Thank you so much! I'm going to try to give this tut a shot right now.

Thank you sooooooooooooooooooo much, Marvine!!! I was looking for a tut that could explain me exactly this!!! I´m going to check if I've done everything right...
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!!

tbwitholt,

I just tried it myself without a problem... What do you mean, there's also a full body mesh? It's not referenced anywhere in the skintone, you just have to replace the cres and shape references in the 3 top and 3 bottom 3D ID referencing file - not 3 tops and 2 bottoms like the adult male.

Well, it could as well be a bug, my advice would be to remake it from scratch and double-check everything...

A tip to save time: scroll down the 3D ID referencing files, those for the teen tops have FFB84F82 for the original resource node instance number (last group on the line), and it's FFC24318 for the bottoms - much faster to find the files you have to edit.

Hi Marvine.
Thanks for this amazing tutorial.
Now, I have a question.
If I wanted to link a specific clothing mesh to a nude mesh, would I use a similar method? Say my sim is wearing a certain mesh before he enters the shower, is there a way to link a certain nude mesh to the current clothing mesh (the clothing the sim is wearing right before entering the shower)?
I'd greatly appreciate your input. At this point, I'm not even sure if it's possible to do this. I've searched around the forum, and this is the closest I've gotten to finding an answer to my specific question. Let me know if I can clarify my question at all, and thanks again!
-RabidAngel

RabidAngel,

It should work exactly in the same way, except that in this case you also have to replace the skintone texture for the age and gender you want to use with your clothing texture.

If you want to use a full body outfit, you'll have to cut the mesh with Wes-h's Body Chop plugins; it would be easier with separate top and bottom clothing, but then you'd have to regroup the top and bottom clothing textures in one, since the skintones use full body textures.

Here is something that will help u understand: nude= normal teen/nudecut= fit teen/nudesoft = fat teen yay!

hope u understand now.

Hi Marvine,
Thank you so much for your reply.
I'd actually like to link only the clothing to a nude mesh, and not the skintone. Would I still have to cut the full mesh into separate parts? I'd like for people to be able to use whatever skintone they'd like, but have the clothing link to the nude mesh. Would it still be the same process? (Sorry if my question is redundant to my first, heehee....just trying to claryify it all in my head.)
I'm hoping linking a full outfit to a full body mesh might be an easier process...I haven't gotten as far as separating top and bottom since once I do that, I can't use bump/normal maps.
Thank you, once again, and many times over for your help.
-RabidAngel

RabidAngel,

Obviously I was a little out of it when I replied this morning - you can't replace the skintone with a clothing texture, you have to paste it on the skintone. And for whatever reason, the textures link only to top and bottom meshes, except for toddlers and babies. There may be a workaround and I've been thinking about that, but this means some really hazardous experimenting, resulting until now in weird textures every time a full body mesh is used. Now you're right about the bumpmap issue when using the Body Chop plugins, but hopefully Wes_h will have that solved (as well as other problems, such as the shoulders blockiness) very soon with a next version using new features that he got to be added to Milkshape's next upgrade.

Now, about what you want to do, I still didn't find a solution - I'd like to do it myself for my growing merfolk meshes family, because a flesh-coloured fishtail is just hideous, and I don't want to impose a unique recoloured skintone. In order to do that, we'd have to find a way to have the clothing texture apply over any skintone; but since it's the texture (the skintone in the case of the nudes) that calls the mesh, I really don't see how to achieve that. So for now, the only solution I'm aware of is to make an assortment of skintones, in which you'll have pasted your clothing texture...

Hi Marvine
Thanks, again, for the reply....I think I understand now. So, at present, it's impossible to link clothing to nude meshes, as the clothing is not what calls the nude mesh...it's the skintone... Is that correct?
Too bad if it is! I'd love to figure out how to get it to work so that people would be able to use different body shapes in the game based on the clothing meshes that they are currently using....It always looks so strange to me to see my guys get naked in the shower and lose muscle and body weight, heehee!
Thank you again for your explanation.....And thanks for the info on the wes_h plugins. I really look forward to seeing the option to use bump maps when creating meshes where you add or delete vertices.
-RabidAngel

RabidAngel,



You could link clothing to a nude mesh - but then it still would be clothing, and wouldn't apply when the sim is really nude. The mesh that will be used when the sim gets naked is the one the skintone links to.



