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Post by pardus on Sept 21, 2020 14:55:31 GMT -5
 Note that it seems to affect the right arm too. In Blender the weights seem ok, at least before import, though needs some tweaking to be smooth it shouldn't be a mess like this. I did do the UV_1 as well. Here is the mesh if you want to look at it: Clicky |
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 21, 2020 15:16:34 GMT -5
Hi. Your garment and the reference you used for the weight transfer are affected by skirt bones while the item you cloned is not. The arm thing is probably related to the number of meshgroups, as in whatever you cloned has more or less of them than what you are importing. Your dress will not clip into boots or accessories, meaning it can be made of 1 meshgroup. Join them all, remove doubles, change cut number to 0000, clone DressPanels, import the blend there Also, it is best to delete more body and inner geometry. And dresses should be vertex painted with 2 colors Vertex paint dictates what variation (skin-tight and robe-like) of deformation maps the painted area will deform according to in CAS during body customization and animation. 00FF00 is for skint-tight areas, 3FFF00 is for any skirt-like area ( skirts, bottom parts of dresses, coats, aprons, etc). Start by choosing 00FF00 and Paint - Set vertex color 1). Disable Limit selection to visible; 2). Holding Ctrl, lasso-select the bottom part of the mesh starting somewhere in the middle of the pelvic bone; 3). Enable sync; 4). Press B and deselect legs; 5). Switch to Vertex paint and enable Face selection masking for painting; 6). Type in 3FFF00; 7). Paint - Set vertex colors; 8). Press A twice to deselect and select everything again, Paint - Smooth vertex colors  |
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Post by pardus on Sept 21, 2020 15:33:31 GMT -5
Hi. Your garment and the reference you used for the weight transfer are affected by skirt bones while the item you cloned is not. The arm thing is probably related to the number of meshgroups, as in whatever you cloned has more or less of them than what you are importing. Your dress will not clip into boots or accessories, meaning it can be made of 1 meshgroup. Join them all, remove doubles, change cut number to 0000, clone DressPanels, import the blend there Also, it is best to delete more body and inner geometry. And dresses should be vertex painted with 2 colors Vertex paint dictates what variation (skin-tight and robe-like) of deformation maps the painted area will deform according to in CAS during body customization and animation. 00FF00 is for skint-tight areas, 3FFF00 is for any skirt-like area ( skirts, bottom parts of dresses, coats, aprons, etc). Start by choosing 00FF00 and Paint - Set vertex color 1). Disable Limit selection to visible; 2). Holding Ctrl, lasso-select the bottom part of the mesh starting somewhere in the middle of the pelvic bone; 3). Enable sync; 4). Press B and deselect legs; 5). Switch to Vertex paint and enable Face selection masking for painting; 6). Type in 3FFF00; 7). Paint - Set vertex colors; 8). Press A twice to deselect and select everything again, Paint - Smooth vertex colors So starting from a mesh of just the dress and the UVs done, what would the correct procedure be? What I did was something like this: - Copy the top and bottom, join them, then join the dress mesh.
- Delete unnecessary faces.
- Transfer weights from the reference Maxis dress mesh.
- Split the resulting mesh into the cut numbers most closely resembling the original Maxis mesh.
I did neglect the vertex paint. I just painted it all 00FF00 but I'm still not sure what else I did wrong. |
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 21, 2020 16:13:16 GMT -5
You should not join the body with the garment until you make the later fully functional because the weights and uvs do not transfer right to the body in the hand area. There are body parts under the rig which you can duplicate and use as a body The best order would be the following but some things are interchangeable or depend on the reference: - retopology; - close holes, add thickness, unwrap all newly created geometry; - transfer a uv_1 map from the reference that is the closest to yours in length and has the least sculpted details; - transfer weights (make sure the mesh is not split anywhere ); - vertex paint; - delete the parts of the body the garment covers; - you can join the body with the garment and edit the uv_0 or do it like this All CAS items share the same UV space. Each has its designated area. To avoid overlapping, make sure to place UV islands not only in their designated areas but also in the vacant space. 1). Select the body, switch to Edit mode ( TAB ), disable Limit selection to visible; 2). Select everything covered by the garment, press Delete and choose Faces. If the garment has skirt-like bottom, make sure to leave at least one row of faces. Otherwise these deleted areas will be visible during walking; 3). Enable Sync, select everything with A; 4). Click on Browse and choose any texture; 5). Shift-select the garment, select everything, choose THE SAME texture, check View - Draw other objects. 6). G to move, S to scale, R to rotate. Following the first two with X/Y will constraint transformation to horizontal/vertical axis. Following any with a number will move/rotate the selection by that number of pixels/degrees. By default UV space is square ( 1:1 ), but TS4 textures are not ( 2:1 ). UV islands that were generated in the square space will become stretched vertically when rectangular textures are applied. To bring them back to their original size, select everything in UV Editor, press G Y 0.5 Place the garment's UV islands in the right spot. Make sure to scale them uniformly unless some need extra definition ( buttons, zipper, other small details ) or are hidden ( geometry created to cover holes, back side of clothing, etc ).  - export the uv layout of the garment, this will be your test diffuse; - join the body with the garment, remove doubles, split sharp edges, set type and change cut number to 0000, save, do not close the file; - clone DressPanels, import the dress there, import the diffuse, import blank maps ( never use Make blank button); - check how the mesh works in-game: check how it moves, change breast size, body weight sliders, some random sliders ( not breast); - if everything is ok, bake textures, make lods, split if needed. If your reference can serve as a body, you remove covered body parts and do a uv_0 map after you transfer all data needed from it. If it cannot, you can make it at the beginning, after retopology. Make sure to not transfer or edit weights to/on the mesh that is split somewhere, the vertices will get different values and it will produce gaps in mesh in CAS. Same for vertex paint. Also, make sure to always smooth the transition between vertex colors otherwise there will be a gap even if the mesh is not split. As for right now, just do everything in the same order I answered the first time |
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Post by pardus on Sept 21, 2020 23:54:02 GMT -5
What about the other cut numbers? What are DressPanels?
