Breathe underwater? I scuba dive, so I can already do that, albeit with equipment. Pet a dinosaur? There are birds. Eat lunch in the place the last human will die? Fuck no, I don't want to know that. Send a letter to a Roman general? Sorry, don't know enough Latin, also fuck them. So yeah, guess I'd spend a day with my grandma. :-)
For anyone SOLELY following me for sims content, sorry. But tumblr is being annoying and left my default reblog-to and post-to as this blog instead of my main (I remember that being different, at least once you've refreshed the page, but not sure anymore).
Anyway. I will try to keep an eye on where my posts actually go in future. Sims here, 911 and other fandom stuff there. Apologies.
I am feeling... things. Conflicting things. Like sure, on the one hand, it would be great if Buck and Tommy got back together.
But on the other hand... I dunno. Somehow, this whole show feels so tainted to me now with poor writing and stupidly repetitious storylines that I don't even know whether it'll be good or satisfying in any ways. I have my 'vision' of how they could get back together (or ten, lol), and I am doubtful the show is gonna deliver on that even remotely. I am very mistrustful now after everything that went down in 8a.
Not saying it shouldn't happen or anything, or that I'll rain on anyone's parade, but personally, I'm not sure I can be excited about this. IF that's even what we're seeing because yeah, that's very little proof so far.
Ugh. I hate this. I loved 911 so much, but now it just doesn't feel like the show I fell in love with. So yeah. Rambling into the void.
I am feeling... things. Conflicting things. Like sure, on the one hand, it would be great if Buck and Tommy got back together.
But on the other hand... I dunno. Somehow, this whole show feels so tainted to me now with poor writing and stupidly repetitious storylines that I don't even know whether it'll be good or satisfying in any ways. I have my 'vision' of how they could get back together (or ten, lol), and I am doubtful the show is gonna deliver on that even remotely. I am very mistrustful now after everything that went down in 8a.
Not saying it shouldn't happen or anything, or that I'll rain on anyone's parade, but personally, I'm not sure I can be excited about this. IF that's even what we're seeing because yeah, that's very little proof so far.
Ugh. I hate this. I loved 911 so much, but now it just doesn't feel like the show I fell in love with. So yeah. Rambling into the void.
I've thought it before, but this video is more proof. Social media turns people into psychopaths. Or rather, it brings out the most psychopathic, toxic traits in people.
This brand owner messed up, immediately apologized and fixed the mistake, but still received death threats and a tirade of vile messages, all over insufficiently filled lip gloss.
People have literally gone insane, lost the plot and all connection to reality.
It's the same vile behavior we have seen in fandoms again and again. People are angry at some perceived (and sometimes valid) injustice, and then react in a way they would never dare to in real life. They hide behind the anonymity of the internet, but more so, they lose sight of their opponent being a real, breathing human being - whether that human being is a rich and influential TV producer, or a CEO of a (small) beauty brand, or a fellow fan.
People are, through the distance social media creates, genuinely losing that grasp of reality. It's all just a bunch of words; it's easily and quickly typed and sent.
More so, social media 'bubbles' can create the impression of togetherness and community; many similarly disappointed and frustrated people will rile each other up and encourage each other to express their - in their perception righteous - anger. Instead of realizing that such entitlement would not fly in real life and therefore probably shouldn't fly in online life either, people remain in that toxic microcosm where they do not need to examine their stances or be confronted with healthy amounts of conflict and healthy ways of dealing with it.
I say that as someone who is on social media and wants to remain so, but last year's ship war in my main fandom 9-1-1, as well as many smaller, individual experiences and incidents of people behaving in such reality-detached ways have made me take a few steps back and put up boundaries again. They have reminded me that, while many things feel big, important and very real on the internet, for the most part they are not real. Friendships online are rarely true and lasting, communities can fall apart quickly, or they can turn from fun to immensely toxic, extremely fast.
Anyway, just a small personal 'rant', or analysis, if you will. If you ever feel like things are becoming toxic around you in the online communities you frequent, it is time to remind yourself of this fact: online life is not real life. It never will be. Please take care of your real one, your real human interactions, and when you're online, not only protect yourself from toxic influences but watch yourself and don't let the flow drag you away into a cesspool of toxicity.
