If you have a mesh and an alpha mesh. Is there a way to copy the bone assignments from one to the same area on the other? I have an alpha skirt I had to pull down and now the bones don't match the body underneath.

For small edits you can mark and copy from other areas with the buttons in the Joints menu. Make sure you do it properly for left, right and middle.

(Blanking on the button names atm, and can't check - I think it is copy and assign, but not sure).

Yikes. Not had a reply for three weeks. Is that how long I've been struggling with it? DX

Does anyone know how I can make the front of the dress flatten while sitting? I've been poking the bone assignments for ages and nothing has worked.

Make sure you've properly assigned the lower parts in the front to either move with the thighs or bend with the knees, depending on where the parts are, and that you blend the weights and don't go from 100% thighs to 100% calves, because then you get bad-looking bendy bits.

Dresses, especially ones with a lot of things going on in the skirt, tend to be in the category of outfits that just don't do what you want them to do however long you poke at them. The wider or messier the skirt is, the less likely it's going to bow down for tables and other things that are in the way of it.

Using ANIM mode in Milkshape (pose mode) can sometimes help when you're testing out bone assignments - saves you from going in and out of the game to test the skirt a hundred and umpteen times. Make sure to save a copy of the file before you turn it on, because you can end up messing up the skeleton.

Yeah It's really annoying, because the lower parts have the same bones as the thighs, but don't move the same way as the thighs. It's driving me nuts. DX

Probably because of the bend in the knees - it does look like a section is going up when it should be going down, but it could be something else. It's difficult to say without looking at the bone assignments.

For pants you have 100% thighs above the knees, then 50/50 thighs-calves in the midpoint of the knees, 100% calves below the knees. Skirts can vary a bit, because these also have to take into account the midpoint between the L/R sections, so they're usually gradient in the horizontal axis, too (something like 25/25 L/R thighs and 25/25 L/R calves for the knees for the midpoint, but could vary a great deal).

Skirt is 100% thighs. Doesn't go beneath the knees.

Basic question, but how does the dress look in T pose/Bodyshop? Like Simmer22 said, there's only so much you can do for a wide skirt. Here's what I could get from an edited Maxis mesh.

From what I can see, the transition between the pelvis and the thighs is really sudden. I think smoothing it out would help a lot already. For the petals' tips, perhaps a touch of weight from the calves might help? Even if they're above the knee, they'd benefit from being 'pulled down'. I'd try something like this. .

Useful Maxis meshes to reference: Glamour Life's DressPuffSkirt and Celebration's DressWeddingShort.

In T pose it looks fine. It's only once they start moving around.

However, I think I've got it to a point where it's tolerable. I lack the skills to get it perfect. I tried weighting the bottom as calves, but it dragged the petals down strangely.

I attached the joints in Milkshape, if anyone has any ideas for improvement. The skirt doesn't respond well to complicated stuff like joints that share two different parts e.g. thighs/knees. Well not with my lack of skill at it, at least. XD

Just out of curiosity - for the comments, is the NumSkinWgts line set to 3 or 1? I just think I can spot a couple possible problems related to bad comments (it could be vertices set to singular joints, doesn't have to be a problem, but doesn't hurt to check).

If the NumSkinWgts is set to 1, the mesh doesn't accept more than one "layer" of bone assignments, so you can't blend them. It needs to be set to 3 for blendability, or the exported mesh will just pick the joint with the highest number for the individual vertices and set the weight to 100, resulting in a color distribution like the mesh to the right here (vs the left one which has the correct NumSkinWgts). It often results in a jagged look during animations.

Even if the mesh looks fine in Milkshape when you export it, you'll notice the changes don't stick ingame, and if you export that mesh from SimPE you'll see the wrong color distribution on the joints. The problems can be fixed as long as you have the Milkshape file, though.

Check all comments just to be sure, and if you find any set to 1, set it to 3. The body itself looks fine, but the skirt looks more like it could have this problem. Check everything just to be on the safe side.

I actually replaced the body with a different one because of it only being set to single joints. Before that it looked the same as the skirt. And what do you know, both alphas looked like this.

ModelName: body_alpha5
Opacity: 5
NumSkinWgts: 1

ModelName: body_alpha3
Opacity: 3
NumSkinWgts: 1

I have no idea how to do multiple joints properly anyway, but I had tried a copy joints from another mesh, which wouldn't have been working properly because of this. Thanks!

^ They're often set to 1 in accessories, which works fine for glasses and things only linked to one joint, but not so much for clothes or hair. I've made it a habit to set them to 3 for everything just so I don't accidentally forget it, and also to save a Milkshape file for the project (easier to fix an accidental miss).

It's so frustrating to have to start over because of one so seemingly tiny little thing (one wrong number), but it can cause such a big problem (borked joint assignments).

Copying joints from a similar-looking mesh is one of the ways to get the right weights.

Does this look better? I still have a bit of a hump at the front which I can't seem to remove, but I think that the back etc. looks better.

It does, and bends much better in the back

This is driving me nuts. It's almost sorted except for the three petals at the front, which still hump like in the picture above. I've been poking the bones for weeks. Can anyone see where my bone assignments are wrong?

http://www.simfileshare.net/download/2164947/

I think it's because some of the bone assignments go from being assigned over 50% to the pelvis to fully assigned to the thigh (you can spot it on the colors - there are a few green areas that seem like they poke through). A couple small adjustments in the "grey" areas around the purple/orange areas, and you might get a somewhat smoother result.

The front area is a bit difficult on skirts, and you will probably get a "scrunched" area no matter what you do.

Testing with the ANIM mode in Milkshape can be a good idea. Saves you a lot of time going in and out of the game (but make sure you save a copy of the file first, because the skeleton can occasionally get borked).