Well to get started im making a corset here is it:

I have the last SimPE, Milkshape, All last Wes Unimesh plugins and Photoshop CS, also the fix for pets.
the point is that i want to add bumps in to the Marvine alpha heels (i did try a lot of times and failed). So i havn't started the reflective step. In the end i will need an alpha a normal and envcube maps. I dont know if its possible to add bumps to the reflective map
I did follow a great tut by Jasana_BugBreeder Here
But the mesh ended without any bump (i did try a lot of times i was using Marvine's alpha mesh and heels). So i am a little confused here what should i do to add those new sets to a non default MAXIS mesh
Are a lot of tutorials but sorry none seems to be clear for me (well i do understand them but i do end on the begining )
I open bodyshop, export the files, make Jasana_BugBreeder tutorial then i link that new bump to Marvine's mesh following tiggerypum tutorials as allways ... i end with the mesh with no bumps and with a skirt lol (the original have no skirt)
If anyone care to explain a lil please that would be the start for a new happy life im tired of reading but i will read more
I will be here ears and eyes open if anyone needs more info i can do any step fast (i did too many times) thx so much and peace and love to all

I have three things to say:

First, when you follow what Jasana listed, don't neglect to use the 'sort list' function. I learned myself that is 100% necessary.

Second, until yesterday, meshes exported by UniMesh did not support bump mapping. This is corrected in V4.07. If you used an older version (V4.06), you need to import (or load your .ms3d version and export again),

To add bumpmap support, each group that will be textured with bumpmapping must have the comment "HasTangentArray:" (without the quotes, with the colon) in the group comments. Without the comment, the exporter will not generate the Tangent Normals in the output file that are necessary for the game to calculate the bumpmap shading. If you aren't bumpmapping an object, then adding the tangent normals just wastes disk space and RAM when played.

If these three things don't work, then perhaps you could post the broken package for someone to look at, because it may be none of the above that is wrong.

Understood i will try importing exporting Marvine's mesh and do what you said. The thing is that is Marvine mesh i can't modify it mabe when he made them there was not bump map exporter...now i am really messed up. Oki ill use another mesh to do it
Now to not to make all again how i set the reflective map just for the parts in the arrows (on the image up) also its possible to have the material reflective+bumped
Thx so much.

I am glad you posted a picture. To get the effect (as I posted in another thread) you'll have to break your mesh up - like the 'hula' mesh but... different. All the non-reflective parts will be part of body group and all the reflective parts will be in the alpha group (which on the hula outfit was the skirt). I suggest you start by making it without morphs, one headache at a time, it's easy enough to make the fat version once your fit version works perfectly. (as in unimesh 3 tutorial)

Start simple, for testing purposes.
Import the hula mesh.
Import a full swimsuit body.
Duplicate the swimsuit body
Hide the hula body, hula skirt, and 2nd swimsuit body.
Cut away a section from the trunk of the first swimsuit body.
Copy the comments from the original hula body, and paste them onto the 1st swimsuit body (that has part of the trunk missing)
Delete the hula body and move the first swimsuit body up to the top of the group list
Now take your second swimsuit body. Delete the legs, arms... and keep going until you have just the center section that when you show both that and the body, they make a complete sim (with no overlapping parts)
Now copy the comments from the hula skirt. Put them on the 2nd body.
Rename the 2nd body to have the name of the hula skirt section (alpha something)
Delete the hula skirt.
Now you should have 2 groups, named the same as the hula skirt and with the same comments the hula thing had.
Save out your new gmdc. Also save as a milkshape file for ease.
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Now make sure that body loads in your game, etc.
The center area won't be reflective yet.
Go experiment with the matd's until you get it reflective
Can the game display bump and reflective at the same time? I don't know. Go ahead and experiment with your test version.

