Hi all,

being a sucker for that kind of hairstyle, I tried a conversion of SkySims' 179 S3 hair along this guide... http://grilledcheese-aspiration.tum...rsion-with-pics.

After quite some try+error I managed to get the mesh ported over and assigned a texture in MS, and S4CasTools shows I made good way. S4 in-game however, I get a strange look all over the body textures, no matter what clothes, skintones etc I use.

Any idea what I did wrong?

Thanks, Torsten

P.S.: If someone knows of a working conversion, feel free to tell me where to find it...

Do you have a screenshot of the "strange look all over the body textures"? I'm guessing this is due to wrong UV mapping, but with a picture that'd be easier to tell.

Sorry, something went wrong with the original upload to my post - attached it again. Here's also a better view.

The blocks and question marks probably mean something is wrong with a texture - check that they're all there and linked correctly and are the correct dimensions (each dimension must be a power of two: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, etc.).

dimensions are ok at 2048x1024 - ok, thanks for your input, guess I'll just re-do it from scratch in case it was some step on the way...

Okay, next try; got it more or less right this time, I still have no idea what I did different other than taking a longer S4 base hair as reference. At least it's a base to start with. Still a myriad of things to do: currently, its only bone assignment is to the head, so it's as flexible as concrete. Also some general work on the mesh itself required.

One question though - this mesh makes the textures a lot darker - the attached picture shows hair that should be almost orange! Did I assign too dark vertex colors? I took the standard S4 hair option (02080000) in S4 Cas tools. Or should I rather assign the glass shader than SimSkin, though it needs no alpha?

Cheers
Torsten

Vertex color affects morphs and part category selection when clicking the sim in CAS and has nothing to do with in-game color. Could be normals or a texturing problem maybe. If you want to upload the package I'll take a look.

Hi Cmar,

that's a very generous offer, thank you. File is attached.

Cheers
Torsten

The problem is there are no normals. You need to smooth the meshes, and if you're using Blender make sure you're exporting normals.

Tough luck... don't have enough blender experience. Could you tell in a few words, or can I correct this in Milkshape somehow?

If you're exporting from Blender in .obj format, when you click Export and select obj, you should get a list of export settings on the left side. Make sure 'Write Normals' is checked. You may have to do this every time - there's some way to change default settings, but I'm not a Blender person myself and don't remember how.

If you want to use Milkshape and CAS Tools, here's how:

In the CAS Tools Mesh Manager tab, under the list of meshes change the View to 'By Meshpart'. (This is because your mesh is too high-poly for Milkshape to load all three region/hat chop meshes at once.)
Export a meshpart to .ms3d.
In Milkshape, go to the Groups tab and Click 'Select' to select the entire mesh. (You could also use the Model tab and select all the faces but it's much slower because your mesh is so high-poly. Either way, you need to select the faces, not the vertices.)
In the Face menu, click 'Smooth All'.
Save.
Back in CAS Tools, Import the ms3d mesh back to the meshpart. (Since you used the same mesh for all the meshparts/hat chops, you can import the same modified ms3d to all the meshparts for each lod. Since you also used the same mesh for more than one lod you can import it for those lods too.) Don't forget to commit after each import.
The color should show up correctly in the previewer now.
Save or (to be safe) Save As.

I tried it briefly in CAS, pic attached.

I've also attached yet another WIP updated version of CAS Tools, with fixes done because your mesh made the ms3d export/import error out. :D

A bit of impertinent advice - reducing the polys would help prevent possible problems with slowness, (maybe) morphing, etc.

Regarding the blender export settings, for me they stick when I change something, until I close blender. One only needs to save them when one wants them to stick *between* sessions.

To solve normals issues in Milkshape, you may also want to check out Cat's Normal Smoother: http://modthesims.info/t/301473 -- I don't know whether you'd need it for this particular issue, this is just a general tip (because it's not in Downloads so people often don't see it).

Awesome, thanks, guys - I'll keep your advices in mind! The "lower" LODs are next on my list.

Torsten