Anyone want to help with 3t2 body animation conversion research? (I have already had success with this)
 

I've been experimenting with this after finding this thread on 3t4 animations. Predictably, it works best with simple animations. It requires Blender and Milkshape and some familiarity with those programs (plus the add-ons to get TS3 animations into Blender and TS2 animations out of milskhape. Some of the animations port perfectly, but some have a few glitchy frames even though they look perfect in Milkshape. I'll try and post some videos later.

I'm not sure if the glitches are due to the complication of mixing Milkshape and Blender or if it's just a problem that's happening on my end. For some reason, my computer does not like Milkshape, and it gives me weird animations sometimes, even without adding blender into the mix. I know there are not that many people who know how to get an animation into the game, who know how to use Blender and who might be interested in playing around with this, but if you are, let me know and I'll get you the files and explain things. If you are only familiar with animesh and Milkshape, and you wanted to help, you could test one of the Milkshape files that have given me glitches. I will post all the files here and write up little guide eventually, but it won't be a priority to do it soon unless someone else is currently interested in using it.

edit - the tutorial on reddit was deleted. Adding it here.

First, start with an armature that is in the default rest position.

For each bone that needs to rotate, you need to do the following things:

(All of these need to be done in Pose Mode.)

Disable "Inherit Rotation" on the bone.
Rotate the bone to make it match as closely as possible the corresponding TS3 bone.
Insert a rotation keyframe on the bone.
Add a "Child Of" Bone Constraint to the bone.
Select the TS3 rig as the target, and the corresponding TS3 bone as the bone of the "Child Of" constraint.
Deselect the Location and Scale axes on the "Child Of" Constraint.
Select "Set Inverse".

Now, just do this to all of the bones that need to rotate!

For bones that need to physically move and not just rotate:

Add a "Copy Location" constraint.
Select the TS3 rig as the target, and the corresponding TS3 bone as the bone of the "Copy Location" constraint.
Set the Space to both "Local"
If it's still animating oddly, you may have to experiment with the "Invert" options on the axis, if you have to do this, it's usually X or Z.

Pretty sure it's not possible, at least not in a useful way, since the TS3 and TS4 skeletons have a lot more bones and have various different bone placement, names and rotation than TS2. You won't get the arms right, and while the adults have similar heights, the toddler (and child?) skeletons seem to have a different height and even more differences in bone placement.

I also don't think you can import finished TS2 animations/poses to Milkshape or Blender (but correct me if I'm wrong). You can import TS2 skeletons to Blender, but there isn't a TS2 animation exporter for Blender yet, as far as I know anyway.

TS3/4 skeletons have a lot more similarities between them than any of them have with TS2. There's a bunch of steps you need to do to convert clothes from either game to TS2, and while possible it doesn't give a particularly good result (usually the bone assignments get borked up a lot).

However, if you have found a way to do this, maybe post how you did it so people can experiment?

ETA: I was so excited to share this that it didn't occur to me that people would be skeptical without proof. It's late here now, but I'll make a little proof of concept video tomorrow.

It is possible, and I've done it. I can see how the original title can be read like I'm asking if it's possible, so I'll edit the post to make that more clear. I just wanted ask if anyone wanted to play with this any time soon, or possibly help out. I said earlier, while I do plan to post an in guide eventually, I'm not making it a priority unless someone is currently interested in trying it out. I want to spend my Simming time playing with this, but I wanted to let people know that it can be done and see if anyone else wanted to try it. And I'm not saying I'm going to keep this to myself forever, but if someone wants to try it, I'd try and get everything packaged and written up within a couple days, but if not I probably won't post everything until next week. Although people who already know Blender and have worked with TS3 animation won't need my help - I followed the guide in the reddit post that I linked to in the OP, and I just made a couple of changes to account for the fact that TS2 has a root rot and root trans, but TS3 combined those bones into one. But since Sims 2 people tend to be milkshapers and not blender users, I'm planning to write something more in depth with pictures etc., which will take time.

