This is the fourth and last part of the “How to import a SimModel to SimPose 2″ Workshop.

First we will have a look back at the first three parts for a short summary.

Then i will show you how to bring all the different parts, the meshes and texture, into SimPose and finally save the complete model.

Check it out, this part of the workshop is the easiest…

Summary of Parts 1 – 3!

In Part 1 i gave you a basic explanation of the required files and their formats.  I also gave you tips and hints about some typical problems, like hair and alpha-channels. This part is still most important to read. It makes you understand what’s going on.

In Part 2 i told you how to extract Body-, Face- and Hair-Meshes of a Sim to make it ready to be imported in SimPose. This step requires the tool SimPe and a little patience. I also told you how to organize SimPose-Files best.

Part 3 was dedicated to the textures that have to be prepared for SimPose. You learned how to avoid the use of SimPose’s “Texture Overlays” but create even better Textures anyway.

Now, in Part 4, we will put those files together in SimPose and save our SimModel.

Make sure all files are ready to go!

Like i already told you in Part 1 you will need the following 6 files:

• body.5gd (the body 3D-Mesh)
• body.bmp (the body texture/skin)
• face.5gd (the face 3D-Mesh)
• face.bmp (the face texture/skin)
• hair.5gd (the hair 3D-Mesh)
• hair.bmp (or 6tx, hair texture)

Make sure you have all these files collected in one and the same folder inside the SimPose Directory. Example: C:/Programs/SimPose2/myModels/BettyPrime

As you can see i will use my model Betty Prime for this workshop. I’m currently messing around with Betty in preparation for the upcoming Pleased Magazine “Pleased 5″.

SimPose 2 Character Tab!

Start SimPose and go to the “Character” Tab (1). This is the place where you bring all parts of a model together. Complete models can also be saved and loaded here.

In the “Model Selection” you can have up to 4 different SimModels which are called “Figures” (2). Every figure consists of at least 3 “Parts” (3), well you know: body, face, hair.

SimPose Character Tab

There is also a fourth slot for additional parts like glasses for example. I recommend to leave that slot alone for now…

Please also leave the “Position” (4) area alone! Unfinished – unstable – useless.

The mesh and texture area!

Set the “Model Selection” to “figure0″, which is the slot for our first Sim.

I always start with the Body-Part and put it into the first slot “part0″. But this is up to you, the order of the 3 Body-Parts is not important. For now, let’s start with the Body-Mesh of our sim.

1. Import the body.5gd

In the area “Mesh and texture(s)” click on the big button “Mesh” (1).

Choosing the Body-Mesh

Go to the Body-Mesh you want to load (.5gd) and choose it. The shape of a Sim should appear on the stage.

It looks like this, depending on the Mesh you’ve chosen. Note that my Mesh is called “dressed.5gd” and the name appears on the Mesh-Button:

The Sim-Body on stage

2. Import the face.5gd and hair.5gd!

Repeat the last step and load the face- and hair-meshes onto the stage:

In the “Model Selection” switch to “part1″, click the big Mesh-Button and choose your “face.5gd”.

Another part for another part

The shape of the face (head) appears on the stage and you can select “part2″ from the menu to load the Hair-Mesh.

The model seems to be complete, it looks like this:

All 3 Meshes have been loaded

Texturize the Meshes!

Now we are going to fit the textures/skins – the .bmp-files – to the three meshes.

Which texture you do first is not important. Just take care that you put the right skin on the right Body-Part ;)

To practice a bit switch back to “part0″, the Body-Mesh (“dressed” in my case). See the screenshot above if you are not sure.

The “Base Texture”!

Now click on the big button “Base Texture” (1) in the “Mesh and texture(s)” area.

Go to your Body-Texture (body.bmp) and choose it. It appears on the body of the SimModel immediately (2):

The Base Texture

Face and Hair!

Do you know what? Just repeat it, do the same for the Face and Hair:

Select “face” in the Part-Menu and load the texture (.bmp) into the “Base Texture” slot.

After that, select “hair” in the Part-Menu and load the Hair-Texture:

All 3 Body-Parts are complete

Note: I recommend to give all related files the same name. In this example my Body-Mesh is called “body” and the Body-Texture is also called “body”. Make it so detailed and easy as it should be.

How to save a SimModel in SimPose!

This wasn’t too hard, was it?

Better let us save the model quickly before SimPose crashes. Just use the “Save” button in the “Character Tab/Model Selection” to save complete Sims.

