NeptuneSuzy Teaches How To Make Sims 2 Body Meshes

This is a tutorial for making a basic clothing mesh. It's meant for the beginner who has never made a clothing mesh before. However, basic knowledge of BodyShop, Simpe and Milkshape are required.

My goal is to introduce you to Body Mesh Creation. How far you would like to go with it is up to you. I intend to show you the way that I alter a mesh, move vertices, etc. There are other tools and other ways to go about this. This is just one way and one set of tools. But I wanted to share with everyone the way I do it, so here it is!

Ok, Let's get started!

What do we want to make? Well, let's make a long gown with a slightly wider skirt and remove that lovely little thingy on the poor Simmie's back This way we will have a mesh that we can use to make some nice long dresses for our Simmies.

First we have to gather all our tools! You will need the following:

1) Simpe - http://sims.ambertation.de/

2) Milkshape (v. 1.7.7 or later) - http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/ms3d/download.html

3) WesH's Unimesh Plugin for Milkshape - http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=122399

4) Patience, and a dose of self-confidence! Oh, and a cup of tea, comfy chair, etc. wouldn't hurt either!

Ok, we've got all our tools and we're ready to start!

Here's a brief overview of the steps we will follow:

1) We'll make a temporary texture for our New Mesh.

2) We'll find out the Maxis name of the dress mesh we intend to alter

3) We'll gather the parts we need to build our New Mesh Package

4) We'll build our New Mesh package

5) We'll connect our Temporary Texture to our New Mesh

6) We'll extract our New Mesh using Simpe so that we can edit it!

7) We'll import our New Mesh to Milkshape and then edit it

8) We'll export our New Edited Mesh from Milkshape

9) We'll put our New Edited Mesh back into our package.

One more thing before we start, we'll need to make a Folder for our project, you can call it anything you want, I think I'll call mine "Dress Mesh" for now

Pictures will follow each step. Make sure to take advantage of the pictures, they help tremendously! And I spent almost a whole day taking them .... heehee!

*** Click on any picture to enlarge it. The pictures will open in new windows, so just close them to return to this tutorial ***

1) We'll make a temporary texture for our new mesh.

The first thing we need to do is to make a temporary texture for our new Mesh in BodyShop. In the end this is how we will be able to see our new mesh in BodyShop. I'm sure everyone knows this by now, but a body mesh can not be seen without a texture, so we are making this temporary Maxis texture for our mesh so that we can see it in BodyShop. This is simple. Just open BodyShop. Choose one of the long dresses with the thingy in the back and export. We'll name the file Temp_Texture_1 (You can name it anything you want; I chose this name for convenience) Then we'll write the same name in the thumbnail description. We're not going to do anything else with this now, so we can leave it as is and just import. (see pics below) Then close BodyShop! When we're done we'll come back and check this. If all goes well it should be in the shape of our new Mesh!

Step 1 is Finished!

2) We'll find out the Maxis name of the dress mesh we intend to edit

We need to know the name of the dress we are using so that we can find the proper mesh parts.

So, we open Simpe, go to File, Open and navigate to our "Saved Sims Folder", and open our BodyShop file that we just made...Temp_Texture_1

Now we click on "Property Set" in the left column. Then we click on "Property Set" in the right column. Under CPF Editor we look to see what the name(dtstring) of our dress is. In this case it's "afbodydresslongloose_sandfancy" We can ignore the "_sandfancy" part, that's just the color and irrelevant for what we are doing. Now we need to write down or to remember the name "afbodydresslongloose".

OK, now that we've got the name of the dress, let's go gather our mesh parts!

3) We'll gather the mesh parts we need to build our New Package

In Simpe we'll click File, New and we have a new clean Simpe screen

We need to collect 4 parts for our new mesh:

"Resource Node" (cres)

"Shape"

"Geometric Node" (gmnd)

"Geometric data Container" (gmdc)

Let's go get our "Resource Node" (cres)

In Simpe, go to File, Open and navigate to C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Sims3D\Sims06.package

Now we click on "Name Map" in the left column. Then we click on "Name Map" in the right column.

Now we look under "Plugin View" and scroll to the name of our dress that we copied down in step 2. Take note that there are 2 similar dress names, one says "afbodydresslongloose" and the other says "afbodydresslonglooselod15" We DO NOT want the one with the lod15! So we make sure we pick the right one. Click on "afbodydresslongloose"

Now we look on the right side under "Properties" and we see "Instance". We're going to copy and paste this instance #.

Copy the # and look in the upper right corner along the side, click where it says "Filter". Click on Filter and paste the instance number in it's appropriate place and click "set".

Now we go over to the left column and click "Resource Node" . Then we click on "Resource Node" in the right column. Now we right click on "Resource Node" in the right column and click "extract". We need to navigate back to the desktop to our project folder and "save"

Now we go back to the "Filter" box and delete the instance # that we had previously put in, and click "set". Important: Don't Forget This Step!

