Well I shoulda thought of that... I just tested it with a straight export and re-import of my modified mesh, and it blew up too... so that's why it doesn't work, has nothing to do with Poser anyway.

So much for that idea... guess I'm doing my edits in Milkshape like always.

I did succeed in getting a mesh into and out of Poser 5 using the ObjX Split plugins, although I didn't actually modify the mesh in Poser. I figured out by trial and error what to do, which I found documented in the Tutorial on using he magnets... except I did not do the welding step, which is likely where the exploding problem starts at.

Alas, I cannot help you much in using Poser... I am a rank amateur in there. But it is possible to get the mesh in and out of there without redoing all the bone assignments. You might want to try a baseline test of moving the mesh into and out of Poser unmodified, then after getting the process mastered trying the use of the magsets. Your choices of options for import and export are important.

<* Wes *>

When you exported, did you use a full 3-group mesh, or just export the main group? I'm not sure if Poser can re-export the separate groups, or if it just merges them into one... it may depend on the options selected. I'll have to try it again.

Well, I it looks like Poser combines it into just a 'top' group, so I'll have to remove the morph groups before exporting. How would I go about merging a poser-exported .obj into an existing 3-group file?

Yes, it seems like an old issue, but still!

- I have the ''hair'' set at -1
- I have the ''alpha's'' set acoording to the number in their name

And I can still see the neck part through the face, ears, etc as the sim turns...
Could anyone help?

I have limited access to milkshape, though. It's on my friends pc.

Greetz!

I got it to work great exporting the Obj and ObjX, importing to Poser, exporting a new obj, applying the objx to it, and welding the seams and resmoothing. However, this is all on just a single-group mesh... I wonder if I can export the other 2 groups as separate .obj's, import all 3 into a new file, then apply a 3-group objx? Off to try again...

Hope everyone doesn't mind my brainstorming here on the forum... I get ideas as I type out what I'm doing, it seems to help, and maybe others can learn from my pain... :D

SCORE!!! I got a test model to work... I exported each group as a separate OBJ file, exported an OBJX file from the 3-group file. Then I pulled the top.obj through Poser and exported a test.obj. I imported test.obj, morph0.obj and morph1.obj, which each kept their group assignments. Then I imported the Objx, which restored the bone assignments. Then, since Poser hoses up the seams and smoothing, I welded all the seams except the ones around the bottom of the breasts on all 3 groups (took a few tries to get them all correct, morphs kept exploding... have to be pretty careful with the welding) and resmoothed the whole model. Then I exported the .simpe file with the Unimesh plugin, imported into my package, and it worked!

OK, now to go try my magnets and see if this all holds up... it should... stay tuned... :D

I was using a 2 group (body + fat morph) and when I got it back I still had a functioning fat morph.

Let me explain an important fact about the MODPHMOD groups versus regular groups. The MORPHMOD group doesn't need to have any bone assignments or UV coordinates, and any that are assigned are ignored. What is important is the faces, vertices and normals. The exporter goes vertex-by-vertex and compares the location and normal for each morphmod to the base mesh, and when they are at different locations, generates a "morph map" entry for that morph and builds tables of delta values (vertex and normal) for the rendering software. These tables must match the ordering of the vertices in the 'base' mesh (like "body"), and thus it is imperative that the morphmod meshes stay in synch with any changes made to the base mesh.

For a big custom job, if you were to make note of the exact name and group comments, you can delete the MORPHMOD and select and duplicate the base group, rename the new group to the prior MORPHMOD name and add the group comments (should be the Morph Names data) back in. Unlike the BodyChop plugins, I built UniMesh to not care about the specific group ordering, so using move up/down in groups should not be needed.

At this point you have a MORPHMOD that will be identical to the base mesh. You could then move vertices until it had the proper amount of fatness/pregnancy and then export. It would not hurt to import the bottom group to obtain the alignment for your top, and then delete the group when finished.

So, since you don't have to worry about losing bone assignments, exporting and reimporting the .obj groups for MORPHMODS should not present the same challenges as it does for a base mesh.

Taking this further, one pseudo procedure list might be:
1. Import and save original mesh.
2. Export each morph group as a .obj, noting group name and group comments and delete these saved MORPHMOD groups.
3. Save intermediate file for backup.
4. Use .obj/.objx split export with base group.
5. Tweak base mesh in Poser (or whatever).
6. Use .obj/.objx split import on base mesh.
7. Use .obj import on saved MORPHMOD groups. Rename imported groups to original names and comments.
8. Use UniMesh Exporter and SimPE to put new mesh into game.

The above steps should work, so long as the base mesh structure (face and vertex count and ordering) wasn't modified, i.e. vertexes moved but not added or deleted. Normals and UVs can be changed externally, if desired.

You would end up with an edited base mesh and unmodified morphs (unless you tweak them also).

