I was having fun yesterday, just last night, with my mom and sister, and now everything is absolute hell. My mom almost died. She was completely unresponsive; I had to try to give her CPR until the EMTs arrived, and when they did, we all had to see a group of them trying their best to keep her alive, to keep her heart beating. Now, here we are in the hospital waiting to see if she's gonna be okay. I don't know what I'll do if she doesn't make it.
Things are not going well. My mom is in absolute critical condition. At this point, we are trying whatever we possibly can to try and get her into a responsive state, but I don't know if that'll happen. I want to be optimistic, but when the doctor tells us that there's very little chance that she'll come to, it's hard to keep up any faith. I have a sliver of hope that she'll wake up, but I know reality is that she may never wake back up. I wish this were just some horribly vivid nightmare, but it's not. I don't know what to do, but I know I'll have to face the reality of the outcome, and that scares me so much. My mom is literally the light of my life. She means so much to me, and I may end up losing her. This is my worst nightmare come true.
The doctors have made us fully aware that my mom is brain-dead. There's nothing we can do for her anymore. This is one of the hardest things I've ever had to deal with. I know death is part of life, but to lose her so soon is just...
My family and I are getting ready to let her go tomorrow.
We've begun planning for her funeral. We made a go fund me to try and cover the costs of the funeral. Please, if you can and are willing to donate, you can find the link to the donation page in this post. We, I, would really appreciate it if you could help us out, even a little. If you can't help financially, please, I ask to help spread the word.
sooo as some of you know I was recently diagnosed with a lifelong demyelinating disease of the brain. I am fine - as much as I can be fine with almost 20 brain lesions at the age of 30 - but I had to stop working 9 to 5. Not making it a pity party but not gonna lie too, it sucks.
My main source of income now is the fandom dolls I make, so if any of you wants to support me, following me on Etsy or adding some of my dolls to your favourites would help me a lot :)
With the addition and since The Sims 3 World Adventures, a change was made to how things are seen in the world of The Sims 3. You may have noticed that many objects glow, day or night, especially in certain lighting conditions. While this may or may not be annoying to everyone, this glow is applied to things such as chairs, curtains, lamps, and countertops. If you don’t know what I am talking about, see the picture below.
By following this tutorial we will be removing the glow, provided the tutorial was followed correctly.
Do note that this edit will have to be made each time after a game update or new expansion pack or stuff pack is installed because the file is usually overwritten. Also note that by disabling the glowing, you will not be able to see the heat waves rising from the ground in Egypt in The Sims 3 World Adventures and headlights and lamps on cars will not glow.
Opening & Editing The File
Open Computer and browse to where The Sims 3 is installed. The most common location is: C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin.
Under the Bin folder, locate the file GraphicsRules.sgr.
Right-click on this file and choose Open.
Next, since the extension is .sgr, it’s not a common file. Windows will ask you what you would like to open it with. Choose Notepad from the listing and make sure to uncheck “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file.” Click Okay.
Once the file is open in Notepad you will then see some coding and stuff you may not understand. That’s okay, because the next few steps are really easy.
In Notepad, go to Edit > Find (or press Ctrl + F keys on keyboard) to bring up the find window. Type in AdvancedRendering and hit the button Find Next.
You will then be taken to a section called AdvancedRendering and it will have a few lines of text below it. This option allows for improved graphics in the game and if you have a relatively good card, chances are this option is enabled. As you see below, the line RenderPostProcessEnabled false is selected, but it’s under the Off option. If you have Advanced Rendering turned off, not only will your graphics look blurry but you also won’t get the glowing on objects – which is just what we want, minus the blurry graphics.
Highlight the line as shown and Right-click > Copy or press Ctrl + C keys on your keyboard at the same time to copy the line.
Once copied, place your cursor in the On section and paste the copied line on a new blank line by pressing Ctrl + V keys on keyboard or Right-click > Paste. If you did it correctly, it should look like the image below. Note: The line in the picture was highlighted so you can see the line you added.
