Any Decent Custom Hair?

[Bangelnuts]

I've seen meshes literally taken exactly as they are in many cases from other sites and simply convertered. Even if a mesh is altered considerably, it's common courtesy to at least mention the original creator. If someone took a mesh someone else made in the Sims 2 community and altered it considerably they'd have a fit! How many times how you seen 'Do not clone, recolor, alter, upload to the Exchange...bla bla bla' notices when you've downloaded something? Because I see it all the time. Also, a lot of those original meshes have user agreements that explicity state they are not to be modified and redistributed.

With all due respect Bagelnuts, I think that's a pretty crappy attitude. It seems to be 'As long as the person is in the Sims 2 community, they must be credited, otherwise it doesn't matter' and I just don't agree with that. If we as a community and if the creators in the community want respect then we must respect ALL creators and their content no matter what the source. Otherwise we are all hyppocrites.

after a stroll through my files I discovered only one mesh that didnt have proper credits to the creator .Ironically the creator was Maxis that the person who recolored it didnt credit, all my other downloads have a creator and the recolorer  credited.I ditched the mesh that didnt have creator on it. the mesh in question was  the hair that is default for maxis on toddlers . the new item added to it was a hair bow.I do undeerstand what your saying though and yes I have seen those user agreements constantly and they  actually com in the form of a pop up on Pronup Sims

[yetyak]

Jumping back to the catagorizing hairs to go into the right color bins; shouldn't you (theoretically) be able to make a sim, age back to toddler and get the same hairstyle through to elder? I tried this with b52b9d28-7b62-4f41-bd88-fb382721db82 as family and with
00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 as hairtone, and get different style with different ages.  Two of them are the same style (not the one I picked), but the rest aren't. How badly have I screwed this up?

[ZephyrZodiac]

I think, when someone makes something, allows everyone to share it, and the only thing they ask is credit where credit is due, then anyone who consistently fails to do so should be ostracized, and no one should download their stuff!  But then, I also feel strongly about people who steal from Pay Sites and offer stolen creations on their site - it's a creator's choice whether they give things away or want to make some money from their work, it's not up to anyone else to say they are right or wrong.

[Bangelnuts]

I think, when someone makes something, allows everyone to share it, and the only thing they ask is credit where credit is due, then anyone who consistently fails to do so should be ostracized, and no one should download their stuff!  But then, I also feel strongly about people who steal from Pay Sites and offer stolen creations on their site - it's a creator's choice whether they give things away or want to make some money from their work, it's not up to anyone else to say they are right or wrong.

I agree with you Zephyr. Itry not to download an Item that is stolen if I can avoid it and I know for a fact its stolen . and I never ever upload CC to the exchange because half the time I cant remember at that exact moment who made the item, and many creators  specifically state dont upload this to the exchange or anywhere else with out their express permission to do so also most meshes dont transfer when you upload an item so the consequence in a sim may well be a bald head or a maxis replacement.unfortunately the only thing that seems to upload tp the exchabge with ease is the  "unwanted" hacks

[MokeyHokey]

Jumping back to the catagorizing hairs to go into the right color bins; shouldn't you (theoretically) be able to make a sim, age back to toddler and get the same hairstyle through to elder? I tried this with b52b9d28-7b62-4f41-bd88-fb382721db82 as family and with
00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 as hairtone, and get different style with different ages.  Two of them are the same style (not the one I picked), but the rest aren't. How badly have I screwed this up?

That's the way I do it because that's the way I was shown how.  I think someone earlier in the thread said that each hair has to have a unique family number to maintain the same style through the age groups.  I'm not about to mess with it now, especially since my hairs have all been done already with the same family number.  It doesn't really bother me as much as having 237162398302372 pages of custom hair to scroll through. 

[yetyak]

Well, you know, most of the time I change the hairstyle anyway.... so I guess it doesn't really matter.  And the few that I've done do show up in the right bin and that is most important.  I think I only have 237162398302369 pages of custom hair, so I will keep plugging away.  Thanks for your answer Mokey Hokey!

[nikita]

I'm in tears, now (nooooooo not really), since I have to go and delete all of those Milla meshes I just put in the other day. And I think I even told you in my last PM, Motoki, that I was wondering why my game was suddenly loading so slowly. Jeez. All those damn hair meshes I just downloaded! And I haven't even used them, yet.

If that is the same Milla that used to post on TSR, apparently (not to spread around Sims 2 community gossip), there was a big scandal when it was found out that she had been taking her hair meshes from Poser and posting them as her own, hence the high poly count.  When the owners of the meshes found out, they threatened to take legal action against TSR, TSR pulled all her meshes but are now working with the original owners to fix the meshes (lower the poly count) and repost them on the site with proper credits. 

[baratron]

More creators really should post their polygon counts online, and the information that it's important should be propagated more widely, and not just in English :-/.

