Help with Hair fix - HP officially rocks. :)

[bethgael]

A number of people here have mentioned how easy it is to fix a hair mesh, so I was wondering if someone can please point me in the right direction.

I have a hair I d/l from MTS2 (the reno hair). It's free, and the creator does mention the gap, so this is not a complaint *grin*, but it's a little more than a "gap": the back of the neck is almost completely detached from the sim (when he puts his head down you can see all the way through to his teeth, which is a wee but more than disturbing). The hair also pokes through the head and glasses. You can see the gap on the pic at the thread:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=108343

I've only ever done hair recolours for my own use (no meshing), so have no idea how to fix this. I wouldn't worry, but it's for a story and I'll probably need to take pictures. I figured one of the hair experts here would be able to tell me where to start, or would be prepared to do the fix.

I do have Sim PE (which I rarely use unless I want to save a born-in-game Sim) but no other meshing tools.

[BlueSoup]

I think only meshers would think it's easy - it's bloody hard!  It took me three freaking days to fix the Exnem mesh, and that's not even including the horrible layers he had.

That being said, I'll point you towards some tutes, though you do need a program.  Milkshape comes with a 30-day trial.

[bethgael]

That'd be terrific. It must've been the gappy part of the S2C paysite thread that said something about a good mesher (not me!) being able to fix gaps fairly quickly.

I'll give it a go, though -- may as well.

[HystericalParoxysm]

Assuming the mesh hasn't been bump mapped and has no other animation (doesn't sway in the wind at all), you should be able to use Milkshape/Unimesh to edit that... relatively easy.  For a hair mesher it'd be like a 5 minute fix.

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=158048

Dr Pixel explains how here - scroll down about halfway till you get to the part "There is one more assignment correction we need to make - the 5 vertices at the very bottom of the neck must always be partially assigned to the neck, or the mesh will have an ugly gap in certain positions in the game." - that's what you need to do.

If you don't know how to get the mesh from SimPE into Milkshape, that's covered on the first Unimesh body tutorial, which he links to at the top of that page there.

[Solowren]

Let me know if you fix it- I liked that hair a lot except for the weird gappiness. :wink:

[bethgael]

Assuming the mesh hasn't been bump mapped and has no other animation (doesn't sway in the wind at all), you should be able to use Milkshape/Unimesh to edit that... relatively easy.  For a hair mesher it'd be like a 5 minute fix.

If you don't know how to get the mesh from SimPE into Milkshape, that's covered on the first Unimesh body tutorial, which he links to at the top of that page there.

Thanks for that, HP. I will read through it all after work tonight and see what I can do once I've downloaded milkshape.

I will definitely let people know if I manage to fix it... although I'm not sure how I'll do, this would be my first meshing project so I'll probably bollux it.  :?

[bethgael]

I haven't disappeared.

I have just downloaded the tools and am working gradually through the tutorials before I try my hand at the hair.

Gods, what a learning curve!

[Jarry]

I hope you can fix it, I like the hair too

[bethgael]

Another question for HP:

I've done all of the body meshing and recolouring tuts (well, redone the recolouring, I had those OK before) and they were very good, easy to work through but I have a probably stupid q now that I'm at the hair tut you recommended:

With the hair mesh itself, do the elder/adult/YA meshes need to be redone separately, or will reassigning the neck/skull bone for one work for all three? (ie just by resaving the mesh for those ages).

[Soup Parrot]

Beth I hope you can fix that reno hair. I love plickas hair but she has some gaps in a few of them. Their so great though. I'm glad your still out there:).

[HystericalParoxysm]

Assuming the hair already works the same for young adult, adult, and elder, then you should just be able to have one hair mesh for those ages.  

There are some exceptions with certain hair that was cloned from a Maxis hair that didn't work the same for young adults (like my Gaius hair).  This is due to the only 11 group hair mesh for adults/elders not working the same for young adults for some stupid Maxian reason that's an almighty pain in the ass to fix... but more than likely, most hairs will share the mesh for ya/a/e.

[bethgael]

Excellent, thanks HP.

I pm'd plicka re the mesh and she's happy for it to be re-uploaded at MTS2 if I manage to fix it, but she wants it on her thread only. So I'm not sure how that goes insofar as sharing.

I'll try and get it done tonight (work has been a beyatch since last week)... and then I guess I'll need to ask if I can fix it so it doesn't end up going through the glasses...

[HystericalParoxysm]

Well, you could send it to Plicka so she could upload it to the thread herself.

Unimesh has been updated very recently, with new and shiny support for bump maps and hair animation - the sexy natural bounce and sway in the breeze sort.  It may be worth looking into doing some of that to it while you're at it, if she's up for it...  

It's more learning, yes, but it's actually not -that- hard, especially with new Unimesh... just a matter of assigning a little weight to the animation bones for the hair rather than the regular bones...  So you may want to check into it while you're working on it.  Do one super-redo to perfect and animate it, perhaps.  

[bethgael]

Erhm. Oookay. I will not be afraid...  I have never seen anyone's brain actually explode from getting a lot of information in a few days, so why not? The risks are minimal.

I'm hoping by "recently" you don't mean less than 5 days ago.

If so, any extra tuts I can look at on the new stuff or is it all pretty self-explanatory? I'm one of those people who likes the "pretend I'm really stupid, hold me by the hand and tell me everything I need to know in words of 1 syllable or less," but once it's got, it stays got.

Cos what Reno really needs is even more sexy natural bounce.

And thanks for the idea for the avatar, too, so now I can be a realz fangurlz

[HystericalParoxysm]

Unimesh got a new and major update on the 10th.  It's really not too much different in terms of operation, except for a couple dialog boxes... and just being able to animate hair and do bump maps all together without having to export/import in SMD format in SimPE when you're done (which then makes that GMDC uneditable in Milkshape).  New Unimesh is fracking awesome!

It's pretty well documented... the main change that would trip up beginners who have learned on the old version is if you are combining two GMDCs - where you used to say Yes to excluding additional joints, now you say No to including them.  You probably won't have to do that for hair though - that's mostly for body frankensteins.

With new Unimesh capable of doing animations, it is no more difficult, really, than fixing a neck gap.  It is the exact same concept, just more of the same: applying joint weights to vertices in certain positions influences how they move in relation to the location of those joints.  The skeleton moves, and each vertex gets pulled along according to how much it's weighted to the different joints.

Instead of assigning fully to things like head, neck, and spine2, to do sexy natural bounce animations, you'll find bits that stick out some, like edges of hair, bangs, points, etc., and weight the ends of those somewhat to a nearby animation bone - there are four: left, right, back, and front, and which one you choose influences how the hair will move.  You generally want to choose the closest one (or you can choose a blend of two by weighting equally to both of them) for best results.

It's certainly not necessary - I haven't released any animated hair yet (mostly because I tend to do short, close-cropped styles, but that's a different story).  But you seem to have quite a few brain cells to rub together, and you sound like you're making excellent progress...  If you're gonna do it, you may as well do it right.  

Your avatar totally rocks.