#sims 4 blender tutorial

[nsves]

blender lighting tutorial + tips.

requested by @thecrimsonsimmer + recommended viewing: youtube video one, two, three, and four. this post will be dealing with newer versions of blender (2.8+) and cycles since that's what i'm more familiar with + commonly used for rendering. this is coming from me as an artist with some dabbling in photography and things i've learned in college!

references and setting the mood

are you basing your render on an existing photo? study the light source and what direction it's coming from: that's what's going to tell you your set up for a similar effect. if you're not basing it on an existing piece, a good start is knowing How you want to set your subject (your sim) up - do you want them to be in the spotlight? are they in a specific environment that has neon lights? are you going for moody or something fresh, bright? definitely look up colors and their meaning (color theory, movie screencaps, etc.) to create a stronger image!

using resources to start the set up

it's always a good thing to mix your tools with different communities, such as the art community! many have lighting tools to figure out how to color their subject, such as this free-to-use head figure that depicts where the lighting source should be placed.

there's also the photography community and teaching people how to set up their lights for certain setups. video three and four linked in the beginning are from photography viewpoints.

spot? area? point? sun?

let's think of the lighting types as objects - a spot is like a plain lightbulb, area is a reflective sheet, spot is a flashlight, and the sun... well is the sun!

a spot is similar to an area light, but triangular/a cone. think of a helicopter search light, it's focused on a small area with the most light concentration. these can be used for lamps with lampshades, car headlights, or a lighthouse.

an area light is great for lighting up technology. a phone screen, tv screen, tablet, anything that's an LED screen emitting from a surface. the light is not as concentrated as a spot and is meant to cover more flatly (hence the rectangular source)

a point is best used for small pops of colors such as candlelight, lamppost, lightning bug tail, etc. a small source that has nothing covering it.

a sun covers the entire area and can be used as the overall mood setter. it can create filter over the entire render by just shifting the color like you would see in a movie. you'll be given a line with a sun light that gives the direction of where the sun is coming from. basically a spot light just on a much larger scale LOL.

power + coloring

this screenshot is mostly what you'll only use to start off with. watts is the unit of measurement and the higher you go, the brighter the light will be. examples with a white colored point light 10W-20W: general portrait lighting 30W-50W: bright source, close flashlight for example 60W+: blinding

coloring is just like the system for in game lights for ts4. shift it to whatever you want it to be (click the white bar, that's the color preview) and mess around with the vibrancy. the darker, more intense color, the less it's going to appear on the sim.

closeness and intensity

similar to what's shown in the head lighting tool shown earlier, the closer the light is, the more that specific area is lit up. go too close and your sim could be completely washed out. it helps to change the size of the light (change with the radius slider) to better imitate what you're wanting. the larger the radius, the more diffused and softer the light source will be. close + small = very clear of the light source shape, can obviously tell where it is in relation to the subject far away + large = soft lighting, more of a hazy lighting of the color you choose.

to quickly adjust the light, press "G" and hold down your middle mouse button to adjust which axis you'd like to edit along. green is the x-axis, blue is the y-axis, and red is the z-axis. you can also press "G" and type the letter of the axis you want to use. drag the mouse to change the placement on that specific axis to however you want. if you want to freely edit the placement, just press "G" to move it out of the axis bounds.

world lighting

take this step as setting your canvas color before you start painting. in order for the values to look their best, change the world color to the same hue of the color you are mostly using. for example, this is set in a red-toned environment:

this is essentially changing the cast shadow onto the sim. the default is gray and will muddy up your undertones if not changed properly. for this instance, if you were to still use the same red point light in a gray world color it'd look like this:

of course, this will be based on if you have an environment image or not that can affect your lighting overall. this post is based on the fact there is no environment image and what not! if you need a visual demonstration on how to mess with the world lighting, check out this short video.

i hope that helped anyone beginning to render or wanting to light up your own scenes! i'm no rendering expert, but here's some of the helpful tricks i've learned and collected over the years<3 if you have any other questions feel free to send an ask!

[salemsimsrender]

So you want to make a sims render: a beginner's guide

But what does that even mean? What do you need to start?