When I started up my site, I considered posting update information in more than one language, but since I only speak two languages fluently, I would have needed someone to translate full sentences for me every time I update my site. And then which languages should you include besides English? German, French, Spanish, Portuguese? That amount of text will clutter up your site pretty fast, and will still not cover all the languages that your visitors speak, since at least my site gets visitors from all over the world. There are translating sites that'll translate a whole site for you, and I see people using those on my website on a regular basis. With the way my site is built, it seems to work pretty well, too. I think that's a much better solution than having all the information on your site posted in 5+ languages. And "1500 polygons" should be pretty self-explanatory in any language if the polygon count is what people are looking for.

With respect, I think you've misunderstood what I meant. I don't particularly care what language a site is run in, as long as it uses either a) images that are understood globally, like the icons from the game, to represent the categories of downloads or b) text that can be pasted into a translation site. Sites that use images of words annoy me, because if the word is not in your language and you don't understand it, you can't paste the image into a translation site and expect it to work .

My point was that it's all very well Mod The Sims 2 having a thread about polygon limits. But because MTS2 is an English-speaking site, to participate in the forums requires that people have a reasonable command of English. As The Sims is released internationally, many creators are native speakers of other languages, and it should not be assumed that they will all speak English to a high enough level to understand what "polygons" and "vertices" are. Notice how many native English speakers don't know what the words mean!

So the information that Maxis recommend 800 vertices per square and that it is a good idea to stick to this needs to be translated into every language that Sims 2 is released in, and then posted online somewhere for people to find. Very possibly this is something Maxis themselves should do, as they have translators and access to the official Sims 2 web sites of every country that has one. But failing that, we as a community should lobby all the educated fans who are fluent in more than one language to translate the information, so it is available for other creators who only understand one language.

[Motoki]

If that is the same Milla that used to post on TSR, apparently (not to spread around Sims 2 community gossip), there was a big scandal when it was found out that she had been taking her hair meshes from Poser and posting them as her own, hence the high poly count.  When the owners of the meshes found out, they threatened to take legal action against TSR, TSR pulled all her meshes but are now working with the original owners to fix the meshes (lower the poly count) and repost them on the site with proper credits. 

Oh is THAT why Thomas is posting new converted Poser hair meshes with permission from the creators? heh

Wonder if they're paying those Poser people now. Probably. :p Took the threat of legal action to do it though I guess.

[IgnorantBliss]

OK, sorry, I misunderstood your statement.

I do think it is important for all the mesh creators to understand what polygons and vertices mean, and I think it should be their responsibility to ensure that high polygon objects are avoided. It's true there is a huge non-English Sims community out there, and passing on information like that to all the creators seems difficult, although I have to say that a large part of the non-native English speakers still understand a fair amount of English, and many non-English websites also have an English section. They just may not be seeking the information in the first place. I have no idea if polygon numbers are a hot topic in the German or any other Sims communities. The English Sims communities are the only ones I visit, and I don't even know any other Finnish object creators, not to mention Sims 2 creation discussion forums in Finnish, but maybe other "bilingual" people from larger languages can do more.

[cwieberdink]

May I ask a stupid question?  What program can I use to look at my objects sizes easily?  Is there one that will list the object name and the polygon/vertice/face count next to it in a big list without me having to open each one separately? 

Thanks!

Chris

[Bangelnuts]

May I ask a stupid question?  What program can I use to look at my objects sizes easily?  Is there one that will list the object name and the polygon/vertice/face count next to it in a big list without me having to open each one separately? 

Thanks!

Chris

SimPE  Geometric Data

[SaraMK]

May I ask a stupid question?  What program can I use to look at my objects sizes easily?  Is there one that will list the object name and the polygon/vertice/face count next to it in a big list without me having to open each one separately? 

I use DatGen for this. It has a feature called Download Maid which has an option to look for poly-heavy meshes. It will scan your entire Downloads folder and find the ones that are potentially a problem. You then have the option to quarantine them to a new folder, which will then allow you to open each one individually (if necessary) and decide how to deal with it.

DatGen does not tell you the exact poly count. What it tells you is how much more than recommended a mesh is. For example, it can tell you that an object is 4 times the recommended/safe amount. Now, when you open that object, it might turn out that it has something like 2000 polygons and it's a really, really cool object that you don't want to do without. 2000 is not THAT bad, as long as you don't use a ton of them on the same lot, so you might decide to keep it. But an object that shows up as 19x more than recommended will probably have something like 25,000 polygons and must be deleted immediately. Screenshot http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c129/saramkirk/datgenpic.jpg

So you will still have to use SimPE to open each file individually, but DatGen can at least tell you which files you need to look at and which ones you don't need to look at at all. Much better than just opening every single file blindly.

