained my problem and intentions clearly enough. I haven't found a tutorial that covers this.

Find any teen hair that has 3 groups, if there is one. I think the long wavy hair might have it, but I'm not sure.

All the so far gathered wisdom regarding doing hair and doing it for different ages is in the Hair faq/infocenter article. Note that that article has several different parts to it, be sure to look at the table of contents.

Indeed, you should have 1 recolor file with all the different age groups linked into it. That is the only way the game will properly age/progress a sim through the hairstyle. Perhaps you need to explore (as we don't have it charted out yet) which mesh set might have the right number of parts in as many ages as possible. Or maybe someone else will know.

I don't know the details for how to get a mesh with a different number of parts directly into the hair file... there was a thread about adding groups to body meshes here in the forum, but it's pretty complex/confusing.

Hey, you're right, I can link any hair mesh to the recolor package. I tried that by accident before with an accessory and it caused SimPE to crash. Might have just been that accessory though.

In the end, when I tried to recolor, the original teen mesh only had one alpha, and creating more alphas didn't work. So I broke down and searched for a teen-elder, three-group mesh. Turned out the skater hair for males fits the bill. I'm starting over again, sorta. The mesh editing is done, and that's the hardest part.

:read: So I have learned! Thank you so much, tiggerypum! I couldn't have got here without you! I don't quite understand the spreading vertex weights out amongst several joints yet, but I'm experimenting with more than one joint along the length of the mesh. Slow but steady, I suppose. I'll probably be crying back in this forum again later. :dunce:

The part I'm not sure about is how you get the extra textures into the recolor file, but maybe that is simple.

I can tell yu how to do it quite simply...

I use the Maxis wavy long hair for females as a base for most of my hairmeshes, because it has room for 6 groups, and it's from child up to elder!

I always use that one as a base. This is how:

- Replace it's groups with your own mesh parts
- Replace the alpha's and normal textures from the recolorpackage with your own textures.
- Volia!

If you are going to use this as a base more often, keep the mesh parts around, and make sure you fix integrety and give it a recognizable name every time.
I never have to extract another mesh, unless I need the mesh parts.
Plus, I only have to extract maxis textures when I want to use them in my mesh.

Hey, thanks for the advice! I'll be on the lookout for a male mesh that carries several groups through out the ages, cause I've never made female hair. Or do you mean you tell the recolor package to treat the the new hair as male or unisex?

Bai Mei, I believe that if you change *all* the refs to gender in the female recolor, you can then pop in whatever meshes you want. There's a bunch of places to change it, but I used that technique when I moved a female mesh to male (and then replaced all the meshes except child, which is identical for either gender.

That's a real good point. I remember back when female meshes were first being switched to male, and having those gaps at the forehead and neck. I completely forgot about that.

Okay, new battleplan! Thanks for all the help, both to tiggerypum and Nouk! :valentine

The female mesh BraidsUp has 3 groups from toddler through elder. You can change the sex by going to Property Set and clicking on "gender" in the left column, then changing the value to 00000002. I think you have to go to HairTone and change gender there, too. I am having a ton of trouble getting all my meshes into one package file, though, so I can't help you any further. If you figure it out, PLEASE let me know what you did!!!!

To get all your hair meshes into one .package is very easy - no manual editing is needed at all.

Here is how I do them:

* First, be sure everything is working right with them all as separate MESH .packages.

* Create a new folder for each age except adult
* Use right-click/Extract one at a time on all 4 parts of each mesh (except adult) to put the parts into that age's folder. So, in the child folder you will have all 4 child parts (GMDC, Resource Node, Shape, and GMND) and the same for teen, and for toddler.

* Open adult's MESH .package
* You will see the 4 files in the list - right click and use "Add" - then go to Teen folder and choose all 4 files.
* Repeat for Child and for Toddler

You should now see 4 of each file type on the files list - 16 total

That's it, save the file. DO NOT "fix integrety" or any other editing at all to it, it is done.

The adult MESH_ file now contains the meshes for all ages - just remove the other age's MESH .packages from your game, and go check.

Dr Pixel I'm so sorry but It didn't work for me. I created a mesh for teen females and did everything you said about the adult, elder, child, and toddler folders and they still had the maxis meshes. I'm a little confused about what you mean at the end, where you say "just remove the other age's MESH .packages from your game, and go check. " What do you mean by that? Where are the meshes that I have to remove and which ones. I'm just confused, is there a tutorial I can find?

SparkleSim, if you only made a teen mesh, then there is no need to put it with other age meshes. If you made the same mesh to fit toddler, child, and adult, you would have 3 other meshes and you would then maybe want to combine them into one big mesh file to keep them all together neat and tidy. Otherwise, I wouldn't worry about it. It is really just to make things easier to download, as there would only be one mesh file instead of 4. It doesn't make any difference in the game.

Dr. Pixel thanks for the info. I will try that. I was actually confused about the package file (the recolor file), not the mesh file...but I figured it out, finally. I will give this putting-the-meshes-together a go now that I have finally got all my recolors into one "neat and tidy" little bundle. Thanks!