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Once you have that - THEN go back and do your detailed version, getting the corset shape perfect, and then test that. Then work the new legs on, making sure all 'skin' parts are part of 'body' and that the 'shoe' parts are part of the alpha group when you're done. Do only part at a time, so that you can test and if something goes wrong you won't have to do as many parts over. Remember that every time you regroup, you need to copy and paste the comments back on, and change the name to the correct name.

Thx a lot tiggerypum and Wes_h i will try but a question..its ok to use Marvine's mesh (i dont want to start over again) it does not support bumpy by default so i will just add the bump is there a way to still use the original mesh (to link to him) because i will need to import it to milkshape and export it :s?
I will ask him also
EDIT: for tests i made a catsuit thingy that was requested and now i am a lil lost what i do make a whole new mesh with the 2 groups..but they are overlaping a bit...dunno i did try to scale up the alpha one but it loses the position.
Thx in advanvce.

Here is the dress or catsuit thingy

Here the overlap

Here the vertex

What should i do remake the body to match the catsuit, or double face the catsuit, or ...errr... im lost
But i believe im almost there
PD: also the nice Marvine said its ok to use his mesh yay! :lovestruc

Um, well, I should have uploaded a bumpmap-enabled version long ago anyway I fear... *blush*

For the catsuit you'd need to follow the excellent advice given by Tiggerypum - base the mesh file on the hulaskirt which is set for two groups and for which the texture files include bumpmap ("normalmap") textures, and make the body in a single shape cut into a "normal" and a reflective group; all the difficulty here would be to divide the faces and cut the mesh so the reflective group has nice smooth edges, and overlapping parts should be avoided.

Now, if for your other project you also need a transparent alpha, you should take a look at this thread, where the matter of having both an alpha and a reflective group was discussed. I'm not aware though of a texture file already linked to a 3-groups mesh AND including bumpmapping (now I have only up to NL and no stuff packs), so this would require manual editing to properly add and link the "normalmap" textures.

The nice Marvine is too modest to remind you he is really a she!
I know in English "Marvin" is always a man's name, and "Marvine" is not used in favor of, perhaps, "Marva", but that's not the case here.

marvine
Yes you are right miss :lovestruc i just imported exported your amazing alpha mesh and it had bumpy so i will wait for u to upload the new mesh you are who made that excelent work
Also i have the hula skirt in there to use the values i have now the mesh with bump and normal maps i did follow the advice from the great miss also tiggerypum :lovestruc
but i'm on the stage where im giving a nice shape to the catsuit and i am a lil lost should i match the body mesh with the alpha mesh then cut the alpha polys on the body and the body polys on the alpha (or catsuit) and make a new body with 2 uv maps?

wes_h
Sir (i hope im not in a mistake ) the plugin works wonderfull its amazing i'm really nutz of how easy and free of bugs is thx a lot you are a genius!!

The hula skirt is 2 sided should i make the catsuit 2 sided?
Finished making what tigerrypum said the body shows good in game and the animations are correct. Im still messed up should i cut the body too? to prevent overlap?

Okay.... because you are cutting the body to make 2 separate sections that will need to join seamlessly to make *1* finished body in the end, you must do these things:

Your body for 'catsuit' and for 'body' should be *identical* when you start taking away faces. If you need to split(add) or move vertices a little to get a good place to 'cut' the body apart, do that *before* you duplicate the body. Make any changes to the shape *before* you duplicate the body and start cutting away bits.

The hula skirt has to be lined because it stands *away* from the body and ONLY the FRONT FACES of a mesh show. So the 'inside' of the skirt would be invisible if it was not lined, which would show from certain angles.

Your catsuit is going to be part of the body - nothing 3D has to happen with that. So you need to have 1 part (alpha) that is your catsuit, and one part (body) that is everything else, and NOT the catsuit area. No overlap. Now to do the deleting, sometimes you'll be able to select vertices to delete, other times you might need to select faces to get best control.

