simnnah

Ok so this is very basic stuff, but I realise its helpful to have as the background for this other post of mine. I know this is basic, but if someone learns from me, then, that's better -

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I reccomend highly downloading this extension by Vyxated.

It makes things easier and it's how I personally do it.

I have prepared a blend file with the first couple of steps completed - i.e, it ought to be ready for transfer.

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[First weighting pass - I later will manually paint and refine, but this can get most of your hair fixed for you.]

Grab a sim-body. For short hairs, the head suffices, for longer, the head and the sim top- for ridiculously long hair, you need the head, top and bottom, or a full body.

This we will use for weight transfer. Usually, people weight transfer from a similar object or existing hair, but I prefer to use the sim body. To prepare for the weight transfer, we are going to remove certain vertex groups.

Here are the vertex groups that should be kept (all else must be removed) :

b__Head__ b__Neck__ b__L_Clavicle__ b__R_Clavicle__ b__Spine2__ b__Spine1__ b__Spine0__ b__CAS_L_Breast__ b__CAS_R_Breast__ b__R_OutBrow__ b__R_MidBrow__ b__R_InBrow__ b__L_MidBrow__ b__L_InBrow__ b__L_OutBrow__

If your hair has strands that cross the face, you may also keep the cheek bones b__L_Cheek__ b__R_Cheek__

If your hair goes below the waist, keep the b__Pelvis__ also!

It's not reccomended to keep any limb weights (arm or leg) because it's a lot more trouble than it's worth to account for all the possible positioning of your hair when it's weighted to a limb- even though the concept of 'long hair moves with arms/ shoulders majestically' sounds tempting, it's doomed to look rather awful in game.

Here's how the weights look when you're just using the EA weights:

Usually, you'll get a good transfer with this when you have a low-mid polygon mesh!

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mesh clean up > merge by distance , then subdivide the mesh.

Depending on how many polygons your mesh has, subdivide the sim-mesh till it is similar.

Smooth the vertices. then, smooth the weights of the mesh - once or twice, then limit the total weights, and smooth and limit again.

Here's how that ends up looking :

Use this sort only when you have a high poly hair mesh.

You can use the ones I provided in the blend file, or you can make your own if you want.

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Duplicate the reference mesh, and join one to your hair- this makes sure your mesh has the correct vertice groups that match the transfer. If your hair mesh already has vertex groups, you can delete them prior to joining the mesh to your hair.

You will separate the body from your hair-mesh later.

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This now prepares the mesh to transfer. Your mesh will now only have the necessary vertice groups for a hairstyle.

Size up the transfer mesh to be slightly larger than the hair mesh.

1.12 - 1.30 scaling in all dimensions usually works to 'encase' most short- bob length hairs

Weight mesh in wireframe, sim-mesh (that is the one joined to your hair) is in solid mode - this is just for demonstration's sake. Depending on hair volume or other aspects, you might want to resize the weight mesh differently.

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Then, transfering with Vyxated's extenion :

Vyxated has included a super useful clarification for what must be selected.

In this screenshot 'AT Top' is the selected ( in a darker orange) and 'AT Top.001' is the active.

While you have the two meshes (your hair and the joined sim-mesh in place of 'selected', while your weight reference is 'active) press the middle button here with 'weights' ONCE.

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Your hair should now quite seamlessly fit with the EA weights.

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Seperate the hair from the sim body mesh. You do not need this anymore!

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Next, we test the weights. I reccomend exporting an animation with strong facial expressions using S4S and appending your hair mesh onto the rig which has the animation active.

I use the chased by death CAS trait animation in order to check jaw and forehead weights specifically, because the sim screams and raises their eyebrows dramatically. If this intense movement can be accounted for, then, most subtler in-game animations will be accounted for also, so long as the range of movement is similar to EA's, and not more exadgerrated.

Now, you'll see some crunchiness. This is when you smooth and limit your weights until there's a good balance between the mesh moving smoothly, and not being too weak/ patchy that the movement gets crunchy again. You will check every group in this manner.

(as you can see, now it does not crunch!)

If smoothing and limiting (every time you smooth, you must limit. never leave your weights unlimited!!!) does not correct an issue (more common with longer hairs), then, we manually paint the weights and ensure there is smooth movement to the best of our ability.

Because the sim rig is limited, and you always must limit your weights to 4, you'll inevitably find some areas will not co-operate with you. That's fine. It's best to pick your battles!

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That's essentially it. Very basic, but yeah.

a couple months ago, we created a survey for the general simblr community which was received really well! as a follow up, we are doing another survey - just for cc creators. same amount of questions, some open response and some multiple choice.

all data is anonymous and will officially close submissions in 2 weeks of this post being made. after that, the data will be analyzed and given an infographic for everyone to read through :) thank you so much if you've participated in the previous one and hope you look forward to these results!

Ok, you guys know damn well I'm anti-gatekeeping resources and anti-cc-creator-competitions-to-see-who's-better-at-playing-digital-play-Doh. AND ABOUT THAT, I found out about MESH REPAIR TOOLS by SINEWAVE. It's a FREE add-on for blender. It does A LOT of things, but do you know what it also can do? DECIMATE MESHES BETTER THAN BLENDER.

Before (taken on sims4studio):

After (taken on blender):

All of this with two clicks on the "Reduce" button. Yes I'm in an awe but can you really blame me?? The mesh looks exactly THE SAME. I don't need to fix wonky UVs or replace textures. It does everything PERFECTLY.

(click photos for better viewing) hello! a couple weeks ago we posted 15-question a survey for everyone on simblr to see how everyone posts and navigates the space. submissions were open for a week and we closed with 178 submissions! thank you all so much if you took your time and submitted <3

we hope this information helps everyone out trying to figure out what tags to use, curious how intercommunity is, and what kinda posts the majority of the community like!