So I tried TSRWorkshop. Importing a simple accessory was easy enough, but the problem arose with the morphstate accessory. This certainly works well with CTU and BMM but since CTU has no necklace category I need to learn how to accomplish this with TSRW

I have a necklace mesh in MS created from scratch with correct boneassigments and comments. I also have 3 morphstates for the necklace - Fit fat and Thin. I exported this as TSRW.object. And in TSRW I planned to base this on the pearl earrings accessory, and tried out importing the necklace.wso file which has 4 meshes (one base, 3 morphs) So naturally I got the error of "Wrong number of Groups expected 1"

Also why do the comments disappear after exporting a mesh into Wso. as I impoted it back to MS to see if all was fine but comments disappear. Unless they are not needed with TSRW.

So how am I supposed to do this exactly? a short step by step guide would be appreciated

You always start in Milkshape with a basegame mesh, in your case the one you cloned in TSRW.
So you have to extract/export that one from TSRW first as it contains the correct skeleton needed for the boneassignements.
Keep in mind that meshes extracted with CTU(or based on a mesh from CTU) contain a diffrent skeleton(diffrent joint order)

Import the basegamemesh from TSRW first with the WSO importer, then your custom meshes with the GEOM importer
You can delete the groups once you imported the basegame mesh, you only want the skeleton.
Note, you need to move the base GEOM mesh on top in the groupstab in order to import your morphs if you decide to keep the basegamemeshes(for reference or i dont know )
Plz check if you still have one skeleton(i remember i once ended up with 2 skeletons in MS, one from TSRW/WSO importer and one from CTU/GEOM importer)
If there are 2 skeletons then you have problem(you can check in the joints tab)
You then better start over and save your GEOM and morphs as a obj file first wich you can import later.
As mentioned the boneorder is diffrent so you need to reassigne the mesh anyway.

The comments are not needed, they really have nothing to do with the mesh itself.

Make sure the groupnames are correct for all 5
you can duplicate the basemesh for the 5th group, the group_special(pregnant) unless you enable it for maternity ofcourse and will not fit.

3 Questions:

1: So I can only base my own morphstate accessory on a EA's morphstate accessory when using TSRW? Like the choker from LN and I think WA has somekind of morphstate accessory by EA as well Kleopatra necklace or what so ever. So are these only ones I can base them on?

2: Do I have to require people to have the EP in order to make my custom morphmesh accessory work if they can only be based on these Ea's morphstate accessories?

3. When working with Morhpstates in TSRW Do I have to make boneassigments for morphstates as well? Since it really seems like as it can be seen in this image I attached.

If that's true then that really blows, not only TSRW requires me to make boneassigments for all the LODs but for all the morph states of 4 LODs and with a skeleton you can't call a skeleton but a pile of tiny bones - Bloom tell me this is not true

1, no , as far as i can remember you can use any accesoire(each clothing/shoes or accesoires has the Bgeo files attached.)
Just create the group_base/fat/fit/thin and pregnant and TSRW does the rest.

2, if it turns out you can only use EP accesoires for the morphing you better clone a basegame bodyfile and set it as accesoire.
Already did that a few times, clone a top, set it as accesoire and save as WRK file, then reopen that workfile and continue.

3, morphs dont need bones

oh thank god that I don't have to make bone assigments for 20 meshes if the morpsh would have needed that. I rig meshes enough at work so I try to avoid it when it comes to hobby meshing, It's not the most fun part


Thanks of the reply time to make this work with TSRW

Well this has been working well so far, but I also wanted to try the cloning top and basing accessory on it instead of an EA accessory. I changed category, saved and reopened the file. I imported my morph accessories changed textures and it looked fine enough in TSRworkshop but in the game the multiplier of the necklace is covering the full body. So what might have gone wrong? The textures I edited were only Multiplier, Mask and specular. Maybe I'm missing something?

Looks like the texture is saved in the wrong format - probably DXT1 DDS, when it should be DXT3 or DXT5.

I tried first DXT5 but importing that gives me error that I can't load the texture. Next I tried DXT3, the choker shows with very odd textures and the body is still purple.

Edit: oh my the odd texture on the choker looks like the teeth texture. Now this is really screwed up mesh Any other ideas?

