Importing your sim as mesh to blender

[par.and]

Hiya all,

long time no post, but every now and then I pop in here to read and I'm glad every time there is an active community modding Sims 3, producing CC and animating, creating tutorials and inspiring each other and everybody else. I notice @LadySmoks and @Nonsequitur have, in addition to their other awesome work, recently created wonderful sim-shaped columns and statues (not to mention the sex doll). Does this process involve importing the mesh of an existing sim into Blender., and if so, how is this achieved? My apologies if this is a silly question.

Best regards,
Paris

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, par.and said:

Hiya all,

long time no post, but every now and then I pop in here to read and I'm glad every time there is an active community modding Sims 3, producing CC and animating, creating tutorials and inspiring each other and everybody else. I notice @LadySmoks and @Nonsequitur have, in addition to their other awesome work, recently created wonderful sim-shaped columns and statues (not to mention the sex doll). Does this process involve importing the mesh of an existing sim into Blender., and if so, how is this achieved? My apologies if this is a silly question.

Best regards,
Paris

Not silly question at all! Well, I am still learning... Several tutorials on youtube about rigging a mesh in Blender 2.8 and newer. I understood this one here.

 

What I did was import all of the mesh parts (I have a workshop folder that contains a lot of meshes/ parts and .wsos, some binary parts to plug into TSRW directly)... upper and lower body, feet, head parts and hair.

 

Fit all parts onto one UV map (leave room for pedestal). Merge all of the body parts into one mesh. Hair was a PITA (for me) because it did not accept bone assignments correctly, and had to be weight painted separately after the rig was made, and before trying to pose. Then rig the mesh as in video. I used meta rig, so I could move fingers. I am still figuring out exact placement of the joints, as some were a little off, and I made adjustments to the mesh after it was exported and imported back.

 

There are some face changes that can be done with rig, and some can be done to posed mesh... at least how I did it.

[par.and]

59 minutes ago, LadySmoks said:

Not silly question at all! Well, I am still learning... Several tutorials on youtube about rigging a mesh in Blender 2.8 and newer. I understood this one here.

 

What I did was import all of the mesh parts (I have a workshop folder that contains a lot of meshes/ parts and .wsos, some binary parts to plug into TSRW directly)... upper and lower body, feet, head parts and hair.

 

Fit all parts onto one UV map (leave room for pedestal). Merge all of the body parts into one mesh. Hair was a PITA (for me) because it did not accept bone assignments correctly, and had to be weight painted separately after the rig was made, and before trying to pose. Then rig the mesh as in video. I used meta rig, so I could move fingers. I am still figuring out exact placement of the joints, as some were a little off, and I made adjustments to the mesh after it was exported and imported back.

 

There are some face changes that can be done with rig, and some can be done to posed mesh... at least how I did it.

Thank you for such a detailed and quick reply! It seems challenging but the possibilities are intriguing. I will certainly check out the video and see if I can try ma hand at this!

[Nonsequitur]

Once any mesh is in OBJ format Blender will load it to edit.

Making a column using a sim is a relatively easy thing. You need an EA compatible mesh for Body, Scalp, Face, Hair, and Feet (naked shoes).

You also need the images for these body parts. A good skin will have all the images you need and can be extracted using S3PE from your favorite Skin's package. 

The only problem you have is the original A-Pose of the Sim Body.  You either need to Rig the fully assembled Sim to pose it or you need to manually move the arms, legs, etc to create the pose for the column you want.  This is why I looked into Rigging and posing Sims - The individual parts of the Sim tend to tear away from each other if you manually move the parts. Rigging - if done properly, will prevent most of this tearing. You may still need to snap together and weld vertices of the final output mesh to repair artifacts and tears.

 

I won't talk about Rigging - that is something that is a detailed process.

 

Basically:

 

You take a copy of each body part mesh and combined them onto the same UV Map.

FIRST: Take all the various body parts and assemble them together how you want them to display without Altering or combining ANY of their respective parts or UV Maps.