Do not touch or copy any other lines within this file unless you want to break your game and prevent it from loading or displaying your graphics properly.
Now that you have added the RenderPostProcessEnabled false line under the On setting for AdvancedRendering it is now time to Save your changes.
Saving The File
Once you have added the line in Notepad, you will want to go to File > Save As.
It is important to know that you won’t be able to save in The Sims 3 folder without administrative permission. If you try to save in The Sims 3 folder you will get an error message of:
“C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin\GraphicsRules.sgr. You don’t have permission to save in this location. Contact the administrator to obtain permission. Would you like to save in the My Documents folder instead?”
Choose No.
Next, browse to your Desktop by clicking on Desktop in the left side navigation pane window in File Explorer. When saving, take out the name it generated which should be the same name as the file and retype the filename GraphicsRules.sgr and make sure the Save as type is set to All Files. Click Save.
The file should have saved to your Desktop. Locate the file called GraphicsRules.sgr on your desktop. It should be a white plain file, and if you try to open it, it should not open with Notepad, but instead prompt you like in the very beginning.
The last step is to now overwrite the GraphicsRules.sgr file for The Sims 3 with your edited one. If you left the Computer window in The Sims 3 Bin folder, good! If not, open Computer and browse to The Sims 3 > Game > Bin located C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin.
Click and drag the GraphicsRules.sgr file from your Desktop into the Computer window for The Sims 3. You can also Right-click > Copy on the GraphicsRules.sgr file on your Desktop, and then Right-click > Paste on any white area in Computer/The Sims 3 window.
If done correctly, Windows will ask you about overwriting the file and if you would like to Move and Replace, Don’t move, or Rename files. Choose Move and Replace. You may be prompted to supply your computers administrator password, depending on your security settings, to confirm that you indeed want to overwrite this file. Since you made the edit and know what file you are replacing, it is okay to allow the file to be overwritten in this case.
Once done, close all your windows you had open and launch your game. If you have done the tutorial correctly, the next time you look at your counters, lamps, curtains, or other objects they won’t be glowing!
my mom recently passed this week and we do not have the funds for the funeral arrangements. if you can please donate,share or help in anyway you can it will be gratefully appreciated 🤍
Hey y'all my beautiful mother passed away at the age of 41 two days ago this is my f… Dajohn Kelley needs your support for Assist in Honorin
Have you ever used some eyeshadows and thought "Oh cute this would look great with a chunky eyeliner on top" only to find that the eyeliner goes *under* the eyeshadow? Well, guess what you can now fix that!
Get yourself to s3pe and go into the casp tag of your eyeshadows and eyeliners. A normal overlay priority for eyeliner (based on my research) should be:
OverlayPriority: 0x00000082
Whereas the eyeshadow should be:
OverlayPriority: 0x00000064
HOWEVER! If you want to use eyeshadows with the basegame eyeliners you would want to set your eyeshadow priority to something like 0x00000030 which actually worked in my testing. (whoa the base game eyeliners are useful now).
Of course you could also get @potatobuttcheek 's default basegame eyeliner replacements but be aware you will have to change the overlay priority on them to (82).
If you go through your makeup cc and you see an overlay priority for eyeliners and eyeshadows with different values than the above, especially if your eyeshadow has an overlay priority of (82) then that eyeshadow will go on top of your eyeliner (no bueno). Here's how to fix it!
In this example the eyeliner has a value of 46 so it'll show up under the eyeshadow. Click on the Casp you want to change. Click Grid below which will bring up a window.
Simply change the values on the Overlay Priority then click Commit. That's it! Save your package (merged package in my case) and voilà!
Here's a picture of Ariana (by @cozygirlsimmer) with a Praline eyeshadow that was always overriding eyeliners and the after using a Gosik eyeliner on top that was always buried behind eyeshadows.
Here is an eyeshadow (by @sehmulated) which has an overlay priority of 0x0000005A (same as blush) that I manually changed to 0x00000030 for testing with a base game eyeliner.
