OK, this is getting REALLY frustrating... I'm still getting seams between my hi-res top mesh and any bottom I put it on. I've used the Ext Manual Edit and made the XYZ coords and the normals exactly the same as the default Maxis top AND checked the numbers were the same on the Bottom Shorts, just to make sure. All the numbers are the same, but I still get a weird shadow on the bottom, just below the seam. I can't seem to get rid of it. Any ideas? I attached a few screens to show what I'm seeing. It does it with various skintones as well.

I'm this close to releasing the first stage of my project... if I can just get this sorted out...

I've also attached the .simpe file from my last attempt, if anyone wants to take a look.

Warlokk, I did some peeking with that mesh. Mated it with frsh Maxis bottom and no shadows here. Yet, looking at the pics, I think, the problem is with the bottom mesh.

Using the Extended Manual Edit Tool, check just the bottoms top line of vertices if there are any doubles. Happened to me when editing. That will cause the shadows. If you find any "Double vertises" snap them together and weld. Should help.

BTW Really Beautiful mesh

Well, the only problem with that is, it's an unmodified Maxis bottom shown... I still have to go back and adjust the custom bottoms I've created to match the standard tops, but in this case it's happening across the board. Not sure what's causing it on my end, especially if it's not showing up on yours. Weird.

Here's the current Hi-Res Default replacement MESH package I've put together using that mesh... can you take a look and see if it works OK for you as well? Best test is that black mesh top with the red bra, it uses the same mesh, unless you've got a nude top or something, like the one I released with the original of this.

Thanks for the help, and the compliments! :D

Back from testing... Nothing wrong here. But, that skin on the bottom part, it's not original Maxis skin.. could there be a leak in texture or alpha... Does it happen with all bottoms in your game?.. waistline is quite low...

Yes, it happens with all of them, although many don't have the lower waistline so you can't see it... it's the Short Shorts outfit that came with the base game, one of the last Bottom Separates outfits in the catalog. The Capris pants do the same thing.

Incidentally, I just reworked my hi-res Bottom mesh, and it merges with the new top mesh perfectly... but I still see a faint line with default Maxis tops. I wonder if there's a rounding problem, like not enough decimal places, in the Ext Vert editor, so there's still a barely perceptable difference?

Frankly at this point, since I know the nudes will look OK, I'll be satisfied with the results... it will only be visible with nude top/bottom combined with clothing, and I can live with that if there's not a fix.

Here's a couply BodyShop shots, you can see it's really faint, but definitely there... and these are with default in-game clothes.

Ummm, I'm not a pro with milkshape or meshing.. Just got out of Milkshape and Ext.Man Ed.. all the other colums match but not the U and V.. wonder if that has something to with it.. Tell me if I'm totally wrong, thank you. Way for me to learn too.

Ahh, never thought to look at the UV coords... I'll check that out, may be exactly the thing.

Thanks! Amazing what a 2nd pair of eyes with a brain connected can do... :D

lol was fun to give you an idea... will have my Questions later, belive me..

Well, was definitely worth a shot, but nope... same result... bummer... I'll keep poking around, but I'm running out of things to check...

Daum, well.. lets see if anyone else is reading this. All I can say, guys, please DL the file ant test it in your game.. Could be a graphics gard issue too.

I have a ATI Radeon 9600 Let Warlokk know how you do and what hardware you tested with.

Yes, I thought that too, it may just be a weird rendering deal with my graphics setup... I've got a pair of GeForce 6600GT's SLI'd, with the newest beta drivers (84.43). It also did it with earlier drivers (84.25), I upgraded today just to see if it would help. I also have all in-game display settings at max, at 1280x1024.

Okay, I found the shorts (they are base game shorts) I found the red bra with the mesh top over it. Put your mesh in, now I see nipples. Tried also some nude tops and bottoms. Unfortunately your nipples do not align with the simscribbling skins I'm using for my defaults. Flipped to a few other skins I have in the game that are just maxis retinted.

Took her for multiple spins. I cannot see the seam. I cannot see the normals thing in your screenshot. It is seamless no matter which skin I use. So either, your computer is being mega fussy and showing you more detail on the normals than most of us see.... (at which point I would say it's a maxis flaw, just like the neck seam *is* visible a portion of the time) .... or it's the skintone you're using has a flaw.

So stop pulling out your hair; It looks wonderful. We creators stare at our stuff far more than 99% of the players do.

Thanks for confirmation tiggerypum, I did my best and could not see it either. Maybe we will be downloading those nice meshes soon(er). You are so right about those who do and those who play.. Have that same problem.

LOL that's pretty much the conclusion I was coming to as well... thanks a lot for taking a look. I know about the skintone alignment thing, I will be releasing a full set of properly aligned skintones with the project, based on ones created by BeosBoxBoy for the BodyBuilder set.

