How I made a crystal crown for the Sims:
I made this tutorial at the same time I made this mesh. The mesh is an attachment that will allow skinners to make a Sims skin of Chou from Jennifer Diane Reitz' Unicorn Jelly online comic. Go read it!
The steps used in this tutorial will apply to any other thing you want to edit in MilkShape. Selecting, rotating, and moving vertexes works just as well for editing hair, faces, or bodies on Sims as it does for making all new shapes. This is also the only tutorial for MilkShape that I'm ever going to make, and I'm certainly not going to give extra help on this subject. If this step-by-step tutorial with pictures isn't enough help for you, go find someone else to teach you because this is the best I can do!
Step 1: import a Sim head or body to base your work on
Step 2: select the cylinder tool, and set it up to make closed cylinders with 2 stacks and 7 slices
Step 3: zoom with your Shift key and move around with your ctrl key to get one of the 2D windows centered and close enough to work on (click and hold to move, with any tool selected except "select")
Step 4: make a cylinder
(I use closed cylinders a lot. When I made fairy wings for cats, I used a huge, thin cylinder with one stack and about 18 slices... it looked like a pancake. Then I shifted around all the vertexes until it was shaped like a butterfly wing. Simple!)
Step 5: select the top and middle vertexes (NOT the faces) with the Select tool
Step 6: use the move tool to stretch the top and middle away from the bottom
Step 7: use the select tool to select only the top vertexes (no pic, you should know how to do that now)
Step 8: From the menu at the top, click on Vertex and choose the "snap together" option
Step 9: now select only the middle row
Step 10: use the "scale" tool to enlarge the middle; choose 1.1 for each option and click until it looks good (I clicked 5 times)
Step 11: I think the top point is a little too high, so select it and then move it down a little
Step 12: the first crystal looks good, but it's WAY too big. Back to the scale tool. Select the entire crystal, and re-scale at .9 for each option this time, clicking until it looks about right. (7 clicks got this one about right. I could have done it faster if I'd rescaled it at .5 or.7, but I like more precision.)
Step 13: we're almost ready to position this one on the head, but we need to map it BEFORE we get it out of position. Select the entire cylinder all at one by using the groups menu, highlighting the cylinder, and clicking select.
Step 14: now go to the Materials menu and click "new".
Then click one of the buttons that says {none} and pick a bmp file. For a complex mesh I would make the bmp first and map the image to it exactly, but this is simple so I'll just use a body bmp for now and make a crystal bmp later. I'm going to make this as an attachment and not as a permanent part of the head, both for ease of mapping and reusability.
Now click the "assign" button.
Step 15: From the top menu, click on "Window" and select Texture Coordinate Editor, which will open in a new window.
Select the cylinder from the first drop down menu and remap it from the Front angle. Now I can create a crystal bmp, perhaps with a nice shiny highlight going down the middle. The back will be a mirror image of the front, which should be fine for this kind of mesh. I won't cover the bmp in this tutorial; I assume you already know how to make one. If you don't go find a different tutorial -- there are tons out there if you're willing to do a simple online search for "sims skinning tutorial" on any search engine.
(By the way... notice the menu at the side? You can select and move vertexes, resize the whole thing, and move it around to a new spot on the bitmap if you want. If I was going to make the crystals part of a particular head, I would shrink it way down and put it in one of the bottom corners of the bitmap. Then I would select the head mesh from the drop down and carefully move any hair vertexes up and away from the spot I chose for the crystals. These changes affect the map, not the mesh.)
Step 16: use the move tool to place the crystal in the right position on the head. You will probably need to use top, front, and side 2D perspectives before you get it adjusted properly.
Damn, that crystal still looks too big. I'm going to rescale it a few more times before we move on.
Step 17: the first crystal is the right size and is in the right place, but it's at a funny angle. Click the rotate button and move it from a side-angle 2D window to align it better.
Move it again to put it back to the right place on the head if it's gotten a little off.
Step 18: Am I going to repeat that whole process to make the rest of the crystals? Hell no! From the top Edit menu, select "Duplicate Selection".
Next go to the top Vertex menu and select "Mirror Left {--} Right"
Now I've got an identical "cylinder" with the same map and shape. Move the new cylinder into place at left or right, perhaps rotating it a little to the side. I might shrink it a little as well, to make a graduation of sizes.
Keep duplicating and adjusting copies until you have a full set.
Step 19: save the whole mess as a ms3d file. Sometimes I forget this step and later cry over it when I realize what I've done -- it's important to have a MilkShape copy because then it gets saved as individually selectable components rather than just one big mass.
Step 20: before we export this as a Sims skn file, we're going to get rid of the head. Remember that this is an attachment, not a permanent part of the head mesh! From the Groups menu, select the head mesh and click the Delete button.
Step 21: This crown will move with the head, and therefore will be attached to the Head of the skeleton. Go to the Joints menu and click HEAD.
From the top Edit menu, select "Select all"
Then back to the Joints menu, to click "Assign"
Step 22: All done! From the top File menu, export it as a Sims skn.
Last Step: I want this attachment to work with lots of Sim heads, so I'll import a bunch, test the crown out one at a time, and see if it's placed well enough to work with most of them. In retrospect, I probably should have made the bottom extend a little longer on all of them... I find that it doesn't work at all with child head meshes. So I resized it and made a kid's version. Download both meshes and a bmp HERE. Now go make your own stuff!
You will, of course, need to write a cmx file to go with the new mesh and edit the skn file in a text editor to add the bmp title on the second line. You can use MS Notepad or any other simple text editor for those tasks. Sistergirl has a good tutorial for those things at http://mayday555.tripod.com/cmxindex.html
Do you still need to download MilkShape? The official site has a 30-day free trial download. Check it out: http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft
SIM RACCOONS: FURRY SIMS ----------
BASTDAWN FANTASY SIMS
