Milkshape 3D Tour for the Sims

Converting Acessories

This next part depends mainly on where your acessories are going to be attached to and what the name of your .bmp texture is. I am assuming you've placed them wherever in the 3D program, so you know where they will be attached to.

Here is a skeletal map showing you the body part names: Just click on him to get the full-size version.

Let's say that I've made a pair of Wings, like I did a very long time ago with my first custom mesher, Shadow. SPINE2 is a pretty good place to attach it, since wherever her upper body moves, the wings will follow. So I have the wings .obj and the texture I assigned to them in the 3D program is called "dragon". No .spj file, though. Now what?

I'll use the "Import OBJ" function for this one.

The "..." button is the button you use to find the file you want. I located the wings .obj file.

"File Designation" is the skin name they will have. The wings will match the fictional b500mafit_goliath body, so I keep this part identical. The next part is the attachment point, SPINE2. The comes the texture name DRAGON.

"Default Skin" is the texture name. Simple enough? Just keep it to the exact name of the .bmp file.

And then the "Attach Site". Self-explanatory.

Now, to prevent any mis-haps with spelling here, highlight the file de3signation and copy it. Click on Import.

Whoops! Almost looks like it vanished! But that is not so. When you select "Save As" out of the "file" menu to save it, paste in the file designation here, and everything is spelled identically.

Done.

Converting a Complexly Meshed Head

Now, suppose you've created a work of art that will double as a brand new head mesh. This mesh has long hair of the Bwar, the ponytail of the pony tail mesh, sunglasses, bows and antennaes coming out of the head. It's all been texture mapped from one .bmp, the normal head's .bmp and you want to make it all into one mesh. You've already exported the whole mess as one single .obj file. A good example of that is a head I recently made, featuring Shi in my huge tutorial. See it here. Impossible? Only if you exceed the allowable amount of faces and vertices for SKN2OBJ. But if you haven't, then this is what you do.

We're going to treat this very much like an attachment. Here, the .spj file doesn't really matter. There's not really much of a skeletal structure to worry about like the body, so it's possible. Thank you to Jennova for showing me the way!

Using the "Import OBJ" function, I locate the .obj file of this head masterpiece.

Here's my info for it.

The only real differences here, are the default skins and the attach points. The deafult skin is going to be whatever your file number is, like the c593fa or c224fa or c567ma. Whichever. The point being that that is the .bmp it's going to read. Whatever .bmp is going to be texturing that mesh.

The attach point is the HEAD. Simple enough.

Import, and "Save as" the exact name you used in the file designation.

Done.

Troubleshooting

Sometimes you may have errors.

"Runtime Error....blah, blah, blah." All this means is that you have too many vertices and/or faces for SKN2OBJ to handle. The only solution is to get back into the .obj file and try and reduce the numbers in there. A lot of detail gets lost in the game anyhow, so you can fully get away with having single tendrils of hair with only 3 slices on the cylinder and 4 stacks. It will be fine.

"Files comdlg32 or VB6 Runtime files missing or out of date" Get the missing files here as well as more current info about this program. They are at the bottom of the page.