Making male sim… is definitively hard. I'm not saying I'm an expert but I enjoy making male sims. Downloading sliders & tweaking your Nraas settings to extend the range of your sliders is the first step you need to do. I recommend downloading the sliders list of simblrs that you like. I personally have @nectar-cellar's sliders so download them from his resources list. And I don’t extend my sliders with Nraas on my own, but you can follow this tutorial. Personally I just import acottonsock’s master controller settings which already tweak the slider range & other gameplay settings (because lazy hehe). Another rule is to make sure you set the limit of your cas sliders with how much sliders you have and enter cas through Nraas -> Edit sim in cas or your cc sliders won't work.
Idk how many part this tutorial will be. It depends on the engagement I got LOL (bc my sims aren't for everyone & idk how many people want to read MY tutorial). But I'll talk about the essential part of making your male sim attractive which is ‘CREATING A ‘V’ SHAPE JAW LINE’.
When you think of a conventionally attractive male model, you would picture a defined jaw while still having the ‘v’ shape. @tau1tvec sim, @nectar-cellar, and my sim have really different styles, but can you see what they have in common?
Yes, all the sims showed above have this similarities: the mouth will be somewhat aligned to the highest line of their jaw. I use Tristan Van Gould from Supernatural Expansion Pack as my model below. Before I tweak his jaw, I only lower his eyelid height a little bit & scale down his head size, head width, and eyes.
To recreate the 'v' shape in the sims 3, slide the jawline height slider to 512 and your sim will look like the one on the right. I recommend your to use the SEP jaw slider/ chin to neck slider to get rid of under chin fat so you can see your sim's jaw better.
If you notice the weird shape on the right, you can easily fix it by sliding the jawline rotate slider to 230
Then lower your sim's chin, scale down the chin size and increase the chin bone height & chin width for a more 'V' shape chin.
Lower their face height & mouth height then use the jawline depth slider to make your sims have a sharper 'v' shape jaw.
And that's all I did to create Tristan's Jaw (+i use chin cleft slider & tweak the measurement a lil bit). Here is how he looks like after the makeover.
If you're not a fan of the forehead size & what it to be smaller, try to move the face up and lift the jaw height/jaw height only sliders. Try to keep the mouth on the red line I drew at the top of this tutorial. You can make the chin wider for a square face & even make the chin line defined like @tau1tvec by messing with the jawline width/jaw rotate a little bit more. Eyeball it. Experiment!
I know you're thinking: what the fuck?!?!? how can the bald guy became like the sim shown above?!?! why are you wasting our time?!?!? you barely explain anything?!?!? This is so cringe literally everybody already knew how to make an attractive jaw?!?!? guys... this tutorial is for beginners. also i think eyes, mouth, and nose really differ depending on the ethnicity of your sim.
For example my Darren, Don, and Tristan have different noses and you can make your sim's noses special by imagining your sim's ethnicities and do a research to recreate the feature of said ethnicities. Don't just slap a black skin on a white sim and call it a day pwease :D <3 I'm kind of sensitive about this subject because I see many simmers (youtuber to be precise iykyk) making fun of sims with big noses and it's so upsetting to me! >:o
Maybe I'll make a tutorial for different shapes of noses & eyes. Mouth are very easy to do so I don't find the need to do them. Idk. Depending on the reaction I get from this post I guess. Another tip is to download your simblr peers base sims. My sims are always base sims that you can tweak, rename, and re-upload on your own simblr (if u make changes to them) without credit although a tag is appreciated bc I would love to follow your accounts. But be careful abt editing people’s sim who aren’t a base sim :D Ask for permission first before putting them under the knife and perform your plastic surgery magic on them✨
for @milky-cowplant who commented they want to me to teach them how to make male sims once.
Hi, I’m loving the advent so far! How do you get your patterns to look so natural? Whenever I make patterns I either get these crusty lines at the edges of some channels where one channel bleeds into the other. Or, I get these super sharp unnatural edges on them that never look any good. Teach me your magic please lol.
