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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 14th Dec 2017 at 10:24 PM
Default Issues with texturing Custom Food meshes in Milkshape.
Hello, back again with more questions!

I am making my first attempt at Custom Foods. I have read the tutorials by AriesFlare, here and the one by pacotaplayer, here. I've followed all of the steps so far:

1. Extracted the base food from SimPE 2. used the extracted food meshes as a base to build my own new meshes
3. Import the new meshes into SimPE and copy/paste the comments and group names.

Everything works perfectly until I come to the "Serve" meshes which is one of the ones with a morph state. So from what I understand, I need to have identical vertices counts across all of the required meshes for that phase (full, half-eaten, empty) or I will have horrible distortion when I export it as a Unimesh. In its "full" state it's very simple:



My issues start when I have to texture the food in its half-eaten state and want to make the inside of the food a different texture from the outside.



According to the tutorial by pacotaplayer, I need to select the faces that make up the inside of the dish and move them to the desired location on the UVW Map using the Texture Coordinate Editor in Milkshape:



So I check my vertices count before doing any mapping and I am totally on point across all three of my groups:



When I go into the texture Coordinate Editor and move the selected faces up to the right hand corner which is where the inside of the food will eventually be, however:



It looks correct in the shaded viewport, but the vertices count has changed:



So when I export it as a Unimesh and then re-import it to test whether it has worked, it's always a distorted mess. I'll spare you the distorted mess pics
I'm at my wit's end and have been beating my head against a wall for several weeks now. I am a newbie to Milkshape and generally try to avoid using it because I am just more comfortable with 3DS Max, but is there something major that I am missing? Is there a plugin that I should have that solves these kinds of issues? I've tried doing this with berries, without berries...I don't know what else to try. Any help would be so very appreciated, and I can post more details if needed. Thank you in advance!
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 16th Dec 2017 at 1:45 AM
If it's a mesh with a morph, you not only need the same vertex count, but you also need the vertices to be in the relative spot to the "master vertex" it's meant to be paired with. If it's not, the morph may explode, because it thinks the vertices are supposed to be in another spot. Vertices are numbered from 1 and up, and they keep their number while you mess about with it - but if you delete a face or vertex, the vertices will usually re-number. If you cut a section of a mesh, even if you keep that section, you usually double the amount of vertices in the seam where the edges are, and they don't keep their original vertex number.

I'm not sure if you can remap the morph, but I have some doubts.

Most of the food meshes seem to have extra bits and pieces for this reason. The extra bits can be hidden in the main mesh.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#3 Old 16th Dec 2017 at 2:13 AM Last edited by Mortia : 16th Dec 2017 at 2:28 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
If it's a mesh with a morph, you not only need the same vertex count, but you also need the vertices to be in the relative spot to the "master vertex" it's meant to be paired with. If it's not, the morph may explode, because it thinks the vertices are supposed to be in another spot. Vertices are numbered from 1 and up, and they keep their number while you mess about with it - but if you delete a face or vertex, the vertices will usually re-number. If you cut a section of a mesh, even if you keep that section, you usually double the amount of vertices in the seam where the edges are, and they don't keep their original vertex number.

I'm not sure if you can remap the morph, but I have some doubts.

Most of the food meshes seem to have extra bits and pieces for this reason. The extra bits can be hidden in the main mesh.


Hmm, that's interesting, how does one determine what the "master vertex" is? is it just always going to be the first one?

In regards to cutting or deleting parts of the mesh, I made sure not to do anything like that and just made a copy of the original "full" dish, then moved the vertices inwards a bit to make it look like a slice had been removed. I'm now assuming that moving those interior faces on the "half-eaten" morph while attempting to remap the inside is causing the verts to break and double. Which is frustrating. I'm wondering how I can do this particular dish using clever bits and pieces and am not sure if it's possible...sigh. Here was I thinking that a food shaped like a bowling ball would be the easiest by far

Thank you for that insight! I'll continue poking at it

ETA: I literally just slapped my forehead and shouted "OF COURSE" after re-reading your response, I think I have it figured out and will update if I've managed to solve it. Thanks again!
Mad Poster
#4 Old 16th Dec 2017 at 1:00 PM
Wha I meant by "master vertex" is the vertex on the main mesh that corresponds to a vertex on the morph. All the vertices on the main mesh are "master vertices" to the ones on the morph.

I attached a pic below - The one to the right is your main mesh and the left is the morph. The colored dots are (roughly) where the "master vertices" for the same-colored vertices on the morph should be. The pink one may no longer correspond to the morph. The red lines are roughly where the cut lines would be.

TS2 meshes with morphs often have some kind of cover over big, remapped parts, and instead of removing/remeshing, that part is just shrunk down or otherwise hidden in the morph. If you start with the eaten mesh plus the part covering the hole (the cover and the master mesh must have the same normals in the edges so you get a smooth look), you can shrink down the eaten part for the morph and hide it inside.

I'm not an expert on making food, but it's possible some food items have extra non-morphed meshes for the different food states.
Screenshots
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#5 Old 16th Dec 2017 at 6:38 PM
When you mentioned yesterday that custom foods often are made in parts so that it's easier to shift and scale pieces around for the morph stages, something finally clicked in my brain, I did exactly what you mentioned in this last comment and it all seems to be working now



I went back to my original mesh (in 3DS Max) and detached the polygons that would make up a "slice" and made that a separate object


I then hide the slice and built out the interior of the food the way that I wanted it to look at it's half-eaten stage



I saved out the 2 objects (full stage and slice) as individual obj files and went back to Milkshape. I brought each file in, duplicated each twice and started regrouping. The base mesh and slice made up the "full" stage. I then took the slice group for the second set of duplicates, scaled it down and hid it in the bulk of the food, then regrouped for the "half-eaten" stage.



The last stage was the "empty" so I regrouped the final two pieces and scaled them down to .02. Saved it out as a Unimesh and re-imported and NO DISTORTION!! I am pretty giddy. Thanks for your help with this. It seems like it should have been an obvious solution but I really was not thinking outside the box, lol. Thanks again!
Mad Poster
#6 Old 17th Dec 2017 at 1:29 AM
It's not the easiest way to think if you haven't done foods before (I haven't, but I've extracted food meshes and there's usually extra mesh parts from the morphs).
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