Note 1: Don’t change your file-structure and directories afterwards! SimPose will not be able to load a model after it has been moved on the computer.

Note 2: Save every other outfit of your model. Even when there are only little differences. It will help a lot. Also make sure to give proper file-names, like “BettyPrime-dressed-summerskirt” for example.

How to load more SimModels into SimPose 2!

You can have up to 4 Sim-Persons in SimPose at the same time to arrange a group of four.

Remember the “figure” slot in the “Model Selection”? It’s point 2 on the first screenshot, have a look.

When you set this to “figure1″ all slots in the “Mesh and texture(s)” area will be emptied and you can load the Meshes/Textures of another person – just like you did before with “figure0″.

The only thing that makes it really confusing is the strange numeration of the slots. Why the hell does it start at “0″ and not “1″?

But after a while you will figure this out as well.

Ready for the next steps?

I’ve told you everything about managing a wonderful sims to appear in SimPose 2.

The rest is up to you, just take your time and practice a bit. Fool around with the things you’ve learned here and don’t start with an ambitioned project.

I will soon show you how to create nice poses and hopefully find enough time to write more tutorials for the MXM Master Class.

So long, write a comment, visit my other sites and/or follow me at twitter…

Stay tuned…

Today we figure out how to texturize those Sims 5gd meshes that have been extracted in the last article of this SimPose workshop.

The procedure is not very complicated although there are some steps to manage. So take some time and stay calm.

We will work with Body Shop, SimPe and our favorite graphic editor (Photoshop, The Gimp) this time, mainly looking for PNG and BMP files. Here we go…

Introduction!

The 3D-Mesh of a virtual object/figure only defines the shape and form of a body. We need to put a texture on it to make the 3D-Figure look realistic. That’s why textures often are called “Skins”.

A texture contains all the visible information, like color of clothes, contours, shades and even the human skin-tone itself.

I recommend to create some outfits and other stuff with Body Shop before continuing this workshop…

Note: SimPose needs BMP Textures! So you need to save every texture in the BMP format with 24bit.

Sometimes you can also use 6tx files, but forget about 6tx for now.

Another info: We don’t use SimPose’s “Texture Overlay” slots! They are not useful, buggy and there are simply not enough of them to create a high-quality sim. Just forget that those overlay slots exist ;)

Yet another info: SimPose cannot handle Alpha-Channels and Normal Maps. Anti-Aliasing is also missing. If such effects are needed, we have to apply them by hand during the post-production.

How to create a texture for SimPose!

Look at a female Sims-Face, it’s the most complex.

It consists of many different skins that were put together to appear as one complete face.

For example, you will need at least the skin-tone, the eyebrows, and the eye color to create an individual and realistic face texture…

Short way for experienced readers:

Extract all needed skins (face parts and make-up) with Body Shop and import them back into the game. Open these files (you’ll find them in “Saved Sims”) with SimPe and export the texture parts in PNG-Format.

The Skin-Tone can be taken directly as BMP from the “Projects” Directory. Open the Skin-Tone in Photoshop and drag all the extracted PNG-Parts to it.

PNG contains all the transparency that normally would be defined by the Alpha-Channels. Just move the PNG-Parts to the right position on the BMP-Skin.

Save the complete texture as BMP/24bit and attach it to the 5gd-Mesh in SimPose.

Long way with more details:

Creating the Face Texture!

Let’s have a look at a sims woman with much make-up. It’s the worst case because it means we have to extract every single make-up part…

But once after you’ve done that, creating Body- and Hair-Textures for SimPose it only a joke ;)

Okay, in that worst case you will need the following texture parts:

• the skin-tone
• eyebrows
• eyes
• lipstick
• rouge
• eye shadow
• eye liner
• + individual parts like birthmarks and such…

Male sims can have beards and of course some make-up too, if it makes them look hotter.

The Skin-Tone

Start Body Shop and – in the “Create Components” section – extract a skin-tone of your choice.

Look inside the “Projects” Folder and open the correct texture, the one for the female face, with Photoshop (or whatever).

You can easily see that there are no eyebrows and all the wonderful make-up is missing as well.

Get the make-up parts

This needs a little practicing. You need to extract the textures of every single part in PNG-Format.

This specific graphical file-format contains transparency and makes it very easy to put different textures together into one.

Step 1:

In Body Shop, extract every single part (in the “Create Components” section) as if you want to make recolors of them (1).

Step 2:

Without changing anything, directly import them back into the game (2).

