This tutorial is outdated, the latest tutorial using Unimesh is found here




THIS IS AN ADVANCED TUTORIAL

It assumes you know how to do all the steps involved in making a new sims body mesh and editing it.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE UNIMESH TUTORIAL AND LEARN BASICS


(even once you've done the Unimesh tutorial, you'll need to learn about bone assignments, but it will get you started.)

This tutorial primiarly covers the DIFFERENCES between editing a body mesh and editing hair meshes.

It is outdated, because the old Wes plugins have been replaced - the new Unimesh plugin is here . There is also a MANUAL for Unimesh, and the Unimesh thread discusses some of the details regarding the bone assignment changes necessary for hair meshes created with it. Unimesh is new and it takes a long time to write thorough tutorials, so this tutorial will remain up until a new one is completed.

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Everyone's Been asking how we make ours work so we decided that it to hard to explain so we wrote it down as we made one Hope this helps everyone willing to learn it Oh we're really new at this forum stuff we don't know how to use all the feature yet like link providing but it won't take us long I hope
If you like edit this post and provide the links please this will help everyone out
Sanmoo

SanMoo's Hair Mesh Tutorial Wednesday, July 06, 2005

What You Need
1. SimPE Version 0.38 ( We had problems with later versions )
2. A Copy Of WDSBriAnna's Mesh Tutorial
3. Milkshape 1.74 ( Newer or earlier)
4. Wes H's 2.16 plugin

Now To The Steps

Step One
Follow Tutorial
Follow BriAnna's Tutorial until You get to step number 18. Replacing the words for clothing with hair.

Step 2.
Open Package
Open your package file you made in Bodyshop ( Which would be the file you extracted )
located in your saved sims folder. Cut and Paste your downloads folder somewhere
else on your computer for easier bodyshop opening.( Just Remember where you put it )

Step 3.
Finding The Order
Click Down To Property Set , Plug-in view and view each individual file until you find the name of the hair
With starts with af,mf,tf,tm,cf,cm,cu, pf,pm or pu ( it depends on which one you want to play with)
and remember with order they are in.

Step 4.
Replacing Nodes
Click on the dotted lines you will see all the files over on your right
Left click and press add
Click your modified resource and shape node and add them to the list.
Then go to 3d ID Referencing File.
On the list to the side click the files
of the ones you found in step 3.
Click on the file for your hair their will be three ( two if you don't have University) files you have to fix a Adult,Young Adult and a Elder
If your creating a teen,child or toddler Hair Their will be 1 File you have to fix.( For Each Age)
Click The Package button right next to the File Properties.
Scroll down the list till you find the Resource Node.
Drag the file to the list of files.
Do the same for the Shape Node
Delete the very first Resource and Shape Node at the top of the list.
Drag the Resource node from the bottom of the list to the very top. Then click commit
Then drag the Shape Node right under the Resource Node and click commit
Go back to the dotted lines scroll down to the list on the right and delete the Resource and Shape Node
you added.
Click File and Save

Step 5.
The Mesh
Open up your mesh file that you saved (Should be In Your Saved Sims Folder)
Click on the Geometric Data Container
Then click on the file to your right (Copy the filename )
Go up to the Geometric Data Container on the right side
Left click and extract it and paste the filename you copied over the name of the file
save it into your documents.
Open up your mesh in milkshape using Wes_H's 2.16 plugin
edit your mesh anyway you want to.
add it to the joints
Click the neck and pull down the vertices its better to view the model from the back view
So you can move the neck piece straight down ( If you move the neck in it looks weird)
Don't move it down to much just a tad.
When adding more layers to hairs don't forget
to rename the duplicated layer just rename it the same as the file you duplicated.
export your file file using Wes_H's plugin and save it as another name.
This is just incase you mess up and need the file back.

Step 6.
Replacing File
Open up SimPE then your mesh file whatever you named it
Click Geometric Data Container Select the filename highlight and copy the name.
Go back to the Geometric Data Container file and replace it
with the file you made in Milkshape.
After you replace it Highlight filename and paste the name you copied.
click commit now save your file.

Step 7.
Open Up BodyShop
And Check Your File
If correct your new hair mesh will show up correctly
Then close bodyshop and check it in you game
to see if the animation are to your liking if not
close the game and go back to milkshape and reassign
different joints. Follow steps 5 through 7 until you like it.

Step 8.
Your Done
That's how we do it.

Thanks Sanmoo. I appreciate all your help. I love your meshes by the way.

thank you now go become great ok We know you can

Thanks so much for this tutorial! I've been looking everywhere for one! I really appreciate it

You might want to move this into the tutorial section...

Here's some very helpful links for hair meshing.

http://forums.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=43092 (BriAnna’s tutorial)
http://forums.thesimsresource.com/s...ad.php?t=278680 (Big Bad Shar hair meshing tutorial)
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=68472 (Dr Pixel's Hair animation help)
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=74817 (Pinhead's Transparent edges help)



http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/ (Milkshape)
http://sims.ambertation.de/ (SimPE)
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=43503 (Wes_h's Plugin/[gmdc importer])

This is how I learned

(This should belong in the tutorials forum)

holy cow how informative! Thank you SOO much you guys!!

