Shutpe

Shutpe, 21,Thailand, WCIF friendly :)

[aheyu-deactivated20251220]

【阿和aheyu】20250703FPOSEA9

DL(Miembro gratuito)

✧8 poses+ all pose collection

✧In-game

-Thanks to all cc creators

-Do not pass it off as your own, do not steal, do not re-upload

[goldfishts4]

School Yearbook

Files:

1. PSD template 2-4. Fonts used

Example of use:

The first line is your name The second line is your sim's quote

Boosty (free) : download (psd files)

(I would appreciate it if you tag me as an author)

[salemsimsrender]

Sims 4 Render Lighting Tutorial

"Environmental Lighting" won my most recent poll, so let's get right into it!

A few notes before we begin:

I render exclusively in cycles!

This tutorial assumes some basic knowledge of blender

Though this tutorial covers the basics, HDRIs can be used in conjunction with any scene/your built scenes

I decided to focus on environmental and other lighting in this tutorial, since they all kind of go hand in hand.

For this tutorial, I'll be using my recent Cupid Sim. Here's a render of her with no additional lighting:

1. Base lighting

In any full body, single sim render (like lookbooks, for example), I really like to use a glowing base. It grounds the sim a bit and casts some interesting lighting on them.

To do this, I add a circle under their feet by pressing shift+A and selecting circle.

An empty circle will appear, but we need it to be a solid disk, so go into Edit mode (by pressing tab while the circle is selected) then hitting F on the keyboard to fill it.

After that, you can go into the Materials tab and add in color and glow.

Mine is adjusted like this:

And gives this rendered result:

2. HDRIs

HDRIs (High Dynamic Range images) are extremely useful when it comes to environmental lighting, I always use them now to add better/more dynamic lighting to my renders.

HDRIs are 3D/panoramic, which makes them extremely useful.

You can find/download HDRIs online in a few diff places: PolyHaven, AmbientCO, and Blender Market.

There are also several available for FREE using BlenderKit (my preferred method).

So how do you use an HDRI?

We can add HDRIs to our render by navigating to the world tab and changing the color to "environment texture".

I chose this vaporware HDRI from BlenderKit, & here it is with no adjustments, but it's looking a little rough so let's adjust it.

By adding vector nodes, we can adjust how the HDRI behaves. Here I mostly use the Z rotation and the background strength:

Here's the same render with the Z-rotation set to 50, 150, 200, & 250.

You can put in any value for the Z-rotation, this is just an example of how the HDRI turns. This is maybe not the best example of the rotation, but putting her in a forest just didn't feel right lmfaooo, hopefully you can see how the light changes on her depending on the rotation.

You can also adjust the strength of the HDRI. Here's the HDRI (rotated to 150) set at .5 and 1.5 strength:

For this tutorial, my favorite lighting is the HDRI set to 150, and the strength set to .5, like this (this is a rendered image):

3. Transparent HDRIs + Point Lights

But I'm not fully happy with the lighting. I don't love how the HDRI is a bit blurry, so I'm going to set it to be transparent.

To do this, go to the Render Tab, scroll down to the Film option, and check Transparent:

The lighting effect from the HDRI will stay the same, but the background will be transparent.

From here, you can add a background (when I do this, I like adding a plane, & moving/shading it until I'm happy (kinda like this):

NOTE that you have to put the plane far enough behind your sim so it doesn't affect the HDRI lighting too much.

SECOND NOTE You can use this same method to use HDRIs in conjunction with scenes. They can provide the perfect backdrop!

This is still really dark, so I'm going to add three point lights: -Two on either side of her head/shoulders that will be smaller (in radius) and brighter -One in front of her to add actual light (so details aren't lost)

Here's how I set up my lights.

The pink light settings are for the two point lights on the sides The white light setting is for the light in front of her

For a basic render, this is almost good enough for me, but I really like the glowing effect I get in my renders.

To achieve this, we have to go to the compositing tab:

4. Compositing

Full disclosure, my compositing tab is set to glow by default (that's how much I love it), so all of the renders in this tutorial have it turned on.

I use the glare node and set it to fog glow.

Here's my preferred setting:

I prefer the fog glow effect, but bloom, ghost, streaks and star are also options.

Here's a guide to the glare node!

Tbh, I never use any of the other settings, so I'll leave this tutorial here for today.

Here's the final result (with no additional editing):

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to send an ask, message or join my discord (no minors pls) for help! <3

[adelarsims]

Tutorial: fixing pants/shirts texture overlapping

friend requested this but i figured someone else might find it useful :)

so you know how sometimes you put pants and shirts together and they do this godawful thing?

that's a shirt problem. it happens when the creator uses a tucked in top as a package base but makes an untucked top mesh and doesn't change this setting. when a skirt/pants and top textures overlap on a texture map, the game considers the shirt tucked in and puts the texture of the pants over it.

luckily, it's a super easy fix!

you'll need a Sims 4 Studio and a mean to locate your shirt file. open the file with Studio by clicking on "my projects".

after you open the file, switch to the warehouse tab and sort by type for your convenience, because you only need "CAS part" here. click on a CAS part and scroll the right part almost all the way down until you see sort layer.

sort layer is, to put it simply, a priority of a texture. bigger number, bigger priority, texture goes above textures with lower numbers.

sort layer for tucked in tops is 13000. sort layer for untucked tops must be 16000. change it to 16000. do the same with each CAS part. it might be tedious if your top has a lot of swatches.

after you finish, click save.

now checking the result in the game... success!

