All the body mesh stuff more than a year old suffered from bone-assignment/skin-weighting related issues. Tops had a neck and waist gap, bottoms had a waist gap, shpulders were blocky and some, as was pointed out, had no fat morph.

Crammyboy surely wins so far for the cleverness of his solution.

I would like to see someone come up with a base mesh that had equipment, a morph to show it in performance mode and custom animations and BHAV to make the transition happen. Hasn't happened yet, but I can dream it will... I also think the same techniques could be used to make bouncing breasts.

Reparsing my reply, the "too" on the end is just plain wrong.

The "As of yet" was in recognition of the fact that crammyboy and some other creators have tackled this issue.

The very first body meshing attempt posted at MTS2 using my early animated-mesh capable MilkShape plugin was a male bottom mesh with a pasted-on penis. It didn't work all that well, but interest in male anatomical correctness was high when there were no solutions available. Now there is a choice of solutions.

As of yet, the Pets are Barbie models, too.

Well, a piano has more than one string for each note, a larger sounding board and when you press a key, it bangs the appropriate strings with a wooden hammer. Bang a guitar with a hammer and it will be loud, too... but it won't make a second note (go directly to jail for smashing a perfectly good guitar).

Makes sense to me. I just did a memory upgrade on my PC, and it had 4 memory slots, two blue and two grey, laid out like BGBG. The original RAM was two 256 Meg sticks, each in one blue slot (0 and 2). I placed a 1 GB stick in slot zero (first blue one), and put the two matched 256's in slots 1 and 3 (the grey ones).

This thread, plus the recent related activity on MTS2 has made me begin work on my contention that the same linkage method I used for adding a new dog collar will allow new things to be added to CAS, including non-replacement face templates.

My first attempt to do so has been ignored, probably because I had only an "af" template in the package, instead of all eight age/genders. So I will add the rest and see if I can make this work.

Because I am such a poor artist, I borrowed some (Eelf) of AllenABQ's face meshes rather than make poor imitations. His posting at MTS2 said it was OK to copy and use them, and I plan to leave him with the credit for the artistry anyway.

If I get the package construction details correct, someone else that actually has talent can use it for a template to put some original non-replacement templates into CAS. Please continue with the replacement efort, because I can't guarantee I will succeed (although I have done a lot of research on this already), but if I do, the GMDCs you guys  guys and gals all are creating will need to be available to put into the set(s).

Anyway, I am just awed by AllenABQ and Nailati's artist's eye for balance and detail (Mr. "Can't-draw-a-stick-man-with-a-ruler" here).

<* Wes *>

Thanks, dizzy.
I hadn't seen that yet... been spending too much time on Pet Accessories and mesh mysteries.
And that was what I was curious to see; if it was a specialized fence item.

Where is that hosted at?
You've made me curious about something, and I'd like to look at the package.

I have spent some time recently tracking through the Pets EP to learn how to add a new Dog Collar (not a replacement for an original item) to CAS, complete with it's own icon (and of course, be able to play it in the game).

I managed to do this, and a demo and tutorial are posted on MTS2 for anyone interested (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=208775). I'll not repeat all of the details here unless asked for clarification of something. Interestingly enough, items added this way can be sorted to any position in the icon panel (head, tail or in-between) and, despite being installed into downloads or collections, does not have a custom content star (maybe this can be specified in some way, but I haven't looked for it yet).

Now, what I wanted to add in this forum is that the linkage mechanism I used should be applicable to ADDING nearly all types of CAS items for Sims and Pets, whether or not there is a custom content mechanism and without the custom content star. I started on this a Pets project, but I think the linkage methodology has been present since the beginning, as these examples can be found in the original Sims 2 game files. However, I have never seen it used or described before. If so, I spent a lot of time rediscovering someone else's hard work, and will apologize for being redundant.

Bodyshop items like clothes use a GZPS, BINX and 3IDR with the same group and instance values to be recognized and linked to a texture. They also appear with an icon (thumbnail) and a custom content star.

Other CAS items use a method I'll call three-pair to provide this link, and may be linked to texture overlays and meshes overlays. The three pairs each have a shared instance between two files, but different from each other pair.

Using the terms on the CAS debug-mode tooltip text they are:

FragKey: BINX/3IDR pair (points to BinKey and ObjKey) [find examples in globalcatbin.bundle.package]
BinKey:  COLL/3IDR pair (points to STR#) [find examples in globalcatbin.bundle.package]
ObjKey: XMOL/3IDR pair (may be XTOL, points to TXMT or CRES) [find examples in skins.package]

The STR# contains the collection name and item name, which are for listing purposes and are not related to how the game recognizes the package (as opposed to objects, where there is a link between the STR# name and the CRES name).

Additionally, there is a family= field in the XMOL that has a GUID as its parameter. A file will link to a different texture or scenegraph when a GUID is duplicated here from an already defined game object, although there will still be a new icon in the panel. Also, the GMND has to be tsDesignModeEnabled and have the TXMT base name in it for the subset (like the MMAT recolor method uses).

While I as yet only have a working demo of a Pet Collar completed, I believe coat color, markings, Body and Face templates for animals are similarly constructed. It also looks like the Change Head, choose hair color and style and change face as well as built-in clothes for Sims all use this same linking method. While some I have listed (like clothes and hair) have an additional linkage method for custom content additions, many do not.

There has been some recent activity rediscovering editing the SIM face template meshes (using a replacement GMDC). I think using this linkage with new scenegraph elements (including the new meshes) will add to the CAS choices instead of replacing them.

Some of the items have meshes which contain data items called Vertex IDs and Region Masks, which seem to be a new Pets GMDC addition. The construction of these meshes is still being researched here at Rancho Como, so while editing them is not yet on the table (at least from me), cloning them or referencing the originals appears to work well.

<* Wes *>

 Edit: I have confirmed this works for Coat Colors, although it appears there is more than a single texture needed to complete it (the head is in a different texture file than the rest of the body).

Every EP and SP I have (all except the holiday stuff) had a new version of BodyShop in it (look at the file dates).
All of them (including Pets) made a start menu entry for it.
None of them updated my desktop shortcut icon. I had to do this manually.

You mean there are men that don't think that making love and fucking are one and the same?? Generally, the former is a euphemism for the latter.

I don't think the new fangs (lycan) in Pets are an accessory, but rather a mesh overlay.

I have been trying to unravel the mystery to cloning the Pet Collars. I think the methodology will be applicable to other mesh overlay objects, though.

So far, I have found that it is an ordinary scenegraph, but it is pointed to by an XMOL and 3IDR pair which share the same group and instance.

Since this isn't an object, per se, it isn't available with the ordinary catalog methods. But so far, I haven't been able to make it appear in the CaP in the game.

<* Wes *>