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Hi! Sorry to bother but I just wanted to ask you - Is there a tutorial on how to create snow ball you did with Bella and Mortimer? I have an idea to make functional snow globe Snowy snowy man from the Store

Hello! you’re not a bother at all!

You can use my snowglobe if you like! All you have to do is replace the mesh and make sure that the snow texture is at the same spot as in my textures. You might want to turn them arounf though because….: http://greenplumbboblover.tumblr.com/post/143503487165/have-a-wip-just-need-to-change-the-direction-of

So just turn the UV map around in case you have that issue.

BUT! since you wanted a tutorial on how to do it, this is one way to do it without having to clone my object!

Things you wanna use:

TSRW: CLICK ME!

Some basic TSRW knowledge!

I won’t explain the meshing/export bits. I will explain how to use groups in this tutorial though! Like duplicating them in TSRW. And uhm… some stuff that most people don’t know about which is the reason I’m writing this tutorial as well! :D

1. Boost up your TSRW and select a decoration piece (I usually go with the Cowplant) You could use the tissue box as well but that one is not recolourable, although you can give it a mask when importing it in TT3 (texture tweaker)… aand i’m rambling again!

2. Usually you want to check how many groups that you might have! Let’s take a look!:

- Allright group 0 is the shadow map, so that makes one group.

- Group 1 is the glass, though if you look closely you can see that I used 2 spheres, this is because I wanted a glass shader, and glass shaders don’t really like textures, so I usually try to avoid that. So make sure the outer sphere is the glass one

- Group 2 is the inner sphere. This sphere will have the animated snow!

- And group 3 (Which I selected) is just that one group that doesn’t need anything special

Now you don’t have to do it in this order, in fact it’s just a small explanation about why I grouped certain things this way, and why there are 2 spheres.

3. ‘But how do I find an object with 4 groups?!’ Simple! You don’t! BUT! That doesn’t mean that you can’t do it yourself! In order to get more groups, you want to select the group that uses your mesh. NEVER the shadow map!

In this case, Group 1 is the non-shadow map mesh, so I want to duplicate that one. But there are cases where Group 0 is the non-shadow map mesh. So do check if it’s the right one!

Click yes when the pop up message pops up!

4. Duplicate it 2 times since we have 4 groups!

Your mesh tab should look like this:

- Now import your mesh and your textures!

5. THE GLASS SHADER Let’s add some shaders! I’ll start with the glass shader, so go to the group that needs the glass shader and click on ‘material’ and the 3 dots button, now another window should pop up.

- Expand the ‘shader’ tab. It should be set to ‘phong’ or ‘phong alpha’ by default, but we want to change it to either ‘glass for objects’ or ‘glass for objects translucent’. I usually go with Glass object and delete most of the things TSRW generates after it will ask you if it could fill the recommending settings. So make sure you delete anything but not these settings:

(In case you’d want to know how to delete certain settings, just right click on the thing you want to delete and select ‘remove’.)

-Select the ‘Done’ button

6. THE ANIMATED TEXTURE’S SHADER

Aaaand there we are! Let’s make some animated snow! :D Let’s go to the group that you want to give an animated texture

- Go to the shader/material tab again by clicking that 3 dots button again.

- Switch it to Phong alpha and click ‘Yes’ to make the changes.

- Make sure you keep the settings listed here:

(NOTE: Your Diffuse map will show you the multiplier that all groups share, I’ll explain later on how to make an individual diffuse map, it’s okay to delete the diffuse map as well, we’ll be adding this one).

7. BUT WHAT DO I DO IF SOMETHING’S MISSING? LIKE FOR EXAMPLE, AVERAGE COLOR?!

Weelll lemme tell you the secrets of shader settings! :D So, ever strumbled across this page?: http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Sims_3:Shaders

And you were like ‘What the hell is this all suppose to be?’ or did you close the page because ‘AAH TO MANY NUMBERS’? Well this page is pretty interesting when you’re working with shaders and the settings that we’ve been removing. Right now we’ll be adding some! :D

“But… but… what does it all mean?!” Let’s get started!

Let’s scoll all the way to ‘phong’ and let’s take a look at all those numbers and settings:

All right so you can ignore the IDs. They might be interesting for some people, but not in this case. The things that ARE interesting however are the names and types.

