I'll have to get the files from my home computer. It will be a day before I can get it loaded here.

I can tell you that I am pretty sure that I had everything checked as you state above, because I followed along with the .9.46 thread open. I remember checking the body editing box and the Using XSI Mod Tool box, and I also exported from XSI with the third box unchecked, because I noticed there were 'unused' bones, and I didn't want to change anything with the bones.

But I also had the first and second boxes unchecked in XSI when I exported if that matters.

I was going to try simply re-importing the unedited .smd back into the gmdc and see if that worked. If it doesn't , then can I assume that there is a problem with the gmdc or base package into which it has been replaced?

Thanks Miche,

Is there any tool that can automatically change the shape of a mesh based on another existing mesh in the same scene so that both meshes are identical (given that their no. of vertices are the same and they have similar shape originally and I can't just duplicate it )?

Mabelline, there might be an add-on that does something like this. I'll check.

Miche, I just saw in the Mesh Tool .9.46 thread that the first two options in XSI .smd export should be checked, so I will also try that.

Thx!
Only 1 question,
1.The question is in the picture.

Mabelline, Regarding transferring edits of one mesh to another:

Shrinkwrap can be used to make one mesh conform to the shape of another. This would work fine on a mesh that you want to totally conform to a target mesh.

I THINK you could also use a weight map to paint in the areas in which you want Shrinkwrap to be active. I'll have to test this. This would allow you to make a dress mesh conform to a body mesh where you want the blouse and hips of the dress mesh to match the body mesh exactly, but you want the lower skirt to remain unchanged.

Regarding merging two meshes:

First Merge the meshes so the two become part of the same object. If there are points that are very close together on the two meshes, the step could weld those together automatically for you. I'll assume that none of the points are co-incident. For example, you have a head and a body, but the neck has a different mesh resolution than the head. Position the head where you would want it and then Merge the two 'objects' into one. Now, select the new merged object and press 'T' to go into point mode. Press 'M' to go into Move Point mode. Hold down 'ALT' and drag a point on the neck to a point on the head, and the point will snap to the target point. When you release the mouse, the points will be merged into one. Continue this until all matching points have been merged. In this example, you will still have one or more points un-merged due to different mesh resolutions. Now you will need to add points, and maybe some new faces/edges to the mesh. Then you can finish merging points on the head to points on the body. The other alternative is to edit out (delete) the extra points on the high resolution mesh.

In your example picture, you could either delete the extra point on the lower mesh, and you would end up with all triangles, or you could add a point and an edge to the upper mesh, and you would end up with all triangles.

Thx a lot!
I may have questions later.

I tried to learn applying textures to meshes myself. I found that it is very hard for me to understand tutorials totally. Maybe it is because english is not my mother language. Usually the mesh has no material originally in every tutorial I read while this is not the case in modding. Also I see something different from the tutorials I read.
What are the major differences between most tutorials about rendering and modding?(eg. settings in those editors)After I select get>texture>image, an editor pop up. There are options like - 'enable' & 'use alpha' under 'bump mapping'.What is bump mapping? Which options should be chosen?
Can you pinpoint something about rendering that needs to be paid attention in our cases?
Even I read the tutorial very carefully and the tutorial mention what 'texture projection and support' are in a rather detailed way, I am not sure what they are.
Did I think too much? Should I just follow every step of the tutorial eventhough I see something weird?

Miche,

I got the mesh to import with one 'small' problem remaining...

What I did was install SimPE .23 and re-export from XSI with the first two options checked. I had exported originally with no options checked.

The attached picture shows the new mesh in Bodyshop. This was a test, so I exaggerated certain body parts. If this mesh looks good, then I know less extreme edits should also look good. It looks and behaves very well except that the arms and hands are not smoothed by the game renderer. They are blocky. The picture shows this somewhat.

This is the final hurdle... I tested this mesh pretty well in-game, and it looks great in all the animations I've seen so far, the only problem being the unsmoothed arms and hands.

I have the various files if you want to look at them, including the original .smd, edited.smd, original gmdc, edited gmdc, and the final mesh & dress packages.

Thanks,

Mabelline,

It's actually pretty simple in our case if we are using .smd files exported from Mesh Tool .9.46, since the material is already setup, and the UV mapping (texture support) is already in place. No need to worry about setting anything up from scratch.

http://forums.modthesims2.com/attac...tid=40908&stc=1

In the picture above, I have simply imported an .smd file from the game (previously edited).

