TS3 to TSM conversion tutorial

[deedee_sims]

That's a tutorial about converting CAS stuff from TS3 to TSM. Actually it's mostly about hairs, but other things like accessories, work really similarly. I cut this to parts, since some stuff are optional (like resizing hairs). Let's start! :D

Table of contents:
Part 1: Converting Hairs - Basics
Part 2: Resizing!
Part 3: Those ugly red hairs
Part 4: A few words about converting other stuff

Part 1: Converting Hairs - Basics

You’ll need:
S3PE
Medieval CAS Part Wrapper this or this
The problem is, I don’t have a clue which S3PE and which CAS Part Wrapper is compatible with each other. I tried like 10 S3PE versions and 2 Wrappers until I finally found a working combo. You may have to check the old releases of the S3PE.
A Sims 3 hair in package format. You can use Delphy’s Multi Installer to convert Sims3Pack files to package if needed.
I’ll start with a hair from the Supernatural EP, because these will definitely not turn to ugly red. I downloaded a base game version of this hair from here.




Open the S3PE and open the package file.



You can see a lot of stuff here, but now we only need to find the CASP line. Then hit the Grid button.
Note: If the Grid button is greyed out, it means the S3PE and the Wrapper is not compatible. Try another S3PE or wrapper!



In the popup window we can see that our hair is categorized as a hair! Good! Now we need to check if it’s available for professions.



Open the Clothing Category thingy, where we can see its availability. This hair is not allowed to professions, we have to change that with a double click on the false word (it turns to true). I usually just change all of the things to true, but you can prevent spamming this hair on random townies with disabling the ValidForRandom field. I also recommend to check if the IsHiddenInCAS property is false!



If it’s done, just hit commit.



Next, go to Resource… / Details…



In the popup window, hit the FNV64 and then the FNV32 buttons. Make sure if the use resource name field is checked and there’s something in the textbox. Then uncheck Compress and hit OK.



After that you can save the package with Save As... (since we don’t want to overwrite the original Sims 3 package)
Then put it to the C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims Medieval\Mods\Packages folder. If you never used cc you have to download the Resource.cfg file and put it to the The Sims Medieval Folder (more info here!)

Now we can start the game to check it out! I usually just start a random new game to get to CAS immediately





Well, here’s our new hair but as you can see it’s VERY misplaced. The main problem is that TSM heads are smaller than TS3 heads, so if it looks so ridiculous (like this one) we have to resize it. Fortunately not every hair looks that bad, but all of them are slightly off. But as I experienced, children hairs are actually quite good!

Well, let’s move to the next part!

Part 2: Resizing!

You’ll need:
A modeler program (or whatever it called). I use Milkshape (1.8.5 BETA version), but I’m sure it’s mostly the same thing in Blender (that I’ve never tried)
Wes Howe’s QMeshPlugins for Milkshape.
Example TSM scalps and faces (I extracted them and uploaded here if you don’t want to extract them yourself)
Patience

First, go back to S3PE and open the TSM file we just made.



Fortunately this hair has nice descriptions, so it’s easy to figure out which is the LOD0 GEOM file we need. But most of the custom hairs are not like this. In this case you can list the resources by filesize (just click on the header of the filesize column), and the biggest GEOM file (the first from the bottom) will be the LOD0.



Now, extract this file with right click, then Export… / To file… Save it somwhere where you can find it.



Next, open Milkshape. Don’t worry, it won’t be complicated!





Import the LOD0 file we just extracted with the Q-Mesh GEOM Importer. And say okay to the silly popup window.



Well, here’s our shiny mesh, but we have to import the example scalp and face so we can adjust the hair to them! Do it the same way as you imported the hair mesh.
Note: If you see a huge blue chaos, just go to the joints tab and uncheck Show Skeleton!



And yes, we really want to import another model, and if the hashed bone is not in skeleton, well, okay, whatever :P



Now you see we have three groups, the first one is the hair. Select it with double clicking ont he group name. You can see it turns to red in the 2D views.
Note: If you want to zoom in, use Shift + Left click, and if you want to move the view, use Ctrl + Left click. You can rotate the 3D view simply with Left click.



Go to the Model tab and hit Scale. Type a little smaller values to the boxes, I usually start with 0.98 or 0.99 and hit scale more times. The first box is the hair’s width, the second is the height, and the thrid is its depth. Change the numbers back to 1 if you don’t want to scale a dimension any further.



You also have to move it, click on the Move button and move the hair with your mouse. You might have to repeat the scaling and the moving a few times until it looks good.



If you think you’re done, delete the reference groups (the scalp and the face) from the groups tab.



Then you can export the new GEOM file with the Q-Mesh GEOM Exporter



Go back to S3PE, and find the LOD0 file again. Right click on it and Replace…
Find the resized mesh, and replace it!
Since I don’t really know how to make the rest of the LODs, I just change the next one to the resized mesh too. It’ll make a bigger filesize I think. Actually the LODs are the Low Poly meshes they appear when you zoom out ingame. And in Sims 3 when the textures are not loaded and you see a bunch of ugly gnomes instead your sims XD. All in all, I don’t really care about the LODs.
Well, if you’re done, save your mesh. And let’s see it ingame!



