#sims 3 creation

[deniisu-sims]

TS4 Crystal Creations SP - 4t3 conversion

I wanted to finish this one before Halloween but alas. At least it's done!

The fancy TS4 scripted objects are just... regular surfaces in TS3. The jeweler desk works like a regular one, the sales table is a (very nice imo) dining table and the round mystical grid thing is just a pretty tray.

That said, I managed to add vertical modularity to the cube shelf :) It's... just a slot, but they do stick to each other even against a wall!

Again, the uncluttered dining table is an edit of my own and not Peacemaker's, but I -do- plan on converting his add-ons later!

The rest is all straightforward :P All BGC, recolorable, highest polycount is around 1.8k for the jeweler desk. The missing items from the pack were made by @bioniczombie already!

(I do have decor, recolorable gems here if you're interested)

DOWNLOAD (package): Dropbox (SFS is acting up right now, will add a link when it goes back)

[kari-sims]

loved the new eyelashes, i'll probably use it all the time (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)

1998 hair ✩ dress ✩ shoes ✩ rings ✩ bracelet

[spanishskulduggery]

I'm also a million hours into Baldur's Gate 3 and I finally figured out how to change it to Spanish

I have to say the most surprising thing was to see the official non-binary options in an official Spanish dub

Instead of like el elfo or la elfa for "elf", you see le elfe for non-binary; or el clérigo / la clériga for "cleric" it turns to le clérigue for non-binary

And just seeing things like amigue "friend", or une enane "a [NB] dwarf" is just... I don't know quite how to describe it

It's really cool but also so bewildering to see it so... officially?

I tell people about using -E endings of adjectives/professions for non-binary things, or the way people use gender neutral language, but I always have to tell people it's usually not officially accepted, that it's more common in certain circles or online but practically never officially accepted in standard castellano

So to actually SEE it officially recognized and there front and center in a game that's easily a contender for game of the year that's so popular is just... really cool and also leaves me stunned for a few seconds as my brain adjusts

[like I saw the le at first and I immediately assumed oh god it's French somehow, but no, it's el, la, then le non-binary which is cool but I'm going to go through everything thinking it's French or indirect objects]

[themaresnest-dumblr]

The Fresh Prince Is Back - And He's Delivering Duck Tailed Porsches!

Let's hear it for the Fresh Prince, because after a year's long lay off, Mr Hold The Custom Content News Front Page has done it again.

There's no other car in the world that says fast, sporty, and fun like a Porsche, and let's be honest, we've all wanted that classic 'duck tail' RS model version in the game at some point - especially if you're a Taffer!

What are you waiting for - get mashing that download button and enjoy the awesome!

[kissalopa]

Nite Crowe for @jonquilyst Total Drama Sims: Season 3

Nite grew up in Glimmerbrook with her mom who was a spellcaster and a jewelry crafter. She lost her mom on a Winterfest night, but then was reunited with her ghost 👻

Nite doesn't live with her father, because he's an alien who abducted and impregnated her mom 👽 That makes Nite half-alien, but she hopes that her application for TDS 3 will be accepted even though no occults are allowed. Nite is a human sim and has no alien powers.

Nite likes nature and animals, she loves her two cats, Nougat and Baloo, dearly 🥰 🐱

Nite is a teen, but she's about to age up. I am bad at converting sim ages to real ones, but I guess that makes her 17 years old 🤷‍♀️

Even though Nite is about to become young adult she hasn't been in any romantic relationship or went on dates. She went to active high school, so it won't be something new to be around many teenagers. She is open to any romantic moments that may occur during show. If she'll find a friend or a romantic partner that would be a cool addition to this adventure.

