#ask lati

[latibulesims]

Hello the gorgeous Lati! :D Would you be willing to make a tutorial or explain how you take such great sim photos with nice background and crisp lighting?

Hi Anon! <3

I'm going to assume you're referring to the portraits I have of my sims here on my tumblr, and not pictures of my gameplay over at my gameplay twitter (there I usually just take random pics as I play, and crop them. None of the technical stuff like with portrait photos)

How I take my sims portraits is pretty simple also, so i'm sorry if you're expecting more. Either way, I hope this is helpful.

Basically, I start off in an empty lot, and then include the following items:

THE BACKGROUND

These recolors of MixedUp's Screenshot Background Rug. I usually go for the white or the black if they're "serious" pictures (usually of character reveals of my show) but more fun colors when it comes to portraits of my gameplay sims (see below for the difference. Same set up, same lighting, different color background)

Lately I've opted for a clear background, as opposed to a set. I don't know, I feel like it looks way better when it comes to taking clear portraits of the sims you wanna showcase.

LIGHTING:

For lighting, I use two things:

The invisible Floor lamp in soft light, which is just everything to me both in terms of taking portraits and filming. Can't live without it!! And how much light you use really determines the vibe you want to achieve from a certain photoshoot. Here's an example of what I mean: Fun little gameplay portrait (bright) vs. Mystery series protagonist (dark)

If you would like to achieve different type of lightings (such as bisexual lighting, for example), I highly recommend colored lights such as this, this and this.

Of course, whichever lighting you choose, it helps to have a lighting mod such as this one!

OMSPs AND OTHER MODS

And then, of course, OMSPs are a must-have. These are the ones I use, but there's a HUGE number of OMSPs to choose from. I also use the look at me now mod, to get the sim to look at me (the camera).

And then, finally, I use poseboxes! There are a bunch of useful pinterest boards with poseboxes, such as here and here! For more whimsical portraits/facial expressions, I use Jaydee's boxes.

PROGRAMS

I use FRAPS to take my pictures and PHOTOSHOP C6 to edit them!

EDITING

Of course, editing is also a part of the ordeal. I don't do much, but I think it does make a difference I do things such as change the levels/brightness/hue of the photos, add sharpening, and smooth out any edges! I also sometimes add shadows, but very occasionally.

Here's a side-by-side with a recent sim I took:

RESHADE

I wasn't using reshade for this photoshoot in particular, but if you get it to work it helps with smoothing out some edges and adding shadowing. If you don't get it work, then don't stress too much about it because I don't think it makes that big of a difference personally! I have it off most of the time when I'm taking pictures, because I enjoy doing my editing in photoshop instead :)

If you do want it, though, here's an excellent video on how to install it for The Sims 2. I use Falkii's Turniphead reshade. The video itself also has a great reshade in the description, albeit one that's less colorful/bright (recommend more for filming than taking photos).

HOPE THAT HELPS!

Please let me know if you have any other/follow up questions <3

[latibulesims]

do you still plan on making epiphany?

yes :) As a movie, though, not a series like I originally planned. Since Isla's a part of The Rivers, it would be the perfect prequel movie showing Isla's story and her high school years before she got to college in The Rivers universe

When I'll do it depends on 1) when I have time and 2) when is the best to upload it vis a vis The Rivers' timeline

[latibulesims]

Hey Lati!

I’m so sorry to press you for more information, but I’m so fascinated by your filming process and I have some additional questions if that’s okay. Specifically around your sets that are just individual rooms, are these just multiple secular room sets on one lot, or do you use a different lot for each set? Like with the River’s house when any family member is coming downstairs, is Tresor or Raign’s room not on that lot? The living room and kitchen? Lol I’m just so fascinated by this if that’s the case, and if so it’s extremely impressive because they look like they all could actually be one complete set. Sorry if this makes zero sense, I’ve just never thought to try this and now I really want to! ☺️ Thanks so much!

