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Space Pony
#76 Old 26th Mar 2005 at 7:11 AM
grykon,

One thing I noticed when getting the mesh into the game is that you have to change the name of the imported GMDC. Basically you are using your modified SMD file & the original GDMC when you do the replace in the Mesh Tool & then save that out as a new GDMC. Then you open your MESH_whatever file & import that new GDMC, but, because it uses the original GDMC the name no longer matches up with the names in the MESH_whatever file, so you have to change the name to match the rest of the stuff in the MESH_whatever file.

I hope that makes sense. If not, let me know & I'll try to explain it better.
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Lab Assistant
#77 Old 26th Mar 2005 at 2:39 PM Last edited by Mabelline : 26th Mar 2005 at 3:33 PM.
Morague, at this moment, there is no solution to blocky meshes. You can read another post' mesh tool help' as Jaycephus has explained it in a very detailed manner there. Even if he can write a script for xsi to solve it successfully, we might not be able to use it since unfortunately we only have mod tool- demo of xsi foundation. There might be some scripts cannot function properly in mod tool even if they can be installed. Now I am trying some user scripts to see if they can function properly in mod tool. But to be honest, I am not positive about this as I think it doesn't make any sense if softimage enable every user scripts to function properly in the demo of their products. This would discourage their targets to buy xsi. I am not blaming softimage as I understand that they are just running business. However, I will not give up too early. I will keep on testing them and tell you the result here.

Temporarily there is no alternative better than milkshape for me. If mod tool has no problem with the meshes, I would say it is the best for modding for me. Maybe I buy xsi later if the problem is solved.

Also, I tried Blender. It is really easy to use but no mesh edited with it works. I can't get why someone can make meshes edited with it function in the game.
Field Researcher
#78 Old 26th Mar 2005 at 4:38 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Morague
grykon,

One thing I noticed when getting the mesh into the game is that you have to change the name of the imported GMDC. Basically you are using your modified SMD file & the original GDMC when you do the replace in the Mesh Tool & then save that out as a new GDMC. Then you open your MESH_whatever file & import that new GDMC, but, because it uses the original GDMC the name no longer matches up with the names in the MESH_whatever file, so you have to change the name to match the rest of the stuff in the MESH_whatever file.

I hope that makes sense. If not, let me know & I'll try to explain it better.


Hi Morague - Thanks for the input...That is what I have been doing, but something is not working right, not sure what...though with the way that people are describing what is happening to the meshes they alter in XSI, I think I will stick with Milkhape. I have had a lot of success with MS as far as moving vertices are concerned. I haven't been able to add or delete anything, but moving them around has been real simple...after getting use to the interface. I'm not sure how many meshes on the board are MS or if some people have other programs maya or whatever...I can't afford that! *laugh* Even if this wasn't just a 'hobby' which I don't think it even qualifies as that.

If you want to see what I have done, if you haven't do a search for Lady in Red...several different mesh edits in there...nothing fancy...the only one that was a little different, was the one where I tried shortening the length of the arms.
Field Researcher
#79 Old 26th Mar 2005 at 8:59 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Jaycephus
It's doable, grykon. Are you using the .9.46 Mesh tool tutorial to get the .smd back into the game? It is a little tricky. I still haven't memorized all the steps.

The vertices will be moved according to how much the bone moves in-game, and how strongly it is weighted to a given bone. If it is strongly weighted to a non-moving bone, then it will barely move in-game. Also it's spatial relationship to the base of the bone is important. If it is close to the base, a big bone rotation will barely move the vertex. If it is far away from the base of the bone, then a small rotation of the bone could mean a large movement for the point.


Yes I'm using the latest mesh too...0.9.46 Not sure what is going wrong when I import, but it is still selecting the original mesh and not the altered mesh for the item.

What I was wanting to do with the bones is to *prev mode on* select the vertices of the breasts and assign them to a bone(bones) that would give them a little 'sway' motion when walking, exercising that sort of thing. They created such a great animation walk for when you tell a romance sim to walk over and flirt with another, that this just seems like a required 'evil'! *laugh* *prev mode off*

I guess for now, until I get some more experience with importing an XSI object back into the game properly, I won't even worry about learning about the bones and weighting and stuff. Thanks!
Space Pony
#80 Old 26th Mar 2005 at 10:26 PM
Thanks Mabelline - I'll try Milkshape. I prefer the XSI Tool interface because I was easily able to figure out how to zoom & rotate the model. I had a heck of a time with Milkshape but I finally found the instructions for using some of the keyboard short cuts. I looked & looked through the Help file & tutorials but I finally found a web site that had them. I'll see what I can do with it now
Lab Assistant
#81 Old 27th Mar 2005 at 9:35 PM Last edited by telamon : 27th Mar 2005 at 11:11 PM.
EDIT -- PROBLEM SOLVED -- DO NOT FORGET TO CHANGE YOUR DECIMAL SIGN IF IT IS NOT "."
Lab Assistant
#82 Old 28th Mar 2005 at 3:35 PM
Small problems that I have encountered.