---

UPD: You can also do the opposite, if you have a top in a form of a bodysuit and it goes over your pants, just change 16000 for 13000 to tuck it in.

[qvoixcc]

okay so uhm, hours ago a nonny asked about long skirt mesh or smth. idk if this would help but I decide to go ahead n share with what I know/have learned so far and here’s a vid of me working on my meshes… I guess. (idek if thats the right title for it .-.) ALSO, credits to this amazing babe @owl-plumbob​ cos I stumble across the tutorial which u can find n read here (ITS AMAAAZINGGG! FOREAL!) The video is basically of me doing the steps from that post so you guys should really read it LOL but I also kinda added bits & bobs here and there. idk if its considered the “right” way (references to the bits n bobs i did) or not but it seems to work for me and that’s how I get my meshes to work. I am still learning too so, youknow. (pffft who am i kidding) *hides in cave*   uhm, I think that’s it from me. I’m not sure what else I’m suppose to type here to be honest partly because what i wanted to say is already written in that post so you know. check it out i guess. yep okay cya guys.  note: i messed up a bit on 02:00 lol so u guys can just skip ahead to 03:58 ish. also, this is more of a rant from me but I usually don’t overlapping my uvs together like that part i did with the sleeves which u guys will probably see in the video. i usually do it side by side if it’s a longer sleeve or use the extra slots but I kinda wanted to test it out this time and since i was working on this i thought, eh mind as well but feel free to correct me LOL. oh and another tip, while in uv map, when you want to rotate precisely… let’s say. 90 degrees. select your uv >press R >type 90 on your numpad >click to confirm and there u go :) andddd you know how sometimes at the end of your clothing mesh there’s this black/gray-like shadow in game? to get it off, select the very end of your meshes, then click the edge select button on the bottom and press ctrl+E and press edge split, that should fix the problem. (references from 12:06 of the video) and uhm.. yeah. ok. this is getting awkward. Thank you for your time :>

[serenity-cc]

Shadow baking / Map Tutorial.

I made a tutorial to help my friend @enriques4​ and wondered: why not share if others? I never make tutorials blaabala… so here I go!

If you don´t know what the shadow map is, IS THE SHADOW THAT CLOTHING / ACC ETC make in the sim. I don´t have images to show the difference so sorry hope you know what I´m talking. 

If you think that shadow map doesn´t make difference yes it does, increases the item quality 10000% much more professional, believe me.

First make sure you have the ´nude top´ under your new mesh, that´s the mesh we will bake.

Select the nudetop mesh, and create a new image for your shadows.

TIP / OPTIONAL: You can add  ´subdivision surface´ to the nudetop mesh, so when the baking gets smoother. It actually doesn´t make tooo much difference, but I thought it would be cool to include this here.

If you want to follow the tip: values between 2/4 are enough to get a smooth mesh. DON´T APPLY THIS MODIFIER!

1. Go to the ´World´ tab and set the ´Environment Lightning´ value to ´2.5. This will make only the top´s shadow appear.

VERY IMPORTANT!

1. Open the rig and make sure all the camera icons are deselected, this option will not let the rig be baked too.

2. Otherwise your bake will appear weird like that.

1. Go the the camera tab.

2. Make sure you set to the ´Ambient Oclusion´ mode.

3. Set the margin to 0.

Now you´re ready to bake :) *-*

In the uv window, go to Image>Save Image As.. and save your shadow image as .png

____________________________________________________________

Open your image in your editing program.

1. Create a new layer

2.3 Paint it white

1.2 Select the parts that aren´t the top shadow, and press delete.

You can add some a little gaussian blur to smooth more the shadows, if you want.

Set the shadow´s layer opacity to 40%. The highest the opacity, more darker the shadow will be. I use 40% for my shadows.

Save your image as a .png/DDS

I use .dds.

After all this, just import it to sims4studio and be happy yyyyaaaaaaaaaaaayy!

NOTE: If you want your cc to be HQ the shadow size needs to be 2048x4096.

hope this helps someone…

[theslyd]

Tutorial: How to bake shadow map for CAS items

NOTE: This tutorial is using a dress and an accessory coat as examples. The method applies to any CAS item that you want to bake its shadow, including necklaces, glasses, hats, rings, bracelets, shoes, clothes of course, etc.

The shadow map draws shadow on the underneath meshes (which could be either a sim body mesh or another CAS item) covered by your item. It adds depth and makes your item a little more realistic. 

Instead of hand-painting it, this tutorial will show you how to use the blender baking to create a ‘correct’ shadow map with just a few steps. 

Please read my tutorial of How to bake shadow for clothing to make sure you understand the basics of baking. This tutorial will not cover some similar steps again.

NOTE: 

This method only works on the mesh where it’s able to tell the sim body from the clothes or accessory you’re making.

It does NOT work if your item is painted on the sim body mesh.

Pt. 1 Your mesh includes part of the sim body mesh, e.g. tops, pants, dresses.

