NEW **Horse** BodyShape in Progress!!!

[jason7871]

Hi!!! I am a die hard Sci-Fi/Horror and fantasy fan,with the help of a dear close friend in Galacia,Spain.we have come up with a "Horse" Bodyshape,I know there are Saytre's,Banshee's,Snake's and a Centaur(Two shapes) I know of and a unicorn shape at Rose's site i think but i wanted too make this one different,this is where i am with my current project,i am just stuck as too add arms and a chest LOL When that is conquered i will offer it up for download remember it still is being worked on just wanted some nice friendly feedback is all......Thanks Your Sims2 Friend ~ Jason7871

[Franky]

Wow that's cool!

[wes_h]

I am guessing you worked very hard to make the arms into front legs and the legs into back legs.

It is likely that a horse will not animate very well in the game. But I have a suggestion that might yield something that may look good in game.

The Sims2 game engine does not really need to have the joints inside the mesh parts, and there is no reason I know of that says you cannot have both the left legs assigned to the same set of bones (l_thigh, l_calf, l_toe and l_foot), and similar for the right leg. The horse's back legs bend the wrong way to walk realistically with the human animations, and both legs on each side would move in synch, but standing poses could look correct.

Then you could use the arm bones for... arms.

Very creative idea.

<* Wes *>

[BlooM]

Im trying to make something similar, the sagittarius.
But i want to make it work with the front like a simoutfit and the back like a hairmesh or accesoire.
I think you can reposition the skeleton from the hair or accesoire and use it for the back part of the horse.
Just in a testfase tho....

[wes_h]

You can't really relocate bones very effectively, as long as the game is allowed to dress and put a face and hair on the mesh.

But I don't know of any reason you can't assign the whole rear to head, or any other bone, if you want. The bones do not have to be INSIDE the mesh that is assigned to them. Assigning the rear to head will make it follow the front along, but whenever the head is nodded, the rear may rise up. A better choice might be one of the spine bones, as it will follow the body trunk better.

BTW, that is a nice piece of artwork.

[BlooM]

im still figuring this out.

I did some objects and found out its ez to add a bone to it and you can change the position of the bones or even the whole skeleton in the cres.
You can move it/mirror it/ rotate it etc.

I think that the same is possible with the skeletons of the hairmeshes and the  accesoires but haven't had the time to find out.

[wes_h]

You are right.

I don't want to throw cold water on your efforts, but doing things with body meshes is very different than all other objects. Virtually no objects have the same joint layout, but all body meshes share the same layout, and ofr good reason.

For body meshes and hair, the CRES you make the changes to is not the one used in the game. While you link the CRES, SHPE, GMND and GMDC all together in a package, the game takes the data from the GMDC and places it on the skeleton described in the CRES that is in the character file (in the neighborhood). It expects to match the head from the GMDC with the head in the CRES. This is why you can make a stretchskeleton cheat work on a standard clothing item.

To further complicate adding bones, the joint order is very important, in that the bone names are not in the GMDC, but rather the bones are matched in order.

So if you want the mesh to use all the standard things you think of for a Sim, the interchangeable clothing and hair, the facial animations and all of the standard Sims interactions, this is not very easy to do with a skeleton that is not standard, because the standard setup allows one hair to be added in place of another, one dress to work the same as another, because the joints are where everything is adjusted to fit.

Now, taking the basic body mesh skeleton, adding bones and making an object with it is very viable, although you really need to get the rotation on the root_trans out, as it makes everything alse so hard to work with. You should be able to apply body animations to it, such as waving the arms. Some body animations will never look good on the horse, such as walking. If you add the bones and make a custom animation, you could make it walk.

Not easy, but very possible.

<* Wes *>

[jason7871]

Thanks Franky,Wes_h and Bloom i am still working on this,i appreciate all that you all have suggested and it will help alot,though Bloom's seems too have came out better than mine LOL But I am still determined too finish this LOL I just wanted too say thanks for the feedback it helps... :P:P