To get started with sims renders, you'll need the following programs:

Blender 3.6 - to render your sims

Blender 2.7 - to export poses, accessories and objects from s4s

Sims Ripper - to rip your sims to prepare them for blender

Sims 4 Studio - to export poses, accessories and objects for your renders

All of these programs are FREE to download and use!

Blender outputs fantastic renders depending on your settings, but you'll probably want to edit them after the fact.

For editing, I recommend:

Photoshop

GIMP

Photopea

I'll be posting editing tutorials in Photoshop, but any of these programs will get the job done.

Stay tuned for in-depth tutorials on using Blender, Sims ripper and Sims 4 Studio!

[wistfulpoltergeist]

Hii, I love ur cc, it's truly amazing!!

I'm also in love with the lightning in ur renders, how do u do it?? Im new in blender and o would like to learn new things :) 🖤

Aww, thank you! I'm pretty much new to blender-render too, so I don't know if I can tell something new about it :D But okay, I'll show what I do. I use Eevee render in Blender. Cos I'm poor and can't afford myself cool Cycles that demands powerful PC. Cos it's... easier.

First thing is environment light. Depending on your idea you can change it into more dark, more light or really any color (or even environment texture!)

Let's change it to lighter color ;3

Next, set transparent background.

I like soft light in pictures with bloom like in 80-90s movies :D So I always add Bloom + Ambient Occlusion because in Eevee it's vital.

In most cases I add Sun light first. And set up Shadow quality, cos... again, shadow quality in Eevee is vital:D

Change softness, power, color for the sun light and also add Contact Shadows. (Cos it's vital?:D)

Add back light. I LOOOOVE when the light is shining from behind the model. Makes me *___*, so yes. Back light must be rally hard and powerful to make the trick.

I also love my model's faces, so I usually try to lit it up with extra light to make it clear and well seen ;3

Then add more back light. MORE!

Make some pose/light changes if needed, add some simple Ps edit and that's it! You have this:

Hope it was helpful. Have fun!

[hymless]

How to fix Transparency w/ Lashes and Alpha Hair in Blender! Cycles & Eevee!

(This tutorial also helps with adding transparency to Sims 4 Object cc. If needed, I can make a post on that as well.)

This is NOT a Tutorial on how to fix broken/ glitched lashes in the SIMS game!!!

It was brought to my attention that others do not know how to fix this issue in blender, so I've made this post to help out. This tutorial works for BOTH Eevee and Cycles! (This only matters at the end when in the materials tab.)

None of the CC is Mine! Ty to ALL creators!

This is work for all methods of DAE exports.

This is Erecen. They will be our tutorial model today.

As you can see, the Alpha CC hair and lashes are not... working like how we saw them in game. So! We will need to fix this up within our Shading Node Wranglers to correct this.

(If you use a GLASS mesh, make sure you are shade wrangling on the GLASS!)

(This picture is only showing which is the Glass mesh!) Plz ignore this if you are not using Glass mesh export on Ripper.

Lashes/Hair Transparency

First import your sim and wire the texture nodes how you normally would. Stay in Shade Editor/Shading tab.

You will now want to Add a 'Mix Shader' node. Search for it by typing in "Mix Shader". Select and now drop it between your Principle BSDF node and Material Output node.

After this, you will want to Add a Transparent BSDF. I added mine the same way as the Mix Shader and have place it under my Mix Shader node.

With this Transparent BSDF node, you'll want to wire it to the TOP Green Circle of your Mix Shader node. (1 in pic below) This will disconnect your current wiring from Principle BSDF. This is fine since you now want to wire the Principle BSDF node to the BOTTOM Green Circle of your Mix Shader node. (2 in pic below)

Afterwards, you will now need to go to your Base Color node; (Where your sims diffuse lies!) It should be the top left node, unless you have moved it. (3 in pic above) Now take the Alpha dot and drag it all the way to FAC on the same Mix Shader node. From here, we need to go to 'Editor Type'.

After locating Editor Type, you now want to locate the sphere listed as Material.

You now want to find the correct SETTINGS tab. Please note how you render your renderings. If you render in EEVEE, take note of the picture above. Same for CYCLES as taking note in the picture above. This is very important since the SETTINGS options switch between these two areas depending on the Engine.

