Converting An Object From TS2 For Use In TS3 Using TSRW

[aikea-guinea]

Converting An Object From TS2 For Use In TS3 Using TSRW

Tools:

TSR Workshop
Photoshop or Gimp (This tutorial was made using Photoshop, but Gimp is a free alternative.  You will need its DDS plugins.)
Photoshop DDS Plugins
SimPE
Milkshape and plugins
Club Crimsyn TS2 magazine .package file and ground shadow texture

For this tutorial, I'll be converting a set of magazines I did for TS2 with TSR's Workshop.  You'll be learning how to extract the original mesh and textures, how to create different LODs and shadow groups, as well as two different ways of doing the textures in TS3.  Is this tutorial long?  Sure, but I promise you once you get the hang of it, you'll be able to convert objects very quickly.

Go ahead and download/install the tools you need, making sure to put all the plugins where they need to be.  Don't forget to install the TSRW plugins for MilkShape as well!  They're included in the programs directory folder, and need to be up to date in order to work correctly.

Note: I'm pretty much against anything having to do with TSR, so why am I writing this tutorial using their Workshop tool?  Quite frankly, I'm lazy, and the tool has some pretty nice built in features that let you have a lot of control over your creation with little effort on your part.  It's also a good way for people to learn their way around TS3 CC creation without getting completely overwhelmed by some of the more technical aspects of creating things with the other tools available.

Please note that this tutorial assumes you have at least some knowledge of meshing.  If you don't, please take the time to go through this wonderful set of starter tutorials by WesH found in the SimsWiki.  Also useful, though geared more towards TS2 creation, is this tutorial by JWoods.

Stage One: Extracting the TS2 Mesh and Texture Files

The first thing you'll want to do is make yourself a project folder to hold all the bits and pieces that go into creating your piece of CC.  I have an extensive group of folders and subfolders for various projects, but you're free to set up your system in the way that's best for you.

Extracting Textures
After you've got a folder for your contents, open SimPE and navigate to wherever you saved MESH_aikea_guinea-Object_Magazine_MASTER-040408.package and open it.  You'll want to click on the 'list' tab in the upper right box (or wherever it appears in your layout) [1], then 'Texture Image' in the list to the left [2].  This will filter your list to just the texture in the list, which you should then click on [3].

Then, simply right-click on the texture in the lower window and choose 'export' [4].  Save it in your project folder with either the default name, or any name you wish to give it.  (I named mine 'Magazine Overlay' because this is the type of texture it'll be in the TS3 part of the project.)

Handy Tip:  TS2 uses PNG format, while TS3 uses DDS.  DDS makes use of an alpha channel, where PNG's alphas are pretty much right there in front of you as part of the basic texture.  You can grab the alpha information for use in DDS by choosing the 'extract alpha' option in SimPE and pasting the resulting extracted image into your DDS's alpha channel.  For this tutorial it doesn't matter, as this object doesn't have any sort of alpha transparencies to worry about.



Extracting The Object Mesh
Now, click on 'Geometric Data Container' in the left hand list [1], then click on the filtered file that shows up in the upper right hand window [2], just like you did with the texture.  You've now pulled up the mesh.

Click on 'Export' and save the obj in your project folder [3].   Again, as with the texture, you can rename this file if you want.



You now have everything you need from the TS2 package file to do a conversion.  You may also want to grab the Catalog Description, but it's not really necessary (and my catalog description for this magazine is amazingly vague).

Close SimPe.

[aikea-guinea]

Stage Two: Creating the TS3 Project File

Open up TSRWorkshop and let it get started.

Click on 'Create New Project.'

Click on 'Object,' then 'Next.'

TSRW will then load a list of different objects to clone.  Personally, I prefer using a specific plant as the base for most of my objects, as it's set up conveniently with an overlay and nice material presets.

Go to Decor - Plants and wait for the program to load the plants.  Scroll down to 'Sculpture Plant Ivy Ball Topiary' and click next.



At this point, you'll want to give your creation a project name, title, and description.  The name is used for internal numbering, so make sure you use something unique.  I try to stick with a simple formula, with my username, something about what I'm making, and the date, so it's not duplicated by anyone else.  Once you fill everything out, hit 'next,' then 'OK.'

