How To Make Your Own Sims 3 Objects | Part 2: MilkShape 3D
This is the continuation of a Sims 3 meshing tutorial. I strongly suggest you go back and read Part 1 if you have not yet done so. It will be a changing day in your life.
When you open Milkshape you will see three meshed windows and one blue one. Start off by right clicking in the blue window and choosing the 'Textured' option from the first list of four options. After you've done this, navigate up to the 'Window' tab and turn 'Show Viewport Caption' on.
Once you've done this, navigate to the 'File' menu, select 'Import' and look for 'TSRW Object'. If this option isn't there it's because you either skipped the plugin installation stage mentioned in Part One, or put them in the wrong place. Plugin installation really is as simple as opening the MilkShape folder and copying the TSR Workshop plugins there.
You should now have your mesh open. At
this stage there are a bunch of lines and planes that will only get
in your way. You can remove the large circles (known as 'bones') from
view by selecting the 'Joints' tab, highlighting the number in the
menu, then going to the 'Edit' tab and selecting 'Hide Selection'.
You can also remove the flat gray plane underneath the table by clicking the 'Groups' tab and deleting the shadow mesh that exists as a flat gray plane. You can work out which mesh is the shadow mesh by clicking on each one and selecting the 'Hide' option. When you work out which one is the shadow mesh, use the delete option to get rid of it. You don't need it right now, it's only holding you back.
Your mesh is now ready for
modification. Under the 'Model' tab, you'll see a selection of
various tools, like Vertex, Face, Sphere, Geosphere, Box, Cylinder
and Plane. The 'Box' option is great for creating solid rectangles
that serve as legs. Feel free to experiment with these tools.
You'll note that no matter how hard you try to draw your shapes in the correct place, they always seem to end up in the wrong place. That is where the 'Move' tool comes into play. You're able to define variables for X Y and Z planes. X moves the object left to right, Y moves the object up and down and Z moves the object forward and back. Remember that after you've moved your object, future movements will occur relative to the current position of the object. That means you need to reset your variables after each move if you don't want things going horribly askew.
You'll also note at this point that although the original mesh is excellent for showing you where the object should begin and end (so that sims don't crash into it and that it doesn't disappear in game) it gets in the way of your designing by sitting there and being all clunky and whatnot. You can make the original mesh disappear by going into the 'Groups' tab and 'hiding' the original mesh. You can also delete the original mesh entirely, which is important to remember to do before you export your final product if you don't want your final creation to be two desks slammed into each other like something from the Bermuda triangle.
Once you're happy with your mesh (and
you've deleted all unecessary groups) export it into a Wavefront OBJ
file for the next stage of the modding process... UV Mapping.