Haha no you make total sense!! First of all thank you for watching my series, and don't worry at all about asking questions! I know filming with The Sims 2 can be difficult bc of how often it crashes and its loading time, so any tips I can give to help the game crash less, im happy to share 💖

The sets are actually on different lots entirely! So, when Tresor "comes downstairs", or the characters go from the living room to the kitchen, I load an entirely new lot! I think the only exception I make is with bathrooms because they're so tiny haha, but any time you see the characters going from one room to the other, it's usually a different lot all together. :')

It may sound exhausting to some, having to jump from one lot to another, but over the years (I've been doing this since 2017, at least!) I've managed some tips that help, for those that are interested:

1) I make multiple sims of the same character, so that every sim belongs to every lot! So, if Tresor for example needs to be in her bedroom, the living room and Simons bar within the same episode, I create 3 Tresors (TresorBED, TresorLIVING, TresorBAR), and that way I don't have to move her around.

I should also note that I change neighborhoods every episode (more on that in tip #3), so it might sound like a lot of sims over the episodes but really it's usually just 3 versions of the same character in one neighborhood at a time.

You might find it's easier to just move the sims from one lot to the other, but in my experience moving the sims around (or using the tombstone to extract them) always ends up crashing my game so this is a really good way to avoid it all together!

2) I don't film chronologically, but by sets! This is my #1 tip. I basically gather up all the scenes I have in 1 set and I film them. That way i dont have to go back and forth between lots, instead I just finish off all the scenes I need using a lot and move on to the next! Sometimes a set has so many scenes I end up filming in one set for weeks at a time (usually Simons bar, haha, that S2E1 Christmas episode needed like 3 sets (Simons bar, Simons living room, The Rivers living room), and I spent two months just filming in Simons bar).

The only time I won't recommend this, is when you havent yet found your own style. Then you might risk something like this happening: You're just starting to film, and you have the 1st and last scene in the episode in the same set. So, you film them both. Then you film a couple more scenes after that, and then you reach the final set and by then your filming skills have changed (if you haven't found your style and take months filming an episode - which is completely valid, BTW - this could mean a drastic change). Then, scene #1 (which you filmed at the very beginning) could have a completely different filming style than scene #2 (which you filmed at the very end), and so on. You wouldn't want that.

I had something like that happen to me, where I discovered reshade mid-filming an episode, so the scenes I filmed at the beginning of the episode didnt have it, and then the scenes I filmed at the end did it. It made the epsiode look incosistent, which is something I don't really care about (and neither do my viewers, really), but you might so letting you know as a heads up! Some of these tips do compromise the "professionalism" of the episodes, but it's how i manage to film and pop out episodes with (relative) quickness :').

Thats why for many reasons, including should you want to film by set instead of chronologically, I suggest you find your style before filming an episode or starting a series all together. This can be done through creating small machinimas, filming tests, music videos, etc. Take it from someone who can't even handle sitting through the first 8 episodes of my own series because of how much my style back then. The way it drastically changed from one episode to another irks me so much! 😅

3) And this is my most controversial one, LOL, but I always build sets + new neighborhoods from scratch with every episode. As I mentioned above, I change neighborhoods with every episode because, in my experience, neighborhoods get corrupt with time so starting with a fresh neighborhood every episode helps avoid crashing. Previously, neighborhoods would get so corrupt, they'd stop loading at all mid-filming an episode, so im forced to interrupt my filming streak and build the sets and characters all together which absolutely wrecks any motivation I have to film afterwards. Once, this happened mid-filming a scene and so I had to rebuild, and let me tell you: Theres a difference between sets looking a bit different because I had to rebuild between episodes, and sets looking different within the same scene. At least when you rebuild the set with every new episode, you can blame minor changes on the fact that time passed from one episode to the other.

Also: I make sure to build all the sets I need for the episode before I start filming, because I dont want anything to interrupt my filming once I start it. If Im forced to build when I'm motivated to film, I end up losing that motivation in the time I spend building, if that makes sense. As u probably already know as a machinima maker, we do the work that is usually required of a team (writer, director, editor, and also stylist and set designers), so I like to do things one at a time so I can have a clear understanding of my schedule and timetable. So, I dedicate 2 days to style all the sims, a week or so to build all the sets, usually months to film the episode, then another week to edit and audio edit. I try my best not to have all of those parts overlapping, otherwise it gets too overwhelming.

The reason I rebuild from scratch, as opposed to just extracting the lot and installing it in a new neighborhood is because, again, I prefer a fresh start and have found that lots are less likely to get corrupt if they're "new". A lot of people think im crazy for it LOL, or that it's a colossal waste of time, and maybe it is! But it's the process that works best for me, and I end up filming really fast with much less crashing and hiccups because of it!

Hope that helps!!! :') Let me know if you have any other questions about my filming process or any other tips 💖💖💖 I'd love to help!