TSRW will then load your project.



Stage Three: Getting All The Pieces Ready

So you've got your project file started; now what?  There are several different approaches you could take, but I'll just go through how I personally create.

Categories: Deciding Where Your Object Will Show Up In The Game
The first thing you'll want to do is change the categories your object will be found in, since a magazine obviously isn't a plant, and the price.  All you need to do to change the category is to uncheck 'plants' and check 'miscellaneous decor' under 'Function sub room category.'  You can then change the room sorting by checking what room(s) you want the item to show up in.  Also be sure to scroll down the list and uncheck plants in 'Room sub category' and check 'miscellaneous decor.'  (Yes, this is almost exactly the same thing as 'Function sub room category.')  You don't need to change anything else in the remaining categories for this project.



The Mesh
At this point I like to start working with the mesh, as I do a lot of texture-related things while I'm in Milkshape.  Go to the Mesh tab [1] and click on the box with the red arrow next to the dropdown menu that says 'High Level Of Detail' [2].  This will export a file that contains bone information in a format that TSRW reads to put together packages for the game.  I generally name my wso's based on the LOD (Level Of Detail) I'm working with, so this one is named 'High.'  After you've saved the High LOD, go ahead and use the drop down menu [3] to select 'Low Level Of Detail' and export that as well.  Don't worry about the shadow groups; we'll be creating those later.

Once you've exported the high and low LODs, save your progress and minimize TSRW.



Run MilkShape, and use File - Import - TSRW Object, then navigate to where you extracted the meshes, and import the High LOD.



Click on the 'Groups' tag in the right hand tool set.  

As you can see, you have a vaguely plant-shaped mesh with two groups: a shadow group (Group 0), and the object group (Group 1).  Don't change the order of the groups, or you'll end up with some interesting material issues in the game.

Now, go to File - Import - Wavefront Obj then navigate to where you extracted the original TS2 mesh, and import it (I didn't get a screencap of this, but Wavefront Obj. is in the middle group of file types at the very top).  Now you've got three groups, one of which is the TS2 magazine.  Go ahead and delete the plant mesh (Group 1), since we don't need it anymore.  Rename the group 'sculpturechinavase_design' to 'Group 1.'



Next, go to the Joints tab, click on 'Select Unassigned,' then 'Assign.'  Your magazine mesh is now assigned to the correct joint.  (I failed to get a screencap of this step; let me know if anyone needs one.)

Note: Obviously, more complicated items have more complicated joints.  Beds have several, including a pillow joint and a blanket joint, and body meshes have many more still.

Ground Shadows
Now it's time to turn our attention to the ground shadow.  This is a purely texture based shadow as opposed to the mesh based shadows we'll be working with later on, and is created by using the flat black square group with a shadow texture applied to it.  What I like to do is go ahead and select the shadow group, then use 'Align Normals' so it's no longer black. 



Then, go to the Materials tab, click 'New' [1], then click on the first 'None' [2], and import the shadows texture I included.  Once you've imported it, if you still have your shadow group selected, click on 'Assign.'  Your shadow group will now have a black dot in the middle of it.

This doesn't line up with our magazine at all, so we'll do a bit of mesh editing and some very basic uv map editing.



First, click on 'Window' then 'Texture Coordinate Editor.'  This is MilkShape's uv map editor.  Use the drop down menu to select Group 0, and you should see the following:



I find it helps to have Redraw checked [1], as this allows you to see your changes as you make them.  We're doing a very simple edit where all we have to do is move our coordinates from the Dark Circle to the Dark Square, so check 'Lock Y' [2].  This will keep your mapping from moving up and down, while still allowing you to move it from side to side.  Then, click on the Move button and drag the uv map over to Dark Square.  You can resize the window to fit the texture.  (If you don't see four little red dots, you've somehow managed to unselect the points.  Click on Select and right click and drag until you've reselected all four points.)

Once you've done moved your selection to Dark Square, you can close the Texture Coordinate Editor.  Now we have a slightly differently shaped black blob sitting in the middle of our magazine, so it's time to do a tiny bit of mesh editing.