It looks so much better! If you notice that it needs more tweaking, just continue with Milkshape resizing, moving, or whatever. Yay!

Part 3: Those ugly red hairs

We had luck with this hair because it converted well, but a lot of custom hairs look like this if you convert them this way:



Bleh. I couldn’t figure out what is the problem exactly, but I invented a method that gets rid of the ugly redness and the black eyes too.
The main thing is we have to make a new hair. Don’t worry, it’s not hard, basically it’s just a simple cloning method. And then we have to change the mesh and the textures in our new package. This method it a bit time consuming, but it’ll definitely work. Let’s start!

You’ll need:
S3OC – for cloning a hair
More patience

So I usually clone a store hair, the „Swept Softly Hair” because it doesn’t have a lot of image files in it (you can download the package version here). Sometimes hairs have a lot of stuff, like different scalp and face textures, but we don't need these. Other EA hairs are good too. I also tried to clone a TS3 base game hair, but it didn’t work for some reason. Oh, well!



So start the S3OC. Open the reference package file that we want to clone. In my case that will be the Swept Softly Hair



Click on the CASP file and then hit Clone or Fix…



Check Create Clone Package, Include Thumbnails, and Renumber/rename internally. Also type your name to the beginning of the new name (since we have to make a unique id – well it would work with only the hash seed, but do it just for sure). Then hit start and save the new package file somewhere. The cloning process would take some time, and then a popup will say, it’s done

Now we can open S3PE and convert this new cloned package as we learned it in the first part.
Annnd here comes the time consuming part: we have to extract all (well most) of the texture files and the mesh from the original hair (which went red), and replace these things to the new one.



So open another S3PE and the original package. I recommend working in two S3PE windows, because we’ll have to copy-paste stuff later and it’s much easier this way.
As you can see there’s a whole bunch of image files in this package. TS3 hairs has a few parts: the hair texture itself (called diffuse), the control, the specular (which makes the hair shine), and the bumpmap (which not always exist). Try to figure out which is which by right clicking on the image and hit View DDS.



Sometimes you have to uncheck the alpha to see what’s going on. Well this looks like the specular. It's usually black and white and not always has an alpha.



Extract it and name it specular so later we can find it. Go through all the other image files.



This one is the bumpmap.



If we find a thing like this, it’s good news since we can skip it.



This is the diffuse (the texture)



And this colorful one is the control.



That last one is the texture that appears on the scalp. We don’t have to extract it.
Well, go back to our hopefully working package and try to pair the textures.



This one seems like the specular. Replace it with the extracted specular.





Repeat it, and do the same with the diffuse and the control.



The problem is that it doesn’t have a bumpmap, so we have to add it manually. Go back to our ugly red hair again, and find the bumpmap. Select this resource and then click Resource…/ Details…



Nice popup window appeared. Go to the new package again and hit Resource…/ Add…





That’s the same window just without the values. Copy-paste the values from one to another. Uncheck use resource name and click OK.





The highlighted one is the new resource, so just replace it with the bumpmap.



Cool! Only the mesh left. Find the LOD0 file in the ugly red package (remember, it’s the biggest filesized GEOM file), extract it, and then replace the biggest GEOM files in the new package (2 or 3 will be enough, remember, they’re the low poly stuff, which means the hair will turn to the original store hair when zooming out too much – so don’t zoom out too much :P – all in all, it’s not really annoying)

Save the package, and go ingame!



Annnd success! The ugly redness and the black eyes are gone! We only have to resize the mesh (as it was explained in the second part) and it’s done! :D

Well, I’m not sure if that’s the best method, but it definitely works. I tried other ways, but no one was successful enough (which means the textures were okay, but the eye blackness remained) I have a feeling that the problem is in the TXMT. But I’m not familiar with these resources so I stayed with this method.

Part 4: A few words about converting other stuff

As I experienced, most of the CAS stuff can be converted to TSM – but most of them need resizing.

Clothes: Clothes convert quite well, but they have no morphs. I have no idea what causes this. I even tried to clone ingame stuff but the cloner is always crashing on me :(
The other problem is that TS3 clothes don’t have legs (since the shoes are separated), so if you don’t want your TSM sims to end up without feet, you can either use accessory shoes (Sauris made some), or convert shoes. I haven’t tried it yet, so I have no idea if it works or not, I guess the mesh is easy to make (extracting and then regrouping), but I’m not sure about the textures.

Accessories: You can convert accessories if you set them to a makeup category (like blush or something). But they need resizing.

Eyebrows and facial hair: Well, I only tried to convert facial hairs, they worked fine, but they needed some alpha-resizing. You can do it with a photo editing program. The eyebrows could be similar.

Well, I think that’s all. I hope you find this tutorial useful! If you have questions, feel free to comment, or send an ask on my simblr and I’ll happily help :D