- Names

You might recognize some of the names, like bloomfactor. It’s in our TSRW’s shader list’s settings! But we’re also looking at some settings that aren’t in there. Those settings are compatible with the ‘Phong’ shader. For example, Phong has ‘Transparency’ and in the ‘Simskin’ shader it isn’t listed. This is because transparency isn’t compatible with the ‘Simskin’ shader. Bummer, I know right? But you can always switch it to a shader that is compatible with transparency! Like simhair, and the phong and the phong-alpha shader, etc.

So that’s why the names are important, and to find the correct shader in TSRW’s list which we will soon discuss.

- Types

Types are really hard to explain if you don’t have the correct window in front of you. But the types are REALLY important. Because, it will show you the correct settings for when you want to add a settings. so let’s move on to actually adding stuff!

- Adding

- Click the +add button:

Look! Another window! :D

Did you recognize the ‘Type’? It’s exactly what you think it is! Imagine the ‘Property’ to be name, because it really is just that. And the name values are part of the ‘Type.

All right, so let’s add some shader settings. First I want to look at the shader list, and remember the shader setting we want to add. In this case, we want to add a texture! :D

- So let’s expand the ‘Property’ and find the Diffuse map and click it:

But now it’s time to freak out! Because when you expand the ‘Type’ button, and look up the type that the shader setting has, you’ll notice there is not texture listed. No! Don’t freak out! It took me a while to get the correct settings for this as well- hell I had to ask someone if they knew, and this is the correct type for textures:

But TSRW won’t let you go until you change the Num values! Why are they there? Well, let’s take the ‘DiffuseUVSelector - Float3′ for example. ‘Float’ Is a type, so you want to choose that one as a ‘type’. But what’s the 3 for? Well, see for yourself! Because when you expand the ‘Num values’ you’ll see a 3!

So your property would be ‘DiffuseUVSelector’, your type would have been ‘Float’ and your ‘Num values’ 3!

(if it just says ‘Float’ or if there is no number, just choose 0)

But what about textures? You want to set those to 4! So for textures (Yes all textures, masks, specular maps, overlay, multiplier, etc). Your setting should always be this (besides the property of course):

Soooo why are we adding a new Diffuse map after deleting the original one?

Well we want to have an individual image for the snow! :D Nobody wants the face of Mortimer and Bella (Or something else) to scroll/animate across the entire glass! D: We want snow! :D

- Click OK!

So too lazy to make your own snow? Well here is the snow texture: http://simfileshare.net/download/144111/

So you can either use this texture or maybe another texture! But I would recommend using a 1024x1024 sized one with snow flakes (Or maybe even flowers!)

- Import your image in the diffuse map we just created!

8. Animate your texture!

Phew that was long! But let’s get to the exciting part! The reason why I explained how to add stuff is not just because of the Diffuse map, but we also need a ‘Uv scoll speed’ setting. Usually it’s set as 0, which means you have a non-moving/animating texture. But, when you change the values to 0.2, it will scroll for 0.2 seconds. My snowglobe is set as 0.126.

BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE! So, 0.126;0 is what you’ll see when checking my settings, but the ‘;’ is more like a ‘wall’ or like a line. I’m not sure if you are familiar with the X and Y axis in general (it will come back to you when you’re familiar with UV mapping or meshing) But the X axis is the horizontally line (Left, right) and the Y is the vertically (Up, down). So in this case the 0.126 is the X axis and the 0 is the Y axis.

Now I didn’t know how to fix the snow for going horizontally after looking at it after the release of the TS2 to TS3 set. In fact, I turned the UV map around even though I didn’t had to, so I thought it would be nice to share that with you!

- Add the UV scroll speed with it’s correct settings

- Change the value to 0;0.126 (or maybe another value, you can always play around with it! 0.2 is super speed! Check out @davidmont‘s awesome twinkle lights! You can create awesome things with uv speed scroll: https://davidmont.tumblr.com/post/71243029766/here-david-once-again-twinkly-twinkly-strange

And you’re basically done! :D That’s how you make an animated snowglobe with infinite snow!

Let me know if you have any questions! Sorry for the long texts. >-<

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