1. Open your mesh with blender, go into Edit Mode and select the faces which belong to the sim body. 

2. Press P key to separate the selected faces into a new mesh. 

Step 1&2 isn’t a must. But it makes the baked result easier to edit later.

3. Select the sim body mesh you just separated.

4. Open the World panel with a globe icon.

5. Check Ambient Occlusion and Environment Lighting.

6. Increase Environment Lighting to 2.5. This will make the shadow darker and shading of the mesh itself (which we don’t need) lighter.

7. Set Samples.

8. Add a new image in 1024x2048 in the UV/Image Editor and Bake in Ambient Occlusion Mode.

9. You should get something like this.

10. Save the baked image.

Pt. 2 Your mesh does NOT include the sim body mesh, e.g. necklaces, acc clothing.

11. Open your mesh in blender, expand the rig tree and select the sim body mesh where the shadow should appear. Note you need to highlight the Eye, the Arrow and the Camera icon to be able to select and bake an invisible sim body mesh.

12. Bake the selected sim body mesh the same way above. And save the baked image.

13. Open the baked image in Photoshop. Add a new layer under the baked image and fill in with pure white.

14. On the baked image layer, use the Eraser tool or Select tool to get rid of the shadow that is not from the item you’re making, e.g. between the fingers and legs.

15. Reduce the Opacity of the shadow layer. You might need to test in game for a few times to get a best result. Please never use a pure black shadow map.

16. In the Channel panel, add an alpha channel. Fill with pure white on the area where your shadow is. The range doesn’t need to be accurate.

17. Save your shadow map into a .dds file and import into your .package file with sims4studio. Test it in game.

[jwofles-sims]

How To Add Transparency to a Clothing (Adding a New Cut)

note - you can view the images in full resolution here

Hiya, this tutorial is on how to add a transparent part of your clothing (and keep the other part as non-transparent). 

I’ll be starting with a dress that only has 1 cut, and I’ll be creating a completely new cut to put the transparent part of the mesh into.

This should work for clothing with any number of cuts, but like always I suggest only using 1 cut clothing to make your life easier. Also I’d like to credit @untraditionalnerd as I used their tutorial as a base for this. 

For your dress to be transparent, you need two things.

A transparent texture, that’s quite straight forward so I won’t go through that here. 

A transparency-enabled mesh/meshgroup - that’s what this tutorial is for!

STEP 1 - blender cuts Go into edit mode, select the parts of the mesh you want to be transparent and press P to separate to a new mesh.

Then change the name (doesn’t affect anything but stops you from going crazy), and change the cut number.

The cut number will be the next number after whatever is already used. For instance, my mesh started with one meshgroup, and its cut number is 0000. Therefore I gave the new mesh a cut of 0001 as it’s the next logical number to use.

If your mesh uses cuts 0000, 0001, and 0002, then you make your new mesh 0003. Simple :-)

STEP 2 - importing geometry & duplicating

Import your .blend with the new meshgroup/cut into s4studio.

Then, go to the warehouse page, and find your LOD0. It’ll be the geometry with the biggest filesize, and you should be able to see your mesh in the preview.

As you can see above, the transparent group is not visible in the mesh preview, don’t worry about this.

First, you need to duplicate this geometry.

When the box pops up to duplicate, change the last character of the group to ‘1’. If that doesn’t work, just try any number/character until it’s accepted.

It doesn’t matter that the filesize of the duplicated geometry is 0b Cool, now we’ve got the base for the transparent geometry. 

STEP 3 - make new geometry simglass

This is a small but vital step. Go to the data section of your new geometry, and change the shader to simglass. This is the transparency shader Sims 4 uses.

STEP 4 - region map editing

This can be tricky so follow closely. On your duplicated/new geometry, go to the data tab, and copy and paste the group, instance and type somewhere because you need these values.

Find your region map, go to edit items, then add a new entry. Select your new entry, enter the cut number that we gave the new meshgroup earlier in the blender step. Keep the regiontype as base.

Next, click the edit items button with your new cut selected. Then add a new model entry, and paste the values that you copied earlier for the new geometry you made into the boxes. Then save the models and entry, and save the region map entry.

This step has created the new cut number in the package, and linked the mesh we duplicated earlier to that cut.

After that, make sure you re-import your mesh. As you can see the transparent part shows up in the 3d preview again, and it also shows up isolated in the new geometry in warehouse which is good (means you’ve done it right).

STEP 5 - adding new geometry to LODs / swatches

This process is much easier if you only have one swatch for the moment (you can add more swatches after this and that’ll be fine), as if you already have multiple swatches you need to do this process for every swatch.

Go to your swatch (cas part), and scroll down till you find the Lods part, and click edit items.

Then, go to level 0 (LOD0), and click edit items. Then add a new entry, and again fill in boxes with the values that you copied earlier for the new geometry (the same ones you used earlier). Once you enter the values, press save.

Ignore in the image that my entry says -000000000-, it just doesn’t update instantly sometimes.

Now your transparent mesh is rendered for LOD0 and you’re actually all done!!…. Except for LOD1, LOD2, and LOD3..  

You now have two options to finish up:

(easy) Use the LOD0 transparent mesh for all LODs.

