#sims 4 pose tutorial

[nsves]

how to make a plus size version of custom poses - tutorial | nsves

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hello! ever since we dropped our cc making resource pack, i've been wanting to do a mini tutorial on how to use our plus size bases. in this video, you'll see me creating a standard pose and converting it to a plus size base. hope this is helpful to new and current pose makers :)

[bomusims]

quick tutorial on how to “copy/paste” poses into another blend file with @vyxated's ea rigplus

for those who have all their poses in separate files like me because there’s no tutorials on it for some reason

DISCLAIMER: this does NOT go over how to make poses, work the rigplus, or navigate blender!!!

// before we proceed, prepare the following:

blend file containing your pose with a timeline window open (hereafter referred to as [BLEND A])

blend file containing the rigplus for the pose to be “pasted” into with an asset browser window open (hereafter referred to as [BLEND B])

// ok let’s get on with the actual tutorial now

in [BLEND A], insert a keyframe with BOTH rigs visible. make sure the normal rig is still selected! (for good measure, i like to clear my keyframes for both rigs to make sure i don’t have any duplicates or anything)

hide the normal rig and select the rigplus. then, in your timeline window, click “copy pose as asset”.

without closing [BLEND A], open [BLEND B]. in your asset browser, switch the library from “all” to “current file”. then on the header, click “asset > paste as new asset”.

hide the normal rig and select the rigplus (again). right click on your newly created pose asset, hit “apply pose”, and profit (don’t forget to keyframe again as you normally would!)

// troubleshooting

i can’t paste the pose as a new asset!

make sure you do NOT close the blend file you’re copying the pose from! leave it open until after you’ve added the pose to the asset library.

when i try to apply the pose, nothing happens!

this is probably because you didn’t have the right rig selected. after inserting a keyframe, make sure the normal rig is hidden and the rigplus is selected when you copy the pose!

// miscellaneous notes

this is the method i figured out when i was making my first all-in-one pose animation. copy-pasting poses as you would with the normal rig doesn't work with the rigplus, so i fiddled around a bit until i came up with this!

dm me or send an ask if you have any questions! i'm certainly no expert, but i'll do my best to help!

@ts4-poses @thefoxburyinstitute

[freezerbnuuy]

How to make a UI Emotion Pose Override

I figured I'd explain how I made the UI Emotions pose overrides for Sims 4. This guide assumes you know how to make a pose and know Blender basics, it just explains how you find the relevant files to override and other little bits. I did search and couldn't find a tutorial for this, but maybe I didn't look hard enough. These aren't too tricky to make, and also for me make a pretty big difference in not having to look at EA animations / poses as much, haha.

You will need Blender, Sims 4 Studio and MCCC for easily achieving the relevant moods for testing.

Go to Animation > Override on Sims 4. Click the Animation button.

Type in ui_mood_ into the search bar and it will bring up all of the mood UI poses, the ones that appear in the bottom left of the screen. a_ui is the Adult poses, c_ui is Child poses. There's also i_ui which I assume is Infant, and p_ui which is Toddler. We'll edit an adult UI pose for this.

Some of them have different names to in-game: Depression - Very Sad, Elated - Very Happy, Fearless - Very Confident, In the Zone - Very Focused, Miserable - Very Uncomfortable, Pumped - Very Energised, Frustrated - Very Tense, Passionate - Very Flirty, Imaginative - Very Inspired.

This is an example from the Sims Wiki, even though this doesn't look too exaggerated on this particular example, I always thought this expression seemed a bit too cheery for some of the small things Sims get +1 happy about. (Hey, if we can't be happy then neither can any of our pixel dolls.) So let's find the one labelled 'happy' a_ui_mood_happy_x and open it. Leave the dropdown as Adult Female, then click Export and save the .blend file.

Open it in Blender, and then press 5 on the NumPad to set it to Ortho view. Now you have to try and move the view around to get the 3d viewpoint as close as possible to the rough viewpoint of the appearance of the emotion in-game. Use a screenshot of the Emotion as reference.

Once you have a similar enough viewpoint (this is more or less at the same angle as the UI pose), then make sure you Save and I recommend naming this file 'BASE' or something. This way, if you want to make more than one emotion override for the different emotions. Saves having to find the correct 'view' for every exported pose. Now it's time to make your pose!

Limitations to bear in mind: - You can't have anything that is too far forwards, like a hand reaching forward or something or it will cut off those parts (I tried a pose with the hands facing right the way forward for the 'possessed' emotion for a kind of 'grabbing at the viewer' effect, and they just are invisible if you do that) and you have to keep the arms relatively close to the body or they will also be cut off in-game if they are out to the sides too much.

This is the one I made, which is much more subtle and more suitably 'normal happy'. This tutorial assumes you know how to make a pose, so LocRot and lock in the pose on the 0th frame. Save, then go back to Sims 4 Studio, Import on the same screen you Exported the .blend on, import the new pose .blend file, then Save. Then put the .package in your Mods folder.

