I'm trying to shoe-swap these jeans (4th pic) with these shoes by following this tutorial, and so far it's going good. I'm stuck at #12, though. "Select two vertices that should be matched up, one from the top, one from the bottom, and go to the Vertex menu, and then choose Extended Manual Edit (EME)", I'm not sure which vertices I should select since my shoeswap looks like this:

did I perhaps do something wrong? Or do I just skip that step? But if I do, I have to skip #13 too, right? That feels like too much to skip :s

Is the top of the shoe a closed mesh? If it is, you don't need to worry about that step. Here you can easily hide the mesh without any issues, without havin to align anyhing. Just make sure the legs go down into the top part of the shoe mesh so you can't see any gaps.

Also make sure the top line of the shoes and the bottom line of the legs have the same bone assignments, or you may see gaps when the sim moves (make sure to keep track of left/right, and occasionally front/back). This may already be covered in the tutorial, but it doesn't hurt to mention it

As long as the shoes are meant to be wider than the legs, you don't need to worry about the step. The step is meant for shoe conversions where the leg and shoes are meant to meet up perfectly, for instance if you cut off legs and shoes from one mesh and put them on another and there's leg meshes and textures that need to match up on both, like the ones in the tutorial (in the original pictures, anyway).

@simmer22 thank you very much for your reply! I'm not sure if it's a closed mesh, it looks like this:

(and yes, the legs do go down farther than the shoe and the shoes are supposed to be wider than the legs ) if you don't mind me asking, how would I check if the shoes and legs have the same bone assignments? Couldn't find anything in the tutorial with "bone assignment" so I guess it wasn't covered in the tutorial.

That makes sense! So I skip #12 and #13 then? And continue with #14?

It's often called "joint assignment" (but I'm used to calling it bone assignments, and they mean the same, so I sometimes mix the phrases a bit).

Mark a vertex, go to the Joints tab, and click "show". Then do the same on a vertex on the other mesh group in roughly the same position. If the numbers for the same parts (Right ankle, Right calf, etc.) are the same or vary by less than 5%, they match close enough. Legs rarely have more than 2 bones assigned to each joint once you get below the knee.

You can copy bone assignments from one part to another part by selecting a vertex that's roughly in the same position on the group you want to copy FROM and click "show" - and then deselect and mark the vertices you want to assign TO, and click "assign". Again, be aware you need to keep track of the left/right leg, so you may want to do the selecting in the front view and not the side view (right leg is purple/pink/green/blue from thigh to toes, left leg is orange, yellow, purple, pink - if you see them change colors, you may have marked both legs by accident).
(Picture: the red or green line of vertices should be a good match for the ankle)

If you need to, you can hide parts of the mesh by marking and hitting Ctrl+H (but always keep at least one level of vertices above the one you're working on).

If the ankle/leg is wider than the hole, you don't need to align the vertices. The important thing is that there are no visible gaps when the sim moves.
(Picture: if the black line is roughly where the leg meets the shoe, then there's no need for aligning them)

Thank you so much for your explanation! The legs are roughly where the black circle is, so I don't need to do any assignment/alignment then? Thank you for your mini-tutorial though, I will save it for future use

No, you probably don't need to align

You're welcome

Okay so after roughly 3 hours I finally got the mesh to show up in bodyshop correctly haha! Now I have another problem though, there's black color on the legs? It doesn't show up in milkshape when previewing my textures, but it's visible in both bodyshop and CAS. It looks like this:

I'm not sure what it is? It feels like I've seen a fix for this somewhere, but I couldn't find it when googling nor in the "recolor" tutorials here on MTS :-(

Looks like an UV problem.
Are the ankles on a separate mesh group? If not, have you made sure the shoes and pants aren't mapped over the ankles?

The ankles are indeed on a separate group! Apparently it's the shoes' texture which is causing the black parts on the ankles (I proved this true when I replaced the shoes' texture with an all gray texture and then the black parts disappeard - and obviously became gray). I didn't edit the shoes' mapping in milkshape because nothing was off about it :-(

If it is possible to combine the shoes and pants into one map, and leave the ankles as the "bottom" group (the one that picks up skintone, unless both groups do), that might be a better solution. If either the ankles and pants OR the ankles and shoes are mapped so they don't overlap with skin parts, you could try some different combinations.

