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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 12th Jul 2014 at 3:53 AM
Building Custom Body Models: Going out with a Bang (Not Really)
Okay, after reading the FAQ for the forums, I learned I can't make requests, which was what I have been doing for the past few months. However,that doesn't mean I have great concepts. I have no modding experience, but I do understand mechanics, and I can draw out what I want. As always, though, I can never quite nail the scripting behind modding. I took my time on the Nexus Forums, piecing together how an idea might work. I also keep a realistic mindset, asking myself "How realistic is this concept?" Or, "Does this make sense in the world I am creating ideas in?"

Anyways, on to the concept. I was tired of the overall blandness of the models of the Sims themselves. I have look for mods on all sorts of sights, only to be disappointed. Eventually, I went to the Sims 3 community, asking this: Creating More Spectacular Mermaids.

Now that that was out of the way, I learned that I had more ideas the change the game. I also realized that I need an assistant: someone who can guide me every step of the way (maybe even help with the scripting). For that, I am asking for assistance in this undertaking. Anyone willing?
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Ms. Byte (Deceased)
#2 Old 12th Jul 2014 at 12:57 PM
If all you want is to alter the appearance of mermaids, you need to make new clothing with fins, etc. For the head, you'd make a hat hair large enough to enclose the normal sim head. You'd also have to figure out how the transformation is done and how to use the custom mermaid clothing. Most likely there's a hidden mermaid outfit in the sim's data and you'd have to find a way to edit that outfit the way Master Controller and XCAS let you edit the nude outfit.

There are several CAS part modding tutorials out there to get you started making mermaid clothes. For editing the outfit (assuming that's how the transformation is done), if you already know C# and have some coding experience you can start by using a disassembler like Reflector or ILSpy to see how Master Controller edits the nude outfit - basically it copies it to Everyday, opens CAS or the Dresser so you can edit it, and copies it back when you exit. (XCAS is a core mod that adds the nude category in CAS/Dresser and probably not the way you want to go.)

Please do not PM me with mod, tutorial, or general modding questions or problems; post them in the thread for the mod or tutorial or post them in the appropriate forum.

Visit my blogs for other Sims content:
Online Sims - general mods for Sims 3
Offline Sims - adult mods for Sims 3 and Sims 4
Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 14th Jul 2014 at 4:33 AM
Sorry it took so long to get back to you, but I was spending time looking for what exactly controls the transformation. Any good ideas on where to look? (And simply saying "in the Data folder" won't help)
Ms. Byte (Deceased)
#4 Old 14th Jul 2014 at 12:40 PM Last edited by CmarNYC : 14th Jul 2014 at 3:23 PM.
To really figure it out you'd use a disassembler to examine the game code, although it may be in the unmanaged code that you can't look at. If you could find the name of the default mermaid outfit it wouldn't be hard to replace it with a custom outfit. Do you have programming experience?

The other possibility is to examine a mermaid sim's data to try and find a mermaid outfit, which should be a SIMO file. Since you can't make a mermaid in CAS and save it, you'd have to find out where the data is kept - I don't know. You could also use Master Controller or my Sim Outfitter on a mermaid and see if a mermaid outfit is listed.

This part of it really isn't a beginner project.

Edit: I went ahead and looked at the game code. The default mermaid outfit name is:

[male/female][Mermaid][Teen/Adult/Elder]

So for example the outfit name for an adult/YA female mermaid is "femaleMermaidAdult". There are separate outfits for other ages and genders.

This name is then FNV64 hashed to give the Instance ID of the SIMO (sim outfit) file that defines the adult female mermaid outfit. If you open the Island Paradise 'FullBuild_p19.package' in 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Island Paradise\GameData\Shared\Packages' ('C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Island Paradise\GameData\Shared\Packages' on 32-bit systems) with s3pe, use Tools/FNV Hash to calculate the hash of femaleMermaidAdult, and search the Instance column for that number, you should find the outfit and be able to extract it.

If you don't have S3PE (sims 3 package editor), get it: http://www.den.simlogical.com/denfo....php?board=19.0

After you make new CAS Parts for your modified top and bottom, you can just use S3PE to change the links for the top and bottom to your modified parts. That's simple and I can guide you through it. Adding a hat hair to the outfit may or may not be simple, depending on whether you can just add another CASP with s3pe. The function is there, but I've never tried it.

I really should do a new version of my SIMO editor to make this easier.

Anyway, you should start working on making the custom mermaid tops and bottoms. There are plenty of tutorials on making custom clothing: http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php...3_CAS_Tutorials

Please do not PM me with mod, tutorial, or general modding questions or problems; post them in the thread for the mod or tutorial or post them in the appropriate forum.