Anyway, I came back here to edit the post and say I figured out that the solution for the glitchiness is this - even though the mesh wasn't turning 360 degrees, the fix is the same:

A 180 degree rotation from one key to the next in an animation probably isn't what I'd do (at least not for a sim). If you absolutely needed to it would be much better to set three keys (one as a midpoint, or what the old Disney animators would call an "inbetween") instead of going from one to the next, so the animation flows better between them. People just assume the animation program does all the work for you, but the ones and zeros aren't always smart. Most movements tend to slow down or speed up (humans aren't machines), and kinda look unnatural when it just flows in the same speed from one pose to the next. No idea if this can even be achieved in Milkshape without a LOT of work.

I'm quite rusty on animating (I know the hows , and have some old knowledge from 3D Max, but my brain can no longer handle the timing), so I mostly keep to static poses. Still, could be interesting if it's possible to use Blender for animating (Milkshape is a sorry mess when it comes to animating), and if someone could come up with (Blender?) rigs for TS2 with IK animation for hands and feet, I'd be thrilled to try it. Not sure how useful it would be to convert poses or animations from TS3/4, though (Is it a lot more work, or is it an easy and quick process?).

The most I've messed with skeletons in Milkshape was when I repurposed a toddler skeleton to (kinda) work for infants. Been using it to convert clothes. and making deco babies and such. No idea if it would work for anything ingame, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi6...eature=youtu.be (ignore the pie menu names in my test painting lol)

Ignore the arm flap at the end. That's a little test thing I made in milkshape; it's not part of the conversion. Anyway, this is the Sim doing an animation from the ts3 wave station and some animations from the witch's broom arena. They are not perfect, but they are better than anything I could've made in milkshape, and I believe editing them will help. It will definitely be useful to me to convert these animations, because I create new interactions and functional objects, and there are some items I've always wanted from the newer games (like the broom arena, for example). Converting an animation takes me about ten minutes. It's just importing the TS3 animation into Blender, exporting a milkshape file out of Blender, then exporting a 5an file out of Milkshape. The tedious part is in preparing the skeleton, but that only has to be done once, then you can use it over and over again.

Blender can import and export MS3D files, so it's already possible to make your own animations in Blender and port them into Milkshape. All the copies of Blender that I have already have the MS3D import/export installed, but it's not active. You have to go to your user preferences and turn it on, then import the milkshape file that contains the TS2 rig, make your pose, set the keyframes. Go into object mode, right click the sim mesh (not the rig). If you've done it right, it'll be outlined in light green. Then export as a milkshape file and use animesh. I'm not sure how familiar you are with Blender, so let me know if this doesn't make sense, and I'll help you out (I'm no animation expert at all, but I'm pretty comfortable with Blender). What kind of IK rig did you want? Because if you just wanted to lock the foot or hand in one spot, you should be able to do that with IK empties in Blender. https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=626272 (It's for Sims 3, but it should work in TS2 as well since the empties don't become part of the skeleton). I don't think it'll work for an animation, but it should be okay for a pose. I do wish we could get the IK rig that the game uses, because there are Blender add ons that convert IK to FK.

It's probably best to make a general thread on Blender if we're going to keep discussing it though, so that people who aren't interested in converting animations won't miss it.

Those animations in the video look promising

IK for legs (for walking/running and general leg movement animations) and for hands (picking up things and holding the hands static while the rest of the body moves) would've been very useful.

I have't done any animation in Blender, but I'm slowly learning the interface, and I'm willing to learn (using Blender would open up a lot of possibilities in TS2 animation). I haven't rigged anything since 2010, and haven't done much animation since then, so most of my previous knowledge is gone, but I can always look at some tutorials.

Someone said earlier (no idea where that topic went, sorry) that it's possible to set up the skeletons with IK and have it work for an ingame animation even if those parts of the rig aren't part of the skeleton (they may have ben talking about TS3/4). If it was possible to make an animation exporter that could export TS2 animations directly from Blender, then maybe Milkshape wouldn't be needed at all.

