I need some help improving my table mesh. It got rejected, which is ok because I expected it to get rejected on the first submission. The reasons it got rejected was it needs a bit more work and I forgot to include the price and in-game catalog location. The moderator also wrote:
"The texturing needs a lot more work - it repeats too much, and the polycount is also rather high for a single tile object. However, its great that you have made an original mesh rather than just editing or transferring from TS2. Dont give up"
I'm not really sure what they mean by texturing because I thought that once an object is uv mapped the red and green sections stand for the primary and secondary recolor sections, and the texture patterns are chosen in-game? Here are soms pics and also I would love to know if anyone has an idea of how to lower the polycount:

What the mod is talking about is the UV map. To put it in simple terms (because I don't know the difficult ones) you've got your whole mesh in your UV map either in the same place. In other words, every little square of the mesh maps to the same part of the texture. You'll want to change your UV map so larger portions of the mesh map to be the same place in the texture. I think. Dx

UVMAP
Try taking a look at the mesh parts overlayed on the UVmap (overlay) and you will see that the mesh parts are positioned on the UVmap - this is then what you see on the object. If you look at the leg of your table you will see that the wood grain is horizontal - it should be vertical. If you isolate just that piece of mesh (one leg) in your mesh editor and remap it then you can
1) delete the other three incorrectly mapped legs
2) copy the remapped leg so you have four legs and then
3) reposition.
When you copy a mapped mesh the mapping is copied too.

POLYS
Its a round table - that will always give a highish poly count. However, you can keep the count down using some simple tricks:

Keep the number of stacks in any cylinders as low as possible. If you dont need to bend the cylinder then one stack is fine
The legs of the table are curved - that has to be pushing the polys up - how did you do the curve? I advise against using extrusion techniques in meshing for sims - it REALLY pushes the polys up.
In theory you could use an eight stack cylinder with 6 faces - on one leg that would be 48 polys. By moving about the stacks in the cylinder you would get a nice curve.

There are also some excellent meshing tutorials on site - you can use all the TS2 tutorials - they are still relevant for meshing and mapping - and that is where your table needs to improve.

I probably chose the method that created the highest poly count , I created the leg, animated it, and then exported it as an obj. file. I think what I have to do is start a new package file and re-create the table. As for the grayscale map I filled it in completely with gray. I was following a tutorial but I guess I just didn't understand what all the maps were for...I'll follow another tutorial and see if I can understand better, I'm really confused with the uv mapping. But the info really helped Thanks!

Which editor are you using? If its milkshape then the texture editor is fairly primitive, try UV mapper or lithunwrap.

http://www.uvmapper.com/ = UV mapper

http://files.seriouszone.com/download.php?fileid=198 = lithunwrap

Well I started a new package and have my mesh, but I want to make sure I uv map correctly. So I should:
1. export as an obj file
2. load obj in uv mapper and choose edit > new uv map > box
3. set the size as 512 and unckeck split front/back
4. overlap the similar shapes
5. export over obj file

Do I have to uv map the table top separately if I want it to be glass and not CaSTable?

I think that top doesn't need to be mapped because it will be transparent but it needs to be made as different group
for example:
shaddow - group_0
leggs and innerring - group_1
top - group_2

About high poly, maybe you should remove one leg to lower poly.

Heres a pic of the table with three legs,thanks for the suggestion huddy 777.
So I don't have to uv map the table top at all?

No, you don't need to map it at all, you must use table that already have glass like one on picture below and import your top instead of that glass (i made a box in MilkShape and imported it instead of glass)

I'm done uv mapping and I've changed all the MLOD files and MODL file, now i'm working on the texture files. I'm not sure what to do to create the grayscale map. In the tutorial I was following they covered the map completely with gray because it was a simple mesh, should I do the same? (Sorry I'm new at meshing, thanks for all the help so far everyone.)

grayscale map shows shadows on item, but you can leave it completely grey

Well my mesh works! ^.^ It may be too simple to be uploaded though. If it is ok to upload I'm thinking about changing the color of the glass.

It looks great!
You can make a chair to go with it and a deco and upload it as a set

I agree. If you can just make a chair with matching style legs(maybe an arm chair? You could alter the big wingback one) to go next to it, it'd be great. As a stand-alone it's a little too unique, I think, to work. But with just one chair I could see it sitting by the fireplace with a lamp on it, with the chair and a bookshelf :D

I would, but it was actually cloned from a coffee table. Sorry I probably didn't mention that! But I'm really glad that you like it. EDIT: I see what you mean, I've never uploaded a set...but I could try. Here is my attempt at a chair, I haven't figured out yet how to give the chair a "shodowy" look, but I'm sure it has to do with the grayscale map.

Wow - what an improvement on the first one (applauds). Just a little thing - your shadow is square, but the table is round.

Also, I'm seeing a lot of advice to just fill the greyscale map with grey, but - AFAIK - if you put some texturing on that map that lines up with the UV mapped areas, you can get some nice detail without having to add a polygon.
If you are thinking of uploading, take some pics with the table legs in different patterns - geometrics are good to show off the neatness and accuracy of the UV mapping.

How many polys is this new version?

Vertices=769 Also the shadow is fixed :D

Hmm, meshes have vertices and polys - I think that your polygon count should be lower than the vertices. Round about 400 I think? If so, thats GOOD for a round table - you could even put that other leg back on if you wanted .

TBH, I'm still not 100% convinced on the mapping; this is how I test my items. I get a geometric pattern, and I put that on the table, to test. If its ok with that, then its gonna be ok with most things. If its not ok, for example the squares look a little off, then I can adjust my map, using the areas where the pattern is a bit wonky as a guide.

How about a BIG close up pic of the table?

I see the areas that need to be adjusted but I don't know how to fix the uv map without starting a completely new package UPDATE: Well I finally had time to work on meshing (homework comes first) I messed with the chair mesh a bit more and the grayscale map, I like everything so far except for the arms, they're just really uneven on the inside. Next time I uv map I'm going to separate the front and back so that there won't be mysterious shadowing on the backside of the chair. But I still don't know how to go about fixing the uv map on the coffee table.

I've tried creating another package and changed the uv map but I don't know how to fix it.

can you upload picture of of uv map like one below

I didn't really overlap any of the shapes because i'm not sure which ones can go together without messing up the whole uv map. (although maybe it can't get much worse) lol

in UVMapper if you press ctrl+g then you can choose by groups, so if you have legs and inner ring as different groups you can choose betwen them, it can help you to overlap things that goes together
Try making it like on the picture below. Press ctrl+g and choose only innerring and put it in corner or somewhere where it wont collide with legs. that way you will be able to recolor ring differently then legs and maybe it will "fix" your table
Can you put bigger in-game picture of table?

Ok so I'll separate the parts into groups before I uv map them. If I increase the size of the leg on the uv map, does that change how the texture appears on the mesh in-game?

yes it does