Visit my blogs for other Sims content:
Online Sims - general mods for Sims 3
Offline Sims - adult mods for Sims 3 and Sims 4
Test Subject
Original Poster
#5 Old 16th Jul 2014 at 6:24 AM
I finally located the file (it was near the bottom of the list), but now I have the issue of what Modeling software to use. I was looking at a couple (Milkshape was the most recommended, but in no way easy to learn), and one that caught my attention was Wings 3D, which has a minimalist UI. I haven't attempted any programming, and this is likely going to be my first mod. What I was hoping to do was to open up the outfit in a model viewer and edit the outfit directly (that way I can visualize what I want easier, rather than starting from scratch), and, with the visual aid (I'm VERY visually oriented), I can think of something wild.
Ms. Byte (Deceased)
#6 Old 16th Jul 2014 at 8:44 AM
To make the mermaid parts you need meshes, not the outfit. The SIMO is called an outfit but it's actually a collection of pointers to clothing, sliders, settings, hair/eye/skin colors, etc. - a complete description of what the sim looks like. The the case of default outfits like Mermaid it includes only clothing.

You should find a good clothing tutorial including meshing and start with that. Sims has its own mesh format called GEOM, and TSR Workshop converts that to WSO. Both require plugins to be imported to/exported from Milkshape. There's GEOM plugins for Blender too but I'm not sure how well they'd work for this purpose. You can also use another program like Wings 3D and export to OBJ and convert it, but you'll probably need Milkshape at some point.

Please do not PM me with mod, tutorial, or general modding questions or problems; post them in the thread for the mod or tutorial or post them in the appropriate forum.

Visit my blogs for other Sims content:
Online Sims - general mods for Sims 3
Offline Sims - adult mods for Sims 3 and Sims 4
Test Subject
Original Poster
#7 Old 17th Jul 2014 at 5:08 AM
Oh, booooooy! Now I'm getting my hands dirty (finally)! I managed to extract (export) the files that govern the Mermaid outfit for all types (six in all, one for each combination, e.g femaleMermaidAdult and maleMermaidTeen). Now I need to find a way to separate the individual files I found into parts I can put into a model viewer. Speaking of which, I decided to dump my free trial of Milkshape to try out Blender, which has the built-in sculpting feature, which will be a heck of a lot better than doing the individual vertices piece by piece. As I said, I need a visual aid to see where I should go, so extracting the individual clothing parts will be very helpful here.
At this point, I'm experimenting with the tools I'm using to try and get a feel for them. I really have no clue how to extract the individual parts. If I have to find the individual clothing pieces, then I must have done something wrong...
Ms. Byte (Deceased)
#8 Old 17th Jul 2014 at 12:51 PM
If at all possible, stay away from the dynamic topology option in Blender's sculpt. It'll destroy the mesh UV map and creating a new one is difficult. You can add parts and UV map them manually and/or divide faces to add complexity, but keep your mesh fairly low poly since getting above around 10000 vertices for tops and 5000 for bottoms will cause you headaches later on.

I can't help you much with Blender since I find it extremely difficult to use. This may be only because I'm used to Milkshape.

What you want is GEOM files. You can use S3OC to clone the mermaid tail (using the CASP cloning function), then open the cloned package with S3PE and export the GEOM files. Then you can import them into Blender using the GEOM plugin available in the Meshing forum. Experiment with some changes and then export the GEOM - export is where I've always run into problems with the GEOM plugin if I've added or removed vertices - if you can't get it to work, then export as OBJ.

I'm currently finishing up a new version of Mesh Toolkit which will directly convert from OBJ to GEOM or WSO without Milkshape, so you can use that to convert back to something usable in the game.

Blender plugins: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=443780
S3oc: http://www.den.simlogical.com/denfo....php?board=20.0

Please do not PM me with mod, tutorial, or general modding questions or problems; post them in the thread for the mod or tutorial or post them in the appropriate forum.

Visit my blogs for other Sims content:
Online Sims - general mods for Sims 3
Offline Sims - adult mods for Sims 3 and Sims 4
Test Subject
Original Poster
#9 Old 18th Jul 2014 at 5:26 AM
Question: What is the difference between af, ef, and em (then there is EP10 on each one)? I found the individual files on the cloner, but I'm not entirely sure what each on means...
I also managed to figure out what you meant by "package", which is what the cloner made. I see know.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#10 Old 18th Jul 2014 at 5:51 AM
Also, about the tops. Male Mermaids don't have a package for "top". Does that mean I have to make it from scratch (with the Sim model, of course)? And what to do with the females... do they even need to be fixed? I think they may be fine as they are... that's just me, of course. I'll deal with them anyway.
Ms. Byte (Deceased)
#11 Old 18th Jul 2014 at 12:33 PM
a = adult (including young adult for clothing), e = elder, t = teen, m = male, f = female.
Therefore, af = adult female, tm = teen male, etc.
EP10 is the Island Paradise expansion pack.