Visually, your catsuit should be like how the legs are before we join them in the unimesh tutorial #3. No overlap on faces. The vertices will touch, they will match exactly. And as long as they have exactly the same bone assignments (which they should from your duplicating), the two parts, shiny and not, will behave as if 1 solid mesh. Unlike in the unimesh 3 tutorial, you will not regroup the parts together, you'll leave the catsuit/shoes in one group and the arms/neck/skin/toes in the other group.

Understood processing data and will update soon thx really !!!!
Oki all works the animation is good i have the 2 pieces togheter but im stuck on texturing seems that the catsuitmesh tears over the body mesh
This is a temp texture just , also the uvmap strange but if i use it as a reference its not 100% correct i get transparent parts so i had to put all white the catsuit base because of that can't apply any detail.Also i wish to know how to start testing the shiny once the tearing is solved and i can texture hapilly.

Here is the tearing

Here the 2 meshes there are no gaps and they run really fine thx a lot!

This is the uvmap just in case. Dunno what is wrong with that tearing and with the uvmap not being exact if i use it as a base behind the legs i get a hole and in other parts if i dont cover all in white
I had to do this lol for the meshes dont to dissapear:

well i give as much info as i can
I am so near thx so much for the help..what could be wrong?
Seems like the mesh is using parts of the hula uvmap still :s dunno i leave to the nice experts on MTS2!!!
PD: sorry for any mistake writing or explaining i am tired this is fun but phewww :p

The mesh can't be using parts of the hulaskirt uv-map if it's a whole different mesh. It seems properly uv-mapped given its shape, and nothing seems out of place enough to account for really noticeable holes in the texturing.
Now, if you are sure that you didn't move the uv-coordinates after you extracted the uv-map shown here, and from what I see of the "tearing" (the mannequin's grey skin doesn't help) I tend to think that the whole uv-map was slightly moved down at some point.
What I'd do to make sure of that : extract the uv-map of a working regular body mesh, assign it as a texture to your whole mesh in milkshape, then check in the texture coordinate editor if it's matching.



Thank you Wes! This is just another case of "Eeek, my name (Juliette) is already taken, I need to find something else!" and the cat just passing by...

Oki Marvine i did a lot of tests and seems that somehow the exported mesh have the uvmaps all messed up
Here i did what you said and meh i dont get it :

Uvmaps on Milkshape

I also did tiggerypum test and all was fine on Milkshape:

But nope on bodyshop

Bodyshop screen
Also did a test in bodyshop with the uvmap and yes somehow it is not taking the new uvmap

I also made a test for to show the holes i did mention and bodyshop also ignores some holes LOL:

So what could be wrong? ...all in milkshape shows fine something exporting or on bodyshop is messed up....
I did extract the gmdc i just replaced as an obj and opened in milkshape and it have all those weird patterns (also the uvmap is a nonsense) so its something on the export process dunno what
I do export like this: file> export> simunimesh exporter v4.07 then i replace the gmdc from the mesh package and save.

Ok, are you sure you didn't weld anything on the seams?
You don't post a pic of the messed up uv-map as seen in the texture coordinate editor, this would be much more telling... Now maybe you could post the files (mesh package, working ms3d or SimPE file if you kept a copy of it - i hope so -, messed up file) or send them to me so I can take a look - in this case just PM me and I'll give you my email address.

Sure!! i can send them to you, wil be an honor sending a pm
And the seams err yes i did read (i was reading all threads on MTS2 lol) just before you posted a tigerrypum thread saying not to weld for to export with uimesh but i did use unimesh identify split to fix the front back strange diff on the materials and did weld them to be able to do ctrl+m
Sending pm thx so much i apreciate this a lot i want to learn really!! :lovestruc

Oh I see... Weld seams is bad enough, but ctrl+m is a big no!! When you need to smooth stuff, use the "align normals" tools from Demon's plugins (they're in a sticky on this forum) and nothing else, and this way you don't need to weld anything.
I'll still take a look at your files, but I'm not sure what would be faster - remake the mesh or fixing the uv-map...