You then begin Re-Mapping their respective UV's.

 

Take each body part ( hair, scalp, face - don't touch the body) and SCALE (S) to fit an area of the UV image area.

 

 

Scale proportionally in X & Y to fit somewhere.

To remove the extra Arm - I click to highlight the arm (L in edit mode), then go to the UV menu and Mirror-X, move the arm to match the other one on the other side.  This makes room on the UV for the other body parts.

 

In your graphics editor - Take the Skin images and carefully scale them and match them over their respective UV image.  

Then, to clean things up a bit - select You entire UV Map image at max sensitivity, invert selection, and go to each image layer and CUT. This removes all images outside the UV mapping boundaries - lets you see only what will be displayed on the Objects and gives room to see gaps and laps of the various images. Correct any flaws in images now. Do the same for each Body part image until all body part images are place correctly - then Merge into one image, Save a copy of the layer as a backup - you'll need it later.

 

As it is you now have the workings for your statue or column. 

In Blender - use a cube or cylinder to make your "Pedestal" Be sure to check Make-UV. Position is where you want it and reshape the UV for it - so it will fit somewhere not occupied on the UV Map.  When all is said and done - be sure to position the complete model so the base of the bottom "Pedestal" is centered of X & Y origin - lever with the ground plane and the top of the upper "Pedestal" Is  slightly lower than 3-squares above the ground plane (a little higher than the top of an existing EA Column). 

 

Most columns have two mesh groups. So, using the Park Statue as a Donner will have 2-mesh groups.  One of these groups is usually set to be a Drop-Shadow. So once your Model is complete and in One-Group - make a 1X1 Plain at a tiny bit below ground plane when you want the "Footprint" of the statue... where you want the sim not to go... This will act as your Sim Footprint boundary and Drop-Shadow when assembling in TSRW.  Make sure your groups are in the proper order when you save as WSO or as an object file before converting to WSO. Same goes for using a EA Column as a Donner. 

 

I've skipped a lot of the details and assume you have some knowledge of TSRW, GIMP or another Graphics editor, Blender's Editing and UV sections, and any conversion utilities. If you need more clarity - PM me.

 

Hope you find this useful!

 

FYI: Manipulating a Sim with clothing is much more difficult unless parts of the clothing is also Rigged.  You can also use the Sim, when completed, as a Static Avatar model to create a garment after the statues creation.  Remember this is a completely Static Model. No movement of Sim or Garment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[par.and]

On 10/24/2021 at 7:36 PM, Nonsequitur said:

Once any mesh is in OBJ format Blender will load it to edit.

Making a column using a sim is a relatively easy thing. You need an EA compatible mesh for Body, Scalp, Face, Hair, and Feet (naked shoes).

You also need the images for these body parts. A good skin will have all the images you need and can be extracted using S3PE from your favorite Skin's package. 

The only problem you have is the original A-Pose of the Sim Body.  You either need to Rig the fully assembled Sim to pose it or you need to manually move the arms, legs, etc to create the pose for the column you want.  This is why I looked into Rigging and posing Sims - The individual parts of the Sim tend to tear away from each other if you manually move the parts. Rigging - if done properly, will prevent most of this tearing. You may still need to snap together and weld vertices of the final output mesh to repair artifacts and tears.

 

I won't talk about Rigging - that is something that is a detailed process.

 

Basically:

 

You take a copy of each body part mesh and combined them onto the same UV Map.

FIRST: Take all the various body parts and assemble them together how you want them to display without Altering or combining ANY of their respective parts or UV Maps.

You then begin Re-Mapping their respective UV's.

 

Take each body part ( hair, scalp, face - don't touch the body) and SCALE (S) to fit an area of the UV image area.

 

 

Scale proportionally in X & Y to fit somewhere.

To remove the extra Arm - I click to highlight the arm (L in edit mode), then go to the UV menu and Mirror-X, move the arm to match the other one on the other side.  This makes room on the UV for the other body parts.