Thank you so much for the compliment :)
I made a fancy tutorial, because more people might be interested in this topic!
There are a few things you can do to solve color bleed and crusty lines while making the Sims 3 patterns. These tips are for Photoshop and the TSR Workshop pattern tool, though they also work for Delphy's pattern tool.
The EA CAP tool compresses its image files automatically, so you have no control over it afaik.
Save your textures uncompressed!
Most of your problem should be solved by saving your images in an uncompressed DDS file format (depending on what DDS plugin you use, it "8.8.8.8 argb 32bpp unsigned" or, in newer versions, "8.8.8.8 bgra 32bpp unsigned".
This is an image of the newer dds plugin export dialog with the settings I use:
This reduces blockiness and color bleed significantly!
Note: For maximum visual clarity and the sake of our eyes, starting from now, I will show just the contents of the individual color channels of the image, specifically green and blue.
If you click on a single color channel in Photoshop, it will be represented in greyscale. My screenshots therefore also represent a single color channel and do not show how the colors interact with each other. I thought it would be distracting and hard to see if I presented everything in color and this tutorial is not about how to build a pattern, but how to get crisp outlines and the best possible quality.
What is the issue with compressed textures?
EA's pattern textures are DDS files that use DXT compression (DXT1 for non-alpha/5 for alpha images, BC1/3 in the newer plugin).
If you save your image as a compressed DDS file and reopen it, you will notice that certain areas are blocky/blotchy.
That is because lightness and color information is not retained for every pixel, but areas get grouped together in a more or less chessboard-like fashion.
In this first example, I increased the contrast to make these compression artifacts more visible so you can see what's going on: Notice the grey blocky areas?
These cause color bleed in the final pattern and the textures look blurry or washed out. EA's textures have this issue too, because they use compression.
In some patterns, the effect is less noticeable than in others, but compressed files will always have a reduced image quality compared to the original image.
Deciding to go with uncompressed textures was essential for me to achieve the quality I offer. I reasoned that the patterns are only 256px in size and the performance impact should not be very noticeable.
I once made a survey in which I asked whether my patterns cause performance issues, and most said they did not, so I stuck with it.
You could test it out for yourself and decide!
If you want to continue to use compression, make sure to change the quality of the compression algorithm to get the best possible result. In the screenshot I posted at the beginning of the tutorial, you can see that I set it to "highest" instead of the usual default "fastest", though this is not really needed if you save uncompressed files.
The old DDS plugin used on older Photoshop versions also has that setting, it is just a bit more obscure. I do not have that anymore so I cannot say where exactly.
Is it a bug?
Lines all around the edges of some channels could also be a Photoshop bug*. This was a regular occurring bug in older versions (before CC 2020 or so.) The issue was that when you scaled down or sometimes even just saved an image that was not just the background layer but had stuff on other layers, there would be a faint line around the whole image. Suuuper annoying!
*clarification: It's not an official bug, but a lot of people get annoyed by it. I still had this happen to me with the current 2023 Photoshop version when using bicubic (sharper) on an image with layers, but I do feel there are less problems with saving layered images now. Idk, this might be "feature quirk" after all...
Anyway, to avoid the faint lines around your image, follow these tips:
Using the bilinear mode when reducing an image's size helps, as does flattening the image before image reduction or file export.
I like to create a copy of the entire document using the shortcuts ctrl+shift+alt+e to make sure it appears flattened without actually flattening everything. You could also paste the flattened copy into a new document, merge it down and export the dds file from there. Just try what works best for you.
Retaining maximum quality on resizing
Most images need to be resized to the pattern size, or you might have made a larger pattern and want that in smaller sizes.
You may never have paid much attention to the settings in that image size dialogue, but it holds some key elements to make sure your pattern comes out in the best way possible!
Per default, the resizing mode that is used by Photoshop to make an image smaller is "bicubic (sharper)". This mode has a sharpening algorithm that causes halos if the pixels are not white or black, which can create unwanted effects such as white outlines around grey pixels, or grey ones around black areas. Note: even if you have the "bicubic (automatic)" setting, it will still use the "bicubic (sharper)" if you reduce the image size!
