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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 16th Nov 2019 at 3:42 AM
Default My game's on a Mac
Hello everyone--

I have a PC laptop I've used for making meshes for the first Sims game; I was wondering if I was going to be able to make new clothing meshes for the second given that my game is on my Mac. I've read through the Unimesh New Mesh Basics tutorial for altering a Maxis mesh, but it looks like the game has to be on the same computer as SimPE. Are there ways to extract a mesh on a Mac? Failing that, is there anywhere I can download Maxis meshes?

(This is of course assuming I can even run SimPE on that old Windows laptop. I had bought a Sims 2 Collection [don't remember how many EPs were included], but it didn't have the right video card or something.)

I'd really like to make some nice ancient-type clothing for the Sims 2; none of the meshes I've seen so far are right.
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 16th Nov 2019 at 4:04 AM Last edited by simmer22 : 16th Nov 2019 at 4:33 AM.
If the game isn't on the same computer as SimPE you'll have issues when it comes to extracting meshes. I can imagine it's a lot more hassle. You can extract a mesh from CC, though.

Not sure if SimPE works on a Mac. If the older ones do, you may not need one of the newest versions since you're technically working from a Bon Voyage standpoint with your game (but don't ask me which SimPE version that would be...) SimPE ran on my old potato of a laptop (bought in 2006), and I've gotten it to work on all my laptops and PCs since then, so I'm guessing it's more of a compatibility issue nowadays (Win10 and the PC Ultimate Collection, especially the combo, can be a pain). It is a bit resource heavy, but not enough to send my 7+ year old laptop into a bluescreen coma (which Photoshop and Sims most often does nowadays) unless I really stretch it, so I'm guessing as long as the installation goes fine and the program runs, you're good to go.

Technically, TS2 is able to run on *most* video cards with a bit of trickery involved (even potato ones, though with the added risk of shortening its lifespan). And you don't tecnically need the game to work fine on the PC if you're just going to install it for the purpose of SimPE being able to extract files from it. SimPE opens the files from the install location regardless of whether the game works or not.

You can in theory use any clothing mesh as a base for your project - and I think you can extract custom meshes with SimPE even if your game isn't connected. Clothing and any other CAS mesh only need to have the proper age/gender skeleton, and you're good to go. If you use Milkshape, make sure you do the comments right, because these control a lot of the mesh behavior.

I extracted all the naked meshes + faces and whatnots for my own use a while back, which may come in handy for you. There's also a Milkshape file for each age/gender (but always remove the head and hair before exporting. You may want to start with an empty screen and import just the "5gd" for the age/gender/clothingtype to get the proper morphs. I mostly use the milkshape files as bases for accessories because I can't be bothered to do the whole importing of the face/hair every single time, and the morphs may be a little iffy becuse of how I imported them, so the Milkshape files aren't optimal for clothes and probably not hairs either). I included the face OBJs because they are nice to have in the modelling phase, same for the hair 5GD files (but these can also be used as hair bases - elders share hair bases with adults).
https://simfileshare.net/download/1455543/
Field Researcher
#3 Old 16th Nov 2019 at 10:12 PM
There are, unfortunately, very few modding tools for the Mac version of the game, and SimPE is very definitely Windows only.

I have my old copy of the Windows game running on my Mac in a Windows VM. It’s not playable, for graphics card reasons, but it does mean I can explore the file packages and extract stuff to play around with when I want. You need to be a little careful about EPs and SPs, because the Mac game only includes up to Bon Voyage and is missing a lot of the Stuff Packs, but you definitely don’t need a runnable version of the game on Windows to tweak stuff for the Mac. If the game can be installed and SimPE pointed at it, that’s generally good enough.

For CC you can just copy files to the Windows machine, get SimPE to open the package, manipulate them and copy them back again. SimPE should run on just about any machine. For my virtual machine I had to increase it from one CPU to 2, but I don’t think I’ve ever given it huge amounts of RAM.
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