Let’s share our storytelling tips and tricks when posing a sim with an accessory I make two outfits, one with the accessory, the other without a accessory so I don’t have to go back into CAS.
this also works for conflicting textures!
say you want your sim to use a ring slotted accessory but it messes with their eyelashes, make an outfit with and without, take ur screenies of the posed sims in both outfits from the same angle using ctrl 5,6,7 or 8 and then over lap them in PS, erase what you don’t need and voila!
when shooting indoors in the daytime (in a room with big windows) i turn off all interior lights and try to keep at least once light “source” in frame- it ups the drama and contrast of every shot and lets bloom do its work. inversely when its night time i never use overhead lights i hide sized down lamps in other items of furniture it just looks more dynamic visually 💆♂️
*cracks knuckles* these are mostly technical BUT
if you use reshade or gshade, use the grid or golden mean overlay to help compose your shots. assign a shortcut key to it so you can easily turn it on and off. using this helps make your dialogue shots a bit more dynamic
you can set reshade/gshade to not turn on when you boot up your game. with gshade it’s a setting in the settings tab (have it use off.ini).
for clipped poses, you can take two shots of your sims posed, one with both together, one with the sim that is clipping, sandwich the photos together and erase the bits that are clipping. kinda like what tart mentioned above.
you can make the teleporter statue show up first by assigning it a price of zero HOWEVER that requires all your other clutter to have a price. it’s a tedious process but like, one day s4s will make a bulk price batch fix.
i swear by this method for dialogue
have your character do something (my go to is eating) at the same time as speaking. since sims stories are a bit of a static medium, keeping your character moving (theoretically) makes the scene a bit more interesting.
for huge crowd shots (shout out to @digital-deluxe for this one), shoot multiple pictures from the same angle, photoshop em together. or use a shit ton of deco sims. your choice. lol
get familiar with the TOOL mod.
create a pose library in blender of different expressions. i have a bunch and it helps make posing a bit easier (even though i have not updated my story in like months but THAT’S MY PROBLEM NOT YOURS.)
ORGANIZE your poses so you’re not stuck searching. shout out to @ellemant for this one. it’s very manual but saves time searching. you can change the title to CONVERSATION-2SIMS-posename in the description and it should show up as such. it’s super helpful.
this is obv but learn to make your own poses! it’s tedious as hell but worth it. i’d give up all of mine but i don’t want [REDACTED] to paywall them or put them on her ko-fi store.
MAKE FRIENDS WITH AND TALK TO OTHER STORY SIMBLRS. THIS IS A GIVEN!
to prevent botox face, move that sims eyebrows a bit. it changes an expression from static to dynamic. we say a lot with our eyes and why not use the most expressive part of your face to say something.
this video because i love a visual gag
read your dialogue out loud. if you run out of breath reading it, it’s not natural. break it up into smaller sentences and have another character interject with a question or prompt that does result in some exposition. remember your characters are talking WITH one another and not AT one another.
if you need a bit of exposition, work it into your story where it’s not a wall of text. have a character or characters have a conversation about it. etc.
make use of a story tag and a character tag so people can keep up.
consider hosting your story elsewhere (be it wordpress or blogspot) as tumblr is anightmare with the flagging
if you’re writing a character of a different race/culture/ethnicity than you do some research! these things do factor into personality more than you think!
write for yourself. if you start writing to please others, the story isn’t yours anymore. always remember this.
