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Mad Poster
#51 Old 20th Oct 2009 at 6:30 PM
Thanks very much both of you for the detective work and the explanation - I wish I fully understood it. I know very little about the technical terminology of meshing and how it all works. I didn't assign anything to any joints, or make any changes of any kind - I just imported the .simgeom of the lenses into Milkshape, reshaped them, and clicked 'Export' to the Q-Mesh GEOM exporter, which is exactly what I did with the frames. I wonder how the bone values of the lenses get spontaneously changed, when the same doesn't happen to the frames? Very strange! So, now I'll have to try to figure out how to reset the values of the bones as Delphy did - I can guess it's going to be very useful to know how to do that!
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Lab Assistant
#52 Old 20th Oct 2009 at 6:31 PM
I'm feeling rejected...
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
#53 Old 20th Oct 2009 at 6:46 PM
EsmeraldaF: I've attached the tool I used to do it.

You need to export the GEOM from S3PE first, then
Run the exe, load the exported GEOM
Then just save (as a new file - call it .NEW.GEOM or something)
Reimport this new saved GEOM into S3PE Save the package

That should sort it out.
Attached files:
File Type: rar  GeomDump.rar (24.9 KB, 22 downloads) - View custom content

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
#54 Old 20th Oct 2009 at 6:46 PM
Merkaba: I suspect the same issue with bones happens with you too. Use the tool in the post above and see if that helps.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Mad Poster
#55 Old 20th Oct 2009 at 6:58 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Delphy
EsmeraldaF: I've attached the tool I used to do it.


Thank you! Have downloaded it and look forward to trying it out.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
#56 Old 21st Oct 2009 at 12:42 AM
Any luck?

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Mad Poster
#57 Old 21st Oct 2009 at 11:13 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Delphy
Any luck?


No, this is making me crazy. I extracted the lens GEOM, ran it through Geomdump and painstakingly changed all 119 instances of Bones to 16843008 (why do lenses have bones, and 119 of them no less?), saved it, ran S3PE and set the old lens LODs to 'Deleted', imported the fixed LODs to replace the deleted ones, saved it, and still got glasses with no lenses. I did delete all caches in case there was something persisting in there from the old lenses. I extracted the new fixed lenses and looked at them again in case the Bone values had somehow mysteriously changed, but they were all intact. Obviously I'm missing something somewhere because you got it to work, but I have no idea what. Back to the drawing board for me. Do you still have the working package you created, and if so, would you mind posting it so I can compare? Thanks again for all your help, sorry to have taken up your time.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
#58 Old 21st Oct 2009 at 11:40 AM
EsmeraldaF: The point of GeomDump is that you don't have to change anything manually. It changes all the bone references for you.

The only thing different is that I added a second bone to the GEOM (to match the original nerdyglasses lens, since that has 2 bone hashes, but the milkshape version only has 1).

I've attached the package I have that works ok in game.

Considering that the GEOMs coming out of Milkshape only seem to have one Bone I think that this, in conjunction with the actual bone pointers, could be the issue.

Btw if you want to talk in real time about this, I'm in the #create room on the live chat (found in the Community menu)
Attached files:
File Type: rar  091019112941-ladiesshades_testnew.rar (45.6 KB, 9 downloads) - View custom content

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
#59 Old 21st Oct 2009 at 11:46 AM
btw, as a note to Wes: Am I right in thinking that the Bone Assignment value per vertex thats specified as a long in the GEOM spec is actually 4 single bytes instead?

The reason I say that is becuase we have 4 weightings, like 1 0 0 0 and then the Bone Assignment we see as 00 01 01 01.

So, to me, this should be read as 4 seperate values, rather than one big long number.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Mad Poster
#60 Old 21st Oct 2009 at 1:43 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Delphy
EsmeraldaF: The point of GeomDump is that you don't have to change anything manually. It changes all the bone references for you.

The only thing different is that I added a second bone to the GEOM (to match the original nerdyglasses lens, since that has 2 bone hashes, but the milkshape version only has 1).

I've attached the package I have that works ok in game.