I am sorry for this hard work to place this tutorial (It's a quite long story, I guess), But can you place some pics? I am not so good at English so can you? If not, well, then it doesn't matter anymore for me ! :D

thanks for the tutorial I forgot to say sorry!

dumb me!

steps 5-6 confused me...

It simply isn't working for me... I can not understand why. I thought I followed the tutorial perfectly, but my model changes wont show up and it can be because of almost anything. I've tried in so many ways now, I'm about to give up. But thanks for writing the tutorial anyways

:kami: hi

i give up on meshing its just so hard i mean every one makes these tutorials but they just aint detailed enough they are not very understandable most things in the tutorials i have been to dont explain things as good as it's mean to be concidering it's a tutorial... i wonder if any one could film it being done that would really help because this tutorials are twisted

emmm i am still trying to understand lol XD, i made a spiky hair mesh from the short hair gel mesh black for adult, male but i just don't get how to put it back in ,

can u help me? ^^

i have had a problem too
at 1st, my mesh replaces the original, now it doesnt, but my mesh just isnt showing up! (the origial 1 is)
i have meshed many sucessful clothes&objects that work, so i dunno why this dont work

i'm wondering when someone is going to answer the questions about this tutorial. why post a tutorial if you're not going to tutor people. And if this comes of rude, sorry, but i'm really frustrated with the lack of help here....grrr lol see

Am I the only one who is confused about following brianna's tutorial until step 18? 'Cause I don't know what to choose, cause the files have totally different names, and there are a lot of stuff that wasn't there in brianna's tutorial, especially since the tutorial was about a special gown. I don't get how to work the hair in the exact same way as the gown 'til step 18.. can someone help me?

ive used wdsbriannas tut to make clothes before and have even changed parts such as using wes plugins for milkshape rather than exporting as an obj file and importing with the meshtool and all that. worked well every time. but now im trying to do hair meshes and my milkshape trial has run out. everything ive read (snazza, sanmoo, shar, etc) all say to use wess plugins and milkshape so i cant do that. i tried it using the export to obj and import using the meshtool method and it doesnt seem to work for hair. how can i make hair meshes without using milkshape? PLEASE! thank you.

I ended up paying the $25 for Milkshape... but I use it for more than Sims2 modding, so it was definately worth it.

My advice... buy yourself a key for Milkshape3D.


On the editing front... I'm having all kinds of problems with these tutorials... Not necessarily this one, or WDSBrianna's either... but with the combination of the two.

I've restarted several times, and followed the tutorials verbose every time. My mesh ends up in body shop, but only on the Elder version of the sim... the adult, and young adult, (which all use the same resources for the am_hairmessy_black resource which I based my mod from) do not have the new mesh added to the hair I have modified. So far I haven't been able to get an answer, heck, I haven't even gotten a response on the thread I'm posting on from anyone yet. I'd love to figure this out, and possibly re-write these tutorials. Having a tutorial point to another tutorial written by someone else for modifying some other aspect of TS2 is kind of a hassle. I have 3 tabs open in FireFox just to run through this tutorial, because 3 different people have written tutorials on the subject and 2 point back to WDSBrianna's clothing tutorial with "follow step X-YZ" in their own. It's just time consuming, and not all that helpful... :shrug:

It'd be nice if one of the pro modders could take a look into this for us. I know I'd definately appreciate it greatly...

- Coffee

Thank you for the tutorial, but where is the "namemap" in Simpe?

annaa, this tutorial was made a while ago with the old SimPe, so we don't have it on the new one. I wish someone would make it with the new one!
And coffeehedake, well said! I couldn't agree with u more; someone should look into them and help us!

For the NameMap, load up SimPE with 'Classic GUI' mode on (it has a seperate shortcut on your start menu for classic GUI).

It will display all the data organized in the way it used to be before the XP style change was made to SimPE's GUI.

Hope this helps a bit.

- Coffee

thanks. the idea though is that i cannot afford to buy milkshape right now and all i need it for is to do hair meshes so paying for it wouldnt be practical anyway. i could do body, clothes and object meshes with other programs. im sure there is a way to do it using the .obj or.smd format, its just a matter of specifics. btw, all the tuts out now are still 100% compatible with the new simpe, just the gui is a bit more difficult to navigate and the newest version also has the classic gui so its not really an issue anyway.

How do I find Brianna's tutorial? I did a search for "tutorial" in the WDS search box but it didn't find anything

Tsk tsk... seems most unlike you not to read threads Inge! The link is already in Revoye's post, need to scroll up a bit teehee

But.... like other things from a while ago... it's a bit out of date now.. and isn't really compatible with the latest SimPE version...