Thanks a lot for your answer. I'm really sorry, I should have reading posts before... :sorry:

Oh cheers... Miche. (referring to the Russian tutorial) some way back.

Well it most of worked, there has been no more questions since I posted that link, so I guess we`ll be doing all future tutorials in russian.

How do I add new texture images and material definition files etc?
I tried extracting and re-adding and renaming but then it just started flashing blue.

The object I'm working on has 22 models and when I changed the name in the Shape file it only had one so only one part of the object showed up.

there are no belly button rings in sims 2 right?

cause when i was looking through the sims03 package file i found....

(look at the attached images)


the first image is the extracted mesh. the 2nd is the name of the file inside the sims03 package. uuAccessoryBellybuttonRing_tslocator_gmdc

there seems to be meshes for a lot of unused items in the files.

Well, I've just spent a few hours making a mesh of a highchair and importing it using the Meshtool and the tutorial that comes with it. At every stage I noted my steps in a word document and took lots of screen captures to illustrate, and I was thinking that, at the end, I'd have a picture of some strange blur or something with the legend 'this is how it turned out' but - miraculously - it appeared in the game. It doesn't look quite right and I had my reasons for doing it blue and red (experimental reasons). It worked! And I accidentally made my own (sort of) tutorial in the process.

I think the fact that it looks like barley twist when it was nice and smooth in gmax is because of something to do with normals that I don't understand but, believe me, this is a breakthrough for me. Thumbnails included.

So, if anyone is using gmax with the plugin to export md3 files and 3d explorer to convert between obj and md3 - and your objects look like weird blurs etc. I might be able to help (a little). I wont post my 'retraceable steps' document because it was enormous. Here are the thumbnails. Does anyone know why the legs became lumpy?

Image 28 is how the object appears in game.
Image 30 is how it appeared in 3d explorer.
Image 29 is how it appeared in gmax (how I wanted it to look in game).

Obviously something happened between the gmax and 3d explorer stages. But what?

Need help!, what dose this mean? OBJ file doesn't include vertex normals! You must have these included

Well, I had that error when I used the "Videoscape with Vertex Colors (.obj)" in Blender. If you're using Blender, choose the last option which appears to be blank to convert your file to .obj, because Videoscape doesn't save the vertex normals and it's smaller. What program are you useing to import/export it?

For the purpose of testing, I created a extremely simple mesh (one polygon cube only) using Maya 6. I saved it in obj files, tried to load it using Mesh Tool New Object Wizard. But when I chose my file and say Next, there is an error "Run-time error '9': Subscript out of range". When I say OK, the mesh tool exit automatically. So what's that mean? I followed the tutorial strictly, and really don't know what's wrong.

BTW, when importing the object, I noticed that aside from the object itself (a sofa in my case), there are four planes which are named as four shadows. Should I keep them?

IT mean that the obj file doesn`t have normals in, the program you used to export the object in the obj file didn`t export the normals (normals , tell the game which direction a vertex and therefore a face is pointing) , The game needs normals in the gmdc, so the obj file needs to include these.

can you post the obj file, so I can look and see what the problem is.

Huzzah, yo. I got the mesh imported and it works just fine in game. I tossed a flat colored texture on it just to get the thing working, I'll be going back and changing it momentarily (I just wanted to get it in first)... there's only one problem with it. It's tilted! And I'm not sure why. It's supposed to be oriented like /\ but... it's rotated a bit. I attached a picture of how it should be positioned back on page 4.
http://modthesims2.com/attachment.p...achmentid=24184

Are there any help threads for making parts of the mesh somewhat transparent? The blue parts are supposed to be sapphires. I'm guessing I'll have to just use some texturing tricks to make the gold part look shiny, though.

Here is a screen shot of the object I made. Just a cube for testing. I kept the four planes.


Attached is the obj files. Thanks for helping!

The four planes (I think) are things like walls and shadows. And I don't think you need them. From my experiments it makes the whole process uneccessarily complex and the one and only thing I got in the game - I deleted all of the planes and anything that wasn't actually the object (in the 3d editor program I've got) before I exported it from the program and imported it into simpe. At the editing stage, it helps to call your object something that will get your attention when you come to work with it in the next stage with simpe. Then you'll know it is actually the mesh you just made and not something from the object you want to replace.