To see the current texture, set a viewport to display Textured or Textured Decal. You may need to rotate the camera & the scene light to get the light on the model the way you want.

The default texture is a built-in texture in XSI that will show up if you don't have a texture (i.e. XSI doesn't know where the right texture is yet).

You can change this texture by editing the material definition in Rendertree. If you click on the purple button in viewport 'C' and select Rendertree from the pop-up menu, you should get the Rendertree screen across the bottom, but it probably won't have the correct material displayed yet. You need to select the mesh object (the dress), and then hit the 'refresh' button in the Rendertree panel. The refresh button is the button with two arrows just to the right of the Lock button. Then you should see something almost exactly like the picture above. If you now double-click on the Image node, which is the box that says 'Image' in the Rendertree, you will get the Material:Image property editor as shown in the picture above. This is where we can change what image is being used as a texture. You can see in the Rendertree that the noIcon_pic is being fed into the Image node. In the property editor, press the 'new' button to the right of the image. (It is in the top-right of the 'Image' panel) Then select 'New from file'. Browse to the texture of the dress and press OK. The image of the dress should now be displayed on the model.

http://forums.modthesims2.com/attac...tid=40909&stc=1

The picture above shows the texture rendered on-screen with the Quick Render tool.

Thank you! You are my hero!:D
After this, my first mesh edited with XSI is almost done!
Btw, I might face other challenges in the future.
Again, thank you so much!

Now I want to remap a mesh. Have you ever read the tutorial provided by softimage about applying a Texture to Dr. Bunsen’s Head (something like that:see attachment)? Is it relevant to remapping? Is there any tool that can automatically remap a mesh? Many body meshes have several textures-usually 2 base textures & a normal map. Do I have to apply them 1 by 1?

Can you show the mesh you want to remap, or tell me why you want to remap it?

The only reason I can think of is, 1) you created an entirely new mesh, or 2) you added significant detail in terms of new points and polygons.

In the case of '2', you may not need to re-map from scratch. You probably just need to clean up the current UV map. Use the picture above as an example. Say that the original model did not have an ear, and you added it to your mesh. Now you would only need to tweak the points around a little, or worse case, extract part of the ear and move it over to another region of the UV map. For the Sims2, that would probably be overkill. Tweak the points around, and then redo the texture for the ear area in Photoshop.

If I took the model from my post above, and added fairy wings, those wings would be new polys. Because I added them to a mesh that already has a UV map, the added points are added to the UV map layout and are visible in the texture editor, but they will be co-incident (interfering) with other parts of the mesh, and therefore will not texture correctly. What I would need to do is select each wing and cut it from the rest of the mesh in the Texture editor, and then lay each one out flat somewhere in an open area of the UV map. Actually, since they are a mirror of each other, you could lay one out, and then snap the points of the other one to the points of the first one. Then you only need to texture one wing, and both would get the same texture, plus they could have a higher detail, because you could enlarge one wing to take up more of the available texture space.

I'm thinking I would like to try to do this. If I do, and it works, I'll make an XSI tutorial.

Show me or tell me how you have edited your mesh.

Mabelline,

To answer some of your questions in your last posts, the Dr. Bunsen tutorial is one of the tutorials you would read for this type of operation.

In XSI, I believe the Texture Support is your overall UV map. A texture projection is how a 2D texture is projected onto a 3D shape. So a UV mapping could simply be a spherical projection. However, in XSI, it can be made up of many projections. So I could do a cylindrical projection around each arm and leg (4 total) and a spherical projection around the head, and so on. That would give me a much better 'starting point' than a simple cylindrical projection around my entire mesh. Once you have all of these projections, however, you will want to clean them up , because something as complex as a human body can not just be translated to 2D with a simple process. So the projections are just your starting point. Then you will use the Texture Editor in XSI to finish your UV map. It is called Texture Editor, but it doesn't actually edit your texture (yet). It is used to map the texture to the model.

When we import an .smd exported from a GMDC by Mesh Tool into XSI, and we open the Texture Editor, we are looking at a UV map that was created by someone at Maxis. If we are only editing a dress mesh so that a hem is shorter, for example, we may not need to touch the UV map. It depends on how we tweaked the mesh, and how much it was tweaked. If points are moved on the mesh, but not in Texture Editor, then the texture may be stretched or compressed in the area we edited. It depends also on how the Texture Editor automatically handles the edits. For example, if I add density to the mesh by adding a row of points, the new points are added to the mesh as it is displayed in Texture Editor, but they and the points around them will probably need to be moved around a bit.