Right click in the lower left window and choose 'textured' instead of 'wireframe.'  Select the two right-most vertices and make sure only X is enabled over in the Model window.  Now, move the vertices until you can start to see some of the shadow appear along the edge of the magazine mesh.  Repeat this on the other side until you've got roughly equal amounts of shadow showing.

Then, grab the upper two vertices, uncheck the X and check the Z, and move those until you see the shadow.  Again, repeat this on the bottom as well.



Now we need to change the normals back so the square is black again.  Simply select the shadow group [1], then go to Vertex - Extended Manual Edit [2].  With 'Normals' selected, you'll need to change any and all the 1s to 0s [3].  When you press 'accept,' your shadow group should be completely black.



If you've noticed, this particular mesh seems to be sitting quite low, so the shadow group is showing through.  We'll fix this by selecting the magazine group (Group 1), going to the Model tab, clicking on Move, and making sure only Y is selected.

Now you can easily move the magazine mesh up until the shadow is no longer poking through.

[aikea-guinea]

Textures
Now's the point at which I like to make a multiplier texture when an object is going to be CASTable.  Obviously we've already extracted one texture to use for this project, but that's going to be what's called an Overlay texture.  In TS3, patterns and colors are projected onto a basic texture, generally greyscale with some highlights and shadows on it.  While this particular project is a little silly for a CASTable option, it's a good way to get a basic idea of them.

Start Photoshop and make a new 512x512 square and floodfill it with 50% grey [1].  The reason we're going with this size is because our overylay texture is 512x512, and it just seems to make sense to be consistent.  In order to get a rough idea of where to put shadows and highlights, copy and paste the original texture into the multiplier and put some guides in where the pages meet [2].  Delete the overlay layer and burn in shadows and dodge highlights into the grayscale layer as you see fit, using the guides as a rough idea of where they should go.  It doesn't have to be pretty [3].

Once you're done, you can run some blur filters if you want to clean things up a bit.



When you're done, flatten the image and save it as a DXT5 DDS by going to File - Save As and using the drop down menu to navigate to the dds extension.



Go back to MilkShape and import your multiplier texture and apply it to Group 1 the same way you applied the shadow texture to Group 0 earlier in the tutorial.  If it looks ok, fantastic!  We can export our mesh and quickly finish up our remaining textures.  If it doesn't look right, keep working on it until you get something you're happy with.

TS3 uses two other textures in addition to the multiplier and overlay.  Not every project will have an overlay, but every project should have a control texture and a specular texture.  The control texture tells the game which pattern gets mapped to which part of the mesh.  Since this is a simple object, we're going to make a control with two recolorable channels.

Make a new 512x512 square and once again paste the overlay texture into it.  (Again, we're using it as our guide; more complicated projects may require you to extract a uv map of your object instead.)  Drag a guide to where the inside and the outside of the magazine texture meets, and select the top portion.  Flood fill this (in a new layer) with 255 Red.


Select the inverse and flood fill with 255 Green.



Flatten the image and save it as a DXT1 No Alpha DDS.



The specular is used to tell the game how reflective an object should be.  Since magazines are generally shiny, we can simply brighten up our multiplier a bit.  Open it up and use Image - Adjustments - Brightness/Contrast to add a bit more brightness and contrast to it.



Now, go to the channels tab.  We're going to give our specular a black alpha channel so the game will put a pattern's specular over the object when needed.  Simply click on the Channels tab [1], select the alpha channel [2], and flood fill your image with black [3].

Save it as a DXT5 DDS.



Finally, our exported overlay texture is currently in PNG format, so we should resave it as a DXT5 DDS.  Just open it up and Save As a DDS.

All our textures are now done, so we're ready to export our meshes!

Close PhotoShop and go back to MilkShape.  Select File - Export - Export TSRW Object, and save over the original High.wso file.

This is a good time to make the Low LOD.  Low LODs don't tend to have shadow groups, so delete Group 0, and rename Group 1 to Group 0.  This is already a very low poly mesh, but you can reduce the polys even more by going to Tools - Direct X Mesh Tool.  Use the slider to reduce the polys from about 400 to as few as just over 100.