Nite decided to compete on Total Drama Sims, because she wants to test herself and try something new. Nite tried continuing her mama's work after her death, but realized that making jewelry is not for her. She also tried to complete Reaper's Rewards Event, but that also wasn't for her. So she hopes to find her passion and maybe she will discover one on Total Drama Sims 💚

[simlicious]

Hi hey gurl! I've been trying to understand something... when it comes to performance, is it vertices or polycount that really matters? I’m trying to get a clearer picture of how they affect gameplay. Hope this isn’t too random tho 😂

Hey nonny, thanks for the great question! I'm not sure if you are looking for a non-creator answer or if you maybe have some experience with meshing, but I try to cover some technical aspects that hopefully will make you understand vertices and polygons better! It's a bit of a longer journey, so grab some snacks and settle in!

Disclaimer: This is my opinion and the definitions are how I came to understand them. I believe what I say to be correct, but I am also human and may have misunderstood something, and making mistakes can happen. Thanks for understanding! TL;DR There will be calculations made on every vertex and every face present in a mesh. So the more you have of either, the worse it is for performance, but if the vertex count is much higher than the poly count, the mesh is especially unoptimized and may impact performance more than it would in an optimized state. Vertex and polygons are actually connected, literally. To understand, we need to start with the basics.

Vertices are points in a 3d space that provide the foundations of a grid-like 3d structure, known as a mesh. Connected through lines known as edges, they form a 3d shape. Three edges form a triangle, or tri for short, also known as a face or polygon. These terms can be used interchangeably, but a tri always has three vertices, whereas faces and polygons can have more than three vertices.

A polygon with 4 vertices (known as a quad) is very commonly used in 3D-modelling, because it can be used to create very neat and well-structured meshes (it is easy to make grids using rectangular shapes). A mesh that is made in a grid-like way may have the same overall shape as one made out of triangles, but the flow of the edges is different, and this plays a role during animation. Having these grid-like lines is usually better for moving and animating characters and avoiding shading issues.

Most meshes for games are thus initially made with 4-sided polygons. These quads are usually further broken down into tris if they aren't already, and three is the least amount of vertices needed to form a coplanar surface.

When the quads of the left sphere are turned into triangles, the grid structure will remain intact:

We can further break down the elements of a polygon. Let's take a simple cube. It has 6 sides, or faces, and each face has 4 vertices that make up the corners. But if we count all the vertices, we will notice that each face shares vertices with other faces. So on a simple cube, we have 6 faces and 8 vertices.

Depending on how a mesh is made though, it may have a lot of edges. You can think of those like cuts in the mesh. If we wanted to cut up the cube, we would separate each face from each other. Now we still have the same number of faces (6), but the vertices are suddenly much higher, because now, every face has its own set of 4 vertices, meaning that we have a total of 24 vertices.

In video games, polygons are usually rendered as triangles. So for our cube, that would mean that every face would be diagonally cut in half, giving us a total number of 12 faces/polygons/tris.

If we take it to the next level and separate all of these triangles from each other, the vertex count would be 36! To recount, on a mesh that is not split, it's only 8. Having these cuts (or split edges, as they are commonly called) in strategic places in the mesh where vertices are split can be important for the final look of the mesh in the Sims games.

You may have already encountered some meshes that have dark spots or shading in some parts, often at the hems. That can happen if the mesh is not split correctly in these areas. It has to do with how the normals work (they are important to how light gets reflected off the mesh).

To not go too off-topic, I won't get into detail about that here.

Ideally, a mesh is only split where it needs to be so it will look right. If there are unnecessary cuts, then the vertex count (and with it, the polygon count) goes up when it doesn't really have to be. If a mesh has a lot of these areas where a lot of faces have their own vertices, then the vertex count is much higher than on a mesh with fewer split edges. This can be a sign that a mesh is not well-optimized. So if you see a mesh that has much more vertices than polys, you may want to question it in regards to performance. CC converters will probably know that Sims 4 meshes come with a lot of these cuts that are needed for Sims 4 because of the way the CC is made (for example, pants have such a split edge cut to allow boots to look tucked-in), but those are superfluous for TS3. So I encourage every Sims 3 CC creator to remove those to save on both vertices and polygons when they are converting! The thing is, in the game, the mesh will be processed and there will be calculations made on every vertex and every face present. Each vertex is indexed, and triangles need to be drawn from the information. Other processes will need to also use the vertices for their calculations. There is more going on during rendering than simply drawing the polygons. The shaders have to calculate their effects, the textures need to be rendered and applied accordingly, filtering such as anti-aliasing will be applied, etc. So the more geometry you have in a mesh, the worse it gets in terms of performance. More geometry means that the polygons are smaller and more numerous, which will in turn affect the vertex count too.

