Invisible Outfit Mesh Problem(CAS Tools and Blender)

[Harkine]

So I was trying to edit a custom outfit, combined some 3 meshes into one and it appeared appeared in the CAS Tools previewer just fine. However in game it was completely invisible. Here the whole process I went through.

1. Exported the outfit mesh to dae

2. Exported a bottom mesh to dae

3. Exported a top mesh to dae

4. Opened blender(v2.84)

5. Imported both the bottom and top mesh and combined it into one object using the bool tool plugin.

6. Adjusted the outfit mesh to my liking and then combined it with the aforementioned body mesh. Saved the .dae file

7. Imported the dae file mesh with CAS Tools to replace the current 0 LOD mesh.

8. Checked the previewer and it looked fine,

9. Started up the Sims 4 and went into CAS and selected the outfit only to find out that the entire mesh is invisible

 

What did I do wrong? I really want to know how to fix this, help would be greatly appreciated. I feel like this is something with an easy solution that I'm just not aware of.

[modella]

Would you be able to upload the package file here so I can take a look at it?

[Harkine]

On 7/12/2021 at 4:51 PM, modella said:

Would you be able to upload the package file here so I can take a look at it?

Here ya go!

 

Edited July 22, 2021 by BigJohn1667

[modella]

2 hours ago, BigJohn1667 said:

Here ya go!

cool whip.package 896.73 kB · 0 downloads

 

After looking at the file in Blender and S4CASTools, it seems like the culprit is . . . . MISSING BONES *dun dun dunnn*

I don't typically work with files in the .dae format (typically I'll mess around with things in the .obj or .ms3d format), but I'm thinking that somewhere along the way, the original bones went bye bye. But no fear, totally easy fix that I am working on now and will post along with the fixed file in a few minutes ?

[Harkine]

6 minutes ago, modella said:

 

After looking at the file in Blender and S4CASTools, it seems like the culprit is . . . . MISSING BONES *dun dun dunnn*

I don't typically work with files in the .dae format (typically I'll mess around with things in the .obj or .ms3d format), but I'm thinking that somewhere along the way, the original bones went bye bye. But no fear, totally easy fix that I am working on now and will post along with the fixed file in a few minutes ?

Great! Excellent! Thank you so much! Could you tell me what you did to fix it as well? I don't want to repeat the same mistake in the future.

Edited July 13, 2021 by BigJohn1667

[modella]

48 minutes ago, BigJohn1667 said:

Great! Excellent! Thank you so much! Could you tell me what you did to fix it as well? I don't want to repeat the same mistake in the future.

You are so welcome ❤️!  For LODs 1-3, all the expected bones are there, which is great, only LOD 0 is this issue ;____;

 

(checking out the file and seeing no bones ;___;)

 

Now I'm not sure why the bones disappeared in the process you did, but I will tell you how I fixed on it my side.

I'm sure there is a better, more accurate way to assign bones to meshes, but the easiest and sometimes quickest way I've found for me is to use the Auto Tool tab underneath Mesh Tools in S4CasTools! This will auto-assign your bones for you after the proper selections are made. 

 

I exported LOD 0 as an .obj (only because the LOD is missing the bones. If it wasn't, you could export it as .ms3d or .dae as well) and had S4CasTools do the rest in terms of assigning the bones.

 

Since it's a full body outfit for adult females, I used the drop downs and selected those options. Make sure 'Use Standard Reference Mesh" is selected.  

 

 

Now, depending on how many vertices your mesh has, this can take a while for the program to do (so in a way, this actually isn't the quickest depending on the file, and it may be better to do the bone assignments manually).

 

And ta-daaaaaa, whipped cream on your simmies naughty bits :3 

 

 

Hopefully my explanation was correct and also understandable, haha, but if not please tell me so I can help better  

 

Edit: I'm going to do a little more tinkering to see where your process went wrong, but for now, here are the finished results!

cool whip (fixed).package

Edited July 13, 2021 by modella

[Harkine]

Thank you!

Edited July 13, 2021 by BigJohn1667

[Harkine]

Alright, so I'm still having problems after all. I just did the process you did and I keep getting this error with the assignment tool. Did I do something wrong?

Did I forget to do something in Blender?

Edited July 19, 2021 by BigJohn1667

[modella]

17 hours ago, BigJohn1667 said:

Alright, so I'm still having problems after all. I just did the process you did and I keep getting this error with the assignment tool. Did I do something wrong?

Did I forget to do something in Blender?

Did you export the mesh as an obj or DAE? 

[Harkine]

Alright, so I tried it again doing exactly what you did but now CAS Tools starts doing the process only to to be told the program is not responding. It hasn't responded for 7 minutes now. Is it still working? If it's still working how long do I have to wait? Apologies for all the questions but I'm still new at this. Alright, never mind it took 20 minutes but it worked.

Edited July 21, 2021 by BigJohn1667

[Harkine]

Alright, after a long frustrating process I don't want to go into I got it working. A whole new different problem has arrived but it I don't think it belongs in this forum thread. Thank you so much for all your help modella! Also could please delete the file from your post? I feel like having something unfinished like this still available for download is kind of embarrassing.