Male mermaids (mermen?) use the nude top - amTopNude, tmTopNude, emTopNude. You can make an alternate set of tops and link them from the outfit if that's what you want.

Whether you want to change the females is of course up to you.

Please do not PM me with mod, tutorial, or general modding questions or problems; post them in the thread for the mod or tutorial or post them in the appropriate forum.

Visit my blogs for other Sims content:
Online Sims - general mods for Sims 3
Offline Sims - adult mods for Sims 3 and Sims 4
Test Subject
Original Poster
#12 Old 18th Jul 2014 at 7:31 PM
I found amTopNude in S3PE, but not in S3OC. The way I had in mind to alter the top will not work, so there must be something else I can do to alter that portion.
What if I extract the files in S3PE into s3_*.* format, then convert that to GEOM? I'm not sure that'll work, but I'll try...
Test Subject
Original Poster
#13 Old 18th Jul 2014 at 7:36 PM
Nevermind. I think I found the problem.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#14 Old 18th Jul 2014 at 7:38 PM
Umm... never mind again. It didn't work...
Test Subject
Original Poster
#15 Old 18th Jul 2014 at 7:40 PM
Refresh, and... done! It works!
Test Subject
Original Poster
#16 Old 18th Jul 2014 at 9:11 PM
Now I can't get the Blender Import to work...
Ms. Byte (Deceased)
#17 Old 18th Jul 2014 at 11:12 PM
Are you using a .geom or .simgeom file?

Please do not PM me with mod, tutorial, or general modding questions or problems; post them in the thread for the mod or tutorial or post them in the appropriate forum.

Visit my blogs for other Sims content:
Online Sims - general mods for Sims 3
Offline Sims - adult mods for Sims 3 and Sims 4
Test Subject
Original Poster
#18 Old 24th Jul 2014 at 11:12 PM
Sorry it took so long to get back to you D:

The file itself doesn't seem to load, but the files I extracted are in .simgeom format. Does it need to be changed?
Ms. Byte (Deceased)
#19 Old 26th Jul 2014 at 2:06 PM
Are you using the plugin and instructions here? http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=443780

Sorry I can't be more help but I very rarely use Blender and have only used it with .simgeom meshes a couple of times.

Please do not PM me with mod, tutorial, or general modding questions or problems; post them in the thread for the mod or tutorial or post them in the appropriate forum.

Visit my blogs for other Sims content:
Online Sims - general mods for Sims 3
Offline Sims - adult mods for Sims 3 and Sims 4
Test Subject
Original Poster
#20 Old 26th Jul 2014 at 7:58 PM
The error is reading "Attribute Error: Armature Part cannot find [use-deform-envelopes]". I'm not entirely sure what that means, but the error location seems to be in the script itself. Something seems to be missing, and I intend to find out what.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#21 Old 26th Jul 2014 at 8:01 PM
Wait a second...
Test Subject
Original Poster
#22 Old 27th Jul 2014 at 2:20 AM
Do I need to load the Sim in to edit the clothes? I think I do...
Ms. Byte (Deceased)
#23 Old 28th Jul 2014 at 2:15 PM
What do you mean by 'load the sim in'? All you need to load is the mesh you're working on. If you're having problems, you should post a list of the EXACT steps you went through and what happened, and also ask in the thread for the tool/plugin you're using.

BTW, double and triple posting is not kosher in this forum, especially for brief comments, since it keeps bumping the thread when no one has replied and you haven't added anything substantial. Unless you have significant new info for the thread you should edit your last post.

Please do not PM me with mod, tutorial, or general modding questions or problems; post them in the thread for the mod or tutorial or post them in the appropriate forum.

Visit my blogs for other Sims content:
Online Sims - general mods for Sims 3
Offline Sims - adult mods for Sims 3 and Sims 4
Test Subject
Original Poster
#24 Old 29th Jul 2014 at 4:32 AM
Alright, here we go:
After installing the GEOM plugin and the GEOM Rig, I open up the import menu. I take the files I extracted from S3OC and try to import them. That is where I come up with the error. The outfit itself is divided into three .simgeom files, and I can't, for some odd reason, load all three at once; only one at a time. I don't know if I need to load all three, or just one, but no matter what I do the same error appears. I'm using the latest version of Blender, so that might have something to do with it, but I don't know for sure.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#25 Old 6th Aug 2014 at 9:09 PM
Alright, does anyone know how to import .simgeom files into Blender? I'm having issues with the plugin, so I need assistance.
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