Now we'll go get our "Shape", "Geometric Node", and "Geometric Data Container"

We're going to go through exactly the same steps above for the next 3 Mesh parts. The only difference will be which .package we pick:

For the "Shape", we go to File, Open and navigate to C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Sims3D\Sims05.package

For the "Geometric Node", we go to File, Open and navigate to C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Sims3D\Sims04.package

For the "Geometric data Container", we will go to File, Open and navigate to C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Sims3D\Sims03.package

Then we follow the rest of the steps above for each of these mesh parts as we did for the Resorce Node.

Now let's see if everything's going as planned so far! Let's go look in our project folder "Dress Mesh". We should see 8 files. These are 2 files for each of the 4 mesh parts we just gathered. We will be using 4 of the these(one for each mesh part) in the next step.

If this is not what you have or there is some other problem, go back over the steps very carefully, there are many little mistakes that can be made, or steps that can be missed. But assuming everything is well so far we'll continue!

Unless you need a break, in that case go get yourself another cup of tea or a snack and then we'll get going!

4) Now, let's build our New Package

In Simpe we click File, New. We are going to right click in that large white feild on the right. Then Click "Add". Add all 4 mesh parts to this field.

Now we click File, Save As, and navigate to our downloads folder. We need to give our new Mesh a name. The convention is to name your clothing mesh in the following way:

MESH_your name or intitials etc_name of item with the date that you made the item.

I will name mine MESH_NSC_Dress051108, with 05 as the year, 11 as the month, and 08 as the day.

OK, we click save!

Now we go to the top tool bar and click "tools" - "object tools" - "fix integrity"

The Scenegraphic rename Wizard Window will pop up.

We are going to put the name of our new Mesh, in my case MESH_NSC_Dress051108 in the "Model Name" field.

then click "update" and "OK"

Now we click "save"

OK, we now have our New Package!

But, we need to do one more thing to prepare for the next step, we need to extract copies of our "Resource Node(cres)" and our "Shape" to our Project folder. We will name these"copiedcres" and "copiedshape". We don't want to confuse them with the originals!

We Right click on "Resource Node(cres)", then click "Extract", then navigate back to the desktop to our project folder, change the name to "copiedcres" and save. We need to do the same with the shape, naming it "copiedshape"

5) We'll connect our Temporary Texture to our New Mesh

In Simpe, we will click File, Open, and navigate to our "Saved Sims" folder, and open our Temp_Texture_1 file.

We are going to add the "copiedcres" and "copiedshape" from our projects folder. So we right click in the large feild and click add and add our "copiedcres", then we do the same for our "copiedshape".

Now we click "3D ID Referencing File (3IDR)" in the left field. Then we click it in the right field.

Now in the lower area, we click on "Package", a window will then pop-up. We can see a "resource node" and a "shape" in that window. Here's what we're going to do, we're going to drag that "resource node" and "shape" from the window to the lower left field in Simpe.

Then we can close that window, we no longer need it.

Now when we look in that lower left field, we see a "resource node" and a "shape" at the top. We don't want these anymore so we are going to delete them. For each one, click on it and hit "delete".

Now we need to move the "resource node" and "shape" from the bottom of the field to the top.

We click on "resource node" and use the "Up" button to move it to the top of the field. We do the same with the "Shape"

Make note that the "Resource Node" must always be at the top, above the "shape".

Now click "Commit"

Now we go back to that upper left field and click on "All Resources". We need to go to the right field and delete the "resource node" and "shape" that we put there a few minutes ago. Right click on each one and click "delete".

Now we click "save"!

We have just connected our temporary texture to our new mesh that we are making!

6) We'll extract our Mesh so that we can edit it!

In Simpe, we click File, Open, and navigate to our "Downloads" folder, and open our new Mesh file, in my case MESH_NSC_Dress051108.

Now we right click on "Geometric Data Container", click on "Extract" and navigate to our Project folder. Before we save, we are going to open a open a subfolder. Call it "Extracted GMDC". We open this folder and then save. The Geometric data container is the actual mesh that we will be altering.

We can minimize Simpe now, we won't need it for a while. We're on to Milkshape! (Unless we want that beloved cookie break first ... heehee!)

7) We're ready to edit our New Mesh!...... or ...... "Milkshape Here We Come!"

Ok, we're going to do some simple editing. We'll be removing that thingy from her back and widen her skirt.

You can do much more complicated editing, but this is not a Milkshape Tutorial. I'm just going to take you through a very simple mesh edit with me. Those who are not familiar with Milkshape must find another tutorial. I suggest the following:

http://www.josh.ch/joshch/tutorials/milkshape,welcome.html

I will add a few detailed instructions as I go along to help those just learning to use Milkshape, but it would be best to read the above tutorial to get some basic idea first.