DO NOT listen to that tagger. That is a more modern take on knighthood. Nobles could knight knights, knights could knight knights. Before that, any guy with a sword and a horse could just be a knight. Just because the monarchy is holding all the knight rights in England doesn’t mean that is the way it is supposed to be. Knight anarchy.
Got the Cozy Gamer kit by @lilsimsie earlier and immediately fell in love. What was missing for a complete gamer den including console games on a TV was a matching screen, so I decided to recolor the Framed TV from the Modern Luxe kit.
The recolor comes in 40 swatches - 20 motives with black and white frames each. There are some generic patterns, gaming scenes and controllers, and several images from games such as The Last of Us, The Witcher, Minecraft, and GTA.
Because my sim kid is obsessed with dinosaurs, I needed a few more bedding patterns to complete the already amazing kids bedroom set “Roarsome Kids Bedroom” by @peacemaker-ic.
The set has 12 swatches and works with all single beds without bedend.
Do you also sometimes get frustrated when you use a wall with a trim but then want to place a patterned accent wall, and it doesn’t have the matching trim?
Marion already has a pretty perfect solution to this, by having created custom wall trims based on the ones available in the game. However, since I very often use Peacemaker’s Classic Wall Set, I wanted trims to match those solids.
The trims are located under paintings/posters and cost 2 Simoleons. I made 8 swatches based on the shape used in Peacemaker’s walls, and 2 based on Marion’s first swatch (a slightly brighter white and a dark grey/black one). Mix and match as you like!
There’s a bit of a lighting issue with indoor-lighting though, but I don’t think it’s bad.
Credit to @silverhammersims for the original object and @peacemaker-ic (whose plants, sofas and floor I also used in this scene)
Pride Month is almost over, but I made a few t-shits last night. Since I made them for my own sim couple, the focus was gay and bi pride art and slogans.
42 swatches in total, each design in black and white
I’ve been doing a lot of recolors (most of them for my own entertainment, and a lot of them of other CC that I needed in just a hue lighter/brighter/bluer etc, which I won’t share), so I thought I’d make a simple tutorial for how to do recolors.
First of all, you’re going to need Sims 4 Studio (You need to register to be able to download the program).
Once you have that set up, you can instantly work on every item that is in the game. (If you want to recolor CC, you need to put a copy of the original CC file into the folder Documents/Sims 4 Studio/Mods. Please me mindful that creators almost never allow you to recolor their stuff without giving credit to them; if you intend to share your recolors with others, make sure you give due credit!)
Next, I’m going to show you how to open items in S4S.
This is the main interface
You’re always want to check the first option to do recolors. For CAS items, it’s “Create CAS Standalone”. Then, click on the blue button above.
Next, you’ll get a list of filters that you can apply to find the item you want. (Again, note that if you want to recolor CC, that CC needs to be in the S4S/Mods folder, and you can filter for “Custom” under Content)
I’m going to pick this simple black T-Shirt. If you want to export several swatches, hold CTRL while selecting the other swatches of the same shirt.
Next, you’ll be asked to save your package. I have a folder selected for all my CC, and I name my items “RhiannonAR_itemname_recolor”.
Next, you can see all the textures used in the item.
You’ll want to export the “Diffuse” texture, which is the color and pattern. There are secondary textures that are overlays for shadows etc. You can ignore those.
Sometimes, however, an item will have two main textures, especially BB items. E.g. a bed would have one texture for the bed frame and one for the mattress. If you only want to change the bedding, you export whatever you need to recolor. You’ll see this if you click through the available textures.
Export the texture as PNG file.
Now you can open that PNG in Photoshop or Gimp or - something I highly recommend using if you don’t have Photoshop - photopea.com, which is basically an online clone of Photoshop
Once opened, you’ll see this:
The circles a the bottom are the insides of the sleeves and the shirt itself. If you don’t drastically change the color, you can ignore those.
Right now, we’re just going to add a print.