With this flaw out of the way, I just need to rebuild the nude bottoms sizes the same way, and I think it'll be ready to go. Thanks again for the help, every now and then I get an obsessive perfectionist thing going, it's tough to step back and say, "OK good enough" sometimes :D

At this point I want to thank Demon for his most excellent tool, without it I wouldn't be able to get even close to being satisfied with these... sometimes you just gotta go tweak some numbers by hand. Thanks Demon!!!

Question/Request for Demon: Is there any way we could get a Copy All/Paste All function for the Ext Manual Edit tool? Basically something to allow us to copy all the coordinates from one vertex and paste them into another, including XYZ, UV and Normals? I'm using it to match up top & bottom separates as shown above, and having to copy/paste every coordinate for every vertex, for each group, is giving me some serious hand cramps... Shift-Ctrl-C(hotkey for tool), click-Ctrl-C, click-Ctrl-V, click-Ctrl-C, click-Ctrl-V...... over and over and over...

I'll probably be finished with this set of meshes today, but I'm sure this feature would come in handy in the future, if it's possible.

Thanks a ton, this tool works wonders! :D

I have been doing some significant mesh chopping, and also some alpha sections on my mesh, and I also would like to be able to copy and paste at a minimum sets of things - like the xzy in one shot, or uv in one shot, or the bone assignments in 1 shot. The hand adjusting power this tool gives us is exceptional, but indeed it's tedious and hand-cramping when one has to do it for entire rings of vertices.

tiggerypum, have you had a problem like this: You chop parts from one mesh and snap together the vertises with the other mesh, you get several vertises in the Extended Manual Edit window. After you have done the hand-cramping clicking and all is fine, you export it with Unimesh and reimport in a new window, all the changes are reverted back!

Happens to me all the time. Could this be a problem with Unimesh or this Extended Manual Edit tool? Anyone else seen this happen?

My changes held just fine, and I made quite a few of them. (that was the painful part). Not sure why your extended manual edit changes might not have worked. Might you have made the changes accidently to the wrong group? Bone assignments are not saved on _morph_ groups.

Thanks, this Sim has a history with steroids, no morphs what so ever.... Will do some more experimenting and report again if needed.. And I was not talking about bones.. they are OK. I was talking about multiple vertices e.g. vertises on vertices...
Happy meshing

Here is a guess, based on the partial description of what you are doing:
In the extended milkshape plugin interface (the one that supports multiple bones and skin weights used by UniMesh and the extended manual editor)) the normal and UV data is associated with each face, but in the GMDC it is associated with each vertex.
If you delete duplicate vertices that have different UV coordinates (as referenced by different faces), as happens when you weld a seam (e.g. front/back seam), UniMesh will duplicate the deleted vertice to restore the association with the UV... otherwise the model will be totally hosed.
I wonder if this is what is happening to you. If the edges of the two parts you are joining are UV mapped on a non-contiguous basis, you cannot get rid of the seam (row of duplicated vertices) because the model will not texture properly.
If you redo the UV mapping first, you should be able to eliminate the duplicates.
<* Wes *>

Thanks Wes, will do another try and see what happens. Yet in the game it shows just occasionally as a black line on the thigh. I need both with and without heels.. thats why I stumbled on this situation. There are like 5 to 6 vertices in the same spot. Playing around with UV cordinates give some odd patterns to the skin, triangles and such. My "Miss Fitness Pleasantview" cant come out untill I resolve the problems.

Just have to keep on trying, I guess. Thank you so much for the latest Importer, makes meshing so much easier now!

I found that the normals tool (from the gmdc tools, not wes) worked well for me to not weld anything, even when I was joining up leg spots. I just made sure to snap all the vertices together, and made sure they all had identical bone assignments. Then once I was done I selected the ring of vertices and did the normals thing.
Then I also touched up the uvmap by hand, simply zooming in 2x or 3x and dragging the individual vertices around to make them appropriately on top of each other. Easier than trying to do it all with the hand editing tool, which gave me cut and paste tired hands.

Thanks guys, It sure was a UV problem. UV map shows that vertices from both legs were connected together.. Started all over from scratch... Looks much better now. Boy, this forum is a well of knowledge. Thanks again

I use Milkshape1.7.8. Milkshape crushes when I do these things: select several vertices at the same time and click bone tool 4.06 or click anything on the manual edit table. Mesa 4.6.1 is installed. Every sims plugin is the latest versions. My PC config is ok. CPU intel 2.6 GHz, RAM 1.25GB & GeForce FX 5900. What possibly causes the crush?

Both the BoneTool (which is my work) and the Extended Manual Editor (which I did not write but think highly of) use the same interface ti MilkShape AND also open another window to work with the data.
There have been a few other reports of crashes with MilkShape 1.7.8 on the BoneTool, from users that were able to work with MilkShape 1.7.7a, but I have been unable to replicate the problem here, and thus am unable to make a fix available.
<* Wes *>