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Tutorial: Attaching Tenshii~Akari's smooth hands to tops/outfits.
Here's a tutorial I posted on GoS a little while ago - I thought it might be useful to put it on here, too.
I noticed some frustrated flailing about using these, so I thought it might be useful to write a little tutorial about them. This is a basic tutorial: It's extremely easy for those who are comfortable with Milkshape, but it was written to be understandable for those who are less confident with the program. Swapping hands is like swapping shoes, but a lot easier. So if you've done that before, this is a walk in the park for you. This will just cover the meshing bit, nothing else.
What are Tenshii's smooth hands?
Tenshii~Akari posted a number of lovely body meshes over at Sim-Oasis a few years back, which feature smoother hands and more detailed feet. The hands are basically edits of the Maxis hands, so they have the same mapping - they're just less blocky. They are interesting for those who prefer a more realistic aesthetic and are put off by the original hands. The drawback is that they do kick up the mesh's total polycount (by about 1800), putting the total polycount on the same level as the average TS3>TS2 clothing mesh. If you can use those without noticing lagging in your game, you ought to have no problems.
Here is a comparison:
What you'll need:
- A recent version of Milkshape
- Unimesh plugins by Wes_H
- msAlignNormals plugin by demon432
-The smooth hands pack I prepared for you.
This archive includes the separated hands for all the ages and genders, cut off at the forearm. The normals and seams are matched to the game's standard naked meshes. They are in .simpe format, so that you can easily import them into your project with bones and comments intact.
Make sure you're working on a duplicate file, or have a back-up somewhere. You might end up deleting a face or vertex that you didn't mean to delete.
This section will show you how to attach the hands to a mesh with bare arms.
Use Select>Face to select the hand and the first piece of the forearm, on both sides. Use the Delete button on your keyboard to delete them.
Using the Unimesh plugins under File > Import, import the smoothhands .simpe file appropriate to your mesh's age and gender (for my adult female mesh it's smoothhands_af.simpe). In my example, the arms already match up with the imported arms I imported in every way. If I export it like this, it would already work perfectly. There's not even a need to combine all the 'body' groups. End of tutorial.
Hah, no - I might be lucky this time, but unfortunately some things can still go wrong. Here are a few things that you might need to fix:
- Do the vertices match? You should be able to spot this in Milkshape - it's when the vertices where the forearms are attached aren't correctly aligned. Go around the seam to select two vertices of each side closest to each other, then use Vertex>Snap Together on them.
- Do the normals match? Turn off the Wireframe Overlay to check, and set the view to 'Smooth Shaded'. If the shadowing on the arm doesn't match, then that is likely a normals issue. Select the vertices that form the seam and use Vertex>Align Normals on them. The shadows should now be smoothed out.
- Do the bones match? You'll notice this in game if they don't - you'll get a see-through seam where you attached the arms, that changes shape when the sim is moving. Select the vertices that you attached and go to Vertex>Sims 2 Unimesh Bone Tool and hit Apply To All + Commit All.
- Does the UV map match? The texture won't match up on your mesh if it doesn't. This shouldn't really happen unless someone has messed with the mapping, but if it does, you'll have to combine the group you imported with the mesh. Selecting them both, go to the Groups Tab and hit 'Regroup'. Fix the comments and group name, and assign the outfit's texture to the regrouped group. Then go to Window>Texture Coordinate Window and move the vertices around until they match up.
If you've made sure that this is all fine and dandy, then... that's it. Export it and import it in your mesh package, as you would with any other mesh. It might be worth double-checking it in-game to see if you've missed something.
This section shows how to attach the hands to meshes with long sleeves. It's a bit trickier, but only a wee bit. First, we're going to delete the Maxis hands. Carefully select and delete the vertices, so that you are left with only the sleeve.
Select the inner ring of vertices...
...and snap them together using Vertex>Snap Together. With the vertex in the middle still selected, also use Vertex>Align Normals so that the wonky shadows are smoothed out.
Now, import the appropriate smooth hands mesh, and delete the forearm (and perhaps the first row of vertices of the wrist, depending on whether it shows outside the sleeve or not). The less unseen pieces are stuck in the sleeves, the less chance you have of things sticking out during animation.
Again, double check it in-game to see if there is anything that you might have missed. And that is it. Easy, right? Many thanks to Tenshii~Akari for her open policy - remember to credit her if you use these.
Please feel free to post questions or point out anything that is unclear.