[latibulesims]

Hi Lati :) I'm a huge fan of The Rivers! I read in one of your responses to another ask that you record with FRAPS on a low-end laptop, but your videos always come out flawless! Whenever I try to record let's plays like this, I always come out with lag. May I ask for some of your tips for avoiding lag when recording? Thanks for all your amazing work :)

Hiii! I am so sorry I am just seeing this, I havent looked at my tumblr notifications in so long! I hope these tips can still help even though they're so late! But thank you so much 💖💖💖 I really appreciate it!

Tip #1. Keep the downloads folder small: For me, I feel like my game lags less the smaller my downloads folder is, so I make to sure to keep at least my gameplay folder small. A great tip ive been using to do this is to go into my game and delete swatches I dont care about. If you use pooklet recolors of hairs especially, you'll find that each hair color (Black, Brown, Blonde, Red, and Grey) usually come with 3+ swatches. So after downloading a bunch of hairstyles, I make sure to go into my game and keep 1 swatch from every hair color. That way, the game goes from 15 swatches of the same hair to just 5! It has helped me sooo much, without forcing me to abandon hairstyles that I like. The same with clothes: when a shirt, for example, would have 5-10 swatches, I make sure to keep just my 3-5 favorites! Does wonders.

Tip #2. Keep the sets simple: With filming, I've found that sets that are heavily packed with CC drop my FPS (which causes lags) way more than sets with simple CC - so i make sure not to go overboard. I know you asked as a lets play player, but just incase any machinima filmers are reading this, here's a trick i do: Instead of building huge sets, I film little boxes that are decorated from the inside and not at all from the outside. Take a high school set, for example. If I want to film in a classroom, I'll just build that classroom instead of a full on school with exteriors and unnecessary rooms that I won't use but would otherwise be found in a school like hallways. And, if I need an exterior shot, I'll just build a seperate lot that I wont mind how big it is because ill just need for that one shot. Its basically like real life shows, where they film exteriors of homes for example, but the actual set is just in one of those warehouses? Hope that makes sense. As for lets players, I would suggest to keep things simple and confined to one floor! Don't go overboard with CC, though I for one LOVE a cluttered house :'( But we gotta do what we gotta do!

Tip #3. Keep the neighborhood simple (or remove it all together): As a lets player I would of course recommend that you keep it simple as opposed to removing it all together, since that would look terrible for gameplay. Of course, its sad because a nicely decorated neighborhood does wonders for that "open world" feel that Sims 2 is missing, but ive found that doing too much CC wise in the neighborhood lags the game terribly. Also, you can turn off your neighbors while keeping the decorations on. I've found this to help immensely, especially in neighborhoods that have a lot of sims living in it. As long as you decorate your neighborhood right (while not going overboard), then you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference - except when it comes to the lagging! I havent played a game with neighbors on since those sims 4t2 deco homes were converted!

For machinima makers I'd go one step forward: If you have scenes that are inside, turn off your decorations all together! Instead decorate around any windows your set might have, and even use one of those mural CC thingies of landscapes should your series be set be in a city. I cant remember the last time I filmed an interior scene with neighbors + decorations on!

Tip #4. Dont overwork your laptop: Make sure you dont have other "demanding" programs open while you try and film. For me, I've found that the game lags a lot more when the laptop is being overworked and getting heated, so closing programs like Sony Vegas (or other video editing programs) and Photoshop (or other photo editing programs) helps a ton! Really, I make sure to film with just the game and FRAPS open

Tip #5. Lower the quality: Push comes to shove and you've found that your computer just isnt handling it? Lower the quality of your game. Nothing drastic of course, nothing that would compromize your quality too much, but some small things like turning off shadows, for example, can come a looong way without making the game look too weird. And, if you do use it, stop using reshade. As a machinima filmer, this is my last resort when everything else I've tried hasn't worked: to stop using reshade and edit post filming. It sucks, but we can make it work :')

I'd also recommend looking up other programs should the screen recording program you're using not work with you. I personally have found that Fraps is the most user friendly, and I cant be bothered to learn new programs, so its what I stick to, but there are other alternatives that people swear by (i hear a lot of sims people recommend Bandicam because Fraps lagged too much for them, so you can always check that out). Hope these helped, and again I'm so sorry for not seeing this sooner! 💖

[latibulesims]

Hello! Could you maybe tell what laptop/computer you use? The one I have can handle the sims 2 but there's some lag (probably because I have 8gb worth of cc lol) and my graphics card isn't the best, so I was wondering if you had any suggestions? :) thanks in advance!