In Eevee, this should be in the first SETTINGS tab in the materials properties tab.

In Cycles, the SETTINGS you will need is located under the tab listed as Viewport Display. From there, a new drop down will be available called Settings. (This is the correct SETTINGS you want)

Either engine will now have a few modes now visible.

For both Blend Mode and Shadow Mode, change them from Opaque to Alpha Hashed. (It is only required to change Blend Mode to Alpha Hashed for the transparent textures to work. Hashing shadows makes a nice balance of translucency and ambient occlusion.)

And that should be it! Your lashes/Alpha CC hair should be working correctly now!

I hope this helps! If not, please feel free to msg me of any other further know issues. Thank you to @spookyxdoom for bringing this topic up!

I even had my bf try it out without knowing a single thing about Blender and they figured it out just fine with this tutorial.

I already plan on doing other tutorials on how I fix overlapping textures as shown below.

[salemssimblr]

Hello there! I'm Eden :D I LOVE your renders! I've been rendering for well over a year at this point, however I only stuck to the super basic stuff since it took me a year before that to even know how to do it at all. I've wanted to up my game and get to where you are now. I'm SO SORRY if this question was asked already (I haven't gotten too far in your posts yet), but;

How do you personally edit your renders? I understand you use photoshop, but how do you do it exactly? Your renders have that kind of digital art style, like you drew them yourself. Feel free to be as descriptive or brief as you'd like!

Hi Eden!!! Thank you so much! 🥹😍♥️

I've followed you back and glad we're moots! I'd love to see some of your work!

I'm not sure if I've answered this before but I'm happy to answer it again! Also I haven't advertised it in a while (and I really need to try to get up a new tut, maybe soon), but my alt account is a Render School where I post tutorials, with plans to post editing tutorials in the future!

But honestly as far as my editing, I really don't do much.

Actions are my secret weapon, and I have a few favorites/go-tos I'll link! A few are by simmers and a few are just action sets. I'm in a family of photographers, so I have access to a wealth of resources for my editing.

Sonder set by @intramoon

Cold Water set by @intramoon

Retro Prime photoshop actions

Indie camera photoshop actions

But my "secret weapon," as it were, and the set of actions that I think most helps me accomplish that digital art style is a set of actions that are sadly expensive and hard to find now.

My favorite set is by Totally Rad! and I think in recent years it's been folded in to this Pixel Sugar product on their website. I know that's a steep price point but it's possible you can find it around the corners of the Internet for less, or if you can't, you might be able to find "dupes" of the better ones, which imo are:

Technicolor dream world

Super Fun Happy

Bullet Tooth

Grandma's Tap Shoes

As for my method, I know a lot of simmers paint over their renders, and I've done that a few times but find I'm too impatient tbh. My goal is always to have to do only minor touchups over my renders and some color/vibe adjustments before the finished product. My "raw" files are always exactly what blender spits out for me, unaltered in any way except to resize them for Tumblr.

To get that digital art style, I'd recommend rendering with alpha details if you don't already. If your computer can't handle alpha cc in the game, DM me and I can give you some pointers (sneak peek info for a future tut lmao) on how to accomplish it without bogging down your game.

When I go into photoshop I adjust the brightness and contrast, as I tend to personally prefer high contrast pieces that contain dark subject matter but you can still see the details. Then I'll paint/blur/clone/adjust anything that needs it, then I'll "stack" and adjust a handful of actions before applying edge blur and vignette and any other color adjustments (levels, curves, etc).

That's a very oversimplified rundown of what I do, but really overall my editing process is simple. The bulk of my work happens in blender itself. I find that the more time I take to perfect the lighting and shadows and angles in blender, the less frustrating the editing process and the happier I am with the end result. So, that said, be sure you're spending a lot of time in blender getting the light and shadows to be exactly where you need/want them to be before running it.

I know this is a bit long I'm sorry! If any of it is super confusing or you'd like a more in-depth look at any of it please let me know! I do plan to do editing tutorials for my side blog, but the latter half of this year has kind of run over me like a train, and for now I'm just trying to get by day by day. But I'm happy to help if you have more specific questions!