Attaching Tenshii~Akari's smooth hands to tops or outfits.
I noticed some frustrated flailing about using these, so I thought it might be useful to write a little tutorial about them. This is a basic tutorial: It's extremely easy for those who are comfortable with Milkshape, but it was written to be understandable for those who are less confident with the program. Swapping hands is like swapping shoes, but a lot easier. So if you've done that before, this is a walk in the park for you. This will just cover the meshing bit, nothing else.
What are Tenshii's smooth hands?
Tenshii~Akari posted a number of lovely body meshes over at Sim-Oasis a few years back, which feature smoother hands and more detailed feet. The hands are basically edits of the Maxis hands, so they have the same mapping - they're just less blocky. They are interesting for those who prefer a more realistic aesthetic and are put off by the original hands. The drawback is that they do kick up the mesh's total polycount (by about 1800), putting the total polycount on the same level as the average TS3>TS2 clothing mesh. If you can use those without noticing lagging in your game, you ought to have no problems.
What you'll need:
- A recent version of Milkshape
- Unimesh plugins by Wes_H
- msAlignNormals plugin by demon432
-The smooth hands pack I prepared for you.
This archive includes the separated hands for all the ages and genders, cut off at the forearm. The normals and seams are matched to the game's standard naked meshes. They are in .simpe format, so that you can easily import them into your project with bones and comments intact.
Make sure you're working on a duplicate file, or have a back-up somewhere. You might end up deleting a face or vertex that you didn't mean to delete.
1. Bare arms.
This section will show you how to attach the hands to a mesh with bare arms.
Use Select>Face to select the hand and the first piece of the forearm, on both sides. Use the Delete button on your keyboard to delete them.
Using the Unimesh plugins under File > Import, import the smoothhands .simpe file appropriate to your mesh's age and gender (for my adult female mesh it's smoothhands_af.simpe). In my example, the arms already match up with the imported arms I imported in every way. If I export it like this, it would already work perfectly. There's not even a need to combine all the 'body' groups. End of tutorial.
Hah, no - I might be lucky this time, but unfortunately some things can still go wrong. Here are a few things that you might need to fix:
- Do the vertices match? You should be able to spot this in Milkshape - it's when the vertices where the forearms are attached aren't correctly aligned. Go around the seam to select two vertices of each side closest to each other, then use Vertex>Snap Together on them.
- Do the normals match? Turn off the Wireframe Overlay to check, and set the view to 'Smooth Shaded'. If the shadowing on the arm doesn't match, then that is likely a normals issue. Select the vertices that form the seam and use Vertex>Align Normals on them. The shadows should now be smoothed out.
- Do the bones match? You'll notice this in game if they don't - you'll get a see-through seam where you attached the arms, that changes shape when the sim is moving. Select the vertices that you attached and go to Vertex>Sims 2 Unimesh Bone Tool and hit Apply To All + Commit All.
- Does the UV map match? The texture won't match up on your mesh if it doesn't. This shouldn't really happen unless someone has messed with the mapping, but if it does, you'll have to combine the group you imported with the mesh. Selecting them both, go to the Groups Tab and hit 'Regroup'. Fix the comments and group name, and assign the outfit's texture to the regrouped group. Then go to Window>Texture Coordinate Window and move the vertices around until they match up.
If you've made sure that this is all fine and dandy, then... that's it. Export it and import it in your mesh package, as you would with any other mesh. It might be worth double-checking it in-game to see if you've missed something.
2. Longsleeves.
This section shows how to attach the hands to meshes with long sleeves. It's a bit trickier, but only a wee bit. First, we're going to delete the Maxis hands. Carefully select and delete the vertices, so that you are left with only the sleeve.
Select the inner ring of vertices...
...and snap them together using Vertex>Snap Together. With the vertex in the middle still selected, also use Vertex>Align Normals so that the wonky shadows are smoothed out.
Now, import the appropriate smooth hands mesh, and delete the forearm (and perhaps the first row of vertices of the wrist, depending on whether it shows outside the sleeve or not). The less unseen pieces are stuck in the sleeves, the less chance you have of things sticking out during animation.
Again, double check it in-game to see if there is anything that you might have missed. And that is it. Easy, right? Many thanks to Tenshii~Akari for her open policy - remember to credit her if you use these.
Please feel free to post questions or point out anything that is unclear.
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(Anonymous) 2014-02-21 04:42 am (UTC)(link)no subject