Amy

SparkleSim, check out this thread, it may help.
http://modthesims2.com/showthread.p...842#post1336842
If you know how to replace the cres and shape in the 3IDR file in your recolor package, that's how to add the other age groups. This thread explains how I had to do it to get all the ages to show up in one file. I don't know if everybody has as much trouble as I had, though.

I imagine if you wanted your teen mesh to be genetically linked to a certain Maxis mesh in the other age groups, you would follow this technique.

Hope this helps.

Amy

I didn't mean to confuse you - my procedure is only for use after you have made up and edited separate MESH_ .packages for each age group. It won't magically create them from the Maxis meshes.

It's just a way to package up all the separate mesh files that you edited into one MESH_ .package.

Help! I'm so sorry but I'm just not understanding anything! Thank you so much, Amy for helping, I appreciate it but HELP ME!!! I'm so confused it's just not registering. OK Dr Pixil says to make age folders and for each age folder, place copies of the original mesh parts of my own package. (Mine is adult.) Ok Here's what I did. It's long so if it makes you mad, I'm not forcing you to read this, but. OK here is what I did: first, Went to body shop, Exported the simple long and str8 hair mesh, called it Longhair, and then imported it to the game. After that, I decided I wanted to grow it much longer, about butt-legnth. So I made my mesh package in Simpe, grew the hair in Milkshape, and yeah that worked out all well and great. So I decided, I don't want adults to be the only ones to have this hairstyle, so I want ALL the ages to have it. So I looked around and found Dr Pixel's thread and did what he said with the age folders. I Got myself 4 empty folders, toddler, child, teen and elder. and then, I opened SimPE and opened up the mesh I just made. The long hair. Then I made copies of the cres, shape geo node and geo data container. Now the age folders have each, 4 copies. Then, that's where I'm stuck. What do I do next???

SparkleSim, let's back up here a second.

The only ages that can SHARE a mesh are young adult, adult and elder, and they all use the adult hair mesh. (you won't find an elder hair MESH, or ya hair MESH)

For each age and gender, the hair mesh shapes (and body sizes) are different with the exception of the adults I just mentioned (but male and female are diff)

SO... the mesh you made, you can assign the modified shape and cres from that to the elder category and ya category (if you have uni)

For another age, you start part of the process over again. You need to go find the teen girl's hair mesh, and start a new work area for it in a new folder - because you'll be making ANOTHER mesh file, with a diff modified shape and cres, which you will then attach *to the same* recolor file in your saved sims folder - just to the teen 3dir. Then you need to modify the teen mesh in milkshape and then replace it in the TEEN mesh file you made. Name your mesh files clearly for what age they are for.

Want to change the child also - same thing - make yet one more folder, and one more new mesh file of the child's hair, do the modified shape and cres thing, and then edit your mesh, etc.

Now when you are done, you will have 3 or 4 mesh files and 1 recolor file that calls the right one for each of the ages. You can simply distribute the 3 or 4 mesh files AND some good recolor files with it.

Now if you'd like to get the 3 or 4 mesh files to be one big package instead, that's where that InfoCenter article comes in. But right now, you really need to get a good set of meshes created and good recolors for them (including fixing the eyebrows on your clones - because once you get the one recolor working right, you'll use that to make all the others)

It's okay that you got mixed up, but I'm going to repeat this anyway. Hair meshing is a complicated thing - very advanced. It's expected that you've edited a handful of body meshes or more - that you understand which ages/genders share meshes and which cannot. The steps for each of these processes is the same - the only part that should have been really confusing is finding the right 3dir (which is why that's documented) and trying to deal with things if the number of groups is not correct.

Thank you Tiggerypum for all of your help, it is very appreciated. Yes I have mastered body meshing, it's a piece of cake for me now. But hair meshing? Damn! You weren't kidding when you said "advanced". It's like the hardest thing! OK I've learned from you how to make all meshes into one package. That's awesome. But what I really want to accopmlish is copying to same mesh of the adult to the teens and younger. Like Melodie9 (I hope you know who she is.) when she offered us all those downloads of adult hairstyles for toddlers and such. See, what I did was make a mesh file for the teen, and when I got to Milkshape I imported the adult mesh and selected it all and moved it down just a little bit so that it fits the teen right. But after that, my result were hair floating about an inch above the teen's head and for the child, there was no hair at all and it was just a face there, with it's scalp missing. (Poor thing.) So, Sorry if I'm bugging you, You probably wanna strangle me, I know, it's understandable. I have ADD so it takes me just a little bit longer to get things. But thanks for your help in advance!

You have to start your new mesh with a mesh that's the correct mesh for the age - you need a TEEN SKELETON in there to make the teen hair work. (this is also true if trying to move body meshes between ages)

So, start with the teen hair. Either make the modifications over again, or then read in your adult mesh and work the adult mesh to fit the teen's head. But hairlines and such change from one age to another, so you might be better off keeping at least the base of the teen hair to be from the teen mesh. You'll be doing a lot of renaming and copying of comments.

You can also get sample heads from the InfoCenter to help you make sure that your modified mesh fits the other age correctly.

But always (and this is so for any sort of mesh conversion) start by importing a mesh of the correct age for your final mesh (and gender, if you also need that reference).