Womrats - is this possible?

[sevenseasofrhye]

I want to create a womrat that resembles my favorite breed of guinea pig, the Abyssinian. :)

As the Abyssinian is covered in crests and ridges (click (http://www.meerschweinchen.de/cavia/abyssinian.jpg) to see one), I was wondering how would I go about doing that? Would I use a mesh? And is it actually possible? =)

Sorry if that was a bit noobish, I haven't created anything but clothing recolors yet. *blush* Thanks!

[Klinny]

It's possible to create a new mesh for it. (I actually just did something similar, I made an alien-womrat, it's on the feedback forum if you want to see haha..)

What you have to do is create a clone of both the womrat and the womrat cage using SimPE and create new GUIDs for them both, and there's two lines of BHAV code you have to edit in the cage to make it work. You can edit the womrat mesh to look like the Abyssinian ^-^

[ParsimoniousKate]

Can I ask, does the animal animate like the old one if you just change the mesh? Does the mesh need to be treated like a body mesh (i.e. use the unimesh to assign joints and export to replace the GMDC?)?

[Klinny]

The animal will perform the same animations as the old one, but you'll have to re-assign the old joints to the new mesh.

I don't know how UniMesh works, since I've never edited a body mesh, but I didn't have to use it to successfully create a new, working creature mesh. If you export the old mesh as a .txt file, (the option in the drop-down menu is called "Milkshape 3D ASCII Exporter") and import it into Milkshape, the previous joints will still be assigned with the mesh. You can edit the mesh with Milkshape and re-assign the joints, then export it as a .txt file again and import into SimPE.

Or you can create an entirely new mesh from scratch. If you have a mesh saved as an .obj file that you'd like to use, you can import it into Milkshape, (while the old womrat mesh is open), and simply delete the old mesh and re-assign the joints to the new mesh one-by-one. That's mainly if you want to use a program other than Milkshape to create the mesh, or if you already have the new mesh saved. As long as the joints have been assigned properly, the new creature will run about in the game just like the old one.

Just remember never to export the mesh as an .obj file, because that will dispose of all your joints, in which case the creature will not animate at all :)

[ParsimoniousKate]

Thanks Klinny, that's useful to know :)