HI.

I'm new to meshing. I'm not a complete noob to creating overall, just to meshing, and I'd like to change that. Trouble is, I'm not sure which programs I'll need. I own Milkshape, UV Mapper Pro, and Photoshop CS6. I've been following a tutorial that uses Blender, and, my God! It's confusing! I've been told that Milkshape is a simpler program than Blender is, and I'm thinking it might be best for me to start off with Milkshape instead of Blender. But I'm not sure if it's possible to create objects (not CAS stuff) for Sims 4 with Milkshape. Is Milkshape an obsolete program for Sims 4 object meshing?

Just so there's no confusion, it's objects I want to create, not CAS items. (At least not CAS items right now. Perhaps later on.) And I'm hoping I can create objects for Sims 4 without having to bother with Blender.

Thanks in advance!

Yes, you can use Milkshape for TS4 object creation (and for CAS creation too).

In order to make objects for TS4 without using Blender at all, you would need to use TSR Workshop. TSRW uses its own proprietary object format (.wso) but is able to import .obj or .fbx format meshes, which Milkshape is able to export.

Alternatively, although Sims 4 Studio is tied to Blender as the meshing program it works with, you don't have to use Blender to actually make your meshes. You can do what I do, which is to do all the meshing in Milkshape, then export the mesh as .obj for import into Blender. In a nutshell, in Blender you import the .obj into the default item you cloned your object from, assign the default item's bone(s) to your new item, and delete the old item. It's really quick and easy once you try it a couple of times.

ETA: Ah, plasticbox posted at the same time as me - yes, it would be good for you to learn a bit about Blender anyway, because it has a lot of advanced features Milkshape doesn't have, and the extra features can be very useful. My work pattern tends to be to do all the basic meshing-from-scratch in Milkshape, eg, stick a bunch of boxes, spheres etc together to make the rough shape, then refine it more in Blender. It's very worth learning.

Milkshape isn't obsolete -- I often use it in conjunction with TSRW (which exports/imports .wso and comes with a .wso plugin for Milkshape) for things that do not require remapping or have complex overlaying parts. It is is quick and simple but also really limited in its abilities, for some things it is totally sufficient though.

It will still be extremely useful for you to get to terms with blender. If you already have an extra UV mapping program that will of course help =). Maybe you can start a project using Milkshape, and when you find you can't get things done properly in MS (like selecting/modifying a complex shape which can be very fiddly in MS), you can export the current state as .obj, import to blender and continue editing there, and then import it back into MS to finish it up? That way you could learn blender little by little, while still doing a part of your project in the environment you're already familiar with.


One correction to what Esmeralda says above: when using TSRW + Milkshape I would *not* recommend to export/import .obj, use .wso instead! wso retains things like bone assignments and group names / order, unlike obj which cannot store that information. Also make sure you tell it to export wso 5, not version 6 -- the latter can only be used with blender, not with Milkshape.

If you are not already used to meshing with Milkshape, I would advise you to persevere with Blender. It's harder to swap later, and Blender is increasingly supported by the modding tools such as Sims4Studio and TSR Workshop. Also there are some objects that cannot be supported properly by Milkshape as they have something (I don't understand it myself) that Milkshape can't understand.

For the DDS textures my favorite is Paint.net as I have found it to have the smoothest support for DDS. Also I can't afford Photoshop and when I tried the trial version I found it too complicated to learn. But if you can use Photoshop that is considered to be the best and used by most of the best CC creators I talk to.

Thanks, I see now that I didn't clarify that well enough (blame it on my not having used TSRW much!).

Thank you! I'm finally understanding Blender and I don't think I can live without it now. Blender has some cool features!

I lucked out with Photoshop. My husband gets it from his work and we only have to pay ten dollars a year for a subscription. Otherwise, I'd be using Paint.net or Gimp just like everyone else.

That's great, glad you're getting along well with Blender now!