This is where you would want to display the actual texture on the model in one of the viewports so that you can see the effects of your editing in realtime. As you tweak the points in Texture Editor, the texture displayed on the model will become less distorted (hopefully). You can also display an existing texture in the background of the Texture Editor so that you can line up points over that texture.

In some cases, we want to add significant detail to the mesh. This will probably require more than tweaking points. The more the mesh is changed, the more likely we will need to make a drastic change to the mapping.

For example, assume an original model was very low-poly, and only had a slight bulge at the ear, and most of the 'detail' was in the texture. If a high-poly ear mesh was added to the side of the head, the entire ear mesh would probably need to be separated from the head in the Texture Editor, tweaked until it is all one flat, stretched-out mesh, and moved to some open spot on the texture. Then that area of the texture would need to be changed to have skin-coloring and probably some fake shading added (for example, the ear-hole would need to be painted in).

In the case of adding fairy wings, I could use a planar texture projection on just the wings so that they are automatically laid out flat in the Texture Editor, and then I can reposition them to an open area of the texture. The mesh is complete and has a good UV map, and it can be imported back into the game. However, I will still need to edit a lot of bitmaps to add a fairy wing coloring to the Sims 2 skins.

I want to remap it because the end of the dress is elongated. If there is no change in the texture, it would look weird. Also, I want to add something to other meshes in the future.Although I can follow the tutorial I mentioned to remap it, it is rather cumbersome. Thank you for telling me another good method to remap it!
Btw,here is my mesh and a new question in the picture: http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y3...eNY/Mydress.jpg

Mabelline,

In another thread, I said:


This is generally true, but I did a test on the 'AboveKnee' mesh that you had shown in one of your posts. I copied the ring of polys at the hem of the dress by selecting them in poly-edit mode ('U'), and selecting Duplicate from the Modify:Polymesh menu. This will create duplicate polys that are unconnected to the dress. Their outer edges will be blue because they are boundaries. The cool thing is that all the new points have the same exact bone weighting of the original points, and the other cool thing is that both rings of points have the same weightings, so no edits are required to the weights! With the new ring of polys selected, press & hold 'V' to turn on Translate mode and drag the ring down so that it is now aligned to the bottom of the hem. You will possibly need to press the 'Global' and 'COG' (center of geometry) buttons in the Transform menu on the right. Then the red-blue-green thing pops up and you can drag on the Y-axis to bring the ring of polys down. Turn on 'Snap' and the point filter in the Snap menu to the right. Then use 'M' to turn on point-move mode and drag each point in the top ring of points to the corresponding point at the bottom of the hem. The points should snap to the points you move over, but they will not merge.

Once that is done, you can tweak the points in the bottom of the ring of polys to create a more frilly hem.

I had said that you could use the alpha map to mask, but I don't think this is going to work for this. The base skin texture will be revealed if you use the Alpha mask to make the fills have curvy ends. You will have to model the curvy-ness in the mesh.

Once you have created the new ring of polys, you need to use the XSI Texture editor to move the position of just those polys to an open area of the texture map. In Texture editor, you can use 'C' to rotate and 'V' to move any selected polys around. Moving them in Texture Editor changes their UV mapping. In the 3D viewport, select the entire mesh in poly-edit mode (U). Then in Texture Editor, press the circular arrow button. This will update the view in the Texture Editor. Now you can see how the entire mesh is mapped onto the texture. You may need to load your texture, or else you will only see the default multi-color texture provided by XSI. You want to move and probably rotate the new polygons until they are in an unused area. There is a menu command for exporting a picture of the UV map with the mesh overlaying the texture. You will probably want to export this. You are now done. Save the file and export the mesh.

Open up the base texture and the alpha map in an image editor like Photoshop. You can also open up the picture of your UV Map. It can be used in a second layer to help you line up your texture editing. By setting the blending options on that layer, it can be made semi-transparent, and then you can add a frill texture to the exact place that it needs to go on both the base texture and on the alpha mask. However, on the alpha mask, you probably don't want to put down a 'frill texture'. You actually want to change the area where the frill is from black to white. White is an area where the base texture will be fully visible, and black is an area where the base texture will be fully invisible, exposing the underlying Skin texture.