Let me show you an example:
Below, you can see a comparison of bicubic (sharper) reduction vs bilinear reduction.
The channel with the black and white checkers has some greyish edges after using bicubic (sharper), which can cause the texture to become unwantedly transparent in these areas, making the colors become muddled in these areas. Using bilinear or nearest neighbor modes (the latter is great for very geometric, crisp shapes), the result is very clean.
This is why do not recommend to use the bicubic algorithm on your textures. Go for bilinear and nearest neighbor modes, these are perfect for patterns. I do any sharpening of the channels in a more controlled way later.
The best way to sharpen your texture
To make the textures look as crisp as possible, you immediately think about the "unsharp mask" feature, right?
This might not be your best option though!
If you have a white shape on a black background with a rim of dark grey pixels around it and you want to make it crisp and want that dark grey outline to disappear, unsharp mask will actually do a pretty good job, because it mainly targets those grey pixels and there is nothing to lighten or darken on pure white or pure black.
But if you have a lot of grey tones, the algorithm "attacks" a lot in your image, depending on how you set your radius in the options dialogue. Most of the time, the radius is set to a small number, for sharpening details, but it creates a problem for us in the form of halos/bright or dark rims around shapes.
I like to increase the contrast of the individual channels to make the image appear sharper without those halo effects that the "unsharp mask " feature often creates. I love to use the "levels" tool for adjusting the contrast, I use it all the time!
I have grey pixels as a starting point and then applied an aggressive "unsharp mask" (strength 100, radius: 1px) to it so you can see the effect. The results are bright halos around the shapes. This will make the edges of the shapes more opaque on the final pattern and can look strange! On very delicate lines, this might be what you want, but for larger areas, this is less desirable.
Sharpening without actually sharpening
Instead of using "unsharp mask", I like to increase the contrast of the individual channels to make the image appear sharper entirely without those halo effects that the "unsharp mask " feature often creates. I love to use the "levels" tool for adjusting the contrast, I use it all the time!
On this layer, I have some intricate shapes, which should appear fully opaque. The are already bright white, but the edges are a bit too soft right now to get a truly crisp result, so I use the "levels" tool to increase the contrast and make the edges crisper. You can also use the curves tool for this, but I find the levels tool a bit more intuitive for this process! The curves tool gives you even more control over pixel values and lets you adjust them individually, which can be great, but for the purpose of creating controlled contrast, the levels tool will suffice.
By moving the marked sliders towards the middle, the contrast is increased. This also works nicely on grey pixels without creating the halo problem.
Another use for the levels tool in this context is to control the thickness of your shapes by moving the middle slider too, like this:
Final words
"Levels" is your friend when adjusting contrast and making things sharper. In some cases, "unsharp mask" or other sharpened options can create a desired effect, such as on more realistic textures such as carpet/fabric textures, wood and stone, where you might want these halos to increase the depth of details. There is always a right time to use any tool, so if levels alone do not give the effect you desire, by all means, give "unsharp mask" a go! Experiment, and find the best way for you.
The biggest gain in quality will come from saving in an uncompressed format though.
Thanks for reading through the tutorial, I hope it was helpful!
This is my response to this post by @goatskickin - a second version. That's the best way to desaturate hair texture or other stuff with alpha transparency ( thanks @paluding).
Desaturate or Hue/Saturation often makes textures crunchy.
You'll get best results if you create plain black layer and set blend mode to Color. Adjust Opacity as needed. In case of alpha stuff you also need to create Clipping mask.
When doing color actions on hair textures (or anything else) - if Hue/Saturation adjustment layer step does -83 Saturation (for example), instead you can do what I described above and set black layer Opacity to 83%.
Also, use SimPE to build textures as DXT5, do not rely on Bodyshop 'cuz it will always f*ck it up.