So i never must ctrl+m even when divide edge is applied or just for the seams?
Sorry to ask and to bother so much seems that are few steps in some threads that i did miss
Every game have his strange tricks lol The Sims 2 its easy for the bones and strange to apply materials to the texture Oblivion is a cake to texture and make new objects but a pain for the bones and each game have his strange process on the 3d mesh pheww
So learned a new thing never ctrl+m and never weld for the sims ... but i was reading the post of Demon's plugins he said thet the plugins could not be used with 2 uvmaps :s

I'm not even sure that 'divide edge' is on the list of .... fully working functions in Milkshape....

In some advice gleaned from other posts (probably from Dr Pixel), this is what I know:

To add new points, select the face(s) you wish to add vertices to, and use the 'subdivide 4' or 'subdivide 3' commands. They will automatically be added to the UV Map, although you will still need to make bone assignments to the new vertices. Avoid 'subdivide 2', as that command does not UV Map the newly created vertices.

http://www.modthesims2.com/article.php?p=1058857
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It's a shame that milkshape has some commands in it that have always had a history, even before Unimesh, of munging up sims meshes.

Anyway, in the tutorials someplace I say 'never smooth all and always use demon's tools'. I'm sorry that somehow you missed that info.

I'm not sure what demon was referring to, but I've used his align normal tool all the time to selectively realign parts of the mesh. One of the great things about it is that the rest of the mesh is unchanged, just the area you select is modified.

Thanks Tiggerypum for clearly explaining things - I love to help when I'm stuck in my work, but putting together clear explanations in acceptable English isn't easy for me.

On the matter of "divide edge": myself and some other creators prefer this method, which is perfectly reliable and also maps the new vertices, because it allows a better control of the way faces are divided and creates a new vertex shared by both adjacent faces. Using "turn edge" when needed allows to smooth the shape and take into account the bending of the parts in game, and you get excellent results with few faces.
"Subdivide" works nicely, but doesn't allow to divide one face in two because of the mapping issue, and when working on more detailed meshes every face counts; and it creates vertices on the outer edges of the faces with no matching vertex on the adjacent faces, which can result in gaps when the mesh animates - so it needs to be used very cautiously.
To apply "divide edge" to vertices on the seams you need to weld them - but then you should unweld them when you're done!! (weirdly, the uv-map doesn't always get messed up when you forget, but better safe than sorry).
And if the new vertex borrows the bone assignments of one his neighbours, you should still correct this for values between those of the two original vertices.

EDIT: Sir Drake, I sent you a fixed .simpe file - thank god you kept the ms3d file, so the uv-map is ok.
In order to unweld just the seams, I assigned a texture to the mesh, then opened the Texture Coordinate Editor with all selected. Then I selected only the vertices at the seams in the TEC where they are clearly recognizable (not that hard, selecting a welded vertex automatically selects it on the other part of the uv-map - you need to be cautious on the hands though) and unwelded those, one group at a time.

Just wanted to add a bit here - the messing-up of the uv_map when welding was only a problem with very old versions of the plugins - it was long ago corrected, so it is now safe to weld vertices as far as the uv_mapping goes.

The only drawback is that once welded, the UV_co-ordinates on the UV_map are also welded - that is, they may be in completely different places on the UV_map, but are now permanently locked together so if you select the welded vertex on the uv_map and try to move it, there may be other points on the UV_map that will also move along with it - you will be able to see them on the UV_map window as you select - watch for other vertices to become selected in a different area as you select. I know that doesn't make much sense, but I'm not sure how to explain it any better.

I am also not saying that you should go wild welding vertices, but when necessary to do it there is no reason to avoid it. It can still mess up the normals at the seams if you aren't careful, but if used sparingly it can be a great help at times.

And as Marvine said, you can always select and then un-weld the vertices later.

