Bounding box problems

That's not quite what Phaenoh meant. I'm still supposed to use my cloned car, but use a decorative object to "clean" the GMDC from joints, and then use that cleaned version in my car, bringing along the SHPE and CRES since it won't work otherwise. Or something.

I tried doing a decorative object and changing GLOB and bringing along the necessary resources from the car, but that runs into problems as well as there are a lot of stuff that goes into it that I won't think to include. I included GLOB, BHAVs and BCONs, and the object throws endless errors. It's easier to use a car since I want it to count as a car, and fix the mesh, even if the mesh bit is making me crazy.

Sorry for going AWOL, but I've had a couple of busy days IRL so I've barely been online. (Still not on my simming computer, BTW, won't be until the weekend.)

Yeah, what Lee said. At this point, instead of fighting what seems to be a losing battle with that darned bounding box, I think it would be easier to clone a vase or something, import the mesh (just remember to rename it), change the GLOB to from PaintingGlobals to CarGlobals and then import the BHAVs, TTAB, and TTAS from a car (and possibly something else I've forgotten - like I said, not on my simming computer). That way, your bounding box will be the way you want it, the footprint will be one tile right from the start, the CRES will be practically nothing AND you won't have to fiddle with any placement flags (even though you might need to fix the size in the OBJD to allow it to be placed on OFB shelves, but that's it). You may need to clean up the BHAVs (and the corresponding functions), because there'll probably be stuff there you don't need, but that's the easy part. Or the least hard part.

I've tried the deco object turned car several times and it ends up throwing errors or crashing. At least with my object I know what the problem is, and just need to figure out how to solve it. Besides, if I've gone through the trouble of figuring out all the previous problems, it seems rather a waste to throw it all away and start over with a new batch of problems.

There's got to be some way to get rid of the joints that isn't bad. After all, straight up deleting them in SimPE didn't cause the object to error, crash or in any way function weird, and the bounding box did update properly once they were gone. I get that seeming to work does not mean it's a good idea, but if it can seemingly work doing it the wrong way, there's got to be a right way that will also work and not be a bad way of doing it.

Does anyone perhaps know a tutorial about meshing that does stuff with joints? Right now all I know about them is that they are called joints, they make my object not want to have a bounding box, and they are related to animations. A tutorial working with them would show me where they are, and perhaps I can reverse engineer what the tutorial does to remove them from my object.

There's a tutorial at TSR that's very easy to follow and understand. The tutorial uses a gate but the process is the same for most (if not all - I don't want to say *all* because there may be an object/objects that are a bit different) objects with joints. I don't have a link to it at the moment and the tutorials section there can be finicky since a lot of the links lead to "oops, that page doesn't exist" results. I think I downloaded it though so if you need it I can upload it somewhere for you.

(20-01-2016 09:25 PM)gummilutt Wrote:  At least with my object I know what the problem is, and just need to figure out how to solve it. Besides, if I've gone through the trouble of figuring out all the previous problems, it seems rather a waste to throw it all away and start over with a new batch of problems.

I get that. Trust me, I do and I'm sure everyone else does too. But starting over doesn't mean you've wasted what you've learned - you might want to work on something else in the future, run into a problem with it and be like "Aha!! I've seen this before and I know how to fix it!!"

Personally? I think the deco object (the way Nix described doing it) is the best way to go. What I would have liked to see? The error logs from your previous attempts. Error logs aren't always the easiest things to read but they should point to *where* the problem is in the object. Once you know where the problem is it should be fixable. You might not know how to fix it but there *are* people who can help - like Nix and MSD. Lee too? Maybe myself - everything I know about BHAVs Nix (and MSD) taught me. (And if I can learn it, anyone can.)

@gummilutt, like most people I can't read minds, so I have no way of knowing what you may or may not have tried before. And right now, I have exactly zero patience for getting snapped at by people when I'm trying to help them.

So I'm bowing out. Good luck with your car.

@gummilutt I do understand how you feel regarding "throwing away" the object. It seems such a waste, but this whole joint and bounding box thing is a PITA and replacing text strings and BHAVS and changing the global seems so much easier to ME. But that is me.

The thing is, there are so many ways to achieve the goal; you can get different methods from different creators depending on what the issue is and their skill set.

If you have the bounding box working, and it doesnt throw errors in a testcheats enable game, then I dont quite see why your solution that works is bad. Seems like it worked to me.

@NixNivis I apologize for coming off as snapping. I promise, that was not at all my intention. I mentioned in the post above yours that I had tried a decorative object, and I wanted to clarify that that attempt was not the only one I'd made. Whenever I've run into a bump on this project and had no one around to ask questions, I've tried it again because it seemed like a better idea, and each attempt always ended up in a problem I did not understand, and the problem with the car clone resolving. In no way did I mean it as "I told you I already tried that"-snapping kind of thing. I was just trying to explain why I' hesitant to take that approach. I understand if you're still through helping me though. Thank you for the advice you gave, I'm very grateful to have gotten the footprint part resolved. And now I know how to fix placement flags on CC objects

mustluvcatz, thank you, I will try to find the tutorial and if I can't I'll get back to you. I know exactly what you mean with leaving a project for a while when you are stuck, and learning how to fix it while working on something else. The stuff I learned for hidden interactions enabling and discussing another project with Phaenoh resolved several other projects I had gotten stuck on. I guess I should probably give this project a break, it's just frustrating when it's so close to being finished.