In the LOD entries, for level 1, 2, and 3, do the same thing for what you did level 0, pasting that same information in. This adds the transparent mesh you made to each LOD.

This means that your LODs will be like normal, except the transparent mesh will stay the same throughout all the LODs (it’ll stay high poly in the lower LODs).

This choice is not as good as the next one, but if you’re not really confident with messing around with this stuff, just do this as it’s easier since bad LODs for one item won’t have a major performance hit.

or..

(hard) Make a seperate LODs for the transparent mesh.

This basically means repeating the whole tutorial for each LOD which can be a lot of work (however trust me when you know the process it gets really easy).

It’s all the same but you duplicate the corresponding LOD geometry for the start, and you when you change the last character of the group, instead of 1 you just use a different number. If you remember the numbers you change it to, when you’re entering all the details into the different entry boxes, you can just copy existing entries, and change the last character of the group to the different numbers you used (that’s what I mean it can get easy when you’re doing the process, and you do like 3-4 meshes at a time).

This is superior choice to the first one, as you’ll have proper LODs, so the transparent mesh will get low poly in LOD 1, 2, 3 etc along with the other part of the mesh (if you imported lower poly meshes for lower LODs).

Andd after that, you should be finished! Woo!

EXTRA NOTES

If your transparent mesh in game has triangles/alpha issues, follow this tutorial (u gotta triangulate and do alpha order).

There are blender instructions in the replies.If your transparent mesh in game is shiny, make sure you have a proper spec map (with no shine) and a normal map (can be a blank normal map, just any normal map).

Make sure you have laptop mode turned off, as this setting disables transparency.

If something didn’t make sense or you want to ask a question, feel free to reply or contact me :)

[qvoixcc]

s4 tutorial: how to fix this problem from clothing meshes

I have absolutely no idea what this issue is called, weight paint? vertex group? spikes? idk, but i think they’re related one way or another.. probably. ok enough rambling. so you’ve made your mesh, everything is perfect but something like this happens. sample ⬇️⬇️⬇️ (second photo is much more common) - in ingame poses/cas/or when your sim moves it’ll appear as if a certain part of the mesh.. looks like that. (I got lazy on opening my game so I’m showing these samples on blender instead but I’m sure you guys get the point)

⬆️⬆️⬆️ when the sim moves their arm/hand in game/cas, that spikey part of the mesh will move along as well, and when u pose, it’ll show as well. same for this below, when your sim raises their arms, their pits area will look spikey cos of the clothing mesh. ⬇️⬇️⬇️

in a way, i guess the problem is something like you’ve got a bit of extra paint part for certain groups that shouldn’t have any to begin with?? sorry, i’m horrible with putting my thoughts to words, let alone sentences. but anyway, additional info on viewing your mesh on the 3d window (which basically is the area your mesh is in):

numpad 5: to toggle perspective/orthographic view

numpad 1: front view

numpad 7: top view

numpad 3: side view

ctrl+alt+Q: quad view

ok lets start~!

ok so first things first; click on your RIG on the right panel and toggle on the eye/cursor view for your RIG.

while you’re still in pose mode; R key to rotate the arms, left click to set it in that pose position. (you’ll be able to immediately see the issue if there’s any like sample ½) - i apparently took this screenie before the error ones.

method also works the same for outfit, bottom, etcetc meshes

next step, select your s4studio_mesh_x on the right panel and then go into weight paint mode.

Z Key to toggle solid/wireframe mode; this might help with the weight-painting but again, totally up to you, whichever works for you.

on the right panel, check on each of your vertex groups to see if there’s any mistake (you can either click on each one of them or with your cursor hovered over that box, press your up/down arrow keys on your keyboard) ———-

Example 1: originally, the weight for R_index0_ is suppose to only happen on the hand part, not the other part as it will cause issues such as these when your sim moves in game/cas.

ok so on the tools panel > brush (left panel) ➡️ ADD brush: to add weight ➡️ SUBTRACT brush: to remove weight

Important!! ➡️ NOTE: for additional info on how the colors work on weight paint; please read this as it has a much more detailed info to help u guys understand how things work around weight paint mode >> link

to fix these issues, use the subtract brush and paint over ONLY the parts that aren’t suppose to be there, not the entirely thing ok!! (for my case, it’s the bottom of the.. top mesh part that’s not wanted)

same method applies for if u see your mesh looking rather ‘flatten’ or something, u use the ADD brush to add some weight onto it. but again, please refer to the weight paint info i linked for more info on how it works.

when you’re done, click on the RIG again (on the right panel) and press A to select all the dots. You’ll know it’s being selected once all the dots are blue.

Press ALT+R to reset the pose position to the default position.

ok, so once you’ve done that, toggle off the eye/cursor view again by clicking on it and go back into object mode. and that’s pretty much it.

save as (make sure it’s save as cos it’ll save ya the trouble & time if something does go wrong) then import to sims4studio. ———-

ok now for the second example. again, same method as example one BUT this time, instead of R_index0_ (again these things varies from whatever mesh you’re working with) select b_R_shouldertwist / b_L_shouldertwist

so yes, like I said, left for left; right for right. meaning when you’re working with b_L_shouldertwist, you’re going to paint/fix the left part only, and when you have b_R_shouldertwist selected, you work on the right part.

another note: you can also change the brush size, weight and strength of how it’ll effect your mesh on the left panel. but again, please check with this link to learn more about how weight-painting works.

remember to save as so that you will not lost your original file in case something messes up, you can always go back to the original.

also, im not an expert; still learning, this is apparently how i fix my meshes so… ya. aight that’s it, hopefully all this makes sense; happy simming~!