If you want to definitively change the mesh, as you are doing, making a new set of MORPHMODS from the modified base mesh will likely be the easiest (rather than trying to synchronize edits on 2 or 3 different meshes). You can still import the original morphmod meshes and, together with hiding and unhiding groups, use them as guides for tweaking the new base mesh copy into shape. After that is done, simply delete the guide copies before exporting.

<* Wes *>

Hmph... well, it works, but differently from the Mesh Tool method... the old way somehow applied the adjustments made in the morph to the modified mesh, where this one uses the unmodified morph mesh exactly... so it looks like applying the magnets to the morph obj's will be required too. Not a problem really, just an extra couple steps. But it does work!

*edit* I just read your last post Wes... I think what I'll do is create another magnet set in Poser for the morphs, so I can keep it consistent... a single overall Fat morph worked really well for my last project, so I should be able to do the same in Poser for this one. Thanks again for all the help and explanation!

"My GOD!" he exclaimed. "What have I created?"

You're hot now.
You see two different approaches to solving the same problem. I never teamed with Delphy and Miche last year on the Mesh Tool, instead opting to follow my own approach. Both teams have benefitted from sharing the research into how the GMDC worked.

Since morphs are created from a table of delta values, the mesh tool can use the original table form the original mesh, so long as the vertex order remains unchanged, and thus your fat morph will start with the edited mesh.

My approach of using the table data to create a static model, and using the static model to recreate data tables at export does not share the automatic morph benefits the meshtool has. But you can create your own morphs, even if you are starting from scratch, and you can modify the base mesh so long as you make the same changes to the morphmod or create a morphmod from the base group. So my approach has more flexibility for heavily edited meshes, at the expense of more work getting it right. But the limitations of only moving vertices are gone as long as you are willing to take the time to make the morphs right.

Note I am not slamming their approach, it is quite good, in it's own way, and is far simpler for smaller edits. I just felt that limiting the editing to only moving vertices was too confining... but then I ended up creating a tool that is harder to get started with.

<* Wes *>

I would bet good money that you have some bone assignments remaining to one of the _hair bones. You probably need to walk through all the vertices in the groups with the bone tool to find and remove them, applying their weighting to real bones.

<* Wes *>

You must have missed my other post -

I had the same exact problem with a hair mesh. It is caused by underweighted vertices (ones that do not add up to exactly 100%)

These seem to cause severe problems with meshes that have "alpha" layered groups like hair does.

To fix is easy - first make sure to use "Unhide All" so all your mesh groups are visible. Then use the "Find Underweighted bones" tool to locate the problem vertices. On my mesh it was those few along the bottom of the neck, those same ones that caused all the problems with the old plugins.

Anyway, you just use the Unimesh Bone Tool to adjust them a little until each is 100% instead of 99% or 101%

Yes, this tiny adjustment of a few vertices will fix it.

===========

Question for Wes -

Would it be possible to add an "autofix" option to the Find Underweighted Bones tool?

In the case of my hair mesh it was no big deal, there were only about 6 underweighted vertices in the whole mesh.

But I have noticed in some body meshes there are nearly 200 underweighted vertices. It gets very tedious to manually edit all of them - maybe it wouldn't be too difficult to have the tool simply adjust the top vertex weight up or down by 1% to correct them? That's what I do by hand, and it doesn't seem to hurt anything.

Thank you very much! I'm going to look into that right now.
Autofix would be brilliant! I hope it will be possible in the future

*Edit* Thanks a bunch! It works!
I have uploaded it to www.noukiesims2.net in case you are interested

Thanks again, without your help I couldn't have made that ponytail

It has begun! :D

My Latest Project Preview

Thanks to Wes and Doc for all the help and advice, everything is working perfectly now, and the ideas are just tumbling out... such possiblities! Wes, you are a genius, and a true gentleman & scholar! :banana: :guitar:

FYI Wes, I was able to test the objx tool with UltimateUnwrap 3d this weekend and it worked great! Thank you very much!

Absolutely. They are floating point -> integer rounding errors. My benchmarks here indicated about 9% or so underweighting on the models I tested.

Personally, I think a small plugin tool would be more along the lines of what I would prefer to make, rather than just slap it into the importer software. I have a dislike of the idea of making the Sims 2 importer/exporter plugins pop up a configuration options panel every time that you want to import or export.

One thing that I think would be excepted would be vertices with 4 bone assignments, which naturally come out underweighted (because the underweighting represents the 4th bone weight). I dropped them from the Underweight Vertices locator tool... it has access to the bone assignments data as well as the weights, so making the exception is just a couple of extra lines of code.

I'll look into building one and post it here in a message for trial, then, if successful, include it in the next release. I was adjusting the lowest number, but adding it to the highest or the first weight will be easy. Thinking out loud, I should look for the highest value, and then pick the first if it's a tie, because I once noticed that while most body meshes had the highest weighting for the first bone assignment, that pattern was frequently broken in hair meshes.