Thank you, Jay. :D
Have you succeeded in fixing the problem of your skin mesh or importing multiple smd to a gmdc? If you have succeeded, plz let me know.

If I create an object having faces that are not triangle, how can I convert these faces into triangles except adding and spliting edges(I want to do it in a second)?

Maybe I got the answer now. It should be modify poly. mesh > triangulate.

I want to model a sofa so I started by modeling a rectangular block in xsi. Even if it is extremely simple for many of you, I still got problems. I started by draw a square on a 2d view and then extrude it along axis. A open rectangular box with 5 faces is formed.Here are my questions:

1.When I edit an object , somehow the space in the camera view is distorted. I can't change it back to normal.How can I do it? Why is the space distorted?

http://www.modthesims2.com/attachme...tid=43259&stc=1


2.I added a face ( by the add/edit polygon tool )to cover the box so that the rectangle end up with 6 faces. Then I weld the edges at the added face to close the box but finally the edges of the added square are green in color. Why are they green?Have they really weld together?If they haven't, why are they still not weld after I use the weld boundary edges tool?

http://www.modthesims2.com/attachme...tid=43260&stc=1


3.I know my way of covering the box is rather clumsy but I tried to fiddle around and this is the only way I can think of at the moment. Is there any other idea to cover the box?

4.Sometimes when I use the add/edit polygon tool to create a face in 2d view, I expect the vertices added are on the same plane but I find them they are not actually when I rotate the space in camera view. How can I make these vertices on the same plane?

Thx!

Sorry, finally I got it by simply pressing get primitive >poly. mesh> cube. lol
Plz forgive me for asking this kind of stupid question as I have started by only editing vertices of existing models and I haven't create a new object in XSI before. Hope you guys understand.
I do have read modeling tutorials but they are much more complex than this one.(eg modeling a gun) Maybe I should read more tutorials for beginners.

Hi Mabelline,

No additional progress. It sounds like you have figured out your problem. The simplest way to make a couch is to start with the poly cube primitive. Then you can scale it, extrude faces, split and then extrude, and bevel faces to get what you want.

P.S. And after modeling is complete, you will need to triangulate the mesh, as you have already figured out.

Thx!
I should have not skipped basic tutorials before reading tutorials at higher level. If only I read basic tutorials first, I would not ask this kind of questions. They are way too fundermental. Now I am really ashamed of myself.lol

The other day when my 30 day trial on MS ran out on me, I once again tried XSI mod tool...with all of the time I put into MS I was able to quickly edit a mesh in XSI and then exported the smd back out...But when I imported it back into the game, the skin would not show the change I made, only the original mesh...I couldn't remember if I had successfully done this before or not, so I thought I would double check, some of you are successful at importing SMD files from XSI back into the game right? Maybe I just need to go back over the importing tutorial and make sure I didn't screw something up...



Edit: Forgot...I was thinking of trying to resassign some of the vertices to other bones...I'm using the mod tool...how much do the bones make the vertices move? And what directions? I'm not sure I am explaining myself very well here...So I apologize if it is confusing!

It's doable, grykon. Are you using the .9.46 Mesh tool tutorial to get the .smd back into the game? It is a little tricky. I still haven't memorized all the steps.

The vertices will be moved according to how much the bone moves in-game, and how strongly it is weighted to a given bone. If it is strongly weighted to a non-moving bone, then it will barely move in-game. Also it's spatial relationship to the base of the bone is important. If it is close to the base, a big bone rotation will barely move the vertex. If it is far away from the base of the bone, then a small rotation of the bone could mean a large movement for the point.

I'm using the XSI mod tool & have successfuly modified a dress & got it to show up in Body Shop, however, the problem I am having is that the arms are "blocky" What I mean is they are squared off rather than smoothed like the head & on a strapless dress it looks really awful :/ I saw in an earlier post that someone else had this same problem but I didn't see a solution. Did I miss something or is this one of the things we'll have to live with of we use XSI Mod Tool?

If so, does Milkshape give better results? I hesitated to use it because of the 1 bone limitation - but - how important is that as far as the clothing goes? My guess is that it's fairly important

Is there a better alternative? I downloaded & tried Blender but I just can't get through the interface. Any suggestions that don't cost a small fortune?