[goldfishts4]

School Yearbook

Files:

1. PSD template 2-4. Fonts used

Example of use:

The first line is your name The second line is your sim's quote

Boosty (free) : download (psd files)

(I would appreciate it if you tag me as an author)

[areleksiyamoonlight]

Sims Templates ✨ [1 pt.]

In April, I created a small pack of templates. During my last visit to my heirs, I got a little inspired, and thanks to this, I "got" one template at first. And after that, there was no stopping me!

What did we end up with here?

The "Seasons" template

The "Player" template [The cover can be changed]

The "Dialog Clouds" template

The "Geolocation" and "Geolocation with a map" template [With all cities / The map can be replaced with the one you use]

Boosty (free): download (psd files) [All fonts are in the folder!] Font used: Simlish Lengiza-Regular by gazifu

(I would appreciate it if you tag me as an author)

[jwofles-sims]

How to rig your mesh and make it game-ready (weight transfer, uv_1 & vertex paint)

Hi, I wanted to write this short tutorial on how make your CAS mesh game-ready using Sims 4 Studio & Blender, going over meshgroups, weight transfer, uv_1, and vertex paint. This tutorial assumes some knowledge about blender but it is beginner-friendly.

This applies to any mesh you can make in CAS, from clothes to accessories. 

Prerequisites: You have a new mesh ready, with a UV+texture that fits within the Sims 4 body UV space, and you are using Blender 2.78 or Blender 2.7.

(1) Meshgroups/Cuts

In order for your mesh to show in studio, it has to have the same number of meshgroups/cuts as the .package you cloned has (these are the s4studio_mesh_x meshes in blender). You can check the cut number for a mesh on the scene tab in blender

When creating a new package, I highly recommend cloning a clothing with one cut, as explained in this mini tutorial by @theslyd​​. This saves you from having to cut your mesh up into parts before importing and saves a lot of time.

For some accessories and other items there aren’t options you can clone with one cut, for which you just need to work with and keep the same number of cuts.

(2) Weight Transfer

STEP 1: Append either a nude top/bottom, or reference ea mesh into blender. Most of the time I use the nude meshes to transfer from because it’s easier/quicker. You can download this mesh pack I made that contains all the male and female nude meshes to save time.

You can delete any extra rigs and bone shapes.

STEP 2 (optional): Subdivide the EA mesh, especially important if your mesh is high poly. This isn’t neccessary to do but if your morphs aren’t looking smooth ingame, you need to do this,

STEP 3: Holding shift, select the EA mesh, and then your mesh, and go to weight paint, and on the left side bar (press T if it’s not open), on the tool tab, click the button ‘Transfer Weights’

Make sure ‘Auto Normalize’ is checked before you transfer weights!!!

Skip the next step if you’re using Blender 2.70

STEP 3: After clicking ‘Transfer Weights’, set the Source Layer to ‘By name’, and Destination to ‘All Layers’, and then Click the ‘Clean’ button, and set the Subset to ‘All groups’. 

This procedure fully transfers all the weights, and deletes any weights that are set to 0 (these weights break the animations ingame).

Now your weights are transferred properly and your mesh is rigged to the skeleton, so it will move when your sim moves.

STEP 4 (optional):  If your mesh is oversized or big there may be glitches/bad looking areas.

These are fixed via manual editing, @theslyd​ has tutorial that goes over this, but my advice is that the blur tool is your best friend. I recommend adding the armature modifier to your mesh if it’s not there and linking it to the rig, because then you can pose your mesh in Blender and check for weight glitches without entering the game.

(3) UV_1 Transfer

This REQUIRES Blender 2.78, older versions cannot be used for the uv_1 transfer.

This is also assuming your EA mesh (the one you appended earlier) is still in your blender file after weight transferring.

STEP 1: On the Data tab (the upside down triangle), scroll down to UV maps, create a new UV map and rename it to uv_0.

STEP 2: Select your mesh, go to the modifiers tab and add a Data Transfer modifier.

STEP 3: Make the Source Object the EA mesh, check ‘Face Corner Data Transfer’, click UVs, change All Layers to uv_1, change By Name to uv_1, and then click Apply.

Now your mesh will morph properly ingame when a sim is fat/thin. You can delete the EA mesh now if you don’t need to use it anymore.

For some accessories and parts of meshes, they do not need a uv_1 if you don’t want them to morph with the sim, like the pendant on a necklace, or zips on clothing.

For example, if there’s a zip on your clothes you don’t want to morph, go to the UV editor with the uv_1 selected, and then find where the zip is, press L to select that uv island and then size it down really small. This will make it not morph if a sim is fat/thin, with the rest of the clothing morphing like normal.

(4) Vertex Paint

STEP 1: Select your mesh, and go to the vertex paint mode.