& thank you again!! ♥️

[little-pinkplumbob]

OKAY, SO I FIGURED IT OUT, tutorial under the cut!

So this was DIFFICULT to figure out, because I'm stupid, and I scoured the internet for tutorials, and I found one that worked for me!

Blender Tutorial - Ghost material

But it needed some fine-tuning to work, so here's the way my nodes are set up

PINK EYES NOT INCLUDED, the eyes were separated and a different shader was applied to make them glow

OH and don't forget to set transparency in your material settings!

Also make sure your diffuse texture is black and white, go into your art application of choice (Photoshop, Sai, Gimp, Clip studio etc) and just turn the saturation all the way down to make it look exactly like mine!

Good luck everyone!

Blender help!

Does anybody know how to make your ripped sims in Blender have that same sort of shading ghosts do in the game? I tried making one myself, but the eyes were entirely visible in the head and I didn't like that

[simplyanjuta]

Transferring animations between rigs (e.g. adult to child)

The steps below describe how to transfer an animation from an adult rig to a child rig but the method should be applicable for any transfer between human rigs.

However, I haven't tested other constellations. Let me know if you have any other tips, suggestions, corrections or run into any issues.

Many thanks to thepancake1 for helping figuring out the details that are not obvious at all 💛

I posted this little guide in Creator Musings for someone wondering about it but sharing it here as well.

Step 1)

Export the adult sim animation you want to transfer (=your source) to Blender.

Open a blend file with a child rig (=your target).

Append the adult rig with the animation to the child rig in Blender (File > Append > Select the blend file > folder "Object" > select rig and mesh there)

Select the animation from the adult rig for the child rig (select the child rig in the Outliner menu > select the scene tab in the properties panel below > in "S4S AnimationTools" select the adult animation as the "active animation")

This will get the job mostly done, but the animation will be offset and jumping around, as you see below. To correct for that you will need to set up several constraints as described in step 2.

Step 2)

As you see below the height of the ROOT_bind of the adult sim and child sim differ by about a factor of 0,7:

You can check the exact location in edit mode:

The ROOT_bind of the child rig is located at 0.6920, the ROOT_bind of the adult rig at 1.0112 on the Z axis, which gives a factor of 0.6920/1.0112=0.6843354430379747

With that information you now need to do the following (see image below for comparison, I also uploaded my blend file with the set up here):

In the Dope Sheet menu, select "Action Editor" and press "New Action" there to make a copy of the selected animation.

In the Dope Sheet Summary uncheck ROOT_bind (thus disabling the animation on the root bind for the child rig). Update/Correction: However, the rotation channels need to stay enabled (this only matters if the ROOT_bind is rotated in an animation). The setting should look like this:

In the Transform menu type in -0,6920 on the X axis for ROOT_bind (thus resetting its position to 0 in the animation; can't properly explain why X axis is chosen here instead of Y but it has sth to do with how local rotations of a bone are determined according to pancake)

Create a "Copy Location" constraint for ROOT_bind of the child rig targetting it to the ROOT_bind of the adult rig (this is done in the Properties panel > Bone Constraints), set Influence to 0.6843354430379747 (factor calculated above), deselect "Z"

Create a second "Copy Location" constraint for ROOT_bind in the same way but this time deselect "X" and "Y" and instead select "Z" and check "Offset".

The animation will now play as expected:

Step 3)

All you need to do now is bake the animation (thus applying all the constraints you set up). Select Pose > Animation > "Bake Action...", then check "Visual Keying" and "Clear Constraints" in the pop up. The animation will now work stand alone and you can delete the adult rig.

Alternatively, if you use Pancakes animation tools, you just need to export the clips, the constraints will be applied automatically.

[buglaur-cc]

cillian set

harrington jacket: 3 swatches, 4.1k polys

sweater vest: 3 swatches, 4k polys

vest and jacket: 5 swatches, 4.6k polys

flat cap: 16 swatches (credit to fableroot), 2.6k polys

tou: no paywalls or ads, do whatever you want :) if you find issues shoot me an ask on my main blog @buglaur, not this one!!

download simsfileshare (merged or separated) 

[simandy]

SOLUTIONS! CAUSE WE’RE ALL TIRED!