Thank you both for the added info, I will explore 'split edge' more because I hate the other command myself. When I have some serious editing to do involving adding a lot of stuff, I end up popping my mesh into xsi, I've not learned all the milkshape tricks.

Thanks again

Dr Pixel, it seems that I should have more faith - I just did that to check and it worked perfectly like it should, this would have spared me some time
Still it seems that Sir Drake wasn't able to though he uses Unimesh 4.07.

Now there's a reason I don't trust this functionality like I used to - for a reason I never was able to understand, specially since I can't reproduce it when trying to, I have uv-map mess-ups happening sometimes on the seams. The fact that it seems to happen after a lot of manual editing makes me think that this could be caused by a memory issue in Milkshape, but also makes it harder to track down the precise thing that triggers this. Yesterday though I just added faces to the elbows of a body mesh, adjusted the uv-map so I would have noticed the issue before exporting, and just one vertex had the uv-coordinates messed up on export when I worked symetrically as usual - I suspect that I forgot to unweld that one, but it shouldn't have been an issue...

The subdivide 2 function is a plugin, not a built in.
I will pass along the criticism to Mete at MilkShape.

I also have got you guys a change put into the next MilkShape update that copies (actually, concatenates) the group comments when you regroup or duplicate selection. This should be a big help on regroup.

I still recommend against welding the seams because some seams were made because of being in different smoothing groups (such as the seam under the female breasts and the seam at the hem of a skirt). The smoothing groups were never taken out of the Maya models and put into the GMDC, so the artist is on their own there. Having those seams allow the edge to have two normals, one for the bottom and one for the front. Combining these normals means the shading will be split between the two directions, resulting unwanted shadowing.

Dr. Pixel is right, in that I have written code and put it in the exporter since the earliest releases that combs through the model and unwelds all the locations with shared vertices and different UV mapping. Also, there is no guarantee my code will catch 100% of the welded vertices. So when you weld them, you lose your ability to UV map them and the exporter just recreates them. Vertice count score: Mesh 1, Mesher 0.

One important thing for Sir Drake is to make sure he has the 4.07A exporter update (also posted in the first message). The very code I talked about was left disconnected in the first 4.07 version I posted (a victim of Sims2 Plugin surgery here).

<* Wes *>

marvine
The fixed file works perfect!!! thx so much next time i will not weld not ctrl+m i am really happy you gave me back the hope!!! :lovestruc

Dr Pixel thx but i still dont understand why the uvmap on milkshape worked good and when i did replace the gmdc got all messed up and the unweld will be hard i wont remember wich ones i welded (ussually the ones that are on the middle of front back lol) but yes i will have it on my mind not weld not!!

tiggerypum your tutorials are allways on my bookmarks they are allways the guide i do love them and all the help you give thx now i understand a lot and i know that allways make the changes on the 1st mesh (example body) first then Drake make the mess up!!! oh also to select just parts u want and not to touch the seams you can select the faces u dont need and press ctrl+h then split, edit, etc and press shift+ctrl+h to get them back :lovestruc

wes_h the plugin is awesome there is nothing wrong it also made the extra assignements alone!!!! i just divide edges and that new vertex was correctly weighted 100% and assigned to his bones thats a genious work!!!!!
The next step now is to make the catsuit shiny and bumped...Drake mess up again !!!!!

Ill be back with updates (and really you all are wonderfull nice people) thx to all!! :lovestruc

Sir Drake, you're just working on something that's beyond the scope of the tutorials. Even with all that is covered, it's simply not possible to cover everything, and every sort of project. The tutorials are just a starting point. You're doing really well, and your attitude is great.

I would love to take credit for the automatic bone assignment, but MilkShape copied that from the vertices on the edge you divided. So it is possible that you might use divide edge sometime and the joint that is assigned is not the one you wanted (but probably the one next to it).

With your enthusiasm and talents, you should be cranking out some featured works soon.

<* Wes *>