STEP 2: On the left side panel (press T if it’s not there), click the colour box and on the Hex tab, set the colour to 00FF00.

STEP 3: With the green colour entered, press shift+k to colour your entire mesh green. You don’t need any other colours like blue or yellow (as said in other tutorials), it won’t make a difference.

And that’s the vertex paint done! Vertex paint is crucial for your mesh to work ingame with sliders and for the other rigging parts to work, and with that the whole rigging process is finished. 

Your mesh should be ready to use ingame, properly morphing and moving with the sim. I also have a tutorial on LODs if you want to continue finishing your CC for release. LODs are super important for making your CC optimised, and is the other step of making your creation completely game-ready. 

If you need more info or help with common weight and uv_1 issues, I highly recommend @mauvemorn​​‘s tutorials. You can also post on the creator’s help section on the s4s forums if you need more specific help, I and other creators check there often to help people out.

Hopefully the helped! Feel free to ask any questions through asks/dms :)

[jwofles-sims]

Retopologizing MD Meshes (old)

EDIT-

tutorial is deprecated, update to the newest MD version and use the remesh function, or just put your mesh straight into zbrush, do zremesh and then re-do the UV in blender.

Hey! Here’s a long tutorial on how to get great low-poly topology on meshes from Marvelous Designer WHILE keeping the original UV (the UV you get if you just use the mesh straight from MD).

For this workflow, you’ll need:

Marvelous Designer (paid)

ZBrush (paid)

Maya 2016 Extension 2 or newer (student version is free!)

Blender (free)

Before I get started with the steps, I want to make sure I give full credit to this tutorial here by Alex Mann, which is where I found the workflow. You can watch that if you prefer a video tutorial and if you’re also more proficient with Maya.

Also, this guide assumes you know how to use blender. Knowledge in Maya+ZBrush isn’t really needed, but you need to have them installed and maybe be able to use basic functions in the programs. In this tutorial, I’ve cut down on the steps in Maya, just because I find it easier to use Blender for things (personal preference).

STEP ONE

First, export your normal Marvelous Designer mesh, and name it ‘drapedMesh’. When exporting, Unified UV coordinates should be checked, and scale ‘m’ should be used. Make sure you export as tris (the default setting), exporting as quads won’t give as good as results (I think).

Then reset 2d arrangement of your clothing, so it’s flat. You can also move it to the right so it’s not in the way of the avatar but this may cause issues (or it may work). Then, export in the same way (export selected), and name it ‘flatMeshOriginal’.

STEP TWO

Next, open up Maya- I use Maya 2016. And after, import the draped and flat meshes you just exported from MD. The camera controls if you don’t know them, you have to hold alt and then use the buttons on your mouse.

With the two imported, select the ‘draped’ mesh and then the flat mesh, go to ‘Deform’ at the top, and click ‘Blend Shape’. This will pop up in the attribute editor to the right.

STEP THREE

It’s time to retopologize! Open ZBrush, and import your flat mesh, and then drag your mouse in the 3d window to place the model into view (only drag it out once). Immediately after, click edit mode (or press T), and then click the ‘scale’ button to zoom in on the mesh.

Turn polygon view on, then go to the geometry tab on the right, and click ‘ZRemesher’. Then, change the ‘Target Polygon Count’, the default is on 5, which is too high, so we need to change it.

This number is in THOUSANDS, so 1 = 1 thousand. It’s suggested to change it to 0.75, which works most of the time for tops, but sometimes you may need to set it higher (1, 1.25, 1.5 etc) for full body outfits or more detailed clothing. 

This value affects how many polygons in thousands it will have, 0.75 is 750 polygons (which will be roughly the final polygon count for the top). Anyway, once you’ve picked a value, hit the ZRemesher button.

As you can see, ZRemesher produces a really nice topology on the meshes. Finally, you want to export it and name it as ‘flatMeshRetopo’. Now, you’re done with ZBrush!

STEP FOUR (conditional/optional)

If there’s a problem in topology, you’ll have to fix it before you carry on. This may happen on more complex meshes. I don’t have any examples of this, but just keep it in mind. You might also want to clean up any tris if there are still some left over.

STEP FIVE

We have to get our new low-poly mesh set up in Maya. Import your retopo’d flat mesh, and ignore any error if one pops up. Then, go to ‘Windows’ on the top bar, and open the ‘Outliner’ window. To hide this, you can just minimise and then later open it back up/maximise it from the bottom of the screen.

Then, in the outliner, select all the meshes that were imported from ZBrush, for me there were only 3 as there are only 3 pattern pieces in my MD mesh. If you have 8 pieces, there’ll be 8 meshes. With these selected, hit the merge button at the top.

STEP SIX

Next, we have to get that clean UV layout. Select your combined mesh, then go to ‘UV’ at the top and then SHIFT-click the ‘Planar’ option. Make sure you have ‘Project from:’ on ‘Camera’ and that you have ‘Keep image width/height ratio’ checked. Next, hit apply. 

Also, when you do this step, try to have your camera looking at the mesh straight-on, as I believe this part just captures the mesh from the camera’s perspective and makes that the UV.

STEP SEVEN

Now, we will make our low poly mesh fit around the draped mesh. Select your low-poly ZBrush flat mesh, and then the high-poly MD flat mesh, go to deform and then wrap.

