Hello! ^^

I am having some trouble getting a just slightly tweaked custom object to be recognized by the game. I am well versed in intermediate Maya knowledge (I am an animation college major) and the meshing/UV mapping/Maya part is not what I have trouble with.... I can understand SimPE enough to find the GMDC and use Delphy's OBJ exporter to get the OBJ file out.

I am tweaking an accessory item, a fox tail, to look like an orca/whale tail. I just pushed the vertex around a little and added maybe 24 new faces (face extrusions to make the fluke). I made a new UV map and exported that out too as a BMP.

I found a lot of tutorials on making maya objects from scratch but none on just tweaking something slightly. I am not doing anything major or too complicated, no animations and no re-associating joints, no renaming or fancy menu captions. I don't care if the obj is useable on other ages/sexes, just on adult female. I am pretty much stuck on how to get my OBJ's new UV map recognized, as the OBJ shows up okay in SimPE's preview. And since I did not edit any of the vertex that touch the body I figured all the joint associations should stay intact? (...tho somehow I bet this is wrong and I'm just sound like a total idiot XD; )

I have no idea how to get it to see the new UV map, because since the OBJ is showing up I'm guessing all that is wrong as to why it won't show up in game is because it's not TEXTURED?

Any help on this I'd be ETERNALLY grateful, :lovestruc even a point towards any existing tutorials I missed that address this point would be okay. I'm so frustrated because I know Maya and can do modeling/UV's (even animation) but can't get some stupid tweaked tail's UV's recognized. XD

Pictures of what I did / what's going on:

Import/export in OBJ format does lose the joint associations with the mesh itself. You'll need to run it through the Meshtool if you're using the OBJ format: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=45457

In the most basic of terms:
1) Right-click on the original GMDC in SimPE and extract it. Filename doesn't matter.
2) Open the Meshtool and load the GMDC. Load the OBJ format file you've edited into it and let Meshtool do its thing (it's been a while since I've used it but if you're smart enough to have gotten this far on your own and to use Maya I'm sure you can figure it out, it's a simple program). Save the GMDC it spits out with a new name.
3) Right-click on the original GMDC in SimPE and choose "replace." Choose the new GMDC. Say yes when it asks if you want to reload it.

Alternately, if Maya supports the SMD format then you can probably use that to import/export with all the joint assignments intact. SimPE preview for Body Shop meshes (clothes, hair, etc.) do not pick up the texture so it being grey is not something to worry about.

BTW, I can tell by your pic that your "new mesh" is going to override the existing one. That's fine if it's just for your own use (which I'm assuming it is) but if you want it to be a new, separate, unique mesh as far as the game is concerned, you'll have to do a bit more with it. This is an older tutorial but it goes over not only some Meshtool stuff but also cloning (the Fix Integrity bits) and linking (the 3DIR bits): http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=141997

(Yes definitly this is just for my personal use, I'd need to get permission from the creator of the tail to share it and I still as you see do not know / am not good enough at programming to define a new object yet.)

Thank you so much for the response <33 might I saw every time I see your posts cause of your icon I somehow picture it coming out of House's mouth? XD (smile)

I looked at what you mentioned and tried it - and I got it to show up in bodyshop!! But it's all 'exploded' :'D *so happy like you don't even know that it showed up at all*

What it looks like:



So obviously I did something wrong...probably when I exported it from Meshtool. I loaded the edited OBJ file, then I loaded the 5gd original file that was extracted from SimPE after (it gave me no confirmation for this but I guess it loaded?) then I did the 'save file' option on the meshtool 'main menu which was the one that exported a 5gd file. Then I replaced it in SimPE and saved the file.

Don't I need to replace the UV texture map in the associated package file that has the texture in it? Because the size of the bmp for the UV's is different I think.

Thanks again for your help already, I feel I'm almost there! ^^ (for starting out on meshing...I have made so many textures though *adept at photoshop* I wanted to make some objects too!)