Oh dear God, I didn't realise GeomDump changes everything for you - I assumed it was just an editor and you had to change things manually. I opened my old bad lenses and just re-saved them without doing anything, and I see what you mean - it changed all bones to 16843008. Nifty! What does 16843008 signify?

How do you add a second bone to a geom? I'm so sorry I don't know what this means or how to do it. As a techie in real life I find it all fascinating and am able to grasp techie things but have had no success finding tutorials that explain these specifics. How did you know to use the lenses from the Nerdy Glasses to take the details from, as the ones I cloned from were the Oversized Sunglasses? Or did you mean the oversized glasses? Where do you look to see how many bones (or bone hashes?) each of these lenses has?

I tried your version of the glasses in-game and yes, they work fine - I was beginning to think maybe it was something wonky about my game. So maybe it is to do with this extra bone you mentioned.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
#61 Old 21st Oct 2009 at 3:02 PM
16843008 = 00 01 01 01 in hex, which corresponds to the 4 bone indexes for the 4 bone weights.

As for which lenses... I actually misread what you said and thought you'd used the nerdy glasses, rather than the oversized sunglasses. The sunglasses, however, have the exact same bones as the nerdy ones.

I added the second bone using a hex editor to modify the TGI list offset, and insert the second bone, then alter the number of bones. Considering that all the vertices are weighted on the first bone index and the first bone index does exist, I'm not actually sure why it's not working with only 1 bone.

Let me whip up a quick tool that allows you to import bones and also incorporates the bone fixing from SimGeom.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Mad Poster
#62 Old 21st Oct 2009 at 3:18 PM
A weird thing that suddenly struck me is that I have used these very same lenses, but WITHOUT frames, successfully before: I used them for my sim of Anna Navarre which is uploaded here - it was how I made her one red cyber eye. So I not only re-shaped them, but also deleted one lens, and they still worked perfectly first time. Yet, previous attempts I'd made to clone sunglasses from those glasses, always resulted in frames with no lenses. Can something strange happen when using modified frames and modified lenses together, that doesn't happen when using just one or the other?
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
#63 Old 21st Oct 2009 at 3:50 PM
Esmeralda: My guess is "Yes" - but I don't know what, exactly. Perhaps it's becuase they are "linked" GEOMs they share bone indices or something weird? Or they need bone indices from both GEOMs to be in there?

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
#64 Old 21st Oct 2009 at 5:09 PM
Okay I've attached a tool that should help.

It's not quite as automatic as the previous one (you have to click once) but it's a lot prettier, and lets you import the bone array from another GEOM file as well as set all vertices to a specific bone id.



To use:

- Load up your GEOM file exported from Milkshape
- Click "Import Bones"
- Find the original mesh you used (oversized sunglasses) and click OK
- The bone list should change to have 2 bones in it
- Make sure the "Set all vertex boneIds to:" says "16843008" and click the "set" button next to it.
- The list on the right should change to have all Vertices with that bone id
- Save the file
- Import into S3PE as normal

Also, for the curious, I discovered a new ShaderType that I hadn't previously documented - SimGlass. It's used for, obviously, the lenses on glasses.

This utility also lets you change the Shader Type, if you really want to. Note, however, that it's not complete - the "Commit", Add and Delete Entry buttons do nothing :P
Attached files:
File Type: rar  SimGeomEditor.rar (28.8 KB, 31 downloads) - View custom content

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Mad Poster
#65 Old 21st Oct 2009 at 5:41 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Delphy
Okay I've attached a tool that should help.


Wow, that looks fantastic - will try it out as soon as poss!

I discovered something sort of (maybe) interesting - having said that my one cyber eye mesh that I made from these lenses worked, I went back to the cyber eye mesh to see if I could spot any differences between it and the current lenses. Everything seemed to be the same, except the comments - I realised I'd used the comments from the frames, not the lenses, to make the single-lens 'eye', because I'd guessed that would make the eye solid and recolourable, which is what I wanted, rather than transparent, and that's what indeed happened.