To make it wrap around now, go to ‘Windows’ at the top, ‘Animation Editors’ and then open the ‘Shape Editor’. Afterwards, set the Mesh Weight to ‘1’ (or move the 2nd slider all the way to the right). This will make your lowpoly (and high poly) mesh wrap around the draped mesh.

Lastly, select your low-poly ZBrush mesh that is now wrapped around, and export selection to a .obj- and save that on your desktop or somewhere (ready to be imported into blender!!). Once you’ve done this, you are done with Maya (woo!).

STEP EIGHT (conditional/optional)

If you import your new mesh into blender (which you’ve just exported), and it shows up as flat and one weird solid changing colour, you may need to put the mesh back into maya, select it and go to ‘Mesh Display’ at the top, then try unlocking the normals (‘Unlock Normals’) and then importing to blender again. If that doesn’t work, try locking the normal and importing into blender.

I’m only saying this because it’s happened to me once (not sure how), so it could happen to someone else.

STEP NINE

Lastly, you have to do the final touches. Import your new low-poly mesh into blender, and merge the vertices where the patterns meet up. Select two vertices and press alt+m to merge. 

Sometimes, you may need to merge 2 vertices on one side to one vertex on the other, this will create a tri but that’s okay.

If there is a part you need to join that obviously doesn’t have enough verticies (such as this neck strap for my top), you may need to add edge loops. You can do this by pressing ctrl+R, and then clicking in the middle of the quads. This will add another edge (and increase polys) so that you can move without losing as much detail.

Also, you may want to go to the ‘tools’ tab on the left, and change the shading to smooth, to get a better idea of what your mesh will look like ingame.

STEP TEN

Now it’s up to you to finish your clothing!

FOR SIMS 4 -

I recommend @owl-plumbob​​’s tutorial for instructions on weight transferring, UV1 transferring and vertex painting (getting your mesh ready for ingame).

And I also recommend any of @theslyd​​‘s tutorials if you want to make your cc more high quality.

EXTRA

Feel free to contact me on tumblr, or go to my ask page if you have a problem. I’m welcome to help anybody with any issues (if I know how to fix them ;p).

If you need a video tutorial of this, because you prefer that, then as I linked earlier, use this video. This is where I got the original steps from but I changed them slightly so I suggest if you follow the video, to have this tutorial opened as well.

An alternative way to this method is this. I literally found this today and I haven’t tried it, but it looks like it might be quicker, however it still requires Maya. Just keep in mind, in the video they retopologize it by hand in Maya where you may want to retopo it in ZBrush (I would). Anyway, I’m thinking of trying this and if it’s good, I may make another tutorial on that.

If you don’t like this method/it’s not working for you, you can try -

This free alternative using a program called ‘Instant Meshes’ linked by @theslyd​

This ZBrush-only workflow (however the UV maps produced aren’t perfect).

Also this thread talks about both these other methods in some more detail.

Just do anything other than exporting from MD in quads (as this is super high poly and the topology isn’t even perfect) or decimating the mesh a lot (this RUINS the topology).

Anyway, that’s the tutorial. Sorry it’s so long, I’m sure you could compress it into 100 words but I get carried away easily, and I wanted to make it totally noob-proof, for people who have no clue how to use maya or zbrush- I wanted to make the tutorial I wanted a couple months ago ;)

[kouukie]

Sims 4 MD Avatars with Rigs

Somehow the links went dead to my rigs and I couldn’t figure out the email I used for the account so here I am uploading my rigs + I included a few new rigs!! I don’t use Marvelous Designer anymore so I probably won’t make anymore of these but I hope you enjoy the ones I did make!

DOWNLOAD

[anachrosims]

STICKY POST: ULTIMATE(ISH) GUIDE(S) TO SIMS 4 CC-MAKING; OR, A COMPREHENSIVE COMPENDIUM OF TUTORIALS, INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS, & FELLOW COMPILATIONS OF A LIKEWISE NATURE

In which I list a fuckton of tutorials, guides, and lists of such, each written, curated, and crafted by people far more talented than I.

More will be added as I find them.

---

@teanmoon's CC Guides - Includes tutorials on cloning, uv_1, weights, bump and specular maps, bi-color hair, and a Blender Cheat Sheet. High poly 'creators' have little excuse to churn out high poly, non-optimized garbage when they can lean on bump maps. (I know those can only do so much for more complex meshes, but for objects, texture maps can do SO much heavy-lifting).

@vintagesimstress's CC Guides - Includes tutorials on using Blender to create objects and clothing, especially for people who are just getting started.

@eliavah's uv-1 adjustment tutorial. Haven't tried this myself yet, but after glancing through it, it's something I will surely want to keep bookmarked.

@simlaughlove's CC Tutorials List - Includes many tutorials handily laid out by category on everything from object texturing to CAS morphs.

@thefoxburyinstitute's Nav Page - This blog is nonstop Sims 4 resources for e v e r y t h i n g. READ THIS POST FIRST as a guide on how to actually... nav.

@simsresourcehub's Tags List - What it says on the tin.

Transferring Weights in Blender 3.3.1 - Over at Sims4Studio forums.

@trillyke's List of Tutorials - Good ones!

