[TS2] Tutorial - Working with the SMD Tool to fix a Mesh

This tutorial aims to provide an example use case for my new SMD Tool, available in early access at the time of writing.

Attached is a zip of the unfixed version of this top, in case you want to follow along rather than just read.

I've made a top only version of my Crop Top Hoodie outfit, using the Blender 2.79 GMDC plugin by SmugTomato:

The only real issue with it is that the hands look really wrong:

Compared to a Maxis mesh:

This is most definitely an issue with the vertex normals, as they handle shading.

I also haven't gotten around to making the fat morph - so we'll do that as well:

First things first - we have to find a good reference mesh to transfer morphs from and to fix normals.

With testingcheatsenabled we can enable debug mode in CAS by pressing Shift + N. This lets us see the internal names of the clothes when we hover over them:

From the debug tooltip we can make out what the name of the mesh might be. I'll be using the "aftophalter" mesh pictured above.

Now, close the game, open SimPE, create a new package and head to Tools -> PJSE -> Body Mesh Tool -> Extracting Stage:

Type the name of the reference mesh we want to extract into the window and click OK:

Hopefully now we'll be presented with the GMDC:

Now click on Export and save the model as an SMD somewhere:

Click Yes when asked if you want to export the Morph Meshes.

Repeat the above process for the custom clothing mesh we want to fix, in this case the Crop Top Hoodie mesh. You don't need to save the package we just created.

We should now have our reference mesh, its morphs and our own mesh all exported to SMD:

Now, open the SMD Tool and first head to the Fix Normals tab.

Browse to our custom mesh ("CropTopHoodie.smd" in this case) for the Target Mesh, and browse to our reference mesh ("aftophalter_tslocator_gmdc.smd" in this case) for the Reference Mesh.

We'll be leaving the settings below as is, as they're good enough in most cases:

Now, click on Fix Normals and save the mesh. I'll be saving it as "CropTopHoodie.smd" in a new subfolder called "Fixed".

Importing the SMD into Milkshape3D to check out the results reveals that while it's fixed the hands, a hard edge that I purposefully put into the mesh has been smoothed out:

This can typically be fixed by repeating the Fix Normals process with the original meshes again, but checking the "Check Normal Facing" checkbox:

Looks great now, and the hands are still fixed:

Now, onto the morphs. Head to the Auto Morphs tab, and this time, in the Target Base Mesh choose the new Fixed SMD we just exported.

For the Reference Base Mesh choose the reference mesh like before, and for Reference Morph Mesh choose the reference morph mesh:

These settings should be good enough.

Click on Generate Morph Mesh. I will be saving this new mesh in the Fixed folder as "CropTopHoodie-morph.smd".

Repeat the process for any other morph you wish to generate.

Now that we have all our SMDs generated, head to our custom mesh package in SimPE, select the GMDC resource and click on Import, then navigate to our fixed base mesh:

Make sure to import the morph as well. I've set 4 bones per vertex as it looks best, and ticked Create BumpMapNormals because I'm using a bump map.

Click on Continue, and in the Mesh Group Importer set the new top mesh to replace the original top mesh:

Click on OK, Commit the resource, save the package and try it in-game.

We can see that now the hands look good:

And we have the generated seamless fat morph: