TS3 Creators Cave

“This post is sponsored by me struggling to select a vertex in Milkshape for like 20 minutes. Anyone who recommends MS to you in 2021 is either trolling or salty that they had to buy it back in the TS3 era.“ - thornowl

No one told me that Mesh Toolkit did .obj to .wso conversions either lmao

So… everyone knows sims 3 creation tools aren’t the best when it comes to technical side, but another reason why people have problems with creating things for sims 3 is because of lack of proper documentation and tutorials. I plan to change all of this over certain period of time with information and tutorials regarding sims 3 CC creation, all fully laid out in one place, this tumblr page. I will start with how specular mapping works in sims 3.

What is a Specular Map?

Specular map, in any game that uses them, not just sims 3, serves to determine how shiny/reflective parts of an object material are. The more bright the map texture is, the more reflective corresponding part on the object will be. This is an example of a sims 3 specular map:

So… Dark areas, less reflective. Bright areas more reflective. Now that we have this established… how do these maps work in sims 3?

Object Specular Maps

Object specular maps have two separate data sets: - Actual Specular Data (Color/RGB channels) - CAST (create a style)/Object Specular Separation Data (Alpha channel)

Actual Specular Data is basically fulfilling a purpose of a specular map. By using Color/RGB Channels, you can determine where the most reflections will be and where there won’t be any. But it can also determine the color of reflections. If you color the specular map in red, the reflections will be red. If you color it in gold, reflections will be gold. This allow you to have some parts of the material look like actual metal in the game. Sadly, changing the color of the material in game, doesn’t change the color of the reflection that you defined with specular map. You would usually only do this if you had an overlay texture that you can’t change color of in game, so metalic reflection color will always match the base material color. It is important to note, however, that the actual reflection intensity doesn’t necessarily depend only on this part of specular map data. It also depends on… CAST/Object Specular Separation Data, which exist because of how reflections are calculated in game. Every Create A Style material has it’s own specular map. This map is then combined with your objects base specular map to determine final reflectivity of the objects material. That is, if you set yor specular map Alpha/Transparency Channel under a certain value. But if you go over that value, then your material specular won’t be affected by CAST material/pattern specular map, and will have it’s shine intensity exactly how you defined it in Color/RGB channels. Here are visual representations of values to closer depict how this looks:

- CAST Material with very dark specular map:

- CAST Material with medium specular map:

- CAST Material with fully bright specular map:

And here is a closer depiction of how it works in conjunction with detailed CAST material specular maps ( CAST Material VS Object Material ):

It is also important to note that when you edit the Alpha Channel in Photoshop, values will be different. I made sure to include those as PS Alpha in the images Those are actually the true values the game makes disctionction between when reading this data. It seems that the border between two different states is 50% value.

Clothes Specular Map

Sadly, Clothes Specular Map doesn’t work this way. No matter the Alpha channel changes, clothes specular/reflectivity can’t be affected by CAST specular map. So how you make your specular map in Color/RGB channels, that’s how intensity will behave in game. Alpha Channel is completely disregarded and useless in this context. Only relevant data in this case is Color/RGB channels. For the end, here’s a little hint on what my friend and I have been working on for the past two months:

… that old hat :) but it is still an important topic. Nothing divides the community like the question about acceptable polycounts. I was inspired by this discussion to have another go, trying to shed light on the question of polygon counts and game performance from different angles and perspectives.

We have individual conditions regarding the choices of CC we can make for our sims games. People have a broad range of computers they use to play the sims games on. Some play on old laptops, some have state-of-the-art destop pc’s, others play on macbooks, some have something in-between… And every computer handles the game differently on different settings. Some simmers need to use really low game settings and low poly meshes for the game to be playable at all, some don’t need to pay attention at all because no matter how many high-poly creations they install, the game just runs fluently. Some might put their settings higher than suggested for their hardware, because they want to take pretty pictures and don’t care about performance.

Why the finger-pointing? It is also no use to wanting to find a scapegoat for performance problems. It is not just a single factor that we can rule out when it comes to performance. I’m sure creators of high poly meshes are annoyed by all the accusations, of people telling them that they create inappropriate meshes for the game. Fact is, everyone can do what they want, we play a moddable game, there are endless possibilities. So creators can and will also create high-poly meshes, for people with systems that can handle them to enjoy.

With sharing comes responsibility That is a common reason for sharing a piece of CC - hoping that other simmers will enjoy it :) But as a creator that shares her own CC, I know that sharing CC also comes with a responsibility… the responsibility to educate people about what they are going to install in their games. Installing CC always comes with a risk. Sometimes, another mod causes a game to crash, sometimes there are conflicts. Sometimes a mesh is more than the user’s system can handle. One could argue that downloaders need to educate themselves and find out what their game can handle. But IMO, creators can’t just push away all responsibility. They do have a certain responsibility to educate their downloaders who don’t know what polygons are all about.

It is all a question of perspective So, what potential risk comes from a high-poly mesh? Before talking about high poly meshes, there has to be a common ground on the definition of high poly.   My definition is: “A high polygon mesh is a mesh which exceeds the game’s usual/average polygon range for that specific mesh type.” There is always room for interpretation on the “exceeding” part. My rule of thumb is that everything that’s 50% higher than a comparable game mesh should be considered high-poly. It is what it is, a rule of thumb. Some may be stricter and argue that everything that is above the average poly in the comparable game category has to be considered high-poly. This rule is especially important for simmers with low performance-computers. If you are concerned that your computer can’t handle stuff, then try to stay within the base-ranges when looking for CC. If you think that your computer can handle a little extra, take the 50% rule or even a 100% above average rule if you think that’s okay. But if you are a creator who wants to cater to the low spec groups, you have to set your bar pretty low.

Which polygon numbers are “the average”? If you want to figure out what the average polys are for a certain mesh type, then take a look at the specific meshes that are in the original game you are creating for/downloading for. If your'e looking for the average polygon count of a hair, you should look at polygon counts for other hairs in the game. If you want to compare full body outfits, compare them to other fullbody outfits. Comparing a hair to a shoe, for example, won’t be very helpful in finding out average polygon counts for the game. Original game meshes have a certain polygon limit and every category has different regulations. A sims 3 basegame hair usually has a higher polygon count than a sims 3 basegane shoe, for example. Game meshes also have different polygon counts, depending on the game itself. Sims 2 has lower polygons than sims 3, sims 4 has slightly higher polygon counts than sims 3. And inside every game, there are fluctuations - some CAS outfits have a higher polygon count than others, depending on their detail. If you want to figure out an average in numbers, take five meshes out of the same game category (for example, 5 top meshes) add up the polygon counts, then divide by the number of meshes you added up. This is a number you can work with as a reference (and you still have a bit of room to go up on), if you want to work within the games’ polygon regulations. But what risks are there when using high-poly meshes on lower end machines?

Let’s say a sims 3 sim is given a custom hair that has 20k polys, but otherwise uses EA outfits, and this is the only high poly CC in the game. The risk of game performance loss would be very slim.

But let’s add a pair of 15k shoes, a 15k outfit to that and a 10k necklace, 5k earrings, 3k lashes… Let’s say these meshes are also valid for random. What happens then is that townies are going to potentially roll these meshes for their outfits as well. The sims game meshes use a system of LODs (lower detail meshes). There are up to four different polygon-reduced meshes for hairs and accessories and up to three different meshes for everything else in the CAS department. Most of the time, there are three meshes, a high detail mesh, which is the mesh that you see when you are close to your sim, then a medium detail mesh which is used when you are further away or when you have very low game settings, and a low detail mesh that gets used when the camera is really far away from the sim. The exact distances that have to be reached to enable the switching to those lower level meshes are dependent on your game settings. If your game settings (especially sim-detail) are low, they will show up much sooner. If your game is on the highest settings, you might not see those lower level meshes at all, because the lower LODs are designed to accomodate low-performance computers (for example, older laptops).

Do we really need LODs? So you could argue that you don’t need LODs, because you don’t see them/have the game on the highest settings. Congratulations on having a computer that can handle the game on the highest settings! And in your case, your computer probably can handle not having proper LODs. But what about other simmers that aren’t as fortunate? The game, as it was designed by EA, aims to to accomodate to all players. That’s why there are polygon limits by EA. And they wanted to prevent getting sued by thousands whose graphics cards have been fried As a custom content creator, I personally want to make sure that my meshes can be potentially used by all players, even those who play on crappy laptops and will see my medium or low LODs. This is how I see it, but of course, there are creators who don’t want to have to limit themselves like that; they only cater to one specific audience: Those with good system specs that can easily handle more polygons than those that the game meshes have, or those that just want to take stunning pictures and are not concerned with actual game performance. And that’s fine, everyone should create for and play their sims games the way they want. But that doesn’t mean that sharing your CC- creations doesn’t come with responsibilities.

Simply state the facts I have made this plea in the past: Creators which do create high-poly meshes should definitely state that their meshes are not in the games’ usual polygon range and that this could lead to performance issues. If a creator happens to use their high-poly mesh for the medium and low LODs as well, this also means that this mesh isn’t appropriate for lower-end machines. Things like this should be spelled out clearly so that those who don’t have systems that can handle them know about this. Of course, It is not a creator’s responsibility to make sure the downloaders read the message. If they don’t, that’s on them, but at least the creators are in the clear. How about a mesage saying something like: “This is a high-poly mesh. On lower end machines, this could significantly reduce game performance and put stress on your hardware. Use at your own risk”. I don’t see many see warnings like those on high-poly creations. Some creators do state their polygon counts, which is a good start. Still, there are a lot of CC downloaders who find a note like: “New shoes. Polygon count: 10k” and still don’t know what that means for their games. They need a bit more of an education.

Why should I care? Some creators seem to have a “don’t care” attitude or may think that because a large number of creators are creating high poly meshes, it’s okay to neglect putting up a warning that high-poly meshes can impact game performance and, in worst case, damage hardware - because “everyone’s doing it like that”. Sure, you are not bound to. You can carry on like always, and you might never have a complaint ever. But, I can’t stress this enough, there will always be people who download high-poly meshes who don’t know anything about polys, and there are people who might be devastated because their games don’t work anymore or they have lost hardware because of overheating graphics. This might not happen often, or ever, but it is a possibility, a risk that is still real.

This is my opinion and I’m sure that there are a lot of creators who might say: “Well, if those simmers don’t even know about polys, they should just stop downloading my CC.” You are right, that would be the reasonable thing to do… But we all know that’s not going to happen. You can’t force people to read anything you write next to your creations. Yes, people might not even bother to read anything and just hit the download button. But you know what, if you do take the time to write a warning, you have done your part and show that you know your responsibilities. As a creator, I want to make sure I do everything I can to educate people and to reduce the risk of people doing damage to their systems using my CC. Don’t you?

……

It was also said in the comments, but important note:

When something is unmorphed, polycount doesn’t visually matter as much. It will still impact performance though, because the game still has to read those many, many, many faces and put the mesh together to show on your screen. But when it is morphed, oh boy…

Why morphs? For morphs to work, they need to be within a specific vertex ID range. Depending on how the item is made/ which software was used (e.g. DABOOBS vs. TSRW for hair), this will be +- equal to the vertice count, or lower, but if it touched tsrw usually equal.

And those vertex ID ranges can’t touch each other, if they do - you get the infamous explosions when your sim isn’t the basic bodyshape (muscle to the bottom and weight in the middle)

These ranges are, for clothes:

Tops 5k - 15k, so can be 10k vertices max. This will usually be about 12 - 13k polycounts max depending on the structure. Absolute max, and the lower lods can’t be morphed.

Bottoms 15k - 20k, so can be 5k vertices max. This will usually be about 8k polycount max. Again, absolute effing max.

Outfits 5k - 20k, so 15k vertices max.

For shoes, which are “last” in the standard hierachy, it depends whether the sims is wearing (morphed) accessories. But when you do not renumber them, keeping shoes below 3k is a safe bet.

Note that the polycount values of EAXIS items are generally much lower than this, generally not even half. The above is the absolute maximum.

If beyond that, the morphs will get into each other’s zones or the zones of the other cas categories (hair, accessories) and glitch. Also the reason why high poly hairs are so much more common that clothes - if you can stand mild clipping or floating hair, hair doesn’t need to be morphed as badly. But clothes whose polycount and therefore vertex count is above 15k, let alone above 20k… Those cannot be morphed, so you’re basically saying “hey, I absolutely hate fat and thin and fit and pregnant sims!”

I made this Photoshop action a while ago for myself because I got so tired of always doing the same routine over and over again when doing normalmaps for my Sims 3 CC clothing projects.

Now I have decided to share it with you!

What it does:

This action is mainly useful for Sims 3 clothing creators. Basically, it creates a normalmap/bump map with one click! It takes your multiplier, enhances the contrast, applies the NormalMapFilter and then copies and pastes the channels in the right order.

Cool, huh?

A .txt file with detailed instructions is included in the download.

You have to have the Nvidia Texture tools installed for this action to work properly!

I made this action with Photoshop CS6, but I’m pretty sure it works with older versions as well.

TSR Workshop pro-tip: Find any game texture

Did you know that you can find and use any game texture for your TSRW project? This way you won't have any redundant textures inside your package. The resource key has to be in this format: key:00000000:00000000:0000000000000000

Here are some useful examples:

Black specular= key:00B2D882:00000000:F961EF123B01E579

1 channel mask= key:00b2d882:00000000:646b487723d17864

Empty normal map= key:00b2d882:00000000:972952e0d3631f66

These are universal textures referenced in a ton of EA CAS items and are safe to use in your own projects. So please, don't import a new empty texture! It'll just be another resource the game has to load.

This will also work with textures from a CC package if you put it in your game files. Check out this tutorial for more info: Link

First of all, a huge thanks to people at MTS and to @virtual-hugs who taught me how to do it at the Creators Cave!

Also sorry for taking so long to write this! It's because I kinda struggle to write in english 😬

What will you need:

S3PE

Mesh Toolkit

Your shoe/necklace/accessory package ready, so you won't need to go back to TSRW to tweak something. This should be the last step on your CC creation workflow!

How to use DXVK with The Sims 3

Have you seen this post about using DXVK by Criisolate? But felt intimidated by the sheer mass of facts and information?

@desiree-uk and I compiled a guide and the configuration file to make your life easier. It focuses on players not using the EA App, but it might work for those just the same. It’s definitely worth a try.

Adding this to your game installation will result in a better RAM usage. So your game is less likely to give you Error 12 or crash due to RAM issues. It does NOT give a huge performance boost, but more stability and allows for higher graphics settings in game.

The full guide behind the cut. Let me know if you also would like it as PDF.

Happy simming!

SIMLISH FONTS

an add-on post to eversims’ simlish font finds!

simlish antonio

nootrasim

lemonberri

shape up

simply there

simlish crayon

simlish scramble

square dance

simlish bristle

Random immensively helpful cc making tip that got drammed into me when I started making cc:

Inspect things

Weirdly & gorgeously detailed EAXIS acrobat outfit that's somehow still only 5k? Open that birch up in tsrw and export the mesh to blender and inspect how it's made, compare the multiplier and the normal map etc.

How did EA make a skirt with a high slit that doesn't go grazy in animation?

You guessed it, open it up, get it in blender, inspect its topology and bones.

Wait, how do you get those sheer 3d sleeves? EA has few/no meshes with 3d sheer parts so....Lemme inspect that cc with the pretty sheer sleeves!

Wait, how does that mask seemingly have 5 channels?

Inspect it

What's a normal map supposed to look like?

INSPECT IT!!!!

(Note; the normal maps you see in tsrw of some BG items are weird and funky, I recommend cloning a later ep item instead)

Look at how others things that have something special or are very nicely made are made. I specifically recommend looking at later ep & sp & store eaxis items first and foremost, because while most cc out there is perfectly functional, it sometimes isn't EA maxis match standard and can have some peculiarities. There are some ea items that are really well made and inspecting their topology, textures and so on can give you a lot of insight.

For the same reason, when I first started making cc, I first tried some 4to3 conversions, using mildly outdated tutorials. This wasn't going anywhere as options the tutorials said I had to use weren't working, it didn't look pretty etc etc. Then @simlicious recommended me to start with an EAXIS frankenmesh, and I made my "sleeveless vest" and "sleeveless vest with ruffle blouse". While I would do those two slightly different now (but can't be bothered, cus they're old news now.) With her assistance I learned SO MUCH when making them.

Starting with an EAXIS ts3 mesh and frankenmeshing it or altering it also gets rid of two intimidating steps I see mistakes in in other's earliest projects - uv mapping (the item already has an optimized for ts3 uv lay out) and the shape (the item already is made to the ts3 bodyshape, so no struggle with autoboobjob or weird shoulders etc)

Also, there is still miles of untapped potential for sims 3 assets mesh & texture alterations and frankenmeshes, it's lowkey overwhelming and my head constantly explodes with options (while there are also so many nice ts4 things to convert! AAAAAH) , to the point there are multiple maxis match TS4 creators who commonly use ts3 store & ep/sp mesh parts in their frankenmeshes, if it isn't a straight up 3to4 conversion!

Before Attempting Clothing Conversions in Blender

Before you dive into clothing conversions, I specifically recommend learning these things:

How the UV map and textures work for The Sims 3 - knowing what texture does what, and in which size and format it should be made in

basic skills in an image editing program which supports the DDS file format (for a free one that is very similar to Photoshop (down to the same shortcuts even), I recommend Photopea, it is free and runs in your browser)

Basic workflow with Sims 3 CC tools (s3pe, TSR Workshop, s3oc, and Mesh Toolkit are the main ones you'll use)

How the mesh and UV map are structured in the original TS3 meshes

How to fix shading and seam issues on your mesh Know how to align, reset and copy/paste normals, how to merge and split edges

Blender Meshing Basics

Get comfortable with these Blender tools and concepts:

Select (select all/none, select connected geometry, box select, circle select, loop select)

Move, scale, rotate, extrude, bevel, proportional editing

Dissolve vertices

Snapping mode/snapping vertices to each other

The knife tool

How to use modifiers like the mirror and edge split modifier

How to split meshes into groups and join them

How to use merge by distance to remove split seams

How to mark sharp edges and set shading to smooth

How to activate/deactivate auto smooth

How to align normals

How to copy normals from one mesh to another using the data transfer modifier

How to triangulate and quadrangulate meshes (working with quadrangulated meshes is visibly less confusing and has better tool support, important for things such as edge loop selection with a simple alt+click which saves a lot of time compared to manually selecting each vertex)

Importing/exporting meshes

How to install plugins and which ones to activate/install (like F2 and UV Squares, Blender GEOM tools)

Basics of the Blender GEOM tools plugin

How to decimate geometry (using the decimate modifier). This is not my favorite method to lower polygon counts since it can have unexpected results in some areas—I like to dissolve certain edges, faces or vertices instead to have more manual control over the process instead, but if your mesh is very high poly, then you may consider lowering it with this modifier if you do not want to do a lot of manual work.