 

In your graphics editor - Take the Skin images and carefully scale them and match them over their respective UV image.  

Then, to clean things up a bit - select You entire UV Map image at max sensitivity, invert selection, and go to each image layer and CUT. This removes all images outside the UV mapping boundaries - lets you see only what will be displayed on the Objects and gives room to see gaps and laps of the various images. Correct any flaws in images now. Do the same for each Body part image until all body part images are place correctly - then Merge into one image, Save a copy of the layer as a backup - you'll need it later.

 

As it is you now have the workings for your statue or column. 

In Blender - use a cube or cylinder to make your "Pedestal" Be sure to check Make-UV. Position is where you want it and reshape the UV for it - so it will fit somewhere not occupied on the UV Map.  When all is said and done - be sure to position the complete model so the base of the bottom "Pedestal" is centered of X & Y origin - lever with the ground plane and the top of the upper "Pedestal" Is  slightly lower than 3-squares above the ground plane (a little higher than the top of an existing EA Column). 

 

Most columns have two mesh groups. So, using the Park Statue as a Donner will have 2-mesh groups.  One of these groups is usually set to be a Drop-Shadow. So once your Model is complete and in One-Group - make a 1X1 Plain at a tiny bit below ground plane when you want the "Footprint" of the statue... where you want the sim not to go... This will act as your Sim Footprint boundary and Drop-Shadow when assembling in TSRW.  Make sure your groups are in the proper order when you save as WSO or as an object file before converting to WSO. Same goes for using a EA Column as a Donner. 

 

I've skipped a lot of the details and assume you have some knowledge of TSRW, GIMP or another Graphics editor, Blender's Editing and UV sections, and any conversion utilities. If you need more clarity - PM me.

 

Hope you find this useful!

 

FYI: Manipulating a Sim with clothing is much more difficult unless parts of the clothing is also Rigged.  You can also use the Sim, when completed, as a Static Avatar model to create a garment after the statues creation.  Remember this is a completely Static Model. No movement of Sim or Garment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow, thanks a ton for the walk through! I hope I will get the time soon to really dig into this! :)

[Guest]

What I found in working on FemmeBots, trying to convert a few game rip meshes, and limited work with statues is that there need not be a set position for anything on a UV map, as these are "self contained" one offs. Body parts do not have to match EA mapping in the same way garments must, as skin textures are not directly applied by the game.

 

It is a little more work, as you must resize the texture (in these cases, skins) and position it to match the UV map you created.

 

General sizing of parts depends on the detail you need for that part. With both FemmeBots and statues, I find hair to be an issue, as too much detail is lost when making it too small. A big difference between bots and statues is that the head slot for bots is a separate map, whereas everything must fit on an object map. These are examples of some of my UV mapping...

 

Spoiler

First is recent bot upload, V4. No head on this map. I have basically abandoned the EA bot map.

 

Next is Eve statue. She is made similar to bot, except the body is moved more to the left and head is squeezed into where I use for bot parts. I give as much room as possible to hair, which still shows transparency with object phong shader, so works out ok.

 

Next examples of body moved and resized. Objects, like garments, need a multiplier to show textures. But with garments, areas of skin have no multiplier image and must remain in standard EA position for the game to properly apply a skin to the Sim. BUT... a statue is an object, has no skin, and YOU place the the texture image where you need it to be, as the game does not apply textures to objects. As Nonsequitur said, a desaturated skin texture of your choice. I then darken the gray so the median tone is 50 percent.

 

First is Lucifera statue, then a work in progress...

 

 

With parts that are folded, such as Eve statue and bots, each half will be perfect mirror of the other. This can cause issues with some patterns. That is why the V4 has some unfolded parts, as they are not mirror images. Small UV will show textures larger. I do not have link handy, but Nonsequitur did tutorial on changing tiling values in TSRW. It was more about centering patterns, but same method works to resize a pattern when x and y are increased the same.

Edited November 21, 2021 by LadySmoks