So today @isjao asked me if I could post a blender file containing a basic streak mesh to make everybody’s job easier, so I thought: “why not” and decided I would post a whole zip file instead, containing the mesh + all my base textures I use when I have no patience to scroll the whole sims4studio catalog looking for the perfect texture.

The .zip file contains:

The streak mesh (modifier on);

My hand-painted base texture (EA dirty blonde, 13th swatch);

The other 23 EA swatches (if you like my version. If you have your own actions, you can recolor the base again);

My 40 PuppyCrow swatches;

A hand-painted scalp texture, if you want it. (png and dds);

Bump map and Specular map ready to go!

A text file for troubleshooting and TOU.

💕 DOWNLOAD 💕

PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING ON KO-FI OR BECOMING A PATRON. I’m trying to pay for my new ADHD meds, antidepressants and therapy, also college. Please, consider sharing too, if you can’t pay. Thank you for the support :)

[solitasims4]

how to create Sims 4 custom poses

hello all! I’ve just released a new YouTube video on how to create custom Sims 4 poses in the Sims 4 with Blender & Sims4Studio. you can watch the video here if you’re interested.

if you're interested in downloading the Sabrina Carpenter "Espresso" Poses I created in this video, you can download them here.

down below is a list of all the programs needed for this tutorial. thanks for your support always!

Blender 2.70

Sims4Studio

Teleport Any Sim

Pose Player Mod

Sabrina Carpenter Sim (optional)

[prettysimcheana]

Speed edit #1

Make sure to follow my Pinterest and Instagram for more content

What app did I use?

App | Procreate

What cc did I use ?

Cc | @complex-sims @xxblacksims

Heyy y’all I’ve made this page just for reblogging only but here’s a quick edit I did in December 🥲

[salemsimsrender]

Beginner Blender Tutorial Basic Render: Part One (Importing a Sim and Adjusting Textures)

To learn the basics, we'll begin with a super simple render: one sim, one pose, one background.

But first, the anatomy of blender.

(image & list courtesy of Blender's online manual)

Yellow - 3D viewport (workspace) The 3D Viewport is used to interact with the 3D scene for a variety of purposes, such as modeling, animating, texture painting, etc.

Green - Outliner The Outliner is a list that organizes data in the blend-file, i.e. the scene data, Video Sequencer data, or anything that gets stored in a blend-file.

Blue - Properties The Properties shows and allows editing of many active data, including the active scene and object.

Red - Timeline The Timeline��editor, identified by a clock icon, is used for manipulating keyframes and scrubbing the Playhead.

The tools I use most I've highlighted below:

I won't outline their uses just now, but we'll be going over them as we use them.

Different creators like to split their blender window up in different ways, but this is my preferred setup when I'm working:

I use the yellow half of the screen as a render preview/3D workspace

I use the blue half for shader editing, posing, etc.

You can set yours up like mine or find what's comfortable for you.

When you first open blender, you'll be greeted by the default cube, lamp, and camera.

Delete them! You can do this two ways:

Click and drag your mouse over all 3 and delete or Select all 3 in the side menu and hit x on your keyboard

Step 1: Importing our Sim

After deleting the default items, we'll import our sim. This tutorial assumes you've already ripped your sim (if you haven't, check here for how to do so!)

Now, let's import.

Click file -> import -> collada (dae) Select your DAE and click "import"

Your sim will look a little... off (thick eyelashes and a weird shine), but that's okay we're going to fix it! Your sim might also look solid white. If that's the case, make sure you're in the right mode. You can adjust modes by clicking on one of the four circles in the top right of the screen.

These are your viewport modes.

Wireframe (far left) - good for mesh editing Solid (middle left) - good for posing Material Preview (middle right) - what we work in most, shows everything with textures (color) Rendered (far right) - this shows your render preview We'll be working mostly in Material Preview

You can also switch between modes by hitting z on your keyboard then selecting which one you want I'll be using mostly keyboard shortcuts but I'll show you how to do both as we go along

Step 2: Adjusting Our Sim's Textures

Let's fix our sim's textures.