A outfit texture overrules the skintexture and that is wat you see.
You need to change the type from body to accesoire in the first project tab.(forgot to tell you)
Best to save the WRK file and reopen it, then save as sims3pack.

edit,
i think its called the type, cant check it.
but im sure you figure it out

Oh, you also need to change the skin specular and skin ambient.
I always use CTU in the background for that.
Open CTU, clone a accesoire and copy the full link for the skin specular texture(including the key words)

In TSRW you choose edit the skin specualr and past the link in the find box.
Same with the ambient

I changed the type - accessories, the category Necklace, saved and reopened. Edited keys for skin ambient and specular, MaskDXT1, MultiplierDXT3, clothingspecularDXT1, But the problem remains. Could you maybe take look at the file Bloom? Or you haven't gotten new harddisc yet? Anyhow I uploaded it incase you can or if someone else could check it out

Cant do anything yet im afraid
I know this works with CTU(changing a outfit into a accesoire) but it might not work with the latest version of TSRW.(im almost sure i pulled this off once with a older version)

You do need to use the correct DDs format tho
The multiplier(base) is always DXT5interpolatedalpha(atleast on outfits) but also on accesoires i think?
The mask is DXT1noalpha for a 3 recolor item and DXT5interpolatedalpha for a 4 recolor item.

Might be the category necklace, donno


Dont know wich texture program your using but Photoshop and the Nvidia plugin often saves a DXT1noalpha as a DXT1with alpha....
I always reimport a mask texture in PS to check that it has no alpha

Oh I use photoshop and paintshopro, and check always the saved DDs files in case something went wrong. But even DXT5 wont really do any change.

How unfortunate,
*Making this with CTU would not provide me the necklace category
*if I base this on EA's original accessories I will end up having the metallic shine in CAS and some oddness as the CAS still keeps bringin up the accessorie's original textures up but fadely - no matter if UVmaps, links are correct.
* I can't base morphstate accessory on a accessory that doesnt have originally morphstates in TSRworkshop
*Basing it on a clothing will end up coloring the whole body as the picture above shows

So in the end I have to base this on EP's accessory, too bad for them who have no LN.
Well hopefully these problems will be solved in the future

Dont know if you ever looked at a package made with TSRW but it includes all files so i am almost sure the EP necklace is basegame compatible.
You can put it up for testing to find out i guess.

The metallic shine is prolly some MTNF settings that needs to be fixed.
I also suspect that the EP necklace has a normalmap wich causes the vage textures on top of your creation

You can find all the textures in the mesh tab under materials, i always update them there instead of in the texture tab.
You have to do it for all lods but you can relink the others with the browse function once you imported the one for the (very)high detail.
There are also a few MTNF settings that you can play with.(reflection and such)

I ordered a new system and be back soon

Oh yeah I already played with all the setting in TSRW including MTNF settings, changing all the meshes materials, removing normalmaps, replacing materials, chancing the value of reflection etc, not much change happened in the end when it comes to trying to remove the real problem But great about your system getting fixed soon, then I can put up the post about a test accessory I made for this problem so this problem can be solved finally

Oh...you prolly also updated or blanced out the normalmap on all 3 lods(or 4)?
Only doing lod1 will not fix it.

Yup, did it for all of them. It would be sloppy work to leave the normalmaps for all the other Lods

Did some testing with TSRWs latest version:
1/ Cloned the furcoat(fullbody) and set it as accesoire(Type) and as bracelet(Clothing type)
Sliders work but the outfit loses the links to the texture files...


2/ Cloned the furcoat(fullbody) and set it as body(Type) and as bracelet(Clothing type)
Sliders work and outfit looks ok and is recolorble, only changing a top or bottom messes up the way the textures overrule eachother.

3/ Cloned a top set it as accesoire(Type) and as bracelet(Clothing type) and loaded the furcoat meshes and textures in it
Tried this if the top maybe would overrule all other outfit parts, it doesn't and even worse...it gives you awfull display issues(same like duplicate parts using the same texture.)

4/ Cloned the bracelet and loaded the furcoat in it
This gives you the error in TSRW, sliders cant be used on this method..

So if you want to make a accesoire that is slider enabled you clone either a fullbody or bottom outfit and change the clothing type.
This means however you got to stick to how outfits are uvmapped, in other words....you need to map your accesoire meshparts on a spot were they dont interfear with tops/bottoms or shoes textures.

It is possible that those accesoire will not work in combination with a fullbody or bottom outfit sliders(depends with you cloned for it) as the vertice ID numbering is the same.(did not have it with 1 and 2 but did on 4)

I would clone the EP necklace tho for custom slider enabled accesoires and look if they are basegamecompatible.
It gives you a much better texture to work with.


Edit,
Last test i did is cloning the necklace(the gold medal from Ambitions?)
Sliders work and the coat will not interfear with other clothing parts.
Unfortunate the material settings are alot diffrent so i prolly need to update those.
Another negative thing is the texture loss when using more then one accesoire, it changes the texture to another mipmap.
But this is only noticible on large accesoires like the coat and maybe it doesn't happen if you import a texture without mipmaps
I might finish this one and put it up for basegameplayers to test it.

Alright, this cleared out everything. Thanks

Oh, just found a small error in the latest version of TSRW, you can not use the ''make empty'' option in the normalmap popup window.
It links to a corrupt or incorrect texturefile.
Use the find box to link to a basegame normalmap or load a custom one,
Its the cause of the display problems you also had.