I'm trying to make adjustments to an existing mesh. What I would like is to remove the military shoulder boards from this mesh: amBodyAirForceOfficer

I've found that when I delete the vertices for the shoulder board in Milkshape I get these gaping holes where the boards used to be. My problem occurs when I try to take the shoulders from the 'amBodyTuxedo' and attach them to the 'amBodyAirForceOfficer' mesh to cover the holes and to replace the missing vertices. The actual process seems to go well and the two parts look as if they meld together quite well. However, when I try to import the mesh into TSR Workshop, I get error messages indicating either:

-The number of vertices for fit, fat, or thin is 'x' number but 'x' number was expected. Import failed.
-TSR Workshop shuts down indicating that 'group_base' cannot be accepted as 'group_base' is already listed or something like that.

The only time that the import is successful is when I basically flatten the shoulder boards in Milkshape and import the mesh. However, when I do this the boards are still visible but they are flatter than they were. I'm a newbie at meshing but I've read many tutorials on meshing for beginners, Wes Howe's being one of the most informative for me. I realize that learning to mesh is a work in progress but you would think that taking protruding shoulder boards off a mesh wouldn't be so complicated but it's just that for me.

I've enclosed screenshots of my problem. I should add that the 'amBodyAirForceOfficer' mesh colors appear in red and magenta and 'amBodyTuxedo' mesh colors appear in cyan and yellow. I don't know if this matters or not but it would seem to me that the final product for a successful mesh would have the same color scheme for each part.

At any rate I could sure use some help on this one. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

You must have seen all the groups the moment you imported a WSO file(TSRW)?
Bedside the basegroup mesh there is also the the fat/fit/thin and pregnant.
So if your making a edit to the base group you need to make that same edit also to the morphs.

If your deleting those boards you need to delete them also on the morphs.
Unfortunate you can not just import another mesh and replace the gap with a part of that mesh..
We call it frenkensteining a mesh but it requiers a diffrent setup and i think(in this case) its better to stay away from it(since your a beginner)

So best thing you can do is to zoom in on the boards and select the sides of the boards(you might want to hide the top first by selecting its faces and hide them))
Then delete the sides and do this for the all the 5 groups(fat/fit/thin and pregnant)
Then unhide the top and select the vertices of the corners, select inverse and hide all surrounding vertices.
Then go to top view and snap each corner together, then alligne the normals on the vertices.
Repeat the same steps for all the morphs

Its a good meshing exercise

Thank you BloomsBase. I'll give it a shot and let you know how it goes.

Before I start:
When you say select the top faces and hide them are you saying to select the top vertices and go to 'Edit' menu and hide them or should I go to the 'Face' menu and hide the faces?

you use the hide selection.
you select the top faces, then unselect the sides, then hide selection.
then reselect the sides and delete them.(do this for all meshes)

Well BloomsBase,

I ran into some problems trying to get those boards off as you instructed so I figure I'd find a less taxing mesh to work with given my mesh newbie affliction. I come across the 'amBodySuitDoubleBreasted' and figure I can use this mesh for my project. On this mesh I decide to close the top buttons to get the effect I want.

Between what I've learned from Wes Howe's tutorial and what you've posted here I move forward and make my edits on this mesh. The procedure I would follow is this:

-Choose 'group_base' mesh first and hide all the others.
-Select all the vertices I don't want to alter and hide them that way I won't alter a vertice that I didn't want to change.
-Each time I adjusted a group of vertices I would move them where I wanted them and once satisfied with their position, choose 'Align Normals' and then 'Select None' to ensure that my next selection would be clear of the previous. This is the pattern I used to complete the mesh the way I wanted.
-When I was finished editing the mesh I hid it and went on to the next one which is as follows: fat, thin, fit, and special and do the same as I did with group_base.

I followed this procedure meticulously, making sure I didn't accidentally grab a vertice I wasn't supposed to and ensuring that the normals were aligned. After importing it into TSR Workshop (version: TSRW_RC4_v2.exe) everything looked okay. I expected the suit itself to look like crap because of the adjustments I made. The only thing I cared about was that the front of the shirt was closed and the collar was well positioned.

I start my game to get an idea of my progress before completing the medium detail (MD) and low detail (LD) meshes and below is what my work turns out to be. As an additional note, I had completed the MD and LD meshes previously and received the same results as what you see in the screenshots. I know the problem with this mesh didn't occur because I didn't finish the MD and LD versions this time around.

Poor Jason looks like Two Face from Batman from the neck down. The left side is horribly distorted and the right side does not quite look like the original suit as I've noticed some "pull" on the leg and jacket sleeves.