First. set up your workspace. Separate your workspace into two windows (as shown in the picture above with a yellow half and a blue half) and select "shader editor" in your right-side window. Like this:

Next, navigate to your Outliner and click the little dropdown beside "rig"

Under "rig" you'll see your sim's body parts listed. We're going to select "Body" When we click "Body", these colored blocks will appear in our shader editor window.

These are called Nodes. We use Nodes to adjust textures for various items in blender (sims, walls, furniture, etc). To add a new Node, you can select "add" in the top bar, or hit Shift+A on your keyboard and add in the node you need.

We're going to add in a Mix Shader and a Transparent Shader (both found under the Shader tab) and adjust our nodes this way:

Snug the Mix Shader between the Principled BSDF and the Material Output. Now we have to connect our Nodes and adjust our Principled BSDF. For the sake of this tutorial, I'll show the basic Node & Shader adjustments, but we'll go into each of them in a later tutorial.

Adjust your Principled BSDF like this, then connect your Node lines exactly like this:

You'll see that our SIm's body looks a bit different from her head, hair and shoes. That's good! Now we need to duplicate that texture to the rest of our sim.

Navigate to your Outliner again, and use Shift+Click to select the rest of the body parts in the list Don't select pose or rig.001 and make sure the Body is selected first EDIT: You'll only see "body" if your sim has a full body outfit on! If they have a shirt and pants, you'll have "Bottom" and "Top" instead! In this case, select "bottom"!

Now, hover your cursor over your sim/the 3D viewport window, and press Ctrl+L on your keyboard. This brings up the Link/Transfer data window. Select "Link Materials"

Our sim is looking better, but her eyelashes are still dark, let's fix that now.

In your Properties area, navigate to Material Properties (the little red ball)

Change your Blend Mode to Alpha Hashed We will always set Blend Mode to Alpha Hashed

Now our sim looks right!

In Part Two, we'll pose her, set up the scene, and run the render!

[wistfulpoltergeist]

Lazy Background for render in Blender

So I’ve been asked about my backgrounds for render in Blender. Do I create sky simulation or environment simulation for my renders? Although there’s a splendid tutorial on How to setup an hdri environment background:

I use the laziest way ever! :D

So here’s my blender scene form this post (my lovely siren fish-boy and his werewolf^^). 

As you can see the background is just a simple plane over there.

With even... simpler material :D it’s important for this material not to have any specular or other characteristics. 

So, for example, I want my picture under this angle. What should I do?

Well! Move and rotate of course! (Scale if needed :D)

Then add Depth of Field...

And. Tada! The picture is done:D

Thank you, @glammoose​ for appreciating my work ^^. I doubt you’ll discover something new here, but who knows!

[serkisyan]

🚿 TOOTHBRUSH REPLACEMENT 2 FOR The Sims 4🛁

❗✅ New types of toothbrushes: 🔹11 colors will be available

You can find out more here 👇👇👇👇

❗Conflicts with the electric brushes mod, as it replaces the same item ✅Recommend to read it as well (Updated version) 👉 https://vk.com/@ser_kisyan_mods-zamena-igrovoi-zubnoi-schetki-dlya-the-sims-4

👉https://www.patreon.com/posts/73180048?pr=true ❗ Items are not displayed correctly when using the Brush Teeth From Toothbrush Holders made by @amellceellce, because the author uses the standard version of toothbrushes in his mod 👉 It can be found here https://www.patreon.com/posts/brush-teeth-from-77662994

✅ Decor in the form of a "cup with brushes"

Download: https://boosty.to/ser_kisyan/posts/af1d3f60-220d-4173-ba58-b614aa1f9194

Download: https://www.patreon.com/posts/zamena-zubnykh-2-78015619

Thank you all for the reblogs 💙 @serkisyan @s4library @sssvitlanz @mmfinds @ts4-ccfinds @emilyccfinds @simmi-kenni @sierrathesimmer @jaylanslife @jojolovesims1 @mysims4cc225 @sweethoneybeesim @classisims

[rebouks]

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)

[simmingonthelow]

Spinning her Arounnnnnndddd 😩😤💘

thank you to @vampirepill for helping make this possible

🥺༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ💖