Click on the little save icon.



Your mesh will now go black, but don't panic.  Just reselect it all and use Align Normals to get it back.

This low LOD looks a bit messy to me as it is, so I'm going to delete the page that's sticking out by selecting the vertices and deleting them.



The only problem with using the Direct X Mesh tools is that it gets rid of your joints.  This is easily remedied by importing the Low.wso and deleting the plant.  Then you can go back to your joints tab and reassign the magazine in the same way you initially assigned them to the high LOD: click on 'Select Unassigned,' then 'Assign.'

Export this the same way you did with the High LOD, only obviously naming it Low.wso.

Close MilkShape.

For more in-depth information on textures in TS3, be sure to check out this large collection of information on TSR.  I hate to link to them, but good information is good information, and it's free.

Stage Four: Putting It All Together
Go back to TSRW.  In the mesh tab [1], select the box with the green arrow [2] and import your High.wso into the High Mesh.

It'll look a little funny, but that's just because we haven't updated the textures yet.

Use the drop down menu and select the Low LOD [3] and import the Low.wso the same way you did with the high.



We can now create the sunshadow mesh using the generate sunshadow button.

Pull up the Shadow high level of detail from the drop down menu, then simply click on the blue arrows [1].  Check 'Low Detail' and 'OK' [2].  (Note that the shadow won't always change right away.  This is fine; it'll regen eventually.)

Do the same thing for the Shadow low level of detail, using the same 'Low Detail' selection from before.

You now have perfect sunshadows!



Go back to High Level Of Detail so you're looking at the highest LOD mesh again, then click on the textures tab [1].

First, click on the 'Overlay' and press 'Edit' [2].  Click on 'Import' and choose the overlay texture, then hit 'Done.'  If [3] comes up, hit yes.

We don't really have to change anything else with particular selection, so we'll move on to the CASTable preset.



Drop down to the second entry in textures and click on 'Overlay' 'Edit' again.

Click on 'Make Empty,' then 'OK.'  This gives you an empty overlay, so the entire mesh is CASTable now.



Go down to 'Mask' and import your control in the same way you imported the original overlay.

Do the same for your multiplier and specular.

Now you'll be able to change the presets.

Go down to Patterns and change the tiling to 1,1 [1] and enable Pattern B [2], also changing the tiling to 1,1.

You can change these patterns to whatever you want by using the 'edit' tool [3] and selecting new ones.  You can also change their colors at this point.

Note: The tiling can change depending on the aspect ratio of your texture, as well as the aspect ratio of the enabled control area.  I find it's useful to apply the medium checker pattern (the blue one in geometric) to get a feel for how patterns will look.

Keep in mind that the second channel on this is actually on the underside of the mesh, so it's kind of pointless to have on this particular object outside of this tutorial.  I've applied a flaking paint texture to the top and a rust texture to the back to give a completely ruined look to the magazine.  I try to avoid using textures from EPs, sticking to basegame patterns, just in case someone doesn't have a specific EP.



We have an extra selection in the presets, so we'll go ahead and delete it.  Go ahead and select it, then use 'Delete' to get rid of it.



Now we're going to do one last thing to our project.  Go to the Slots tab [1] and click on Footprint.  There will be three dots in a row [2]; click on those.



In the Footprint editor, click on 'From Mesh' [1] and choose the one that seems most like your High LOD [2], then run Calculate [3].  This will give your object a perfect foot print for placing off the grid and telling sims where not to step, etc.



Now we're ready to export to a package and install!

[aikea-guinea]

Go to Edit - Project Contents.  Once there, click Export To Package and save your package to your mods folder with a descriptive name.



If you've done everything right, you should have a magazine in your game!


Phew!  Hopefully this tutorial will prove at least somewhat useful.  As always, if you have any questions at all feel free to ask!  

[Artemisia]

I have successfully converted the magazine *yay*

But now I appear to be stuck with my new project, a dessert
So here come my noobish questions.
I took some screengrabs so you can see what goes wrong, and hopefully can help.