Here's a secret bonus tutorial🍀: 📌 Anchoring Mesh Pieces

This is what I personally call a method EA utilized in TS3 clothing meshes to seamlessly connect mesh pieces to each other through connected vertices. It helps to minimize clipping and gaps during animations. The technique involves making sure that the vertices at the seams of different mesh pieces, such as connecting the neck to the collar of a shirt, are connected like two magnets, and will share the same space, so they are basically treated as one when assigning bones and them getting identical bone assignments will prevent gaps forming in the mesh on certain animations, which can happen if you leave edges raw/unconnected. In combination with good bone assignments, This can also reduce clipping/mesh pieces poking through each other. To utilize the method of anchoring, you can pair up vertices from one edge to one on the opposing edge. You can use strategies such as selecting a vertex, then tapping the g key twice to move it along the edge to better line them up. Pro tip: this vertex slide mode locks the axis to the edge and moves the vertex also on the UV map, which results in a better UV map and less work fixing it for you later on. Enable snapping with snap to vertex mode to easily snap one vertex from one edge to the other on the other edge. Sometimes, the vertices might not match up and you have too many on one edge or too little on the other. In that case, you need to remove ("dissolve vertices") or add an additional vertex on the other edge with the knife tool (or by selecting two vertices or an edge between two vertices and using subdivide on it to create a new vertex in the middle—there are often several ways of achieving something in Blender) in case there is a mismatch. Whether to add or remove the vertex depends on the shape and complexity of your mesh. If removing vertices from one edge results in an undesired shape change, adding vertices on the other edge instead is preferable. Ideally, each vertex on your mesh should have a visible purpose, meaning if it is removed, the shape of your mesh will visibly change. If your mesh has so many vertices that you do not notice a difference in how the shape looks by removing the one next to it, the vertex density is probably too high and you can safely dissolve the superfluous ones away, but that is a topic for another time.

Textures

How to add and connect node-based textures so you can check your textures right in Blender right on your mesh (and even edit the textures using texture paint)

Basic UV Editing

How to use the align tools on the UV map

Moving and selecting islands

Using different modes: vertex, edge, face select to your advantage

Enabling/disabling UV sync mode as needed

Different ways to unwrap (mainly the plain unwrap and project from view types)

Using the heatmap view and applying a UV grid texture to check for issues on the UV map (there is a handy addon for that too: Quick UV Checkers)

This is just what I remember (I may have missed something, I've been on a meshing hiatus for a while), and it covers only Blender (not other CC tools), but this information should give you a basic direction to go in while learning Blender. Knowing how to do these things gives you a solid base for tackling conversions (and Frankenmeshes/mashups of EA meshes or your very own meshes, too!). Once you are more confident in your abilities, it’s easier to venture deeper and learn things like how to adjust or make your own morphs, change bone assignments manually, and optimize the UV maps of your meshes. While learning to make conversions, to take them to the next level, I suggest you get into:

weight painting/manual bone assignments

texture painting

Baking textures/transferring textures from one mesh to another

How to create and edit custom UV's

How to set and remove seams for UV's

How different unwrapping methods change the resulting UV

How to use a UV grid addon to get square-looking UV maps

How to use tools to improve UV maps like align and minimize stretch

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.

I’m learning as I go along and am far from mastering all of these, but here are a few tutorials I’ve found helpful enough to save.

Milkshape settings, Bone Assignment (deco), and Drop Shadows.

More about Shadows.

Hologram Lights - Lots to take away from this, but I never knew you can put fully colored textures in the multiplier.

Phong Alpha shader: how to calculate the correct Alpha Mask Threshold value - Super helpful when trying to make anything translucent.

How to add a container slot and fix problematic ones

How to fix a black mesh (blender settings) - Especially useful if you are converting from TS4.

The Bump Map (aka Normal Map) Texture - TS4 tutorial, but it applies to creating for TS3 too. They also have a bunch of other great tutorials!

The Specular Texture (shininess)

Added 8/16: How to make objects with glass.

Added 8/25: How to edit the reflection of a flat mirror.

Added 12/4: Fix CAP patterns “materializing materials” when converted to .package.

And while not a tutorial, @sims3tutorialhub is a goldmine of knowledge, and has helped me tremendously!

Also @ts3creatorscave has an active, and helpful creators Discord where you can showoff projects, and get help with creating!

Or: everything I've pulled out of the official game files

Here's a link to my google drive🔗 where I store the .png files I took out of the Sims games I have.

I've been converting a lot lately and felt a bit inspired to share what I've learnt. I am fully aware that I'm still a beginner and have a lot to learn - I just wanted to share some beginner-friendly instructions while I'm still fresh and remember exactly what overwhelmed me when I started.

There are better tutorials out there, if you know the basics already this probably isn't the video for you, but if you have no idea what's involved then hopefully this will be enough to get you started converting objects :)

It's all in the vertex ID's!