Do you need any plugins for Blender to exp/imp MS3D files? And which Blender version are you using? (I currently only have the one that works with S4Studio)

I really like the idea of converting animations! Do you think it is also possible to convert TSM and TS4 animations?

Yep. I already did a couple of ones from TSM (TSM sims and TS3 sims use the same skeleton). I haven't tried doing a 4t2 animation yet, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. I think converting TSM animations would open up a whole world of possibilities for medieval players, like maybe default replacement dancing anims.

I have the one Blender that works with Sims4Studio too, and it came with the plugin to import/export Milkshape files, but the feature is turned off by default. You go to your user preferences and turn it on. One thing I forgot to mention though is Blender's MS3D importer only imports the bones if the MS3D file was saved in Milkshape 1.8.4. Even if the file was originally made in 1.8.5, all you have to do is open the file with the Sim body in 1.8.4, save, close and then import it to Blender. If you don't have 1.8.4, I can send you the bodybases that are compatible with Blender. They're the ones you made, actually. You gave them to me last year when I was trying to learn to animate in Milkshape. The only change is that they've been opened and saved in 1.8.4. Once the file is exported from Blender, it doesn't seem to matter which version of Milkshape you open it in, just as long as it's compatible with Animesh.

I currently only have 1.8.5 (couldn't get 4 to work no matter how much I tried)

I'm quite advanced in Blender with animation, and this thread is pretty interesting to me even though I don't really work with The Sims 2 anymore. If anyone needs my help, I could build up an IK rig for TS2, or help with converting animations

Edit: Would this be any sort of help with exporting the animations from Blender? It might however, be too outdated to use though http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=246658

^ That would be very nice! IK would be really useful (it's basically the reason I haven't made animations with Milkshape, because they always end up looking weird without the leg and arm control IK gives you)

Just out of curiosity, but would it be possible to link up the infant skeleton somehow so it's possible to animate it? Currently it's got only joints and no bones between them. I'm not technically advanced enough to figure that one out. I think someone did this a while back for Milkshape (I have the files), but the skeleton ended up looking rather weird and was flat on the floor instead of standing up (and had some other flaws as well), so it didn't really work.

I have a reshaped toddler skeleton for non-animation projects that I made (basically to make it easier to make baby clothes conversions and to test if the clothes work without having to go in and out of the game), but it's got a lot of flaws since it's only an approximation. I'd really like one that works with posing, because I'm currently using the toddler skeleton to make baby poses, and getting it right is a nightmare (plus the babies get really weird thumbs and their arms never end up in the right position). Would be nice to have the full set of animation bases

Thanks for the offer to help and the link @TheSweetToddler. Unfortunately the program in that link is outdated. For some reason nobody was ever able to get good results importing SMD animations into TS2, so the community moved to the .5an file format. If you're willing to build a TS2 IK rig, that would be incredible.

About using Blender to animate, here are the simsbodybases saved with 1.8.4 - http://www.simfileshare.net/download/1126163/

This is the site I learned from. https://clarkcorrina.wixsite.com/si...on-with-blender - There isn't a Blender animation exporter, so you can't bypass Milikshape, but Blender can import and export the MS3D (Milkshape) format. The add on to allow this is already included in the last several versions of Blender, but it's disabled by default. The link also says you need Blender Source Tools. There's a link to the tools and an explanation for how to activate them and the Milkshape Import Export here: https://clarkcorrina.wixsite.com/si...imation-tools-1

I had a couple of random issues that no one else seems to have encountered with Milkshape, but I'll put the fixes below just in case.

Rarely, when I import an MS3D file into Blender, the mesh will be way off to the side, or too high. If that happens, just Click File > New in Blender, then re-import.