Step 3:

You have to repeat this with all parts for the face listed above. After a few minutes you have saved all required Face-Parts in the “Saved Sims” Folder of the “My Documents” Directory.

Start SimPe and open the first of those Face-Parts.

Click on the Texture Entry to activate the texture slots:

You should then be able to see the texture in the preview window.

Step 4:

Do you see the button “Export…”? Great, click it! And save the texture anywhere you want.

Step 5:

Back in Photoshop, the Face-Skin BMP still open!

Open the freshly saved PNG of the Face-Part in Photoshop as well. With the “Move-Tool” click the PNG and drag it onto the Face-Skin. Correct the position.

Step 6:

Repeat the last steps with every other of the Face-Parts until the face texture is complete.

Don’t forget to correct the layer positions to make sure the parts show up correctly. For example: Eyeliner should be above eye shadow, eyebrows above everything else…

Step 7:

Save the final texture. Save it in BMP-Format with 24bit. Now you can load it with SimPose, attach it to a 5gd Face-Mesh and see how it looks.

Creating the body texture!

Well, the process is exactly the same. But in most of the cases you only need to mess around with:

• the Body Skin Texture
• the Outfit Texture

Take the Body Skin Texture from the same “Projects” Folder. Open this BMP in Photoshop.

Get a PNG-File from the Outfit Texture by repeating the same steps as you did with the Face.

Put both files together in Photoshop and save it as BMP, too.

Creating the hair texture!

Yes, you’re right! You have to repeat the same thing again to get the hair texture.

But this time take care!

Hair often makes problem in SimPose. The hair that works best for me is made by xmsims.com. From time to time i try out other hair as well but what can i say? Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Go and make you own experiences ;)

Typical SimPose Hair Problems:

Messed up hair. Texture doesn’t seem to fit on the mesh. Happens relatively often with original maxis hair. With SimPe, try to export the texture in 6tx format (right click on the texture slot).

Large Holes. Again, happens quiet often with original textures/meshes. Don’t waste time, just take another hair-style ;)

Background Shine-Trough. There’s no solution. Such failures will be manually corrected during the post-production.

and some more…

What comes next?

Alright, you really should know enough details to give it a try and make some textures for SimPose now.

If you need more help here and there, just write a comment or send an email. Also read the other parts of this SimPose 2 Workshop Series.

Next time we will go inside SimPose where we mount all those meshes and textures together and save our first beautiful – complete – model.

So long, have fun!

After a busy week i’m back with the next part of the SimPose Workshop.

Don’t forget to read the other tutorials about SimPose 2 and also install the Sims-Tool SimPe because you will need it now.

We will extract the required 3D-Meshes of the sims and open them in SimPose 2. We are going to look for 3 Meshes (Body, Face, Hair) which together form a complete Sim-Model…

Quick overview!

If you already know how to extract 3D-Meshes with SimPe because you are an advanced creator of pretty stuff, i only tell you what you need to do to make SimPose happy:

Extract the GMDC Part of a Mesh-File and save it in the .5gd file format. You can (and should) give the file another, better and shorter, name.

SimPose only reads .5gd and you must load the Mesh into the Mesh-Slot under “Mesh and texture(s)” in the “Character” Tab.

File organisation!

Before you start you need to think about how to organize all the files that will be made for SimPose 2.

I’ve created separate folders for every model and another folder for objects. This is not the best method and i’m sure you will find a way that works better for you after you made some tests…

There is no standard Windows Open/Save/Save as… procedure in SimPose. In fact, to open and save files and poses can be very annoying.

Mark these 2 rules:

• Put all files and folders inside the SimPose directory to get short and flat paths
  
• Never move files or folders to another place on the hard disk

The Body-Mesh!

The body is everything from feet to neck. No matter if the sim is wearing a skirt, trousers, jacket or if he/she is naked.

Standard Sim-Outfits can be extracted with the “Body Shop/SimPe” Method. Custom-Made Meshes are easier to handle; you only need SimPe…

2 more rules:

• Never take split outfits (top/bottom).
• Teen-Meshes will not work.

Body Shop/SimPe Method

1) Start Body Shop and choose an outfit. Extract it like usual and then import it back into the game directly without making any changes. Close Body Shop.

2) Start SimPe and open the outfit file. You will find it in the “Saved Sims” folder in the “My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2″ Directory.

3) In the “Resource Tree” click on “Property Set” and also activate the entry in the “Resource List”. Below, in the “CPF Editor”, click on the field “name”. Copy the main part of the appearing name to the clipboard (Strg+C or Ctrl+C).