Firstly : the skeleton is understood as a set of nulls. Is it normal ?

Second I could do my mesh, assign a texture, set an envelope (though I do not know if it works) to it and export the SMD file. This file can be seen in the mesh tool 3D View but... I cannot export it, it says "subscript out of range when I replace or add the model.
Lab Assistant
#83 Old 29th Mar 2005 at 8:03 PM
Quote: Originally posted by telamon
Small problems that I have encountered.

Firstly : the skeleton is understood as a set of nulls. Is it normal ?

Second I could do my mesh, assign a texture, set an envelope (though I do not know if it works) to it and export the SMD file. This file can be seen in the mesh tool 3D View but... I cannot export it, it says "subscript out of range :( when I replace or add the model.


I assume you are importing a clothing mesh, modding it, and exporting it. I have successfully added a frill to a .smd dress, so I know it works. If you are tweaking points, or adding a few vertices to an existing mesh, then the below recommendation are applicable. The explanations are true in any case.

1) Yes, currently Miche has said that Mesh Tool is not building the full skeleton because there is not any data on which bone is the child or parent of another bone, I believe. In any case, the .smd file exported from the Mesh Tool only lists all bones as being the direct child of the first, or root, bone. Without the correct heirarchy, no skeleton can be built, BUT decent bone weighting can be inferred from the bone-weighting of nearby pre-existing vertices. Furthermore, I'm not sure that the ModTool and the Valve addon is actually able to import and rebuild a skeleton. I think you will only ever see the joints, which are the colored nulls you are seeing. That's a limitation of the .smd import of the Valve addon. I think that you would be able to create a default skeleton for a Sims mesh, however, and then when you import a Sims .smd, the mesh would be connected to this skeleton. At the time of import, the Valve addon looks for pre-existing skeleton with the same name as the .smd file's skeleton, and it connects the mesh to that.

2) When you import an .smd, you already have a texture map defined, and you have an envelope defined. You could immediately export as is, and would have no problem getting it back into the game, with the exception that the normals will be slightly messed up (blocky arm syndrome). This is due to the normals at the mesh boundaries being changed by XSI. We will need a helper app, or plug-in to the Mesh Tool to fix this problem. Anyway, the only thing you need to do with respect to the envelope or texture is when you add vertices. Depending on how they were created, etc., you might need to change their bone weights (CNTL-E, i think), or you would need to adjust the texture mapping. No need to create a new one. It's easier to just edit the existing setup.

- Jay
Lab Assistant
#84 Old 30th Mar 2005 at 10:41 PM
It is quite difficult to assigne manually the boneweights when the mesh fits roughly an existing body. Is there any plugin in XSI that projets the weight from one mesh to another like the latest 3DSMax skinning tools. Assume two meshes one is a body and one is a piece of fabric wrapping it. It could be useful if any point of the fabric gets automatically a weight map value calculated on the basis of the values of the closest points in the base body object.
Lab Assistant
#85 Old 31st Mar 2005 at 8:12 PM
Telamon,

I'm not sure if you can run scripts, or if they have to be set up a certain way for the Mod Tool to run them. I'll look on Softimage.com to see if there is a script or addon that does this.

What I would do is select the elements in a body mesh that I want to copy for the piece of fabric. Then, copy and scale the vertices up, or tweak them into the positions you want. The copied vertices will have the bone weights already, so no need to mess with weight editing at all if you use this technique.

- Jay
Lab Assistant
#86 Old 31st Mar 2005 at 11:19 PM
I have done that before and it works fine yes. But you know, I have a Lightwave background, and though I do not want to start a flamewar, I must say that LW modelling toolset is far more intuitive than XSI's... In other words I find really uncomfortable with XSI's toolset
Instructor
#87 Old 26th Oct 2005 at 1:34 AM
Has anyone found a way to eliminate the normals problem when going from XSI to the Mesh Tool yet? This seems to be the closest I've gotten to getting things working just right, but the blocky arms and seams are just killing me... :P
Field Researcher
#88 Old 20th Nov 2005 at 7:20 PM
I've just started trying to use ModTool and have (FINALLY) gotten my first mesh to come out fairly good in Bodyshop. However, I still have funny flattened backs of arms that I got when using Milkshape. I don't know whether this is a bones thing or a normals thing or what...Frankly I have no idea how to weight bones...is there a guide somewhere, or somewhere one could look in the original GMDC file? And how does one fix normals, and where?

Also...is there anything that is the equivalent of the "snap together" vertices from Milkshape? I have not found out how to do this even after much reading the tutorials and the help menu.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

"Outside a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read" Groucho Marx
Field Researcher
#89 Old 22nd Nov 2005 at 12:25 AM
I am having a problem with Mesh Tool in that except for one or two accidental occasions (I don't know what it was that I did right) when I try to export the .smd file I get a "run-time error '9' Subscript out of range" message. I have been using original GMDCs straight from Sims2, but have also tried saving them as SimPE files in case that might work, but so far, nothing. Could someone tell me what is causing the error message?

