Hello. I'm working on a clothing mesh and I'm running into the same problem for this particular mesh. I was adding a pair of Maxis shoes to a mesh that I had put together and I started having trouble replacing the GMDC. Before I added the extra part, it was working fine.

I'm using Milkshape 1.7.9 and the most recent versions of SimPE and Unimesh. I've done other meshes as practice, but for this one, I keep getting this error message when replacing the GMDC.

I don't know what the could be wrong, but any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Okay so were you following tutorial #3? You have the same number of groups, same comments, etc?

Are you accidently trying to replace the gmnd instead of the gmdc? That will break things horribly with some error message that I don't have logged.

Hi. I've learned all the tutorials prior and have had success. I just did a hair mesh and I feel very comfortable with the whole process. I was able to replace the mesh properly at first, but when I snapped in the feet, I received the error. The groups and comments are all correct.

did you verify that you accidently didn't replace the gmnd this one time? I did it once, others have done it sometimes. That is the only time I've seen such messages.

Oh wait. When you do your unimesh export, do you get ANY errors? Because if you do, the gmdc file will be empty, and that will also make SimPE get all ill.

No, I don't get any errors when exporting. I've even tried undoing the shoes and exporting the original and it worked. It's just not allowing me to snap in any other Maxis parts for some reason. Hmmm . . .

When I try to re-import the meshes back into Milkshape I get an error
or so maybe there's something wrong with the mesh although I've only snapped in Maxis parts so far.

Also make sure you have SimPE set to "advanced" mode - otherwise it doesn't like importing meshes it thinks have too many faces.

The other thing I'm wondering is if you were answering the part correctly about the skeletons, or if you ended up with extras. Go to the Joints Tab on the right. You'll see a skeleton there, all the bones will be listed. Note what the first few are named. Now scroll down the list, it'll go through the whole body. Does it repeat? Do you have an extra skeleton in there?

SimPE is running in advanced mode, but I did notice a repetition of the same bones in the joints tab in Milkshape. So the problems is the extra skeletons. I never noticed this before.
The first few bones are named: auskel, root_trans, root_rot, spine0, spine1, and so on, then later down there are about a couple more that start with these same bones.

How would I fix this? Or would I have to import other parts in as .obj and reassign the joints?

You either do not have the most recent unimesh or you answered the question incorrectly when you were importing - the 'bones' question is about importing more skeletons and the answer is not to.

Please check your version of unimesh, Wes changed the wording of the question because users found it confusing, (and in very early versions, it always imported skeletons, he had to add that option to not) and then look at tutorial #3 again where it goes over importing a second maxis outfit for future reference.

To fix:

In theory you can delete all the duplicate sets of skeletons on the joints tab, leave the first one. That's what we did when we first got unimesh.

Or you can roll back to when you had a working gmdc, import that one with unimesh and then add in your other parts. Check it though and make sure it's not got the extra skeleton; if so, try cleaning that part up first.

I had to reinstall Milkshape a few weeks ago and I did forget to install the Unimesh plugins again. So that was the problem all along. Everything works just fine now. Thanks so much.