But aside from the transparency, these comments seem also to enable the lenses to be imported successfully along with the frames, because I tried packaging the cyber eye with the frames out of curiosity, and got the first result below: the cyber eye AND the frames. I then replaced the comments from the previously non-appearing modified lenses with the comments from the cyber eye and packaged them with the frames, and got the second result below: the lenses finally appear, but they're solid. So maybe there's something in the comments that enables both lenses and frames to appear together? I'm baffled. At least I may have discovered a way to make mirrored (or otherwise opaque) shades!


Will go off and have a look at that tool now - thank you very much for putting that together!
Mad Poster
#66 Old 21st Oct 2009 at 6:05 PM
IT WORKED!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your new tool fixed it!!!! We can have sunglasses with lenses in them!


OMG this is fantastic, let there be desperately needed new shades in TS3! Thank you SO much! You are truly the supreme God of all modders and I am not worthy. Thank you again for taking the time to sort this out! Now I have to get busy reshaping those funky rough draft frames.

Again, THANK YOU!!!
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
#67 Old 21st Oct 2009 at 6:14 PM
The comments section controls the tagvel, vertexid, and all the "extra" stuff that is found in sims 3 vertices. So getting this right is crucial.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
#68 Old 21st Oct 2009 at 6:15 PM
Whee, glad it worked. btw, I'm working on a modification to that tool that should let you change the opacity of the lenses.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Lab Assistant
#69 Old 21st Oct 2009 at 9:25 PM
still doesn't work for me :\ maybe it's my computer's fault... I will try to do that on another pc
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
#70 Old 21st Oct 2009 at 10:54 PM
Merkaba, can you attach the package file or upload it somewhere? I'll take a look.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Lab Assistant
#71 Old 22nd Oct 2009 at 9:48 AM
here you go.
Attached files:
File Type: rar  test4(Merkaba).rar (1.23 MB, 12 downloads) - View custom content
Mad Poster
#72 Old 22nd Oct 2009 at 10:42 AM Last edited by EsmeraldaF : 22nd Oct 2009 at 11:22 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by Delphy
I'm working on a modification to that tool that should let you change the opacity of the lenses.


That would be fantastic!

I finished the shades and was dismayed to see that they're still pixellated around the edges as when making them with TSRW - so I went back to examine the original TS3 shades I cloned them from, and realised their edges are pixellated too. So maybe we're stuck with pixellated frames in TS3 anyway! It's less noticeable if they're patterned rather than a solid colour.


For the finished product, I had to reshape the lenses again as well as the frames, and the reshaped lenses again came out with their bone numbers all messed up and one bone instead of two. I simply ran them again through GeomDump and SimGeom Editor, and the lenses came out perfect, as above. Great work on those tools - they're a godsend!

A HUGE advantage worth knowing about is that shades made with CTU display correctly on a Mac, unlike the ones I made with TSRW. For my JC Denton sim here, I made his shades with TSRW using the same shades as above to clone them from. They work OK on PCs, but on my Mac, they revert back to the ladies' shades, not a good look for him, and I sadly had to advise Mac users to use one of the men's shades from the game. I've just tested the new ones on my Mac, and they're just as they should be.

Looking forward to the new version of that tool, and thanks VERY much again.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
#73 Old 22nd Oct 2009 at 11:23 AM
Esmeralda: Just as a note - you dont need to use GeomDump if you use the SimGeom Editor

I think the reason the TSRW ones dont work on Macs is becuase the VPXY points to the old, original, GEOM for any LOD other than 0. Whereas the CTU version has a full complement of VPXYs, blends, GEOMs and everything else - it's a "full" package and not a cut down bare-minimum version like TSRW.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Warrior Gryphon
site owner
#74 Old 22nd Oct 2009 at 12:06 PM
Merkaba: Okay I looked at your top hat. I see a major problem with it, though: You only have 1 LOD defined, and that lod has all 4 GEOM files assigned to it.

I suspect that you used LOD0 and then put the 4 meshes in LOD0, LOD0_1, LOD0_2 and LOD0_3, correct?

What you need to do instead is to put the hat meshes in LOD0, LOD1, LOD2, and LOD3.

Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.
Lab Assistant
#75 Old 22nd Oct 2009 at 12:54 PM
yeah you're right. I've noticed that CTU says that my model has over 4k polygons in it but I'm still too lost in sims3modding... I corrected meshes in my package but now it crashes my game :P
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