Nearly every time I export an animation from Milkshape, the mesh will end up being too low in the game. Hopefully no one else will encounter this, but the fix is easy:

@simmer22 Hmm, I don't really know what you mean, perhaps you can send some pictures or the files even? Anyways, so you're using a reshaped toddler skeleton, possible if you can get the baby skeleton, you can try and position the bones to be the same as the baby's? I'm really sorry if I'm not making much sense here, I'm not very technical with TS2 as I am with TS3 lol

@omglo I'm not really familiar with Milkshape, as I only use it for exporting clothes to TS3 (I did use it for making TS2 poses but that was some time ago!). What I did was export one of the skeletons from MS to Blender as an smd file and from there build up the rig with constraints and textures (it's still not finished yet, I'm just writing a tutorial on Blender basics and how to use IK and FK with the rig).



I'm only using the toddler rig because I had some old textures from Beau Broke, but perhaps if my friend (or someone) can send me some textures for the other ages I'll get them done, but I mean, they're not absolutely necessary, but it looks better with textures, if I am allowed to add them. And it should be easy to convert the constraints and bone shapes to other ages as I have done this for TS3.

Wow, that looks great. I'm not really familiar with milkshape either. I tried using it to animate, and I wasn't happy with the results, so I gave up until I found out TS2 users could animate in Blender too. I could get you some skin textures, but they wouldn't have the little outfit like your toddler does.

Thanks, and it's nice to know that you can animate TS2 in Blender too, I might even make some animations myself!

That would be great, and don't worry about the outfits, I add them directly to the mesh as a new texture.

Here are the textures. Hope this helps.

http://www.simfileshare.net/download/1126308/

^Looks like a few of the skins might be missing?
I went through and exrtracted the LIFO files (needed them anyway) - couldn't find the teen female face, but I think it uses the AF face. Added the file below.



Here's a Milkshape file with the original infant skeleton/mesh, with the head/face properly assigned (Milkshape 1.8.5, not sure if it works for Blender).

It has a different body position than the rest, and no actual bones - just joints that don't move together. The baby skeleton has fewer bones (missing most fingers and hairs, plus some skirt/shorts bones, I think), and they have different names. The main joints have similar numbering , so it's possible to convert clothes without having to fix too much for bone assignments, but animations aren't so easy.

Didn't include the reshaped skeleton, because it's not done with precision and I'm pretty sure is not useful for animations.

I just extracted the skins through bodyshop and took out the extra scalps, since it looked like the same texture, and normal bodies, not the fat/fit states, since the fat/fit/normal Sims all use the same skeleton. But I don't do CAS stuff, so maybe that wasn't right.

^ The skins showing in SimPE sometimes skip a few ages (usually if the textures are identical, may also depend on the skin you clone). I noticed the toddler body skins were missing, and they look a little different from the rest.

Oh yeah, I forgot I deleted the toddler since TheSweetToddler says she already has that one.

Ahh, simmer22 I get what you mean, I opened the baby rig and exported it to Blender, and I know why the bones move in a somewhat weird way. It's because they aren't connected, so when you move one of the bones, they just move the area where the bone weight is. And about the baby position, most of the babies in Sims games are generally positioned differently in their rest pose, for instance, babies in TS3 are layed down with their arms out, meanwhile the rest are A-posed because my guess is that babies have some sort of different body/skeleton to the rest of the Sims. But anyways, I'm connecting the bones right now in Blender, so hopefully the game will be okay with this "new" connected baby rig.

And thanks, omglo!

^ That's the main problem with baby skeletons. They're kind of considered to be objects by the game, so they're animated via joints only (like other animated objects). There have been tries on fixing the skeleton before, but so far without that much success.

Thanks for trying, and hopefully it'll work with the game

@simmer22 Alrighty, well I've finished connecting the bones of the baby anyways, and I modified them a bit so they move normally, basically like the rest of the rigs.



I was able to pose them and everything, so now maybe it's time to test if the game accepts the rig?

That's adorable. Even if the game doesn't accept the rig, I'll bet you could use the same basic process that's used for converting animations. Make an animation with the new baby rig, then transfer it over to the game rig using bone constraints.

Looks great