Everything goes rather well, until I try to re-import it back into TSRW.
It comes up with an error, it says "groupcount does not match. 3 in file, expected 2"
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/nightwish_oceanborn/error.jpg
It's correct, cause the dessert has 2 parts, the cup and the ice-cream, see here:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/nightwish_oceanborn/Untitled-1-4.jpg
But when I "merge" the mesh so it's only one part, my overlay looks all weird on it, see here: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/nightwish_oceanborn/messedup.jpg
At this point, I have no clue what to do.
I'm still VERY new to this....

[aikea-guinea]

It looks to me like your two groups have their own texture files, so when you regroup them in milkshape, they end up being mapped on top of one another (basically).  TSRW (and, in fact, MilkShape as well if you just load a single texture) will then be putting the overlay on both 'groups.'  What you need to do is a bit of remapping and reworking of the texture, which isn't really too difficult.  You'll need to basically put both textures onto a single texture, then do a quick and painless remap of both groups to the single texture.  This will actually be much easier to show rather than explain, so give me a bit to come up with a quick mini-tutorial.  

[Artemisia]

Ohh I'd love a tutorial for it
Especially as I found this tutorial so easy to follow.
I remember back when I still played the Sims 2, I dabbled a bit with meshing, etc, often swearing and abandoning my projects cause I had difficulty understanding the tutorials (ok, I'm ashamed of that).
Skinning was pretty easy but never got to understand uv mapping, what is probably what I need to do here with the dessert I'm trying to convert?

[BleakOptimism]

Now I managed to make a magazine and get it to look right and it worked in game, and did everything I asked it to, but I am confused at how I managed to bork a few stages, any advice on how I went so wrong yet ended up with the correct item would be appreciated.

First, in milkshape my shadow box/rectangle was half the size of yours and I'm not quite sure how that happened.
secondly when I got to the final step and made the mask, multiplier and specular empty, the print of the magazine went all pixelated and I couldn't get the image to look normal again, so I tried a second time, without changing those, and everything looked fine, I also didn't need to delete the icy texture overlay, importing the magazine overlay seemed to automatically remove it.  Have I done something super wrong here and how come it worked O_o

Aikea, please come to my house and hit me over the head with something until I get this, I'll bake rhubarb muffins and it will be grand *weeps on keyboard* I got the result I wanted but I know something went skewiff in the process.

[soulscorpio]

Hullo, Aikea. First of all, lemme thank you for all the good stuff that you've provided us Sim addicts through all the years, and props to you for keeping up the good work. I've got some Sims 2 objects that I wanna convert for use to Sims 3, however, I've encountered a bit of difficulty with the first step.

What if I had an object that had three textures in it? Do I take all those textures and apply all the steps covered in this tutorial on them, or do I need to only take one particular TXTR file and work on it? Please see the attached file to see what I'm talking about. Thanks in advance for your reply, and more power!

[aikea-guinea]

Artemisia, I haven't forgotten about you!  I've been busy in the real world and haven't had a chance to put together that mini-tutorial.  If I can't get to it today, I should have time tomorrow.  Finished!  See the end of this post.

BleakOptimism, the only time you should use 'make empty' (for this tutorial, at any rate) is when you're making the castable variation and don't want to have an overlay.  Think of the overlay image as exactly that: an image that overlays everything.  It sounds like when you chose 'make empty,' it gave you the pop up about updating the other material sizes, in which case you should have answered 'no.'  Basically, when you import an image that's a different size from the other images that are already in the file, it's asking if you want to change how those other images will be displayed.  In the case of the first overlay import, we do want to have the other images in the same size/ratio, because we're going to be updating all of them.  If the image you're importing/referencing is smaller, then you don't want to have the other images match it, or you'll get the blurriness.  But like I said, you didn't need to make anything empty at that point anyway.  