After that, you need to go to My Documents / Electronic Arts / The Sims 4 (or your equivalent on your computer). In this folder you'll see a file called localthumbcache.package. Delete it, otherwise you won't see your new pose in-game since it stores the emotion thumbnails.

Once you've done that, boot the game. With MCCC, if you shift-click a Sim it should give you an option to Cheat Emotions if you need to (you can use these multiple times to get the level of emotion you need depending on what Emotions you've made overrides for) to test how it looks in-game.

The top left is the new, more subtle Happy pose which I greatly prefer. The rest are examples of other poses that are part of my (free) UI Pose Overrides. The 'Very Happy' gives you an idea of the space you have and where the 'cut-off' points are.

You can easily take the overrides out without issues as well if you change your mind or want to try out new ones, you just need to delete the 'localthumbcache' package each time you add or delete a pose override so it can 'reset' the portrait images and show the right poses.

[wistfulpoltergeist]

How to make poses for Luumia Height Slider! (Tall Sim)

I promised this tutorial to @aniraklova, so here you go, sunshine! (I also meant this tutorial to pose makers, so they would created more poses for me:D)

You'll need:

+ Base knowledge in making poses for Sims 4 (this isn't a tutorial about how to make poses for Sims 4, so it will be perfect for someone who already created/creates poses for the Sims 4)

+ Base knowledge in Sim Ripper (Again this isn't a tutorial about how to Rip the Sim, but we will use Sims 4 Ripper)

+ Sims 4 Ripper

+ Sims 4 Studio

+ 3 sims. Sim with average height, sim with tall height (Arwin here has the max height) and his double with average height.

1. Rip 3 these sims and import them into Blender where you already prepared 2 rigs for your couple poses.

2. Select b__ROOT_bind__ bone on the average height clone of your tall sim, then scale it and move it up to fit the size of the tall sim.

3. Fit it the best you can (up or down), but DON'T move it back or forward. Yeah, there will be a weird gap (tall version of your sim will be more moved back) that may cause some problems in the future, but... just don't think about it for now.

4. Now you're ready to make poses! NOTE THAT ONLY AVERAGE HEIGHT SIM CAN MOVE AROUND. It's imortant for b__ROOT_bind__ bone of the tall sim stay as it is. You can only rotate it, but once you fit it up into your tall sim, don't move it anymore up or down.

5. Ok. The pose is done!

6. Before you saved it, select b__ROOT_bind__ bone of your tall sim, click Pose, choose Clear Transform, click Location.

7. Now your tall sim will be slightly sinking down to the ground. It's important to let him to!:D

8. Then Select all bones and LocRot it. LOCROT.

9. Now you can save your poses and import it to the game!

Not bad, huh? It's still a tricky little poo, I know. Mb someone knows or will find better way - that would be awesome! But so far it's the only way I know.

It's not necessarily to be one tall sim, you can pick lots of Sims with different height, just remember to move down (or up if they're small) their b__ROOT_bind__ bones once you've done posing.

Hope it was helpful!

Have fun!

[musthavemods]

Sims 4 Group Poses

Squad pics or it didn’t happen. These Sims 4 group poses make it easy to stage silly hangouts, vacation snapshots, and glossy magazine-style shoots with friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Grab Andrew’s Pose Player and the Teleporter, and what kind of scene are you shooting first? 👉 Read More At MustHaveMods.com

[rebouks]

I've put together a few tips that I've learnt during my pose making escapades. I hope they'll come in handy!

My best piece of advice is just to mess around yourself. You don't even have to make anything useable at first, but you've gotta give yourself time to get used to how Blender feels.. the controls, how stuff moves etc. Give it a chance!

Useful titbits: Under "View" on the righthand side, change the Lens from the standard 35,000 to 250,000. It'll change it from a weird fisheye perspective to something that looks a bit more normal. It especially makes working with the face much easier.

The two tiny clipboards with left and right arrows at the bottom are where you can copy/paste a pose (this'll come in handy later!)

When you open a rig the pivot points are set to Median Point. Change this to Individual Origins (you can do this by clicking the two little white circles at the bottom as you can see below). That way the joints move according to their.. individual origins. Surprise! This means when you move multiple points at once, like the eyes or the knuckles, they move as one but act as though you were moving them separately. It avoids any weirdness, trust me!

Personally, I avoid reference pictures. I find moving my own body (or making my poor husband my muse) is much better. If that means getting into a weird position on the floor or pretending to throw something in the middle of the living room, fine. Maybe close your blinds though...

Move, Rotate & Adjust Height: First of all, make sure you're in pose mode! For the most part, we want to use the rotate feature for the body (press R for rotate or select rotate from the bottom menu. To reset a joint, press ALT+R... If you want to reset the whole body, press A twice to select all the joints, then press ALT+R) and move (press G for move or select move from the bottom menu. To reset, press ALT+G) for the face. If you move the body too much it looks distorted and we don't want that! Same for the face, you can use rotate subtly but use it too much and you'll end up in uncanny valley.