This is what this tutorial is about... I thought you wanted to have your sims keep some kind of clothing on when under the shower!
This method is precisely intended for keeping a particular body type when the sims get naked - I had to figure this out so my bodybuilder sims wouldn't revert to skinny when nude, and then Beosboxboy and I made an assortment of "muscle" skintones based on our meshes to choose from.
So if there is a body shape you like, but it only exists for clothing, all the chances are that there's skintight clothing for it using a mesh suitable for a nude, like underwear or swimwear; this is the case for Xenos' heroin or Faerygurl's fat girl. However, these are full body meshes, that would need to be cut and put in separate top and bottom mesh packages in order to be linked to a skintone.
I hope this is clear, but don't hesitate to ask if it's not.

Hi Marvine
Yes, that's what I gathered....It makes complete sense. The only thing about it is that not all meshes would look correct as nude (like your mermaid tail or a wideleg pants outfit)...Thanks for explaining!

Thank you Marvine for all your help. Your tutorial is great and it was really easy to follow. I didn't think I was going to be able to do it but after a couple of tries I was able to with no problems, I just made some dumb little mistakes along the way. I can’t thank you enough for all your help. Thanks again!

Congratulations, Silentwarrior! :D

Okay I need help! I’m not very familiar with body meshing but after playing around with Milkshape for a couple of hours I sort of got a very basic idea of how body meshing works, I think.

The problem that I’m having is that whenever my sim takes a shower the sim is completely bodyless with only the head showing up. I’ve tried about 3 times to figure out what I did wrong but with no success. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. I’ll try and summarize everything that I did as best as I can. Here it goes:

I have the full body mesh but with no bottom or top mesh so the first thing I do is use Milkshape to split them up.

I import the mesh into Milkshape and Milkshape asks me if I want “Display all blend groups? and I select “yes”. Does this make any difference?

Then I use the selective editor to delete the part I don’t want around the waist for the top or bottom mesh. After that I just use the select tool to delete the rest. The thing I’m worried about is that when I do use this a dialog prompts me that the selective editor is sill in the beta stage and says under the disclaimer says that “As with all plugins, you will need to re-weld your verticies after using selection editor.” Is this a good method for splitting up a mesh? If not, do you just use the select tool and just cut off the bottom and top with the select tool only? I wasn’t sure about this but I found it best to use the selective editor because I was able to duplicate the way another top/bottom mesh was cut and just followed it in order to cut the top/bottom parts of the mesh.

Does it matter if I have to hide, under the groups tab, for each of the groups (body, bodymod.1, & bodymod.2) when I cut the mesh up? According to the “Basic Clothing Mesh Tutorial” by NeptuneSuzy under Step 7, you had to do that but I didn’t because I didn’t move any vertices around. All I did was cut the mesh into a top/bottom part.

After that I go under groups and change the body to top for the top mesh and bottom for the bottom mesh under the groups tab. I also change the comments for the top/bottom, bodymod.1, and bodymod.2 under the groups tab from looking at comments from another top/bottom mesh that I had. Oh the auto smooth box is ticked. Does that make any difference?

Before I export the file I selected each group with the auto smooth box ticked and welded together each of the three groups and then exported the file. Does this make any difference? I wasn’t sure about this part so I just followed NeptuneSuzy’s Tutorial under Step 7 since I used the selective editor.

Then after that I followed NeptuneSuzy’s tutorial “Basic Clothing Mesh Tutorial” and followed steps 3, 4, 7, 8, and 9 to create the package for the mesh.

Are these the right files to make the bottom and top portions of a mesh?

Bottom:
amBottomNaked_tslocator_gmdc
amBottomNaked_tslocator_gmnd
amBottomNaked_untagged0_shpe
amBottomNaked_cres

Top:
amTopTankTop_tslocator_gmdc
amTopTankTop_tslocator_gmnd
amTopTankTop_untagged0_shpe
amTopTankTop_cres

I used these files above to make the top/bottom package and followed steps 3 and 9 in NeptuneSuzy’s tutorial.
The first thing I did is make the new package, added the 4 files, then clicked fix integrity and gave my package file a unique name under the “Scenograph Rename Wizard”, updated, and saved.
Then I just replaced the GMND with the file I exported from Milkshape to the appropriate place, fixed the integrity again without putting anything under the “Scenograph Rename Wizard” and saved.

Finally I just did the easy part and linked the skintone to the top and bottom mesh. Tried it in the game but with no luck . Can anyone out there tell me what I’m doing wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

SilentWarrior,

I don't know Neptunesuzy's tutorial, so I'll explain to you the way I do this.

First, the way you build your packages is right, and the files you're using are okay - in fact, any male top or bottom would work since you're going to replace the GMDC anyway.

You still made a few mistakes, that may explain why it doesn't work.