The object I got into game had a new shaped shadow too so that sort of proves that the shadow planes and wall planes can be deleted at editor level.

Someone please correct me if I'm giving bad advice here.

Okay... fixed the problem with it being tilted (the object itself was set to the correct orientation by rotating it, so it seems it was setting it back to 0 deg rotation), but I'm still having issues figuring out the transparency thing. I tried making an alpha channel image, imported that, it didn't work. It's also way too dark. :\ Any tips? Should I attach the .package file to be poked at?

EDIT: And the shadow is vase-shaped. XD;; I can't seem to find how to change that.

EDIT2: Heh, okay, after looking around a bit, it seems no one knows how to fix the shadows yet. What about the darkness of the textures? x_X

EDIT3: Holy crap. It doesn't seem to be effected by lighting at all, even after I made the object over again using the same GUID. I surround it with lamps and it's black.

What did I do wrong here? I thought I'd done everything right. If anyone can help - please have a look at my attachments. It looks like the clothing texture is on the outside of the object, for one thing, and the shadow is very strange.

OK, now here is another model I got "runtime error 9". It's cloned from a ceiling lamp. For the simple cube one, when I remove those four planes, it can be imported into MeshTool. I don't know why. :werd:

Edit: add some info that may be useful
I use Maya 6, complete or unlimit I don't know, but not that personal study version. I use the build-in objExporter plugin in Maya. No nurbs in my model, uv mapping already assigned. All polyfaces are triangels.

Is it possible to post the complete "Tutorial" that is on the "meshtool" site in a single file, for download.

I've read all the threads concerning the mesh tool and the other tuts, etc.... but it would be nice to have the complete tutorial on your HDD for reference, and possible printing, instead of having to go to the meshtool site to follow it when creating a mesh.

If I missed this already somewhere, sorry.

How many vertex normals are supported?

For some reason, Maya generates a lot more vertex normals than the OBJ extractor or Milkshape exporter. Milkshape can handle this but the mesh tool freaks out and causes the model to behave badly in-game.

It seems the problem starts at around 1000 normals.

fleabay,

Attach a Maya created OBJ with many vertex normals and I'll take a look.

Thanks

Hello!
I followed the tutorial step by step, but in the game my new object looks like an original but with the new texture.
I've exported GMDC as the obj file and found that the old mesh was replaced with the new one. So, I don't understand what's wrong.
Could someone check the attached package?

REf: the shadows, as far as I know the problem with the shadows of the old objects showing up is when the old shadows are reimported as part of the object (the square planes are the shadows). I can`t be sure it will always be the case but deleting those shadows from the object (in your 3d program) normaly solves the problem. However as I said I can`t be sure that it will work on every object and on every one`s game, I think those planes might be used when running the game with low graphic settings.

Here is the original file, and the file with Maya's extra normals. Milkshape will export the file that was saved in Maya to a 'proper' size.

When I exported the adult female top from Maya and into the game via the mesh tool, it looked OK. (less normals)

With this Maya export file, it went haywire with polygons thrown everywhere.

you have a couple of problems with this, the first one is the reference in the gmnd file which point to the gmdc file wasn`t updated automaticly , some people have this problem as it has been pointed out in this thread.

So update that to point to the new gmdc file:

go to the gmnd file -plug-in view then to the reference tab, you will notice the instance and groups number in the listed gmdc file are still from the old one, so click the "u" next to setting, then drag the new gmdc file from the window what opens into the reference window.

You will now have two gmdc listed in the window, delete the old one, then click commit.

Then do the fix integrity again, and commit again. Then save the package.

This will get the object showing up in the game, but you still have a problem in that you have the chair laying on it`s back, so you need to rototate your mesh and reimport.



I don`t know why some people are having this problem with the gmnd reference not updating , make sure you are using the lastest version of SimPE, and I`ll try to talk to Quaxi to find out why it might be happening.