I decided to re-do this tut and make it more alpha-hair friendly - because in some cases it could cause color bleeding through the most transparent parts, as demonstrated in the pic above 🙈
A small discovery about plant meshes I wanted to share..
This is a converted plant from TS4 Cottage Living. Looks fine, right?
BUT. If you're fond of using bright or vibrant colors in recoloring objects, it will become like this:
a closer look:
As you can see there's color bleeding around the plant edges, and it follows the object's color you set it up with (again, very obvious when you use bright colors).
This is a 1x1 wall object, just a small one so the effect doesn't look too obvious when zooming out. But once you work on bigger meshes it becomes a problem (well, at least aesthetically).
The culprit: a mask that covers every part of the mesh, including the part where the plant overlay is supposed to be. Example below (mask part set with lower opacity to show which areas are covered)
The workaround:
As said above, the problem is triggered by covering the plant overlay with the mask, so the solution is to avoid covering it (as in leave the plant overlay part transparent).
And also this only happens when you give the object a single recolorable channel (red only mask). When you enable the second (green) channel the color bleeding will magically disappeear.
And here's another waaaaay more sensible solution. As I brought this problem up at @ts3creatorscave Discord, @deniisu (thank you very much! 😊) advised: to cover the plant overlay area as black (0,0,0/#000000) so that it won't be touched by the color channels. (left: mask + multiplier with the mask at around 50% opacity, right: actual mask)
And as a result, you'll not have bleeding plant edges anymore, no matter how bright you recolor your object as you wanted.
Tutorial: quicker way to remap hair UV in blender for conversion
Hey everyone, what's up? I want to share a small tip for quickly rearranging UV maps when converting TS4 hairstyles. This tutorial won't cover the other steps involved in converting hairstyles and assumes you already have some knowledge of creating CC. Anyway, I'll try to explain it clearly and let's get started :)
First, you can export the original SIMS 4 texture and crop out the square portion at the top left corner that represents the hairstyle (from left to right).
Next, in Blender, import the hairstyle you want to convert. After importing the original SIMS 4 texture, your interface should look something like this. In "Viewport Shading" button, you can select "Texture".
Then, select "Open Image" in the bottom left corner, and import the newly cropped texture. Your UV map should appear stretched in the new image.
Now comes the most important step. You'll see a 2D cursor in the UV view on the left. Use the scroll wheel to zoom in on the image, and then left-click to position the center of the 2D cursor at the top-left corner edge. In the toolbar below, find the "pivot" button and select "2D cursor". Finally, press "a" to select all UVs, then press "s"+"2", "s"+"y"+"2" to scale the UVs to the correct size.
This way, you'll directly get a UV map that corresponds to the texture with 99.9% accuracy, without any additional adjustment. Hope this is helpful for you all!
Hey guys, I wouldn’t ask for this help if I didn’t need it but anything you can give my family and I appreciate it and thank you sincerely ♥️
I lost my Mom this past Monday and I still wake up hoping it’s a bad dream. Unfortunately the insurance policy she left doesn’t cover the entire cost of her burial and we’re short a bit of money. Anything you can give would be greatly appreciated, even if it’s just a prayer 🤍
I AM A TRANS WOMAN TAKING CARE OF MY THREE YEAR OLD NEPHEW ALONE, WE ARE BEING THREATENED WITH EVICTION IF I DON'T COME UP WITH $825.92 BY 8/11/23. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO HELP US PLEASE, IT WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATED TO AVOID HOMELESSNESS - MY CASH APP IS $gweniieegwenz 🍓
How to keep Sims from moving around when you’re photo-shooting, without resorting to poses (yes, it IS possible!)
Because I’m trying to shoot pics for a large wedding party, I figured I’d eventually run into the bane of every Simmer who attempts to put a lot of Sims into one location:
They won’t bloody well stay where you want them to!
Want them all sitting down? Soon enough, one or more of them will get out of their chairs, even if you have Sim Autonomy OFF.
I found something that fixes that, and it’s something so simple: the Movie Maker cheats.