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 22, 2020 0:44:41 GMT -5
DressPanels is the word you type in the search bar after you click on Create 3d mesh. You will see a dress that is made of one meshgroup that has cut number 0000. The dress is affected by skirt bones, so you will not be introducing any new bones that cause the distortion you had.
Since you will join all current meshgroup into one, you do not need "other cut numbers"
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Post by pardus on Sept 22, 2020 2:18:52 GMT -5
I merged the vertices, did the vertex paint, used the DressPanels dress as a template, and made sure once again that the weights work ok in Blender(need tweaking, but first I need to make sure it's viable). Still no luck. If you don't mind, I would highly appreciate you take a look at my mesh, which is packaged in here. EDIT: I also notice that when I import it and export it again I see it creates cuts, some of which overlaps |
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 22, 2020 11:11:23 GMT -5
By "cloning" I mean you should click Create 3d mesh, choose DressPanels, click next, create a new package, and import your dress instead of it. You are importing the dress back in the old package. Again, DressPanels is made of one meshgroup, it is affected by skirt bones, it is perfect for what you need. And again, never use Make blank button. It removes maps from the file thus disrupting it and causing all types of issues. Replace them with maps I shared. When you import a blend file in the package, s4s splits the mesh along uv island borders. Has something to do with the fact that each vertex can have only one placement on the uv map, but it is not important. Anyway, when you export the mesh again, you are able to see these split edges in blender, and when you re-import the same file, you are able to see them in s4s By leaving a lot of legs at the bottom you are minimizing free space available for the garment. They will also poke out. New blend and package files. I did not edit uvs to not project dress's texture on legs Another thing, 11k is not the end of the world, but for your dress it is unnecessary high poly. In the future, try to be conscious of this for you do not want to go past 10k unless absolutely necessary. And you should not put uv islands on top of each other unless they are identical. |
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Post by pardus on Sept 30, 2020 15:03:02 GMT -5
Excuse for the late reply, it's only now I've been getting to this. Thanks for taking a look into the the mesh. I want to be sure exactly what was messing the bit at the tip of the skirt up though. I cloned it onto the DressPanels mesh and imported it into a copy of the DressPanels mesh. It fixed the arm but the tip of the skirt is still a mess. Is it because of the legs?
I didn't care much about the textures and stuff yet, as you can see with the deadpan blue texture. I just wanted to see if I could get the mesh working before I proceed futher.
Also what are the general guidelines for polycounts of various items by category?
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 30, 2020 15:16:34 GMT -5
Could you share updated package and blend files pls there should not be any more distortions. Have you tried the package i sent? Does it have this issue?
Well, sort of as low as you can go while preserving the details and nice shading. It's not like there is a line which you should not cross, it's just that you want to think about the bigger picture, one 20k dress may make the game load 20 seconds longer, but what if there's hundreds of them in Mods folder. The sims 4 is not meant to render high poly things like second life, sansar, etc, so they can take a tool on its performance. And not everyone has a strong pc ofc
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Post by pardus on Oct 1, 2020 0:53:42 GMT -5
I don't see how that mesh reveals what I did wrong. You may have provided a link to the wrong mesh.
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Post by mauvemorn on Oct 1, 2020 6:59:01 GMT -5
My apologies, thought Google disk creates new files with the same name but it just overwrites them.
Anyway, I don't have your dress any more and the link in the first post does not work, but you should just clone DressPanels and import the blend there. If doing so did not work out, share the updated files please
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