As CC creators, we cannot address all the factors that impact performance, as we can only influence a small part, but we can try to adhere to the game's standards to minimize the performance impact as best as we can. If we wish our meshes to be more detailed than what the game's standards are, then we impact the performance more.

Instead of just cranking up detail like crazy, it is good to see if we really need it. And ask questions such as how often will the player view the item closely? If the player is usually far away from the item or it is a very small item, making it super detailed will not really do much, since the item looks the same as a low-poly item from a certain distance. We can also make compromises and maybe make an item 50% more detailed instead of 200% more detailed, providing a more detailed item while minimizing the performance impact.

This is a bit off-topic, but since I'm here already, we may refrain from using a bigger texture for a very plain piece without any notable intricate detail (like a basic T-shirt, for example), since it already looks fine with a smaller texture, but it may pay off for a highly detailed texture which looks visibly better with a bigger texture, warranting the performance impact (like a lace blouse with an intricate pattern, stitching, and small buttons).

On that note, using the texture space efficiently can also do wonders to increase detail. Use all the real estate you have on that UV map (that is a 2d representation of your 3d mesh and used to apply the texture to the mesh). Have you tried upscaling the texture yet? Okay okay, I'll stop now and get...

Back on topic: The number of polygons also matters, not just the vertex count. When a mesh has lots of smaller polygons, a lot of them are necessary to form the entire mesh. Bigger polys will not provide as much fine details, but will have less impact on hardware because fewer calculations to be made. A good mesh uses only as much detail as needed while using as few polygons as possible to still maintain functionality.

Sims clothing meshes need to animate and move well, so they need to be able to flex at the joints, and the shape must also be able to change to accommodate body sizes, thus the mesh needs the minimum amount of geometry to achieve this and still look decent, which is a sweet spot the developers have to find to craft meshes that perform well while looking reasonably good.

A good habit for creators looking to make meshes for the Sims games is to look at similar meshes in the game and study them (so for TS3, check the original TS3 game meshes, for TS4, check the original TS4 game meshes). Check how many polys they use and how good the topology (structure) of the mesh is.

For example, how many rows of edges do they usually have, and what sizes are the polys usually? How many vertices are in one round of edge loops, for example for the arms? How are the different mesh parts connected to each other, where are split edges used? Then imitate that.

The professionals who made these original meshes knew what they were doing, and they optimized them to be gameplay-friendly, so if in doubt, copy what they do.

Game meshes are usually especially optimized and it is very much game-dependent how they are structured, so a mesh from a different game can look totally different. CC Creators looking to optimize performance in their meshes should try to match the original game's mesh in terms of structure and polycounts. This will also ensure they animate well!

If you made it this far: well done, thanks for bearing with me! I hope you feel more knowledgeable and ready to apply what you've learned to your own meshes or when selecting CC for your favorite Sims game.

[caramellles]

ida in her "student" era

[cheesebrackers]

Cringetober time starting with the man himself

[calvins-creations]

I uh. Don't know how to caption this. POV you are Martin

Original image:

[gryficowa]

Boycott!

Now that I have your attention:

[sugurugetos]

JAKE 230525 🧋 | for @heeseunq

[thebramblewood]

Different Sims game, but I can never say no to a strong nose.