Also, I forgot to metion this in the tutorial but sometimes the original images want to 'stick' to the new mesh, and this is fixed by updating the mesh via the 'material' part of the main group.  Just use 'browse' to find the images you imported and click 'ok.'

soulscorpio, you'll almost never need the shadow image, so you can pretty much flat out ignore that one.  The other ones look like they're just color variations, and when I run into this I tend to find the lightest colored texture and use that one as a base for my multiplier texture by simply making it greyscale.  If they're a bit more complicated than a simple texture (something like my magazine overlays, for instance), feel free to extract all of them and use them as individual overlay options.

Hope that cleared some things up!
__________________________________________

Mini-Tutorial: What To Do When The Object You're Converting Has Two Groups and Textures:

This is a pretty basic look at how to turn two individual textures into one.  You'll need your image editing software and MilkShape.


First, open up the two individual textures.  Pick one of them (doesn't matter which) and double its canvas width.  If you follow the above screenshot settings, you'll end up with a chunk of empty space off to the right of the original image.


Paste the second image into this space.


Go into MilkShape and apply the texture to both groups.  As you can see, this looks really stupid.


We need to change the aspect ratio of the uv mapping, which is very easy.  Open up the Texture Coordinate Editor and select one of the groups from the drop down menu.  Under the Scale tab, enter '.5' and '1,' and click on the S button.


Your UV map has now been scaled to fit the new image.  Simply move it over to where its texture is mapped, making sure not to go off the edge of the texture.  (TS2 had no issues dealing with mapping that went off the edge of the texture; however, TS3 will do all sorts of horrible distorting things if you're mapping isn't confined to the image.)


Repeat the steps with the other group, and you're done!

Note:  If you have an object where you want half of the mesh to be CASTable and the other half an overlay image, you'll have to do the above steps, only with part of the image being your greyscale multiplier and the other part being the overlay.  In the alpha channels of each of your textures, make sure that for the overlay image, any part of the mesh you want to have CASTable will need to have black in it, and, of course, in the multiplier, any part of the image you want to have the overlay on will need to have black in that area of the alpha.  (And just to clarify, you will end up with separate overlay and multplier textures.)

[Artemisia]

Thank you!
I think I will be able to do it with this tutorial


Update:
I didn't have much time of late but today I finally gave it a try and it was really easy to do thank to your little mini-tutorial
Just took a screenshot of it:

But here come the questions again lol...
I'm able to add 2 additional overlay textures as you can see, so now I have 3 different looking desserts, but the original ts2 object had like 9 recolors, of which I used 2 and the base (red swirl).
I tried duplicating the groups to add the other textures, but that didn't help me much lol.
So I started googling for tutorials and browsed mts forums and tsrw forums but so far I couldn't find what I wanted to find, a simple explanation (or any at all really) how to add those extra groups for extra "recolors".
It's probably really simple but I'm at a loss here, I have no clue how to add them.
If you have any time to explain or if someone else can help me out I'd be really thankful

[aikea-guinea]

First off, those look fantastic!

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking.  Do you mean in TSRW you've run out of room for adding the rest of the overlays?  As in, the original object only had three presets, and you need nine?  If that's what you mean, it's really easy to get more.  In the textures tab next to the drop down menu at the very top is a white square thingy with a yellow * on it; click on that and use 'duplicate' to get more recolor options added.  It won't look like anything's changed, but you'll have another listing in the drop down menu to edit with your additional overlays.

If that's not what you meant, sorry!

Also, I feel like I should add that with something like what you're doing, you'll still only need one multiplier with it's alpha for the overlay.  You can use browse to reuse the same one multiple times and cut down on your file size.  

[Artemisia]

Yes, that was what I meant, I tried it before but clicked replace so that's where it went wrong lol, but glad I know what to do now.
I finished the conversion


and can be downloaded here.

I also started my own blog, Clutterland, where I plan to upload more items later on

Thanks again for your help Aikea!

[dominno]

Wow, those look really good, Artemisia! I was ready to read this whole tutorial and give it a try... but I really know nothing about meshing so I'm going to finally give it a shot and read WesH's tutorial first and then come back here. I have a very hard brain, so hopefully I'll understand half of it! 

[aikea-guinea]

Artemisia, they turned out lovely!  I'm so glad you were able to get everything figured out.  

*cough**hint*youshouldmakesomestuffforthetheme*hint**cough*