Beginner Blender Tutorial Basic Render: Part Two (Posing Our Sim, & Setting up a Scene)
(Continued from Part One)
Welcome back!
In this tutorial, we'll be posing our sim & setting up our scene!
For this tutorial, you'll need Sims 4 Studio, which you can download here!
Step 1: Exporting Poses for Blender
Before we can pose our sim in blender, we need to prepare the pose. I'll be using this pose set by @roselipaofficial for this render! Download your pose and open it in Sims 4 Studio. Click "Clips" at the top
For my render, I'm going to use Pose #3 When you select your pose, the Clip Name will change (Each creator names their poses differently) Before we export, make sure you're set to the right rig! Blender does terrifying things if you export to the wrong rig. I'm posing an Adult Female sim, so we're good to go! Export the pose and save it somewhere that's easy to find! Now let's go back to Blender
Step 2: Posing Our Sim
In Blender, click on "Pose" in your Outliner Then hover over your sim/3D viewport area and hit I on your keyboard (not L) to open the Keyframe menu Select "Location & Rotation"
In your right-side workspace, change your editor type (window) to Nonlinear Animation This is where we'll pose our sim!
You'll see rig and rigAction. Click the little dropdown arrow next to rigAction, then you'll see a highlighted orange track
Now let's add in our pose Click File -> Append and navigate to where you saved your pose Double click your pose file, then elect the "Action" folder Double-click the file that comes up under "Action," that's your pose
It'll appear as though nothing happened... but it did! In your Nonlinear Animation window, click "Add" and select "Add Action Strip" Make sure your rigAction line is highlighted orange like mine is!
Select the Roselipa pose we added from the list, and TA DA! Our sim is posed!
Step 3: Setting up our Scene
I always add in my camera before doing anything else, that way I can adjust as necessary based on what I want the final render to look like. To add in a camera, you can either select "Add" in the top bar of your 3D viewport window, or hit Shift+A on your keyboard and select "camera"
You'll see that a camera has been added to our Outliner, and we can see it in our 3D Viewport (If you still have a lamp in your Outliner like I do, go ahead and delete it now, we don't need it)
I personally like to move my camera around in real time so I know where it's going. To switch to camera view, click the little camera icon in the right toolbar of your 3D Viewport You'll see that our camera is in a weird spot, but that's ok we're going to fix it
I want a portrait, so I'm going to switch the resolution settings. To do this, go to Output Properties and change the resolution values. The default is 1920x1080, but I like higher resolution renders personally, so I'm changing mine to 2080x2920. Only go up in resolution if your computer can handle it!
Now let's move our camera I like to use the Axis directions on my keyboard to get the camera where I want it Select your camera in the Outliner, then hover your mouse over the 3D Viewport Using the "G" key (the shortcut for move), combine G and "X, Y, or Z" on your keyboard to move the camera where you want it This will be fiddly at first but you'll get better with practice! I've set my camera up like this:
For basic portrait renders, I like to just use lights and a simple cube Remember the default cube we deleted in the beginning, we're going to bring it back now Add it in the same way as the camera, either by selecting "Add" in the top menu and choosing Mesh -> Cube, or by pressing Shift+A on your keyboard and selecting Mesh -> Cube I use keyboard shortcuts, so I'll add mine with Shfit+A like so:
You'll probably have something like this, your sim floating in a box
Use the same method you did to move the camera ("G" plus axis directions (X,Y,Z) to move it up and use "S" on your keyboard to scale it up To scale up, hit "S" then move your mouse outward Then center the box over your sim We want to have something like this:
Click into Camera view (click the camera on the right) and you should have something like this:
In Part 3, we'll adjust our render settings, add lights, and render!
I'd wanted to include those in part two, but Tumblr is yelling at me about my photo limit.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below and I'll help as best I can!