Did I miss something in my steps?

Those distortions are normal, next thing you need to do is to update the uvmap.
But looking at the guys shoes and the lower part of the pants something went wrong bad....
Alot of the faces cracks(are open) as you can see, happens sometimes when a external uvmapper is used.
I have no idea how you did it tho.
I do see you accidently have moved the whole bodymesh out of the center.(the neck doesn't have a proper fit to the head anymore.

Better start over but you dont need to edit the morphs(if i would have known earlier )
There is a proggy MorphMangle that copies all edits to the morphs.(but only works when NOT deleting any faces or vertices(the reason i didn't tell you on your previous project.)

Hi BloomsBase,

I'm so sorry that I hadn't given you updates on how things were going with this project but I had been told some very difficult news and lacked the will to work on the mesh. I'm still not ready to return to working on the mesh right now but I wanted to let you know that I haven't disregarded your help so I posted to let you know as much. I will return to the project when I'm better focused and will use the MorphMangle that you recommended and start the mesh over again. I will update this post to signal my return.

Hello,

I started working on this project again and I believe I was finally able to successfully remove the military bars from the shoulders of the uniform. I have enclosed before and after screenshots of the uniform with and without the new mesh. Notice from the 'after' screenshots that nothing is out of place (shirt, tie, collar of the jacket) on the uniform now that the bars have been removed. With the exception of the missing shoulder bars the uniform looks the same as it does on the original mesh.

I wanted to get a look at the new mesh before I attempted to do anything with its UV map to get an idea of what it looked like. As you can see from the images, there are some distortions. From a previous post entered here by BloomsBase I was told that the distortions were normal since I still needed to update the UV map. Okay, so I start up UV Mapper Classic, load the object (.obj) file of the newly edited mesh, and all I see are grids comprised of a bunch of lines going to and fro against a white background. I actually learned something about those lines from Spaik's UV Mapper tutorial so I'm not too intimidated. Unfortunately, when the tutorial referred to how to understand UV mapping the author used an object as the model to apply his/her learning concepts. I had no idea how to apply what I learned from the tutorial on an edited clothes mesh.

I download Blender and listen to the video tutorials on how to use it. After hours of watching and reading instructions I get a general idea on how to use the commands and such but they also use an object (an IcoSphere and a Cube) as the models to apply their teachings. I search the web looking for a tutorial or some type of instruction on how to update an edited mesh's UV map and found nothing. All I've done on this project is remove the military bars from an existing mesh. Seems to me that all I need do in this case is remove the grid that make up the bars on the UV map but I know it isn't that simple.

Could someone please tell me what I need to do to update the UV map for the edited mesh? I'm certain that I may be told that there is an issue with the mesh as my models neck is out of sync but I know I was meticulous in ensuring that no vertice that shouldn't have been selected was selected when I edited the mesh and the morphs. I did this twice, the pattern for each step being:

Select none--individually select each vertice that I needed to do away with--invert the selection--hide the selected vertices--return to the vertices that need to be removed and delete them--select none--return to the hidden vertices and select only the two opposing vertices that needed to be snapped together to close the holes where the bars used to be--invert the selection--hide all vertices that won't need editing to ensure they are not affected by the fusion of the others--select each opposing vertice--snap them together--align normals--hide the selection--select none--go to the next row of vertices that need to be snapped together and repeat all of the bolded steps with each row of vertices that needed to be snapped together to close (fuse) the hole on each shoulder of the mesh base and the morphs (fit, fat, thin, special). Again, I did this twice to ensure that I did not move the mesh (or the morphs) from its center (the first time I didn't hide the selection and even though I knew I was careful I wasn't absolutely sure I didn't grab a vertice I shouldn't have on mistake so I did it over). As the military bars were not on the medium and low level detail meshes I did not need to edit them.

When I imported them into TSR Workshop the result came out to be as you see them on the TSR Workshop 'After' screenshots. The only thing that changed was what I wanted to be removed (the shoulder bars) and I was very pleased with the outcome. I strongly believe the problem I'm facing right now stems from the misalignment of the UV map. I'd gladly fix this if I knew how but I'm at a loss here on how to do that for an edited clothing mesh. I know this post is long but I wanted to be certain that I covered every possible avenue so that anyone who can help me will have what they need to assess my problem.

Thank you in advance for any help that is forthcoming.

Hi TC...I'm not sure if you've gotten an answer to your issue yet. If you haven't you might try posting the question again over in CAS parts...the people who know about clothes meshing tend to look in that forum more than they do in this one.

Thanks orangemittens for the info; I'll do that.