I’m going to search for an image of a shark with a transparent background now. Transparent background will make it easier to copy the image without having to cut anything. A good idea is to search for “clipart” and then download it directly from the source. There are many platforms with free art and textures that you can use.
(At this point, if you’re not familiar with placing and editing items in graphics programs such as PS, it might be a good idea to look for a tutorial on this)
Save your image as PNG under a different file name.
Go back to S4S and import
You can zoom in your model by scrolling, move by holding the scroll wheel, and tilt and rotate by right clicking.
You can now also edit the thumbnail, either importing an image or just changing the color. I’m always too lazy to make thumbnail images, so I just do colors. I’ve just added two more colors.
If you want to make more swatches, just click “add swatch” and repeat the process. The prog will copy the last swatch as template for the next.
I wanted to make another swatch with the bi pride flag, but it was too big.
So I just went back and made it a little smaller (also, it’s a VERY good idea to save the PSD file of your project).
That’s better.
Next, you could go through the categories and e.g. change the color for the catalogue (when you filter for colors in CAS), or make the t-shirt suitable for evening wear etc. You can also disallow it for random if you like.
Lastly, SAVE the project and then go into the folder you saved it in, and copy (or move, but I always copy) that into your Sims 4 Mods folder. I have a sub-folder there called “My CC”.
If you’ve realized you actually wanted to export another swatch as base to edit, you have to repeat the process and select a different one. I am now using the blue swatch as base, but then I’m going back to my previous project in the main menu of S4S and am adding the new swatches there.
The easiest way to just change the color of something is by adjusting “Hue/Saturation”
Depending on how often you do that, however, and how drastic the adjustments are, it can get pixelated and fuzzy.
An alternative is to create a layer with a color as overlay for the original texture. For that, hold CTRL and click on image of the original layer:
It will then automatically outline all the objects. Make a new layer - the mask will remain active - and then fill the areas with the paint bucket tool.
Then, you can play around with that layer. Hue or Color always works well.
You could also change the opacity of the layer to make it less vibrant. Or you could even fill the layer with a pattern.
Now you have a texture to the fabric. You can experiment a lot here.
I’m leaving it as it was.
AND NOW, since you have a solid fill color, when you go to “Hue/Saturation”, you will get no fuzziness.
I also added the bi flag again. But that doesn’t go with this horrid rust color, lol.
Now I’ve gone and desaturated the base layer, and then added the color fill one as “overlay”
Again, this is something where you can play around a lot to see what works best.
If you want to have light, pastel colors, you need to work with the white base. So it’s always a good idea to select several swatches at the beginning, export them all, and then see what you can use best.
I’ve added the swatch to my project and saved it.
Lastly, if you want to recolor items that have many different areas and textures, you’re gonna have to put more effort into it. Quick selection, eraser, and how to work with multiple layers will be important tools to learn. But with these basics, you’ll have a good starting point.
Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and found it helpful. :-)
[EDIT: I re-did the tattoos because the resolution was too low in game. It looks much better now. Download the file from the SFS folder again and replace it in your mod folder.]
I went and created Buck and Eddie’s Tattoos for my Buddie Sims. You can download them here. It’s one file, two swatches, both marked as upper arm tattoo (left, I believe).
This was a bitch to create, and I’m not 100% happy with it since it’s a bit pixelated, particularly the geometrical shapes, but then again, this is as good as I can make it and better than nothing ;-)
The folder also contains Buck’s birthmark, which I’ve also created, and a modification of LumiaLoverSims Body Hair V4 which no longer seems to be available. That one is black hair only because none of the other CC body hair versions have that adorable bat-signal shape :-D
LumiaLoverSims is now https://luumiasims.com/
You can also find the whole family including Christopher and their little kitten in the gallery. My ID is RhiannonAR. Please check custom content when you search for them. They’re called “Buckley Diaz Fam 3.0″
Other than that, I’ve used a fair amount of CC clothing on them, but I’m sure you’ll have good replacements for the things you don’t have. If not, also message me, and I’ll dig to find you the links.
P.S.: I apparently can’t spell hair, and the file is called ‘haire’. Can’t be bothered to change it now so you’ll have to live with that :-D