Hii!

The laptop I use is pretty outdated, imo! But here are my specs <3. It’s a Samsung laptop, Windows 7, i3 2.50 GHZ, intel(R) HD Graphics 4000, with a 8.00 GB RAM and 500 GB of space divided between drives (C:) and (D:)

Despite some outdated specs, I think it works relatively well! It hardly ever lags, despite huge downloads folders. But, it does take hours to load, lol. figures. My old downloads folder was 50+ GB and would take 2.5 hours to load, while my newly restarted downloads folder is just about 30 GB and takes an 45 mins-hour. My gameplay downloads folder is also around 10 and takes 20 mins.

That’s it for specs! Hope it helps.

If you’re a sims 2 director who’s struggling to film, I shared some tips on how to avoid a lagging game, from a director’s perspective under the cut c:

OK. So here is a couple of things I do to avoid my game lagging while I try to film:

1 - The newest thing I’ve been doing that I’ve found helps A LOT is something that people have been doing since like the beginning of sims lol and it’s separating your downloads into folders, or, at the very least, body shop CC + buy/build mode CC. What I do is, after using that approach, I load the body shop with my body shop CC only, and make the sims I need for the episode. Then, I place the buy and build mode CC and take out the body shop CC, and package the sims I dressed up earlier in body shop. That way, I would load my game with all the buy/build CC i need, and the body shop CC I need for that specific episode (so, I’d end up with, let’s say, 8 hairs instead of 100). (P.S. don’t forget to include the accessories CC alongside the buy and build mode CC, tho, since they dont package with the sims!).

2 - I avoid heavily decorated neighborhoods!!! Whenever I try and decorate the a neighborhood to look all nice and pretty in the windows of sets while I film, the neighborhood doesnt survive a couple of scenes. Now, I just decorate one (1!) spot in the entire neighborhood and strategically place every lot i need in that same spot thats surrounded by building decorations and trees lol.

3 - Unless I absolutely need to, I always avoid having more than 8 sims in one lot. I feel like my game tends to lag/crash a lot when I do. Alternatives I use: If you need to make it look like the room is crowded (i.e. party), try and move the 5-6 sims you’re working with to fit in the angle you’re currently using. It may get hectic moving the sims from one angle to the other, but it beats your game crashing/lagging every 5 mins. :’) And you can always use deco sims, though I try my best to always avoid that because I don’t like how still they are vs. the sims that are being filmed

4 - I never use full sets. lol. that shit lags and crashes my game soooooo often, especially with how heavily decorated my lots usually are. Instead, I make every room I need a set independent from any other room. For example, if I have a scene in the main kitchen, that’ll be a lot by itself. When my sims move from the kitchen to the living room, I log them out from the “kitchen” lot, and into the “living room” lot. I know it sounds like a lot of work, but trust me, it has saved me from so much unnecessary lagging and crashing when you go from a 2-story heavily decorated home to one (maybe two, if im feeling dangerous) rooms. Back in 2017, I shared four sets that showcase how my sets usually look like in series (skip to 5:55). Think of the lots as....sets from tv shows. Where the actors go from one cluster of a room to another lol. P.S. I build the exterior as a separate lot as well, and shoot however many shots i need of it before I move on to the interior sets to start filming

5 - Don’t overwork your laptop/computer. Now, this has nothing to do with CC, but i’ve found that the game usually lags while I film (With Fraps, sometimes dropping the framerate to 2 frames per minute), because I have other programs on like Sony Vegas or Photoshop. Try and have the sims 2 and fraps being the only programs you have open when you film, and see if that helps. 

Hope you found any of these tips helpful!! <3 Good luck with your game!

[latibulesims]

Hi Lati!!

So I’m rewatching The Rivers for the umpteenth time and I wanted to ask how you do such an amazing job creating a unique voice for all of your characters?

For instance, there’s an obvious distinction between the vocabulary and speech pattern Pamela would utilize in conversation versus Tresor (if you hadn’t guessed, I’m currently watching their amazing scene in episode 15). But there’s also an obvious difference between Raven’s dialogue and Reign’s. So when scripting, how do you make sure each character retains their distinct personality through their speech? I think that’s the hardest thing for me and makes me so dissatisfied with my own process.