@sims4tutorials - *GRAND GESTURES*

@katverse's Huge List of Tutorials - Tutorials on eeeverything.

@thatsimslady's Massive List of Tutorials - 31 pages????? Damn.

@kouukie's Sims 4 CAS with Marvelous Designer Tutorial - YouTube video!

@rusticottage's Gifmaking Tutorial - I love Sims gifs tbh.

@cowplant-pizza' Boes' Editing Masterlist - Includes stuff for Reshade, PSDs, PS Actions, and how to use them.

@melonsloth's Deco Sim Tutorial - Using SimRipper

@depthofpixels's Deco Sim Tutorial - Using SimRipper

@azuhrasims' Guide to Posing Sims - Includes how to pose sims, and handy workarounds! Super great for beginners and longtime users.

@radioactivedotcom's Guide to Posing - Includes additional posing resources. NOT for beginners.

@madameriasims4's Add a Flame to Your Basegame Candle - Great for mood lighting and historical gameplay!

@syboubou's Making a Lamp Start to Finish - a video tutorial

MORE BELOW:

Adding Lit DST to Fireplace

New image ref for default overrides

Make an RGB Spec for Objects

Bake a shadow onto your object in Blender

Linking all bedding to a single frame

Cutouts for Doors/Windows/Archways

Making objects see-through/glass

Making lamps light correctly

Give an object transparency (add an alpha)

Make a candle w/ multiple flames

Change LOD viewing distance

[kouukie]

Sims 4 MD Avatars with Rigs

Somehow the links went dead to my rigs and I couldn’t figure out the email I used for the account so here I am uploading my rigs + I included a few new rigs!! I don’t use Marvelous Designer anymore so I probably won’t make anymore of these but I hope you enjoy the ones I did make!

DOWNLOAD

[smsims-evekleos]

Okay guys, here’s a mini tutorial I thought I’d whip up in the dead of night. I’m very tired so sorry if there’s spelling errors. If you have any questions, just ask BTW. So, anyway, this quick tut is for retopo-ing MD meshes with Zbrush and Blender in a way that preserves the UV islands so you don’t lose the nice neat UV shape that MD generates. Ready? Okay.

You will need: Marvelous Designer Blender Zbrush

Note: This tut doesn’t cover how to use these programs. You have to already know that.

Okay, here we go.

1. Make your mesh as normal and export from MD. I’ve called mine top.obj. Here it is.

2. Now highlight all, right-click the 3D garment and chose Reset 3D Arrangement (selected)

3. Export this from MD. I called mine topFLAT.obj

4. Import FLAT version into Zbrush.

5. Under Geometry tab, ZRemesher, hit the ZRemesher button. Depending on your mesh, yours might be fine to export with the default settings. For mine, however I’m going to lower the Target Polygons Count to make it lower poly.

6. When you’re happy with the poly count, export your mesh. I called mine topFLATretopo.obj

7. In Blender 2.79, import all three obj files. You can go ahead and tick the eye button to hide the original MD mesh and the FLAT version for now. First we will do things to the FLATretopo version.

8. With the FLATretopo version selected, divide the window so that you have the 3D version to one side and the UV/Image Editor to the other side. Now you can ender Edit Mode, Mesh -> UV Unwrap and Project From View to get the same UV island shape that MD generated. With that done, return to object mode.

9. In the Modifier tab chose Surface Deform. Set the target as the FLAT version, turn the Interpolation falloff up as far as it will go (16) and hit the Bind button. Now you can hide the FLATretopo mesh.

10. Unhide the original MD mesh and the FLAT version.

11. With the FLAT version selected, switch to the Object Data tab. Under Shape Keys, hit the plus sign. ‘Basis’ key should appear.

12. Now you must deselect everything, then select first the original MD mesh and second the FLAT version. It is important they are in that order. Once you have selected them, hit the little downwards arrow to the side of Shape Keys and chose Join as Shapes. Another key should appear, named the same as your original mesh.

13. Unhide the FLATretopo mesh.

14. Click on the newest key and slide the Value slider all the way to the right. The FLAT mesh and the FLATretopo mesh should morph into the position and shape of the original MD mesh.

15. Select the FLATretopo mesh and hit Apply on the modifier to confirm the movement. Then you can delete both the original MD mesh and the FLAT version. You don’t need those anymore.

16. Now you should have a final mesh that has a nice topology from what we generated in Zbrush as well as a neat UV map, plus it’s still in the shape as the original garment you made. It isn’t finished yet, however. Now you need to close up the seams, fix the UVs for TS4 usage, and make everything pretty.

Note: I personally start this next step by Shading Smooth in the 3D window. This will highlight the seams that need fixing. If the item is symmetrical, I find it easier to just delete half of the mesh and use a mirror modifier while I work on it. It cuts the workload in half. Now I just go around the seams and close them manually. It doesn’t usually take very long once you get the hang of it. I also bind all my repetitive keys to shortcut keys (eg. Merge, rip, cut, loop select, etc) so it’s quicker.

When the FLAT version is still flat, you can also edit the topography directly onto the mesh to make sure the seam verts will match up. You can also remove any unnecessary loops easily as well as adding extras.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Hope it helps some people! :) Have a nice weekend.