For most 4t2 and 3t2 conversions (or any other conversions mapped differently from TS2 meshes) having anything skintone colored in a separate group and the rest as a "noblend" group is often recommmended, because you avoid most weird texture annoyances (In the TXMT settings, skintone parts have SimSkin, and noblend layers should be set to SimStandardMaterial)

For a skin overlay texture (SimSkin) you need to be very careful to not overlay any part of the skin parts that would show with the mesh and a naked top/bottom, or it will show on the sim. For a noblend (SimStandardMaterial) texture, you can pretty much UV-map parts wherever you want because the texture only works on that particular group.

Having an UVmap of the body, or at the very least an extracted skin is very helpful, too.

Is map = texture? If so, that's unfortunately not possible as the shoes' texture overlaps with the pants' texture :-( atm the shoes are one group named "bottom" and the pants are another group named "bottom2" - but the ankles is also called "bottom" like the shoes. Perhaps they are picking up the shoes' texture? Since their names are the same? Could that be the problem? I did try changing the shoes' name to "bottom1" (under "comment" in milkshape, the TXMT's in the recolor file and basically everywhere I saw something with "bottom" in it) and changed the texture name in the recolor file, but that just made the shoes themselves invisible :-( the ankles however, didn't have any black parts on them when doing this.

I looked in the TXMT and the "bottom" (now bottom1, the shoes) is set to SimSkin, and "bottom2" (pants) is set to SimStandardMaterial. I have no idea if "bottom" (bottom1) is a noblend texture though, I'm not sure what that is exactly? Also, I sincerely thank you for helping me, I really do appreciate it a lot!

Map/texture map = full texture picture
UVmap = UVs of mesh, either in the meshing program or extracted as texture/picture form.


Could you maybe upload the recolor and mesh file here (or PM them to me) so I can take a look? (preferably the files before you did any name changes - if you change names of any mesh or recolor groups you need to change all the references to this name in both the texture file and mesh file, and them turning up invisible or causing issues is often a problem if you don't do it properly).

If you want to rearrange mesh groups but keep the same number of groups it's often easier to do so via the texture and mesh, sometimes also the UVmap (usually by moving the UVs to a different spot and moving the belonging texture to the same spot in the texture map).

One layer should be named "bottom" (preferably the SimSkin layer).

Ah yes please! I literally have no idea what I'm doing haha. You can download them here. These files are before I did any name changes

I think you'll either have to make a second noblend layer or do some UV remapping. The shoes overlap both the pants and the ankles, and I can't see how else they would fit together.

The first option is safer, because a lot of tops have details in the areas under the hands, and since bottoms will overlay tops, chances are you may see some shoe textures here and there on tops with bows or hoodies or other decorations mapped outside the skin UVs.

I'll see if I can find a tutorial for you (lots of steps, not too difficult, but one little mistake and you end up with hours of problemsolving - been there, done that, and it's very annoying )

Ahhh I see, darn shoes lol. Thank you! Hahah :-D

and if you don't find a tutorial, don't search your ass off for me, you've already helped me plenty! I can always use another pair of shoes

and please do excuse my english, idk why it's been so off today. I'm not usually this awkward with english. Or perhaps I am lol

It's one of those cases when I have a feeling I've seen (and used) a clear and to the point tutorial, but can't find it. Oh, well, I did find a few others:

https://rented-space.tumblr.com/pos...groups-in-simpe (adding groups)
http://stonegod.org/sims2/tutorial/...irt%20tutorial/ (for alpha groups, but roughly same principle, also shows some tricks for the mesh + morphs for when you have more than one mesh group)

https://skellington7d.livejournal.com/89549.html (Not quite tutorial but more tips and tricks)

https://hermit-fox.livejournal.com/1740.html (adding morphs - in case that's interesting )

https://whattheskell.tumblr.com/pos...ure-less-groups (adding a "null" group for skin parts instead of an empty PNG - could be useful)

Neat tutorial database:
https://ts2tutorialdatabase.tumblr.com/SimPE

Thank you very much! I'll take a look at those :-)