I think SimPE also has some kind of ability to scan for poly-heavy meshes but I haven't looked into that. For me, SimPE tends to hang if asked to scan more than about 1000 files, and since I have way more than that, I avoid using it for that.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I keep my files in folders according to site, which makes it much easier for simPE to scan, you just tackle one site at a time.  However, with hairmeshes etc. it's not possible to isolate them without NL.  With NL, you can make a folder in Downloads for all your hair files and simply get SimPE to scan that.

One question I have, though, is, is there or is there not a relation between polygon count and file size?  If there is, then that should help pinpoint the more urgent files.

[Motoki]

I think SimPE also has some kind of ability to scan for poly-heavy meshes but I haven't looked into that. For me, SimPE tends to hang if asked to scan more than about 1000 files, and since I have way more than that, I avoid using it for that.

It does, you can go to tools, then scan folders and then in the scanner settings tab uncheck everything but the health scanner. When the scan is done sort by type and look for the stuff flagged as high poly. It will also scan for other problems too.

question I have, though, is, is there or is there not a relation between polygon count and file size?  If there is, then that should help pinpoint the more urgent files.

There's not an easy answer to that question. High poly meshes all other things being equal will be a larger file than a low poly mesh utilizing the same texture, and in general the higher poly meshes seem to be larger file sizes, but mainly what takes up the most space in the package files are the textures. So a very low poly mesh with a large and detailed texture file will be a large package file, conversely a high poly mesh with a small or single colored texture could be a smallish file size.

In short, no it's not a good way to tell.

[SaraMK]

One question I have, though, is, is there or is there not a relation between polygon count and file size?  If there is, then that should help pinpoint the more urgent files.

Not as far as I know. Meshes that come without a texture packaged up in the same file are usually very small in size. Since some meshes come with a texture and some don't, you can't rely on size. You could have a mesh that is 300kb by itself and a mesh that is 50kb but is packaged with a 500kb texture.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I just wondered.  It's annoying though, how big some files are.  I have some beddings from GLTS which I really like, but they're three times the siz of even the largest of other bedding sets!  So, since there are, I think, 4 of them, I could have at least twelve other beddings taking up just the same amount of space!

[Motoki]

Textures are by far the biggest culprit when it comes to large file size. There are various compression techniques, but a lot of people really don't know how to use them. Also people tend to go overkill on file size. A smallish painting doesn't need a 1024x1024 texture and imo those rug textures are too huge too.

Though it's by no means an indication of the polycount, I do take file size into account when choosing a download. And with the exception skins which I'm very selective about anyway, I generally don't download anything these days if it's over 500k unless I absolutely cannot live without it and for smaller stuff like paintings I usually won't go over 200k.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Yes, I've noticed that some files which are absolutely enormous go very small when you compress them, which I do for the copies I save, as I don't like keeping zips and rars, which are difficult to search if you are looking for something!

[Hairfish]

The only advantage to a larger texture file is that you retain more detail in far zooms. That doesn't do any good without a top-of-the-line graphics card, which many ~ maybe most ~ of us don't have. It does just as much good to use .dss and sharpen the smaller zooms by hand before importing to the .package file.

Some skin files are a hell of a lot larger than they need to be, due to the bump map...which is another thing that most of us have no use for with our "good-enough" graphics cards. I've noticed that the majority of new skins that came with University and Nightlife have no bump map, which is fine with me! I've tried enabling bump maps, and my game c r a w l e d, even after I upgraded my graphics card. So, when I recolor, I generally gray out the entire bump map, so it's just a useless extra 100k or so in the finished texture file. 

Yeah, this is way off topic, since hair and objects don't have bump maps. I'm just rambling.

[ZephyrZodiac]

What's a bump map?  Does it do anything important?

[Motoki]

If your video card supports it, it gives the illusion of depth. Also, apparently from what I hear a lot of Nvidia cards do support it but for some reason the game doesn't enable it for them by default unless you go through some process to remedy that. I don't recall how because I have an ATI card so I didn't pay too much attention.

[Karen]

What's a bump map?  Does it do anything important?

Here is an easy way to see the difference.  Open up Body Shop and start a new project, then click on the Change Mannequin button.  Select a mannequin, then press F8 to zoom in.  Note the textured appearance of the bra.  If what you see on your PC looks "flatter", less textured, than this picture, you don't have bump maps enabled (or your video card can't support them).

Karen

[attachment deleted by admin]

[IgnorantBliss]

If your video card supports it, it gives the illusion of depth. Also, apparently from what I hear a lot of Nvidia cards do support it but for some reason the game doesn't enable it for them by default unless you go through some process to remedy that. I don't recall how because I have an ATI card so I didn't pay too much attention.

I think that problem was fixed with Nightlife. I always thought I'd seen bump maps, until I actually saw them in game after installing Nightlife  . But, in return, I lost object specularity (upon installation, with the same graphics card as before).

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I can't get Bodyshop to run properly in my game, so I never use it.  However, I do have an Invidia 5200 (I think) but I don't know if bump maps are enabled or not.  I'm just not technically up in these things.