So, I have a nice new hi-poly head 3do (478 faces, no grouping over 200). It's saved in Jed as one mesh K_HEAD, and I used Jed's 3DO Hierarchy tool to remove all the other groupings left over from modelling.

How should I go about sticking it onto a body? I've tried a few experiments lobotomising 3dos in JOKE and adding in the new head, but although I seemed to get a complete 3DO with the correct hierarchy, they don't work in game. The template loads as the little black cube of error.

What is the best method?

u didnt exceed 256 faces per group did u?

if not, and u used a few groups for the head, refer to what i said in PM, but also add the extra groups as new nodes and make the parent K_Head, so it will animate properly.

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

From what I've discovered in the past, JOKE always screws up the format to the point that the 3do will never load right in the game. The work around I've discovered is that after you make a 3do with joke, import the model into JED and export it back out. JED usually is good at rewriting the format properly, fixing any errors that JOKE made had made to the model.

One possiblity is that Joke can more easily overshoot some texture vertices limit, since if vertex u v is used so many times, joke lists the vertex that many times, leading to unnecessary duplicates -- Jed does not include these extra, redundant vertices.

This is the only difference between Joke's 3dos and Jed's that I've noticed thus far, but I haven't really looked for the source of the problem(s), so it may be something else too/instead.

I am stumped... Ruthven has kindly given me a step-by-step guide, but I bet I am making an error along the line. Here are some of the places where I think I might be getting it wrong...

When I first import my ms3d head model into JED:
I unify the head 3DO as one layer (e.g. K_Head) Should I remove or keep the other groupings on the head model?

When I insert my new head into another 3do in JOKE:
What Node should the new head be labelled? I have been altering it from an Upper Body to a Head node. Should I?

When I import my model with the new head inserted back into JED:
I don't seem to be able to locate a 'remove unused nodes' button in JEd. I am deleting the unwanted nodes (the nodes relating to the original modelling groupings) using the 3DO Hierarchy tool. Should I be placing these nodes under K_HEAD in the 3do Hierarchy? Should I reassign them to K_HEAD, and delete the remainign extra $Dummy node, or delete them all and build new nodes under K_HEAD?

Sorry if that all sounds confused - it probably reflects my thinking!

Ruthven says in a PM that i should try to keep my milkshape model down to two groupings if I want to use it later as a 3do. My model has 8 groupings, due to duplicating left-right sides and due to texturing. So could this be the main problem? How should I tackle this?

without seeing the model myself i cant see whats wrong.

assuming u havent gone over 256 surfaces on any mesh....

the remove unused nodes is on the left pop up window for JED. the one that controls lots of things, like preview step and moving texture.

You may need to open up the 3dh file in notepad to make sure the numbers of sectors and hierarchy is correct.

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

These are the models in each stage: 1. in milkshape, 2. as imported into JED, and 3. reopened in JED after using JOKE, and after working on the 3do Hierarchy.