You can adjust the height of sims by using the points shown next to the dots below; try and move each one only a little bit, up or down, to avoid stretching the sim out too weirdly. You can also use the ankles, but not if you've set up an Inverse Kinematic joint on them (we'll get to that soon).

Only move your sim via the pelvis point. Do not touch the orange dot! If you do your sim might not pose in correlation to where you place your teleporter. Also try not to let your sim go below the horizontal line, otherwise they'll clip into the floor! (If you line your view up just right the line appears grey as below, otherwise it's either green or red depending on where you're facing). Leave a lil' gap for shoesies. In fact, you should leave gaps in most places to allow room for clothes etc. So don't make the sim directly touch their leg for example, or their hand will clip into their pants!

Joint Locking: I always work with the bottom two knuckle joints locked on every finger, we don't want any demented fingies! I also lock the jaw point, so no matter which direction I'm facing when I move it, it'll only ever move up or down. You can always unlock them if you're trying to achieve a certain look, but for the most part we don't want them moving in any other way.

Select the joint/joints (you can select multiple joints at once by either pressing C and dragging the mouse over the points, or by pressing B and dragging a box over them) and lock W, X & Y. Once you've done this, save your rig! That way, you won't have to do it every time.

Inverse Kinematics: I have these set up for each leg, arm, finger and thumb to save time. It means that when you move the bottom joint (eg. the finger tip, wrist or ankle) the whole limb moves with it. It's especially useful for the thumbs & arms since they tend to behave themselves better. Stick with three for the thumb, fingers and ankle joints.. with the wrist point, you can go up to four and it'll include the clavicle joint too. Though it's a fussy one, so I prefer to move this alone for the most part. You can always change it temporarily if you want!

To do this, click on the lil' bone with a chain underneath on the right side, as below, and choose Inverse Kinematics. Then change the Chain Length to 3. Save your rig again so you don't have to set everything up next time!

Be especially careful when using this method to move the fingers as it'll throw out those locked joints we mentioned earlier! I really only use these ones to move them ever so slightly.

Also, be careful when using it to move the legs (and sometimes the arms) as they can be unpredictable! It's best to rotate the joints separately to give it an idea of what you're going for, then use the joint to move the limb into a more natural position. You can see underneath how demented it can look if you don't give it a general idea before you start... I used the exact same movement here on the left/right (slightly up and to the left) but the right one started with the knee bent.

Ripping off EA: Use EA animations to save yourself some time! Almost any animation in game can be found/used. To do this go to the Sims 4 Studio > create a new animation > save the package (I called mine RIGBASE) > open it in S4Studio and choose your rig (eg. female, male, child etc.) and pick "EA Clip" > find an animation to work from > export and save the pose > open the pose in blender. You can work from here, or you can copy the pose (press A twice until all points turn blue, then click on the left clipboard at the bottom to copy it) paste it onto your own rig and work from there instead.

This method is super helpful when you're a beginner, or for more tricky body positions. There's no point wasting time, faffing around posing the rig into a kneeling position when there's a perfectly good base you can work from.

Frankenposing: In a similar vein to the above, frankenposing can also save a huge amount of time. So, you've got two poses.. let's say one stood up and one sat down. You want the emotion/arm movements from the standing pose, but you can't be arsed making them sit down. No worries! Copy the top half (press C to select several points at once or B to click and drag) and paste it onto a previous pose you've made (or ripped off EA.. heh). Adjust accordingly and voila!

Move slowly: If you want your sim to bend over, lean to the side, look up etc etc.. you can't just snap their neck/spine or whatever. You've got to work your way down/up to it. Eg. Your sim's looking up; so start from the bottom of the spine, tip it back a bit, move to the middle, tip it back a bit... Right up until you get to the neck. This is where moving your own body comes in handy! 9 times out of 10 we don't just move one body part.

So let's say your sim wants to touch their noggin'. Don't just grab the wrist and try and drag their arm up to their head, it won't look right. First, adjust the clavicle upwards a bit. Then you can grab your wrist and move the arm into a rough position. Rotate your elbow and pose your fingies (you can adjust them more perfectly later, we just need an idea to begin with). Now you should be able to lift the arm and it won't look demented.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hope all these tips help you out, I promise you'll get better with practice! I plan to make another tutorial about using custom rigs at some point. Maybe one for facial expressions too. Happy posing ❤

[sims4studioofficial]

New Tutorial : Make a Sims 4 Pose for Absolute Beginners

A new tutorial has been added at Sims 4 Studio that discusses how to make the actual pose itself in Blender.  This tutorial is aimed at absolute beginners and it covers navigating in Blender, positioning the model, using the animation timeline to create multiple poses in a single .package, and setting keyframes.

Additionally, it includes helpful tips for creating good poses and provides other information about posing in Sims 4.

All questions about basic Sims 4 poses made with Blender and Sims 4 Studio are welcome in the tutorial thread.

Read it here:

Sims 4 Poses For Absolute Beginners