4) In SimPe, make a “New” Package-File. Go to “Tools/PJSE/Body Mesh Tool/Extracting stage” and paste the outfit name into the field “Base mesh name”. Hit Okay and you’re almost ready.

5) Four entries appear in the “Resource Tree”, but you only need the “Geometric Data Container” better know as GMDC. This is the 3D-Mesh. Activate this entry and then right click on the entry that’s in the “Resource List”.

6) Choose “Extract” from the menu and save the file in your SimPose/whatever directory. Also give the file a better name but keep the extension as is: .5gd

Extract Custom-Made Meshes

This is much easier because you don’t need to find the right Mesh-File; you still downloaded it and only have to open the Mesh-File with SimPe. Look for the GMDC and extract it, that’s all.

So download a nice Mesh-File from somewhere and open it in SimPe…

Please note that i’m not talking about Skins; this is about Meshes.

The Face Mesh!

Every Sim has its own individual face. To get this face you first need to create a Sim in Body Shop and export the final sim to your desktop.

This is really a “first-10-minutes-standard-procedure” in Body Shop so i won’t describe that here.

Open the exported Sim (.Sims2Pack) with SimPe by using the “Tools/Package Tools/Open Sims2Pack” menu.

Now you will easily find the GMDC line. Extract it the same way like you did with the Body-Mesh. Save the Face-Mesh in the .5gd format as well.

The Hair-Mesh!

This is the same like extracting a Body-Mesh. With the exception that i highly recommend to take Custom-Made Meshes (best from xmsims.com) from the start.

The game’s original hair styles also work but often make problems. I don’t know why and i can’t explain it; it’s just my experience that xmsims hair works best in SimPose.

So get the Mesh-File, extract the GMDC, save it in the .5gd format. That’s it.

Putting the meshes together in SimPose 2!

Now you have all 3 meshes that are required to form a complete Sim-Model in SimPose 2.

Start SimPose and go to the “Character” Tab. Remember, a Sim-Model is called “figure” and can consist of 4 parts. Also keep in mind that SimPose starts counting on zero: 0 to 3 instead of a more realistic 1 to 4.

So we have the 3 meshes (parts) of our first model (figure0). It’s up to you how you sort them… I like to start with the Body-Mesh…

In the “Model Selection” the buttons say “figure0″ and “part0″. Below is the section “Model Content”; click on the big button “Mesh” and open the Mesh-File (the .5gd you extracted in the previous steps).

Here it is, the untextured body appears in the workspace to the right.

Now switch to “part1″ in the “Model Selection” and open the Face-Mesh…

Switch to “Part2″ and open the Hair-Mesh with the same old “Mesh”-Button.

Saving the model!

Voilá, my dear friends. Time to save or to close SimPose to repeat these steps for practicing.

To save a finished Model click on the “Save” Button in the “Model Selection” in the “Character” tab.

Give the model a very detailed name, this will help you much:

• Wrong: MyModel1.fxml
• Right: LenaLuv-redbikiki-topless-tannedskin.fxml

Save it anywhere on your computer but not too far away. Just test what works fine for you.

To open a saved model start SimPose and use the “Load” function in the “Model Selection”.

And the textures?

You know that this SimPose Workshop is pretty long and i split it into 4 parts.

This was Part 2, extracting the 3 required Meshes for the body, face and hair, saving them as .5gd files and open/combine them in SimPose to form a complete Sim-Model.

In the next Part we have much to do again. Because we will create sexy textures without messing around with SimPose’s “Texture Overlays”.

It will be some work but it won’t be too difficult, don’t worry.

In this Part of the SimPose Workshop we’re going to import a Sim-Model to our sweet little Posing Tool.

Wow, that’s exactly what you’ve been looking for since ages! But not so fast! It means a lot of work until you can see your wonderful sexy fashion diva in SimPose!

It’s a wide range of things we have to do and i want to be detailed. So i need to split this “Import a Sim-Model” workshop into 4 sub-parts.

In this first one i will explain something about 3D-Meshes, Textures, Files and typical SimPose Problems as well.

I think it’s relatively simple to understand what you have to do as long you have some fundamental skills!

But don’t worry if you are a bloody newbie, it isn’t hard to learn…

Check out your skills!

Next to SimPose you also need a good Graphic-Editor (Photoshop, The Gimp) and SimPe. If you don’t know what that is, read the whole first part of the MXM Master Class immediately.