Also, is there some way to fasten two different parts together, like with the "snap vertices together" command in MS3D? I have a top of a one piece dress to which I want to add a wide skirt. Having finally given up on trying to convert the similar skirt files I wanted from GMDC to .smd, I made a new skirt from a cyliner...but I have no idea how to fasten it to the dress top. Any suggestions?

I can see all sorts of great things I could do with ModTool if I could just get a grasp on some of the things which were, in MS3D at least, extremely basic, lol...any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

"Outside a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read" Groucho Marx
Admin of Randomness
retired moderator
#90 Old 13th Feb 2006 at 9:42 AM
I have been able to get the seams off the arms and body - the info is in the 'welding' part of my mini.... tutorial if you'd call it that....
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=118986
not meant for total beginners.

Now, after that I still had some spots on the mesh (did a girl's mesh and a toddlers) that simply did not smooth - and they were not necessarily seams! For instance, the knuckles got some triangles on them. I lowered the knuckles to be closer to the hand. On parts of the arm and leg I ended up adding a row of points and then pulling them out a bit to force a more rounded shape (also the outer fingers). From what I can tell, the original game normals are lost, and new ones based on the mesh we're editing are created - but as the mesh is as low poly as they could get away with, sometimes modtool doesn't do the normals quite as smoothly.
BUT you can see 3 working meshes I made with this tool, and they all look good.

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=104078
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=95973

and the girl's long gown in this thread
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=99584
message #3
Field Researcher
#91 Old 15th May 2006 at 5:14 PM
Hello peeps. Someone might be able to quickly resolve a problem for me. In the XSI Mod Tool (working with a maxis mesh) I export a SMD ('optimize chains and compensate', 'remove top level bone on character rig' and 'remove all unused bones' unticked) and it's all nicely welded with only the neck or waist line showing as an open edge. Why is it, if I re-import the smd back into an empty scene in the mod tool, does it show that the vertices on the left and right extremities of the mesh are unwelded? Presumably this unwelding is also happening upon import into SimPE? Could this be part of this problem with the normals (the issue with the flat sharp edged areas). Moving vertices about a bit does, apparently, help the illusion of smoothness but if there is some unwelding happening upon export? It's not just the extremities. It's mainly down the sides - but it's not always as if the mesh is split in half front and back. This must be some operation of (or limitation of) XSI? Does anyone know a way around this?

I promise, Tigger, I'll get out of your hair soon . (I've had brilliant help on the other threads). If I'm going to set up a thread specific to this cut and shut method of meshing I need to know how to do it first and this struck me as a significant stumbling block.
Admin of Randomness
retired moderator
#92 Old 15th May 2006 at 10:06 PM Last edited by tiggerypum : 15th May 2006 at 11:55 PM.
For whatever reasons (and I mentioned this in the XSI 'tutorial') the smd import in XSI does not retain the welding.

From what I can tell -- the welding (I actually liked the other variation of it that I suggest in the tutorial) is maintained for the export, but lost on the import. So... when you export a welded mesh it will be welded. But if you import it, you'll need to reweld again.

Separate from that, I have not explored fully XSI modtool's abilities with normals. It seems to be generating _new_ normals based on the low-poly mesh we're importing - which could simply mean that the smd import function is also losing them - this I don't know, but is certainly possible. Sometimes these little add on import functions do not fully support things.

What I did to solve the problem of an occasional odd crease where it didn't belong was either adjust the location of the vertices on the mesh slightly (I could *SEE* them in modtool, where those 'lines' were if I looked carefully) Or I went and added another row of vertices along that problem part of the mesh, and then pulled it away from the mesh just a little bit to force the rounding.

On the other hand, if you CAN simply adjust the normals to fix the problem (which is better than adding points) and they keep being lost on smd import, the answer is to save your project _also_ in xsi format, which will not lose anything. I tended to do that when I got towards the end of a project, although I had a tendency to only save and read smd files for a while. You'll still need to also export your smd, but it will save you from rewelding everything every time.
Field Researcher
#93 Old 19th May 2006 at 1:26 PM
I have another question about a certain operation in XSI! I managed to find the 'relax' operand (finally) in simulate/modify deform. In GMAX it's fairly straightforward, there are two settings - strength and number of iterations. However, whatever settings I go for in XSI I can see no change to the mesh. I've selected the vertices I want to average out a bit, I have the shaded view selected. In the help it says:

To redisplay: Select the reduced object, click the Selection button on the Select panel, then click the Polygon Reduction Op icon.

I can't find this polygon reduction op icon! I'm presuming I have to select this to see the result of the operation?

Am I using the correct method for gentle averaging? Maybe I'm being to much of a perfectionist but my ankles are too lumpy and I know these things will be visible in the game.
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