We can now open Milkshape. Before we import our mesh using the Unimesh plugin, we need to go to the upper right corner and click on the Groups tab and make sure the "Autosmooth" box is NOT checked. Then, go to "File" , "Import" and click on "Sims2 Unimesh Importer" (this is Wes H's plugin)

Navigate to the folder that we named "Extracted GMDC"

At the bottom, type of file, we choose GMDC and open our GMDC file that we had extracted earlier.

We will get a little window that Says "display all blend groups?"....we click "Yes"

Let me explain what we're looking at. These are 3 different BodyGroups (sim body types) blended together, 1 regular, 1 unfit, 1 pregnant.

Now, we can add or remove vertices if we want, but when we're done we have to have the same amount of vertices in each group, or else we can't export our mesh. So since we want to remove the thingy from her back, we need to remove it from the backs of all 3 body groups so that the vertice count will remain the same.

So let's look at how we separate the bodygroups

In the top right, we click the "groups" tab. These are the three body groups:

"body" group is the regular dress

"BODYMOD1" is pregnant

"BODYMOD2" is unfit

If we look underneath this list of 3, we will see a button that says "Hide". When we highlight a body group we can click hide to hide it, clicking hide again will unhide it.

OK, let's remove the thingy off of the pregnant body group first. We highlight "body" and click "Hide", then we highlight "BODYMOD2" and click "Hide".

Now we have only "BODYMOD1" on our screen. We click and drag to select the vertices in the thingy and hit delete on the keyboard. Then we do the same thing with the vertices from the part of the thingy that attaches to her back. This is tricky and if we delete the wrong vertices she'll have a hole in her back, but not to worry we can just click edit and undo. And try until we get it right.

This is all the editing that we will do to the pregnant bodymod1. We'll just let her skirt remain regular.

Now we can look under Edit, and click "unhide all" and repeat the same procedure with "BODYMOD2" We hide body and bodymod1 and delete the thingy.

Again, we will not do anymore editing on this bodygroup2.

Ok, now we remove the thingy on the regular body just as we did above. Once her thingy is gone, we can move on to making her skirt wider.

First we need to go to the top right of the screen and click the "Model" tab. Then click "select". Then we will click and drag around the vertices that we want to move. Once they are highlighted in red we click the "Move" button and use our mouse to drag them where we want them.

And we do this about 5,000 more times until we're happy with the way her skirt looks! LOL!

Play around and have fun with it, you can make her skirt any shape you want!

You can add and remove vertices if you want, but remember that all bodygroups must have the same amount of vertices in the end.

You'll get the feel for it. And if this is your first time using Milkshape I have to say again that it's best to read that tutorial above.

8) Now, we'll export our New Mesh from Milkshape

There are a couple of things that we always need to do before we can export our Mesh from Milkshape.

First, we have to move her neck up just a tiny bit so that there won't be a gap between her neck and her head. The gap occurs even though we didn't edit the neck. It's just a side effect from moving the mesh in and out of Milkshape, so it always has to be done

We click and drag around the edge of her neck to highlight the vertices in red and pull it up just a tiny bit.

Second, we need to fix any underweighted bone assignments.

Go to the top and click "Vertex". Then click "Sims 2 Unimesh Fix Underweighted Bones".

If there are underweighted bones, you will get a popup telling you they have been fixed. Click OK.

OK, we're ready to export:

Now click "File", "Export", "Sims2 Unimesh Exporter".

We need to name our new mesh file. In this case, I will name mine MESH-NSC-Dress051108 and hit save. You will name yours whatever you decided to name your Package.

Make sure it's being saved in the Extracted GMDC folder. This is so that we can keep everything organized.

OK, we have our new mesh ready to go!

9) Let's Get our New Mesh into our Package.

OK back to Simpe!

In the field on the right we are going to right click on the "geometric data container" then click "replace" and replace it with the new mesh that we just made.

A little window will pop-up telling you that the resource has changed..............click yes

Now we go to the top toolbar and click Tools > Object Tools > Fix Integrity.

The Scenegraphic rename Wizard Window will pop up. This time we will not be entering anything in the Model Name field. We'll just click OK.

Now we click Save.

One last point. We will find our new mesh in our Downloads folder. Along with our new mesh, we will see a file with the same name but with the extension .bak. This file is unnecessary and we can delete it.

And we're Done!

10) Let's look at our new Mesh in BodyShop!

Now all we have to do is check it out in BodyShop and be sure it looks the way we want it to look! Then we can make textures to shop off our new mesh!

Yay! You Did It! Congratulations on your first body Mesh!

I hope I was able to get you started at Clothing Mesh creation!

Now go play around and have fun with it!

And don't forget to show us what you made!

Suzy

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