Tutorial: Bodyshop meshing with blender/smd's
let me just get this out of the way that i'am not a very creative person,
so there wont be alot of filler text, just the steps.
today i will be showing you how to edit a body mesh in blender, and link it.
you will need the newest simpe, blender, and
my smd import/export script.
here goes nothing... be gentle as it is my first tutorial.
1. export then import in body shop the clothing you want to base your mesh on as if you were just recoloring some clothing.
2. move the new package from savedsims to someplace safe, i made a folder on my desktop.
3. open simpe, create a new package, and click Tools/PJSE/Body Mesh Tool/Extracting stage.
4. click browse.
5. select the package from body shop.
6. you should end up with these 4 files in your new package.
7. click Tools/Object Tools/ Fix Integrity.
8. put a name for your mesh in the box, click update, then ok.
9. save your new mesh package(put "mesh" before the name so you know which it is and is easier to find.)
10. open your body shop package in simpe.
11. select the 3IDR file for the recolor.
12. click Tools/PJSE/Body Mesh Tool/Linking stage.
13. click ok.
14. select your mesh package.
15. click ok.
16. do what it said and goto another file in the package without committing.
17. now save the body shop package.
18. now open the mesh package back up in simpe, and select the gmdc file, and click export.
19. now select .smd as the file format, and hit enter.
20. it will ask if you want to export morph meshes, but we wont be doing that right now as iam showing how to do a simple edit.
Next, the blender side of things.
1. delete the default cube by hitting delete and enter as soon as you enter blender.
2. click File/Import/Sims 2 smd file
3. select the smd file you saved from simpe, hit enter, it will pop up a box asking what you want to import, we want it all, so click ok or hit enter again.
4. zoom down in on the model with the mouse wheel, and right click the sim's body to select it(both the body and bones are selected initially), hit tab to switch to edit mode, and select these vertices's by hitting a to deselect all, then hitting b and drawing a box around them.
now heres where you do the editing, i couldn't think of anything to edit so iam going to give the sim popeye arms. lol
it is possible with smds and blender to make entirely new vertices's or get rid of them(i made a sim made of cubes as a test when i made the exporter), but iam trying to keep the tutorial simple.
5. hit S to scale them, and hold control so you get nice even scale amounts(1.2 vs 1.15599546 etc), and move the mouse till you get 1.3 scale.
[IMG]http://thumbs.modthesims2.com/getimage.php?file=619313]
6. repeat on the other arm. you should end up with something like this.
7. now click File/Export/Sims 2 smd file, but make sure there are no quads, or
SimPE will error, you can hit ctrl+t in edit mode with the mesh selected to convert any quads to triangles.
8. name the new smd, and click export.
9. back into the mesh package in simpe... while still on the gmdc, click import this time.
10. select the newly exporter smd.
11. this is where you would specify the new morph meshes too, but trying to be simple we didn't do that this time.
12. select replace from the menu, and click ok.
13. click preview, if all went well you should see the changes.
(note the weird dark spots on the sleeves and bottom of the shirt are from a error in the importer that has been fixed)
14. now copy the bodyshop package, and the mesh package to the downloads folder(i made a folder for them so i knew where they were, to many downloads... lol)
15. at this point, make sure you Moved the body shop package from the savedsims folder and not copied it as i did while writing this(pulled my hair out trying to figure out why my new mesh didnt show up in bodyshop)
16. your done!
(note the weird dark spots on the sleeves and bottom of the shirt are from a error in the importer that has been fixed)