Apparently, you need Generations for this (or you did when it was released; I’m not sure if a subsequent patch enabled it for everyone) but give it a try, regardless of whether you have Generations or not.
To access it, open up the cheat console (CTRL + SHIFT + C) and type:
TestingCheatsEnabled True
And then type:
MovieMakerCheatsEnabled True
Now, when you Shift-left-click on a Sim, you’ll get the following menu:
Disable Autonomy will make ALL the Sims on the lot do nothing, except what you tell them to do. Sit them all down, and they’ll stay put. THIS is the cheat you need to keep all those little wandering buggers in place!
Turn off Look Ats will stop their heads from moving (you probably want to keep this enabled for most things, as it looks more natural)
Animation lets you play almost any animation on any Sim, from the idles to the conversations, the solo dances (sadly no animations that require two people, so your Sims can’t slow-dance this way unless you switch on some music and tell them to slow dance). You can play them once or play them in a loop.
Remember to shift-left-click the mailbox and set all needs to static if you’re doing a day of shooting, or else you’ll have some Sims starving to death in puddles of pee ;)
Well, dang. I guess it is possible after all. I was looking for a way to hide the UI in CAS via some complicated method, but instead found a site which led me to this guide to a ReShade add-on called ShaderToggler 🤩 I haven’t found someone create a TS4 tutorial for this yet so here ya go.
If you find this useful, do share the word around! All I ask is that you link back here if you want to share outside of tumblr :-)
📌 UPDATE 31/03/2023: For tutorial on how to prevent shaders from affecting UI, please check out my new tut in Clear UI of Shaders & More! Have fun💖
📌 UPDATE 05/04/2023: I’ve added one additional step in the installation section for GShade users! Thanks to @loveatfirstsim for the new addition😁 I’ve also updated the previews gifs to reflect the current setup for shortcuts.
I was about to go back to my business and quietly leave y'all with a word of wisdom but the very next package I opened raised my hackles. So here we go, hold on to your seat.
Disclaimer for younger/sweeter - followers - this has language in it because I'm pissed... I apologize in advance.
49,282 Polycounts. That's 50K for a fucking basket!!!
It's pretty, it's beautiful, and I downloaded it because it's everything you could want out of a basket of lemons... whoever created it did an outstanding job... for a movie production.
NOT PC GAMES.
So let's fix it - and let's hold our creators and converters to a higher standard or send them along to a different platform where they can create without our bitching.
First off, there's 3 or 4 ways you can check polycounts.
1 - TSRW under Mesh tab
2 - S3PE (Pretty sure you have to have an addon to do this - I'll try to find it when I'm done and add the link) Under MLOD, right click and go down to Preview. It'll open up a window and you can view the model and the polycount.
3 - 3D Viewer on your computer
4 - Blender or Milkshape
Now that we have the ability to check our polycount - we're gonna fix this mesh. I'm not going to show you how to package it, there are other tutorials for that part, but this is VITAL to having a healthy game, and honestly, being a creator or converter for this game. I do understand that you have to have the knowledge before you can fix a problem, so here it is - literally handed to you in a basket. I also understand that there are creators/converters who don't post polycounts because they're afraid people won't download it - that is inexcusable. If that's the case then you will eventually be boycotted by the players who know better.
Alright, so step one - you're going to want to get into blender after exporting your mesh. You're going open the modifier properties and add a decimate modifier (the wrench circled in red, and the add modifier drop down menu).
Keep it in Collapse, not un-subdivide. It's gentler on the mesh itself and you'll get a lot farther with it. You're also going to want your UV map to match what you're doing with your mesh, in case you need it for selection (I'll explain that in a minute) and have faces tagged so the selection is easier.
Now that you have that set up, you're gonna want to remove unnecessary vertices. See the shadows on the bottom of the basket? Here's how to fix that - hit tab, press A to select everything, and then go to MESH/MERGE/BY DISTANCE. This removed 16,900 loose vertices that didn't need to be there.
