![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[Part 1 of 3 ] MtF hair conversion guide
I've been promising this for months now, but since it's taking me way too freaking long I am posting this here, so you can poke me publicly to finish it. If something is unclear, just post a comment. That's what I'm here for, yeah?
This is meant to cover every part of the process as I tend to do it, including adding all the ages and whatnot, but should by no means be taken as the 'standard' way. Assumed is knowledge of recolouring, binning and compressing. If you don't know how to do that, I'd advise you to try that out first.
What you need is SimPE (sorry, Mac-people :( ), some basic knowledge of SimPE, the Unimesh plugins and Milkshape 1.7.8 or higher. You'll also need Dr. Pixel's Male and Female Bases to fit the hair to the head correctly. (fixed link now)
So, you've got a funky hair you'd like to convert for your females, but changing gender values alone gives some gappy-as-arse results - thus, it needs remeshing. Depending on the hair, there are different ways of composing the .packages.
I'm cloning the original male mesh instead of a female mesh, so you won't meet the various troubles one's prone to encounter (wrong alpha groups, messed-up mapping/black scalps, fucked-up joints and animations) when cloning a female mesh instead. It doesn't matter in the end anyway and it'll save you headaches.
1) Dump all the original files in an easy-to-find directory, then open the mesh file in SimPE and make four copies of it: 'afmesh', 'tfmesh', 'cumesh' and 'pumesh'. Note that, if the mesh has fewer ages than that you can leave out the age that isn't included.
2) Open each of these files, sort the files by name and delete the other ages like I'm doing here with the child mesh, then save.
3) Fix the integrity for each age package to make it a unique mesh (Tools > Object tools > Fix integrity). I tend to name these things 'yuxi*creator**meshnumber*mtf-*agegender*' so I don't mix shit up.
Personally, I tend to delete the original, confusing mesh names like in the screenshot here, but that's just because I'm anal about such things. (just don't delete the '-amhairrocker_cres', '-amhairrocker_tslocator_gmnd' and '-amhairrocker_untagged0_shpe' (etcetera) parts.)
Don't forget to commit after each change, then save.
4) When you've done that, open Bodyshop and make a recolour file of the original mesh. Import it into your game, close BS, go to your SavedSims folder and move the new file to your conversion directory. Take care not to leave it in your BS - it can make for many frustrated hours of figuring out why your changes don't show up. XD
5) Open it, go to the 'AllRes' screen and sort things by Instance (by clicking on the instance tab). Note the 3D-ID Reference files and the Property Sets packages - the ages correspond to each other but aren't always arranged in a logical sense. This one does happen to be sorted logically, so yay:
Now, we select each valid 3D-ID Reference file on by one - it will take a short while until it is loaded. Note to which age it links to to by looking at the Property Set its instance corresponds to. Go to 'Tools' > PJSE > Body mesh tools > Linking stage, then navigate to the new mesh file for that age. Follow the instruction that pops up.
6) Almost done, but we're not finished with this yet. We cloned a male mesh, so we still have to change the gender values to make it show up for females: Go to the Property Sets, open each age, go the the 'Gender' value and change 0x00000002 (male) to 0x00000001 (female). Commit after every change and save.
7) Move all the meshes and the recolour file to BS to see if you linked it correctly. The unedited male mesh should show up. Be sure to check if all the ages are linked correctly as well.
If the teen and adult meshes look alright at this point then congrats, you wasted your time and this doesn't really need remeshing xP (e.g. it's wise to check whether it's needed using point 6 beforehand). Children and toddlers of both genders share the same bodies, so their hairs are always unisex - these meshes don't need to be edited, unless they're gappy and/or you want to.
8) At this point, open the teen, pu and cu mesh files and extract their contents one by one in a new directory, like so:
You do not need to rename these files. Now, open the adult mesh. Right-click and choose 'Add', then select ALL of these funkily-named files and voilà, all the resources for the other ages should be added to this mesh file.
Do not fix the integrity or anything - just save it. Don't forget to delete the seperate meshes when you test it in BS. If it still works as it should, go ahead and delete the extracted files and such.
Now, extract the teen and adult meshes from your new mesh file (those are the GMDC-files) and name them something logical (like teen-unedited, so you don't mix things up later). Get yourself some tea before we get our butt to Milkshape.
Not that there are many Maxis meshes left to convert, but still.
This comes down to making a recolour of the Maxis mesh, importing it into your game and moving it to a new folder. Open SimPE, create a new file, go to Tools > PJSE > Extracting stage and select the recolour file. All the mesh files should now appear. Continue as described above. If the hair is included with an EP however, it'd be wiser to clone a basegame hair instead (so the end result won't require that EP.)
Will edit to add clarification and new things. I'm still working on the meshing bit but didn't want to leave anyone hanging in the middle of the process, so part 2 looks very mediocre right now.
And yes, you can apply these instructions to FtM-conversions as well. Just remember to switch the mentions of 'female' to 'male' and so on.