My "discovery" comes from some things @thecardinalsims said in their hairtutorial on MTS (recommended read/overall workflow!), some things @virtual-hugs told me, as well as a fragment from @bellakenobi's vertex id renumbering tutorial, that told me the vertex id range for hair is in between 20k and 30k, a range of 10k:

Basically: Cardinalsims said somewhere in their thread that the max amount of vertex id's for hair is 10k, the range being between 20k and 30k, and then I also saw this by Bella - a bell started ringing and I had to confirm for myself (cardinalsims generally does very low poly hairs), and VH said something about a 10k limit and vertex id's...

How I understand it, vertex id's are the "positions" in which there are vertices, aka the corners of poly's or faces. Vertices that are in the exact same spot, will share a vertex ID.

Lots of hairs are above 10k vertex id's. This, even when there aren't deliberately morphs added, will make the hair deform when morphing 3D accessories or slightly higher poly shoes are worn, because the hair gets in their range - above 30k or 31,5 k respectively, starting from hair's 20k - I've seen this with a couple of hairstyles. they started deforming when I put a necklace or cc boots on a sim.

To counter this, most creators clone the cursed pigtails in tsrw. They aren't morphed and EA gave them a very odd vertex id range, starting at 240 000 or something (or add another zero). (Edit: It's actually from -1 to -1) This vertex id range being miles away from everything will make it not clash, but I guess also makes it unmorphable.

Then we come to: how to make many more hairs than expected have below 10k vertex id's?

Very simple, it's all in the backfaces. Out of respect for those creators I won't randomly share share pictures of those cases, but basically; in most cases, the backfaces of hair will either be sized down slightly, repositioned slightly, or have less faces and have a different shape (often resulting in a sort of "checkerboard" look). Aka, not all the backface's vertices will be in the exact same position as the uppers their vertices, resulting in more vertex id's.

Left is upper (blue) with backface (red) not the exact same shape; the only shared vertices are the white dot, the grey dots will have different vertex id's

On the right, the upper and backface have the exact same shape without resizing, just copypaste and normals flipped. All their vertices are in the same spots, sharing the same vertex id for each "pair".

That the backfaces are different isn't always bad, as it can cut down on overall polycount. Newsea Spotlight for example it's backfaces were much lower poly, enabling a curly hair to be below 13k. but even with the different shape, lots of the vertices (basically those on the edges of the strands) still shared the exact same location, so after recalculating vertex id's (see further) they were below 10k, and the hair morphs well. So with hair that's below, say, 13k polycount, it doesn't hurt to just click the vertex id button and that's it and it might already be morphable.

So when making my anto angele edit, I wanted to reconfirm it with a 15k+ hair.

I first deleted all the backfaces, and did what I wanted to do (reshaping it to fit the male head and edit the bones)

With "face orientation" on in blender, it will show up in blue, with the backside of the faces in red. What's red will show up invisible in the game, so some hairlocks won't exist from some angles, and we don't want that of course.

At that point, it had 6693 vertices, with 6519 vertex id's. This I saw after changing the "start-id" to 20 000, and clicking "recalculate vertex id's"

I duplicated the mesh. I deleted the strands that don't need backfaces (the bits covering the scalp and some of the ponytail), and did Mesh -> normals --> flip, so the red side is facing us now, the side that will be invisible. So other than deleting some strands and flipping the normals, I don't touch it.

When I make both the upper and backfaces visible then, the places that have backfaces will either be purple or magenta, very pretty shades!

I selected both in object mode, first the upper, then CTRL -> backfaces (basically, whatever keeps purple on the outside and not the magenta), and clicked CTRL + J to join them.

i then clicked "recalculate vertex id's" again, and tada! still 6519 (my final thing actually nded up more cus I had deleted too much in these obj's, they're whatever I found that was the backface and upper still separated in my blend file to illustrate) while being almost 16k faces.