In the upcoming parts i will tell you…

• how to extract Mesh-Files with SimPe and load them in SimPose (simple)
• how to extract Textures with SimPe and compose a final texture (moderate)
• how to put all files together in SimPose and save the Sim-Model (simple)

Understand how a Sim works!

A Sims consists of 3 Body-Parts:

• Body: Everything from feet to neck
• Head: The Face of a Sim
• Hair: The backside of a head and – the hair

So if you want to create a complete Sim-Model you need all these 3 Body-Parts (SimPose even has 4 slots).

Every Body-Part consists of 2 things by itself:

• 3D-Mesh: The physical shape of an object/sim
• Texture: The visible surface of an object/sim

I will give you a closer description in another workshop. For now it’s enough to know that those things exist.

Understand what you need to do!

It’s clear to see that you need both, the mesh- and the texture-files, for every of the 3 Body-Parts (Body, Head, Hair).

So you need 6 files to create a Sim-Model in SimPose!

1. the Mesh of the Body
2. the Texture of the Body
3. the Mesh of the Head
4. the Texture of the Head
5. the Mesh of the Hair
6. the Texture of the Hair

The single steps to get these files are:

• Export the 3D-Meshes of all Body-Parts with SimPe
• Export all required textures (can be lots) with SimPe
• Compose the final texture files with the Graphic-Editor

The file-types you will be working with:

• .5gd = This is the MESH that SimPose needs
• .png = Always export textures with SimPe this way!
• .bmp = This is the TEXTURE that SimPose needs

These are the 3 file-types that you will use most of the time. There can be exceptions, sometimes .6tx can work better for Hair-Textures, but usually you only need to handle .5gd, .png and .bmp.

Quicky for the advanced: Export single parts (eye-brews, make-up…) as .png, put them together in Photoshop and save the final texture as .bmp (24bit).

What about Alpha-Channels?

The more advanced Skin-Creators of you surely want to know how to integrate Alpha-Channels in a SimPose-Model. By using Alpha-Channels you can add transparency and invisibility to a skin/texture. But SimPose cannot handle Alpha-Channels!

That’s the reason we ALWAYS use .png when we export a texture with SimPe. Because .png can understand transparency!

Now the smart of you will scream out “but there are Texture Overlays in SimPose”…

Yes, but i told you in the post “SimPose 2 – how to prepare for a good start” that we won’t use SimPose’s Texture Overlay slots.

Even if they would work fine (and they don’t) there simply are not enough slots for all the required overlays…

For us, it makes no difference. The work is nearly the same, but our method will work very much better. You’ll see in sub-part 3 of this workshop.

Hair often makes problems!

A SimPose-Model will never look so perfectly beautiful like in the game. There are some ugly things that can happen in SimPose; some examples:

• no anti-alias. The edge of a model isn’t smooth. No big problem in most of the cases.
• background shine-through. Happens quite often with faces and hair. Can be a problem sometimes.
• totally strange hair. Can vary from file to file. It’s annoying, some hair works fine, the next does not.

Fortunately, there’s a long process of what i call “Post-Production” anyway, and most of those problems can be resolved during that phase.

The “Post-Production” is the time when i take the photo of the finished pose and load it into Photoshop to repair all the ugliness and compose the final picture you later will see in my stories.

You can see by the length of the last sentence that “Post-Production” easily will fill further more workshop pages. So i only give you some small hints now…

How to resolve those probs (short version)!

I only take care of the missing anti-alias when it really looks ugly. Then i try to smooth the edges during the Post-Production. But most of the time i don’t care.

When the background shines through it’s no question that it can destroy the photo. Try to find another camera angle to reduce the effect. And change the background color and lighting of the scene – it can help a lot.

I recommend to use hair from xmsims.com, it works best in SimPose. I have made bad experiences with almost every other hair – even the original Maxis Hair-Styles. So don’t waste time and have a drink on xmsims!

Quicky for the advanced: Some Hair-Texture .bmp won’t open in SimPose. Then they are in wrong 32bit. First open them in Photoshop and just “save as…” with 24bit.

Take a deep breath!

You see it’s pretty much to talk about so far. Perhaps you understand a few more thing now. But that’s not all, take a deep breath and look forward to “How to import a Sim-Model / Part 2“.

Then i will show you how you can use the ultimate Sims-Tool SimPe to extract the required Mesh-Files (.5gd, remember?) of the different Body-Parts.

And please, girls! Don’t scream so loud because you will need to use SimPe! I promise you that it is absolutely easy to extract meshes!

So if you feel kind of cute, stop weeping, go and install SimPe.

See you next time…