This is meant to cover every part of the process as I tend to do it, including adding all the ages and whatnot, but should by no means be taken as the 'standard' way. Assumed is knowledge of recolouring, binning and compressing. If you don't know how to do that, I'd advise you to try that out first.
What you need is SimPE (sorry, Mac-people :( ), some basic knowledge of SimPE, the Unimesh plugins and Milkshape 1.7.8 or higher. You'll also need Dr. Pixel's Male and Female Bases to fit the hair to the head correctly. (fixed link now)
So, you've got a funky hair you'd like to convert for your females, but changing gender values alone gives some gappy-as-arse results - thus, it needs remeshing. Depending on the hair, there are different ways of composing the .packages.
I'm cloning the original male mesh instead of a female mesh, so you won't meet the various troubles one's prone to encounter (wrong alpha groups, messed-up mapping/black scalps, fucked-up joints and animations) when cloning a female mesh instead. It doesn't matter in the end anyway and it'll save you headaches.
CUSTOM HAIR
1) Dump all the original files in an easy-to-find directory, then open the mesh file in SimPE and make four copies of it: 'afmesh', 'tfmesh', 'cumesh' and 'pumesh'. Note that, if the mesh has fewer ages than that you can leave out the age that isn't included.
2) Open each of these files, sort the files by name and delete the other ages like I'm doing here with the child mesh, then save.
3) Fix the integrity for each age package to make it a unique mesh (Tools > Object tools > Fix integrity). I tend to name these things 'yuxi*creator**meshnumber*mtf-*agegender*' so I don't mix shit up.
Personally, I tend to delete the original, confusing mesh names like in the screenshot here, but that's just because I'm anal about such things. (just don't delete the '-amhairrocker_cres', '-amhairrocker_tslocator_gmnd' and '-amhairrocker_untagged0_shpe' (etcetera) parts.)
Don't forget to commit after each change, then save.
4) When you've done that, open Bodyshop and make a recolour file of the original mesh. Import it into your game, close BS, go to your SavedSims folder and move the new file to your conversion directory. Take care not to leave it in your BS - it can make for many frustrated hours of figuring out why your changes don't show up. XD
5) Open it, go to the 'AllRes' screen and sort things by Instance (by clicking on the instance tab). Note the 3D-ID Reference files and the Property Sets packages - the ages correspond to each other but aren't always arranged in a logical sense. This one does happen to be sorted logically, so yay:
Now, we select each valid 3D-ID Reference file on by one - it will take a short while until it is loaded. Note to which age it links to to by looking at the Property Set its instance corresponds to. Go to 'Tools' > PJSE > Body mesh tools > Linking stage, then navigate to the new mesh file for that age. Follow the instruction that pops up.
6) Almost done, but we're not finished with this yet. We cloned a male mesh, so we still have to change the gender values to make it show up for females: Go to the Property Sets, open each age, go the the 'Gender' value and change 0x00000002 (male) to 0x00000001 (female). Commit after every change and save.
7) Move all the meshes and the recolour file to BS to see if you linked it correctly. The unedited male mesh should show up. Be sure to check if all the ages are linked correctly as well.
If the teen and adult meshes look alright at this point then congrats, you wasted your time and this doesn't really need remeshing xP (e.g. it's wise to check whether it's needed using point 6 beforehand). Children and toddlers of both genders share the same bodies, so their hairs are always unisex - these meshes don't need to be edited, unless they're gappy and/or you want to.
8) At this point, open the teen, pu and cu mesh files and extract their contents one by one in a new directory, like so:
You do not need to rename these files. Now, open the adult mesh. Right-click and choose 'Add', then select ALL of these funkily-named files and voilà, all the resources for the other ages should be added to this mesh file.
Do not fix the integrity or anything - just save it. Don't forget to delete the seperate meshes when you test it in BS. If it still works as it should, go ahead and delete the extracted files and such.
Now, extract the teen and adult meshes from your new mesh file (those are the GMDC-files) and name them something logical (like teen-unedited, so you don't mix things up later). Get yourself some tea before we get our butt to Milkshape.
MAXIS HAIR
Not that there are many Maxis meshes left to convert, but still.
This comes down to making a recolour of the Maxis mesh, importing it into your game and moving it to a new folder. Open SimPE, create a new file, go to Tools > PJSE > Extracting stage and select the recolour file. All the mesh files should now appear. Continue as described above. If the hair is included with an EP however, it'd be wiser to clone a basegame hair instead (so the end result won't require that EP.)
Will edit to add clarification and new things. I'm still working on the meshing bit but didn't want to leave anyone hanging in the middle of the process, so part 2 looks very mediocre right now.
And yes, you can apply these instructions to FtM-conversions as well. Just remember to switch the mentions of 'female' to 'male' and so on.
no subject
no subject
no subject
(Anonymous) 2010-07-04 05:53 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
no subject
(Anonymous) 2010-07-07 04:21 am (UTC)(link)