Basically - when backfaces and uppers are the exact same shape and position, the amount of vertex id's can never be more than the amount of vertices before backfaces are added. If you consider adding backfaces tends to double the vertices, and often more than 2 vertices share the same spot, hair up to 25k might have below 10k vertex id's. it will depend on it's exact structure and style (aka, how many of these poly's are part of backfaces)

That's also obviously where the supposed 11k limit for morphed hair comes from - some vertices will be in the same location, accidentally bringing the amount of vertex id's below 10k without the creator ever looking at them.

I would also recommend creating (hatless) hair in DABOOBS rather than TSRW. It's a very intuitive, non-overwhelming software, and hair tends to behave better with it. The aforementioned Newsea spotlight was glitchy and did, in fact, explode in the morphs when I made it with TSRW. I thought my "theory" of hair above 12k being morphable was wrong, but then I made it again in Daboobs with those very same geom and texture files, and it was fine!

@dhalsims​ commented on my post [Hi, lovely :D] and I thought I’d show you  through a post instead of a private message [no hoarding knowledge you beasts!] This is a super simple method that Luna used to use when she was still in the community. If you ever pop open one of her models, you’ll see the textures are just simple images, and I was always baffled how she did it. When I first started modeling, I tried [and failed, and failed again] to create models from images and they either looked like a hot mess or they were wayyyy up there in polycount from trying to get every nook and cranny.

I wrote this as if you’re just starting out in blender before, so if you’re more advanced please forgive my rambling.

So, here I introduce, the knife tool in blender [I don’t use milkshape, so please don’t ask lol]

Why on earth would I want to cut something to make something? Shh, let me know you.

You’re gonna start with this:

Yep, that’s it. Add a plane, UV map it so you can put the texture on it. I scaled mine so it wasn’t stretched, so just figure out the general size you’d like and hit edit mode for that plane. On the left side of the screen you’re going to want the tools section. Look down the list until you find the knife button.

Click it, and it’s going to give you a little knife with a green dot. Go around your image and trace the shape with the knife tool using small clicks. [Note, every click will be a vertice]

Trace your shape all the way around the edge, and when you connect the last one, you’re gonna have a string like thing. Don’t panic, just hit enter once those are connected and you have the random line attached to your mouse. It’s going to give you a cut-out like this.

Well crap, you say at the giant hole in your picture… No, just wait. Patience.

Select the vertices around your basic shape. [Shift/Alt Right click people, don’t be like me when I started and select every vertice by itself. Save yourself time.]

Now, you can do this 2 ways. Either duplicate those vertices, or [in edit mode] press P/Selection to remove those vertices from the plane. Either method will do.

Now press F to fill in that space, and unwrap it. No need to go marking seams, just press unwrap, it’ll match the shape.

Press E to extrude that down. If it’s gone wonky, right click to release it and use your blue arrow to move it straight down so it’s not at an angle.

You now have a basic shape. Hold on, there’s a few more bits. Go ahead and delete that plane, you won’t need it anymore. [Remember if it’s attached to the mesh, select the vertices of the plane and then delete]

If your mesh looks like this [ignore the UV mapping, I fiddled with mine] just go to MESH in Edit mode, and go up to NORMALS. Hit Flip Normals to get it to flip directions.

Like so:

Now the rest is UV mapping and getting it to where you like it for your textures. I’m not going to go over that here, but I highly recommend watching videos and studying UV mapping. On a platform like the sims, you can do amazing things with textures without having astronomical polycounts. Now one more thing, to give your mesh a little oomph, you can bevel. One pieces like this, I use it regularly as meat isn’t supposed to be flat. Select the top of your mesh, and hit ctrl/B. Be gentle, it’ll take off with you. Drag that out until you have a slight bevel to your edge.

As you can see, since you UV mapped it beforehand, it already added that in for you.

And there you have it. A simple mesh, with textures straight from google image search. AND: Look at that number! :D [70]

Now go do great things! (: And tag me so I can see your CC! :D

NOTE: I am not an expert. There are other methods that you can use to do similar projects, there are methods that will get you more detailed results, but for a low poly, game-ready item, this is how I do it. If this helps you, let me know I did something for the world today :D [Kidding, but kind of…? lol] I hope it helps, and happy modding!

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