When you import the full body mesh, you have to say "yes" to "display all blend groups?", else you'll only have one body group like with the plugins v. 2.16 and won't be able to export it with the Body Chop plugins.

"Autosmooth" must be unchecked, it will only mess up your mesh - if you need to smooth it but there's no reason you should for this particular job, you can do it with face > smooth all (edit > select all - vertex > unweld all > weld - face > smooth all).

Now, I never used the selective editor; for my bodybuider meshes, since the 3 groups are identical, I let all 3 showing, just select and delete the unwanted faces, then rename the groups and update the group comments.
When the groups are different (real fat and preg morphs), I delete the unwanted part on each group in turn, hiding the two others - the waistline is placed much lower on a fat morph. Don't forget to check in 3D view that you didn't left out any vertices - when deleting the bottom part, usually the vertices in the feet soles don't all get deleted in the other viewports, and you have to select and delete them in 3D view.

When following this method you don't need to re-weld the groups before export.

One more thing: when cutting a mesh that wasn't made with the Body Chop plugins in the first place, first import the full body mesh in Milkshape with the plugins and export it at once before importing it back again - this will prevent a gap at the waistline in game.

I take it you mean "the GMDC"; now don't fix integrity again - just say "yes" when SimPE asks if it should reload the file.

Well I hope this helps...

…and Marvine saves the day again!!! :D
The method you suggested worked flawlessly. I was finally able to cut a mesh into two and actually make it work in the game. You made everything so much clearer!! Thanks a lot for all your help! I couldn’t have done it without you.

Thank you Marvine!

Superheroine and Female Bodybuilder are now showerproof lol it's easy when you get the things going. Btw found Zenmans mesh halves hour after got mine done... Well it's all learning

Thinking about trying this. Would it be possible though, to take an existing template and use "Build DXT" in SimPE to apply a different skintone? Similar to the method used to make skintone defaults.

Jmtmom,

Sure it's possible - but this way you'll get huge files, I recommend that you clone it afterwards in Bodyshop so the textures get compressed, and then get rid of the first ones. This way you'll retain the texture quality (which is lost only when editing bitmaps because of a compression issue), but the files will be considerably smaller. Doing this, I was able to get files nearly ten times smaller for clothing textures, with the same exact quality as the original.

Finally got around to trying to do this. I did find a very easy way if you have an existing non-default nude replacement. I used Consort's fat man set and Enayla's Sweet Fall skintone. All I did was export them both in body shop, then copied and pasted the Sweet Fall textures onto the existing non-default skin, then reimported it. It seems to have worked, I tested it in game. Of course this method only works if someone else has already done the hard part of making the non-default nude.

The Build DXT method proved to be too confusing for me and seemed to be more work than following the steps in this tutorial.

I have another question now. Would it be possible to take the non-default nude I've made, link it to the female curvy girl mesh and still keep the link to the male fat man mesh? No non-default nudes out there for the curvy girl yet, so I'll have to do it the hard way, I guess.

I'd also like to link the fat child and teen if it was possible, those do have existing non-default nudes.

Edited to add:

Tried to add the fat teen non-default mesh to my fat man custom mesh skin tone and got all the way to step 7, then couldn't find the Resource Node or Shape in the package window. I think I'll probably start over again tomorrow. I have a feeling this is something I'll have to do several times to get right, that is if my head doesn't explode first. :insane:

jmtmom,

Sure it's the easiest way to replace the textures on already existing non-default nudes, it gives poor results only if you edit the textures - in this case the build DXT method is unavoidable. Now it's not always easy to use with skintones...

Of course you can link the same skintone to different meshes, you can use as many meshes as you have bodytypes, for both gender and all ages - still an issue with the "fat" adult male since there's no fat bottom texture, so the top should the be linked to the regular mesh so it can use the fat morph of that mesh ; I'm not aware of other anomalies.
Anyway you will have to do it the hard way; even if there was an existing default nude for the curvy girl, you'd have to choose : use your skintone which is already linked to the fat male, and link the female textures to the curvy girl with SimPE - or the reverse.

Thanks for writing this tutorial, but I don't know how to get a body mesh. (I want to use a default one and edit it.) This should be an easy question to answer, right? Thanks in advance!

CyberCube, wrong tutorial. Look at the 'clothing' editing tutorials. A 'body' and 'clothing' are the same thing in the game. We're revamping the clothing mesh editing tutorials, give us another few days and there will be new ones with the new SimPE and current plugins.

Oh. Sorry to bother you, then.

I'm thinking about uploading a sim with a custom mesh-linked skintone. Do I need to have people upload seperate meshes, or is everything needed contained in the skin package?