Custom Rig / SimRipper Tutorial
Hi hello, welcome to todays lecture! Nah it's real simple even if it doesn't look it, I promise! I'm gonna go ahead and assume you have some basic knowledge of Blender/pose making for this tutorial, so I won't be going over how to set up your rigs or anything. Feel free to ask me any questions though! My previous pose tutorial is here if that's what you're looking for.
Disclaimer: I use this process to rip sims for posing only, idk if it's different for making renders 'cause that I ain't my jam. Although I assume it's pretty similar.
You're gonna need Blender (I use 2.79b but I'm pretty sure the newer version works okay for posing too) and SimRipper which you can get here...
Blender (2.79b) SimRipper
First things first, you're gonna wanna dress your sims! Just go in game like you usually would and once you're done dressing 'em you can save and exit. Hint: SimRipper will load up your sim wearing the outfit they're dressed in when you exit the game. I usually make sure they're wearing the right outfit before I quit. You can load up other ones later but it can take a while so it just saves some time.
Okay! Once your simmies are dressed and you've downloaded the SimRipper/extracted the file, double click on the .exe to open the application. You'll be greeted with this:
Click "Retry" to set up the correct paths then hit save. (I only needed to set up the first one so I'll assume you do too! If not just let it know where everything's installed)
Once you've hit save the application will open! Hit "Select" on the right and choose the correct save file, like so:
Hint: SimRipper is slow so don't worry if it says Not Responding or seems to take a while, it's pretty normal. The less sims/outfits there are in a save file, the quicker it'll work. You can make a blank save to make it faster but I don't bother; it doesn't take too long and I can't be arsed. You'll be greeted with a long list of all the sims in that save file. Find and click on the sim you wanna rip:
Once your sim has loaded up there's a couple of things we wanna change:
Change the top drop down menu to "Solid and glass meshes and textures" - this'll make it easier to get rid of eyelashes etc later (we don't really need those for posing and they get in the way of the eyes)
Click HQ - it'll look better, trust me!
You can change their outfit here too if they're not wearing the right one - though it'll take a while to load up again.
I like to hit the "Tanned" option, especially for paler sims, since blender seems to really wash them out and it hurts my eyes 😂 - personal preference though!
Once everything's set you'll need to click on "DAE" near the top right, this'll save your sim as a .dae file ready for blender. Again, it might take a while! Once you're done, you should have these files:
Okie doke! Now we're off to Blender. Open up your rig and click the little plus to the left of it to extend the menu. You're gonna right click on each of these body parts like "bottom" "feet" etc etc and hit delete until they're all gone.
Once you've deleted every body part, you'll be left with an empty rig like this:
Now that our rig is empty, we can import our .dae file! Go to "File" -> "Import" -> "Collada (Default) (.dae) like so:
Find your .dae file and double click on it to import it. Hint: I like to make a separate folder for my .dae files and I regularly delete 'em once I've saved my rig. I like tidy files!
Hi Oscar! I'mma go ahead and right click on this extra lamp that was imported and hit delete 'cause I don't need it! You can keep it if your eyes aren't sensitive little babies like mine, it doesn't matter much.
Okay.. so now we should have a "rig" and a "rig.001"! Click the little plus signs to the left again so you can see what's in the hierarchy of each one, and then:
Click the upside down orange triangle of your sim from the "rig.001" rig and drag it up to the first one, then drop it on top of "rig"
A box should come up like the one below and you wanna click on "Object"
All we've done here is move Oscar (or whoever) from the extra imported rig to the original. We don't need that extra rig or the glass textures (the eyelashes etc) anymore so get rid of it by right clicking it and hitting "Delete Hierarchy" like so: Hint: "Delete Hierarchy" is different from "Delete" and gets rid of the whole hierarchy (shocker) at once!
I like to rename my rigs, it can get complicated when you start posing more than one sim so naming them just makes it easier. Double click on where it says "rig" then rename it:
Now we need to attach your sim to the rig, as below!
Left click on the sim (aka "OscarFinch" in this case)
Head to the toolbar just below and click on the little wrench/spanner.
A little further down, click on the box beneath "Object:" and choose your sim/rig
In this case it's called "OSCAR", but if you didn't rename your rig it'll still be called "rig".
And that's it, you now have a custom rig 👍 Just make sure you save it!
You can go ahead and click on the little plus/minus to hide the drop down/extra info of the rig and start posing! \o/
Once you've done this a couple of times you won't even have to think about it anymore! I do it almost everyday and I had to really pay attention to what I was doing for this tutorial 'cause I was like ??? when I tried to think how I do it lmao.
They're so much more fun to work with than the base rigs, no more clipping, better facial expressions, poses with clothes in mind?! Amazing 😌
Extra Hint! If you rip a sim who's dressed with a pose accessory assigned to a stigmata joint, it'll still move as if you imported that accessory via blender. I randomly found this out by accident but it might save you some time!
I hope you found this easy enough to follow, but lmk if you have any questions! I think this is one of those things everyone kinda does a bit differently. Like.. one tut I saw you had to add the textures in separately n' shit? Idk that one confused me so this is how I do it and it works, so I hope it does for you too! ❤
Happy SimRipping! (sounds kinda painful, doesn't it? ouch)