You’re amazing and your work is so inspiring, I really hope you know that!

Hellooo! ❤️

First of all, I am so flattered that you like The Rivers (enough to rewatch it too!! Ahh?? I cant even rewatch it😂😂). Thank you! ❤️❤️

The best tip I can give you is to establish every character's background and history (i.e the circumstances they grew up in: from the type of families they had, where they were raised, their financial status, etc). And get diverse with it! Incorporate different ethnicities, races, religions, socioeconomic backgrounds, etc... It'll not only make the process easier, but you'll have 1000x a better cast for it ;)

Take the examples you gave: Raven and Raign. Raign had an amazing childhood and was spoiled by her siblings for the first 18 years of her life (and counting!). With two siblings taking care of her every problem and need, she grew up 1) naiive and 2) struggling to make it on her own in the real world. This is translated in her language (stuttering, apologizing too much, crying at every inconvenience). On the other end of the spectrum, Raven had a tough childhood that started with abandonment. This lead to her being 1) angry (mostly, at life... as she should be) and 2) very defensive (since defending herself is all shes ever known). She also has a serious case of seperation anxiety disorder that translates to jealousy and possessiveness. Another example: Ezra's sense of entitlement comes from being an only child of an overbearing, but wealthy, mother. I think you get what my drift

Really, all you need to do is figure out every character's past and present! Everything else should fall more and more together with every new monologue/dialouge you write. At least, thats what happened with me. And dont get discouraged, pinning a character's voice is hard for just abt anyone. Just, dont jump right into scripting a series before you establish even the most boring details of every character you hope to bring to life.

Hope this helps at all!! Pls feel free to ask followup questions if u need to.

And thank you so much. Comments like this keep me inspired to work on the series, so I hope you know that❤️

[latibulesims]

do you use any of sort of guide when working with animation boxes in your videos? with poseboxes I think keeping the jpg with all the poses does the job, but with animation boxes, once you download too many of them, it's hard to keep track of what type of animations you can find in each box (and hence not knowing when to use them). I hope I'm making sense :/ thank you 😊

Hii! 

You’re making a lot of sense, and I feel you so much. To me, working with animation boxes is usually a mix between memory and an outdated guide:

There are a lot of animations that I use in every episode, or in some cases, in every scene. This includes the basics: sitting, talking, turning around, etc... Those I know where I can find them by heart. But memory alone sometimes doesn’t cut it, because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spent hours trying to find an animation I need but rarely use. So, I really suggest a system, like the one I have for Jaydee’s animations:

Back in 2017, I spent a few hours going through every one of Jaydee’s animation boxes that I’ve since then lost. As I went through them, I wrote down in a Word Document everything that struck my eye as something I’d use for The Foundlings (bowing, jumping, running, hitting, magic animations, etc). Then, I categorized them. It goes something like this (this example is totally on the top of my head, since I can’t open my game atm:

     Hitting animations:

Slapping: Nightlife box > vampire bite > rejecter.

Punching: University box > pillow fight > rejecter.

Another way I categorized my animations is by character. For example, Mitsuko in my series is a Lightning Kitsune. Under her character, I listed a bunch of animations that I thought would work for her character. It looked a little something like this (again, I’m not sure how accurate these are, but you get the picture):

     Mitsuko animations:

Thunder: Seasons box > Weather > lightning > hit by lightning.

Electricity: Freetime box > Servo > Servo malfunction.

Teleport: Bon Voyage box > Far East > teleport.

That seriously helped when I filmed The Foundlings first time around, and it’s definitely something I plan on doing before it’s time to continue filming it. 

Today, I wouldn’t limit the categorization to just Jaydee’s boxes, but would add custom boxes made by amazing sims 2 animators (for example, for the Hitting animations I’d include the fighting animations found in this box).

Hope that helps at all, and let me know if you have any follow up/other questions!<3 Good luck xx

[latibulesims]

Do you actually have to pay to the voice actors?

A lot of voice over work is actually unpaid! Inside and outside the sims community.

Since almost everyone who does sims projects does it for no profit, most sims voice over projects are unpaid (With a few exceptions)! A lot of VAs are happy to voice in your project for practice or experience, you just have to make sure to make it clear going in that your project is unpaid, so there won’t be any miscommunication! :)