Leefish, the reason I don't trust my solution is because Phaenoh told me it's a very bad idea to delete joints in SimPE. I don't know anything about this stuff, so I trust her judgement (as well as I trust you guys when you say something is a certain way). Deleting Sims in game seems fine too, until you realize it wasn't, so I have the same attitude towards my creating. Seeming to work could mean it's about to explode in your face later on.

But you're all right. I will give the decorative object approach one more try, and try to work out the problems with that approach instead of banging my head against joints. I'll still try to read the tutorial mustluvcatz mentioned, but mostly because I need to get over my hate of all things Milkshape.

@gummilutt you and I must have been posting at the exact same time yesterday, because your post, that's now above mine? Was NOT there when I made mine, only Lee's was. And I didn't see it there when I logged off yesterday, either. (If I had, I wouldn't have told you to do exactly what you'd just said you did, I promise.) So now I understand what you were coming from a bit better, and also if you got a bit impatient/frustrated with me (but I hope you can understand me a little, too, because without having seen that post, to me it sounded like you were getting p*ssed because I didn't use my crystal ball to see what you were doing). Friends? .

About Phae's advice... well, I can't speak for anybody else, but in my (not particularly positive) experience with her, she can be the "my way or the highway" kind of modder, that thinks her way of doing things is the only way, and all other ways are Bad and Wrong. So to me it's quite possible she's told you never to delete joints just because it's not the way she'd do it.

Because you can delete joints, just as you can add them - but you have to take care and make sure you know what you're doing, because otherwise things can go Very Very Wrong. (For example, sometimes joints will have stuff attached to them - like slots of a bazillion different kinds - that you really don't want to delete unless you want your object to explode in a Big Fiery Ball Visible from Space.) So if this were an animated object that Sims were supposed to use for stuffz, and not just own, I'd tell you to put the joints down and back away slowly. But since it isn't... yeah, then you can delete joints. And if your object isn't throwing errors and crashing and making your life miserable, then you (most likely) haven't deleted anything you shouldn't have or done it in a bad way. So it sounds like you should be good - but I'd get some people to test it for me just to be on the safe side.

Well no wonder you felt I was snapping! I absolutely understand where you were coming from, regardless of if you had seen the post or not. You guys are being so helpful, the last thing you deserve is being snapped at. I do my best to convey tone when I write, but it does happen on occasion that people think I'm snapping at them when that isn't my intention at all. I'm glad you understand I wasn't trying to snap though

I wouldn't say I know what I'm doing, but I've been pondering it (after yet another failed attempt to try and use a deco object as base ) and I wonder. If joints are tied to the mesh somehow, and I've replaced the mesh, shouldn't that mean that the ties they had to the mesh are gone and removing them is not a bad idea? Seems more like cleaning up leftovers from the old mesh. From what you wrote, it sounds like it might be okay since I've removed all forms of Sim-interaction with the car, aside from assigning it an owner, so whatever they are supposed to do is no longer necessary.

If that's the case, then I suppose it's technically done. I'm still a little uneasy about all the entries in CRES that I have no idea what they are for. You mentioned that joints can have slots of a bazillion different kinds attached, is there any chance those slots would somehow be represented in the CRES? The CRES list currently goes all the way to 0x2C, and some entries mention joints so I imagine they are linked. If any of you feel you have the time, could you look at the list and see if you see anything obvious that I should/could remove?

I'll test deleting the ones with joints in the name, just to see what happens, but any/all input would be most appreciated.
EDIT: Tried it, and apparently that was a bad idea because the object vanished Blank image in catalog, and placing it does not place anything. I had the same thing happen when I renamed parts of mesh to make them disappear, so I'm guessing this did something similar.

I also wanted to ask for input on shadows. I play with shadows off, and if I understood correctly (sorry if I didn't Michelle! <3) the SimFused versions did not fix the shadows of the tiny cars. Because I don't like shadows and they weren't updated to match the tiny car, I simply deleted the shadows from my clone, but one of the things I want to get better at with my creations is to not half-ass things just because they aren't important to me. I found a tutorial on MTS from boblishman, and I see that fixing shadows would involve Milkshape. Since I don't care about shadows at all I can't really tell if it's something worth doing. Do you think I should make the effort to fix shadows? I feel like they are so small you'll hardly notice, but I know some people find lack of shadows creepy.
EDIT: Weirdness! I was doing some tests with my tiny cars, and I realized they still have shadows, even though I deleted the ground shadow. Properly sized shadows too. And now that I'm going over bhavs to try and find the flag that allows them to be placed on driveway I found an expression that I wonder if it might be the reason for that. Does anyone know what this line is doing?
[prim 0x0002] Expression (My 0x0044 (Shadow Type) := Const 0x0128:0x0 ("Dynamic Shadow" Value: 0x0003)

While testing to see if I could unearth some kind of problem caused by deleting joints, I realized there's another problem that I need to fix. When you own a car, it tries to push the "drive to work" interaction one hour before work starts, and since the tiny car does not have that option it throws an error. I need to figure out how to disable that if the car you own is one of tiny cars. I suppose the easiest approach (that I can think of at least) might be to find the bhav that controls it and make it check the guid of the car you own, and if it's one of the tiny ones it does not push drive to work. Not sure how to find the right place, but I'll go dig around and see what I find.

I also wondered, if the deleting of joints caused some kind of problem, how would that express itself? The object does not protest being placed, and I've had it sitting on my lot with an owner for a day, and nothing. Not sure how else to test it to make sure there isn't a problem from deleting joints.