[b4rapture11572]

Created Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova from Deadpool & Wolverine! 😁

[millascreativecornerblog]

Editing occlusion shadows on objects

This is a tutorial aimed at creators and converters who want to understand, at least a little, how to improve the appearance of their objects in the game. Yes, it’s a bit exhausting, just like creating an object from scratch, mapping it and texturing it, but the result is worth it. The shadow dynamics of TS3 are different from TS4. In TS4, the game itself creates these shadows when the object approaches a wall. In TS3 it is necessary for these shadows to be created using “lights” in TSRW. Of course, the occlusion is not perfect, but it gives the game a more realistic aspect by creating this idea of depth.

The icing on the cake: keep these shadows if they are large objects, like cabinets, sofas, beds, tables, chairs… Small decorative objects, like clutter, you can just delete these shadows. But if you are crazy about perfection and details, and really want even an ant to create its shadow when approaching a wall, my tip is that you clone using a small object as a base as this will make editing the shadows easier.

I will use as an example this armoire that I edited a while ago. The shadows have been edited and look like this when you open them in TSRW:

In the game, this is how the shadows appear when we position the object close to a wall:

To edit the shadows, you must click on the "MISC" tab in TSRW. These shadows are right below, where "LIGHTS" is written. Note that there is a + sign next to it and when you click it, a drop-down list appears with all the shadows separated. In this example there are 3 of these shadows. The names are the same, but let's say we have shadow 1 (front), shadow 2 (top) and shadow 3 (side). Edits must be made in the order they appear.

Click on the three dots to the right of lights. A window as shown in the image below will appear:

The lights that must be edited are found in the part where it says "OCCLUDERS". In this case, "Entry 1" corresponds to our "SHADOW 1" (front)...

For the front shadow, we will start by changing these two parameters that correspond to the width and position of the shadow. My tip is that you copy the original value, change this value to 1 and then click on "OK" to see what happens (that is, to see what changes when changing the value, so you will know if you need to change it to a higher value or smaller...). If it's not what you need, just paste the original value copied previously into the corresponding field and change it little by little until you reach the correct size of the object.

Front shadow height:

For the distance the shadow is from the object, this field must be edited - remembering that we are still editing the front shadow (which corresponds to the shadow that will replicate the width of the object on the wall):

For the other shadows, you must follow the same path: changing the values until it is proportional to the size of the object.

Bonus tip: Open various base game objects in TSRW and see how shadows are created. For example, select a chair and study each shade individually. With practice, you will realize that all you have to do is create a shadow on all sides of the object. For example: on a bed, you should have a shade for the headboard, another for the footboard, another for the side and another for the top, which would be the mattress. Therefore, it is important to study each type of object separately.

Now you might be asking yourself: Oh, yes, thank you very much... But where do I start? How will I know how to create a shadow from scratch? OMG! Help me!

Don't worry, it's very simple: when cloning an object, like a bed for example, it's obvious that you will use a bed from the game as a clone... So just edit the original shadows that correspond to the clone, so that they are the size of the bed you are creating for the game. Only that.

I say again: each object is a specific case. This tutorial is just a simple way to show you the way to understand how these shadows work and how they are generated for the game.

Yes, creating a beautiful object is hard work and requires dedication, time and effort. Therefore, value the creators who strive to deliver you a quality object ♥.

If you feel like helping me, here is a link for donations. Thank you very much ♥.

Tutorial inspired by: @bioniczombie and @sideshowsnob

[bloomingkyras]

Eliminations R3

• Odin Sands by @theosconfessions

Seriously I'm soo sad that Odin got eliminated 😩. But it's all Gemma decision.. tq Stacey send Odin to us. He is so sweet and they both decided to just be bestie. Tq again and congrats, although Odin not winning the challenge Rowan already win Fern heart ❤❤

[sweetestberryofthebunch]

Guess who‘s about to restart Act 2 because Mizora and Wyll were bitching and then Shadowheart had some feelings and AND THEN FUCKING GALE cockblocked my Karlach Romance scene so long that it glitched into non existence and she basically friendzoned me in the process :/ I literally finished everything when i realised and decided to look at the Wiki lmao. At least it’s kind of a common thing that happens so it wasn’t my fault. Bye bye five hours of pretty good gameplay, I‘ll see you again when i rush through this a second time…