<* Wes *>

Well, gee, thanks... [looks down and feigns modesty].

I am happy to have made something useful for you and all the other talented modders.

<* Wes *>

BTW, I am downloading your DD mesh right now... the screenshots look marvelous.

Again, by request, is another test version of a proposed addition to the UniMesh suite, a 'Fix Underweighted Bones' tool. It's purpose is to scan through all the vertices in all the base groups, and, unless a vertex has a 4th assignment or is already weighted at 100%, it will add the difference between the sum of the weights and 100 to the highest weighted bone, or first bone if a tie.

This is a blunt-force tool... it doesn't look at the selected state, just goes through the whole model. If you want a more careful approach, you need to do it manually.

I put this together pretty easily, because there are only a handful of lines of code difference between this and the underweighted bones selection tool... they both have to find the underweighted bones, this one fixes the condition instead of setting the selection flag bit.

This is an ALPHA release. If this tool is useful and works correctly without bad side effects (it seemed to work fine here), then it will be included with the next release of the UniMesh suite.

<* Wes *>

Wes, I know You have been busy but have You had a chance to look at my latest BoneTool crash report (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthre...675#post1033675)?

Wes, while we're doing weird little plugins, does one of the plugins show all vertexes that have a 4th bone weight? That would be valuable for folks who want to make sure meshes will work in all expansions.

wes/dr pixel,

i have a body mesh that dose this werid "bleeding" i guess you can say. i didn't think it could really be anything like this, but dr pixel you did say that this could happen to body meshes. well i went ahead and i tried out the plug-in and it came up with nothing, is there somthing that i could have done that didn't touch the bones yet comes out with simular effects?

Sorry, I missed that message. I must have read above and below it. I was wondering if you had been by to test it.



The format is written up in the Wiki here... look at the PageIndex and find AC4F8687 (the hex ID number for GMDC).



Odd. Here, there is room for 5 digits or more in the edit box. But then, I am running 1280x1024 screen resolution. But at 96 dpi, I'd think that it would be the same as any other screen resolution.

Do two digits really fill the box? What font size have you got set in Windows?
If large, can you try a small font size and see if it works with a small font?
I'd hate to go twisting the screen real estate around if that isn't the problem, because it takes a lot of tweaking to get everything straight looking.

If it is related to the edit boxes and the font size, I can try making the edit boxes a bit larger, but they are already significantly larger than the text here. I never saw conflicts like this in an edit box before. But Windows 98, while better than Windows 95, is not as stable as Windows XP. However, if you do a little more testing on the font size there, and I think I might be able to get you fixed up.

<* Wes *>

The show bone 4 plugin requires you to select the bone you want to see before running it. I can change the way it works, or make a new one that selects all vertices with a 4th selection.

I was anticipating the way it works now as having a use in hunting down all the vertices assigned in any way to a specific bone. I guess your point is to look for 4th assignments to help prepare a mesh for base game compatibility.

<* Wes *>

I think that I'd need to see what it looks like. I remember the issues with the moved bones and what that looks like, but I am not sure what you mean when you call it a "bleeding" effect.

<* Wes *>

Hey Wes, I just wanted to let you all know something REALLY cool I discovered with Poser... you can import .obj files as morphs, as long as the vertices match up. Kinda like the morph groups in Milkshape. Actually, EXACTLY like the morph groups in Milkshape :D

I was able to export each of my modified mesh groups from MS as .obj files, of course... top, Morph0 and Morph1. The cool part is, I can import the Top mesh into Poser to do my magnet work with... but I can also import the other two morph .objs as morph targets for the Top mesh! So I can make my alterations in Poser with magnets, spawn a morph target. Then I can apply that morph, along with the other morphs from the game, to get perfect versions of the different sizes! It's amazing! :D

I'm excited, can you tell? This just saved me a whole BUNCH of work!

OK, time for one more 'by request' plugin. This is the ALPHA version of Show All Bone 4 for the UniMesh plugin suite for MilkShape.

This plugin selects all the vertices in all the groups with a 4th bone assignment. It requires no special setup prior to use. During use, it unsets all the vertices selection flag (but not faces) and then sets the flag for a vertices that have a 4th bone selection. Since any MORPHMOD groups have no bone assignments, they will never have the selection flag set on any vertices.

To test it, you need to find some meshes with 4 assignments. So far, the only ones I have seen are in Nightlife. The efHairGypsy and afBodyHalterTop meshes both have some 4th assignments. But, afHairVampire and efHairHatCrumplebottom do not have any more than 3 bone assignments in them.

As with the other special plugins, if this is useful, it will become a part of the next UniMesh release.

<* Wes *>