Go back to your modifiers and add an edge split modifier and hit apply.
Boom - no shadows.
Now that that is all done you're going to go in to edit mode (tab) and press L while hovering over what you're wanting to select. This is going to select all of the islands in your UV, and it's the fastest way (that I've found) to quickly select pieces of your mesh.
When you have your whole group selected (you can also figure out at this point what pieces need alternate textures or groups for TSRW later in your packaging process) you're going to hit P-Selection. That's gonna split whatever you have selected into a separate group.
Now, you can do that to however many pieces you see fit, but for this I'm just gonna stick with two - the lemons and the basket itself. You're going to click the blue Ratio box - and type in .5 and hit enter. That will collapse your polycount in half - (you can move that ratio box lower if you wish, but this way is the gentlest way possible and I've gotten better results. So play with it and see for yourself if you wish to. ) - Now repeat the process until your mesh starts to lose quality, I tend to stop there unless I can push it a bit further without making it look bad.
Now repeat that process with all groups.
Given that this particular mesh was such high polycount and an intricate mesh, I could only manage to get it from 49,282 faces (polys) down to 18,860. This is absolutely not okay for TS3 - and I'm using as a lesson rather than using something that I can get down to an okay level - because this is what you're going to run into when getting meshes that start in the tens of thousands of polys. THIS IS NOT MEANT FOR TS3, it's beautiful, yes, but you are putting people's equipment at risk by advertising a mesh for a 13 year old game without disclaiming that it's dangerous for it.
This tutorial will absolutely work for most objects, and I've used this process for a couple of years now with success, but you have to be able to decide what you're willing to put into TS3. We have all of these tutorials for reducing lag in this old as dirt game, but NONE of that matters if you're carrying objects like this - no matter how pretty they are.
If you need it that bad, figure out how to make a version of it that CAN look as good as this with a little less detail (think the spirals in the wicker that is actually meshed rather than just textured), or ask a creator to make something for you.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. If I have the time, I try to help whoever comes into my inbox. If I can't help, there is a hoard of creators out there that probably can.
So have fun, CHECK YOUR CONTENT, and keep your computer safe.
And creators/converters - do better.
Edit to add - to the creators/converters who do put out their polycounts, or a disclaimer of high poly/photo use only - thank you. I do understand the need for high poly objects for photo-op purposes, and I'm not here to attack anyone's preferred gaming style. I just want people to be safe while they play, as there are those who don't know what they're putting into their games. Let's help ensure that everyone has a chance to play whether they're experienced creators or regular game-players.
Edit to add 2 -
To add a bit of context - I was able to get the reduced mesh even further by removing some of the intricate details of the mesh, to create a simpler version. This is now down to 5,270 - and it could be lowered even further by removing the top of the handle - which is 1700 by itself because it's spiraled. So when you're dealing with a high mesh object such as this, pay attention to what's really adding weight, and if you can replace/remove it without taking too much away. The shadows can be fixed in gimp as well.
Guys, I know I’m missing. I’m so sorry about that… The Sims is really important and creating content has always been therapy for me. I never thought of writing a post like this, asking for help. But it’s because I don’t know who else to turn to. I know there are many people here with problems much more serious than mine, but I really need you now ♥. Please ♥. It’s been 3 years since I lost my son and I suffer every day from it. To help, my 14 year marriage ended. It’s been very difficult for me, both emotionally and financially. I’m working, but it’s not being enough. I can’t pay rent, electricity, water, buy food… So I decided to come here and ask for help.
I’m willing to take requests for new meshes, conversions, anything. I really need help.
Any $1 already helps me a lot. You can order whatever you like. I do anything related to The Sims: decorating houses, creating new meshes, converting anything. I’m really willing to help. The Sims is therapy for me. So this might save me somehow ♥.
If anyone can donate anything I can give back. Please. I’m desperate. If you can’t donate, at least share this post so more people can see it. ♥
I will release here for free the link to the paid set I made for 2SIS a few years ago:
