Making Sim Stuff - Whatchoo Up To?
 

This thread is for everyone but it's also a place for people who make stuff for the game to show off what they are doing: their work in progress. The thread idea came about when we were having a chat over in the main disucssion section and I said I'd like a thread over here in the Sims 2 section for The Sims 2 game only where we could talk about creating things and suggested a thread to show off work in progress. I said:



So this is not intended as a feedback or testing thread. Creator Feedback is the place if you've got to that point or one of the dedicated threads over in Social. Please don't post files for people to download, just pictures or extended posts about what you're doing or what you think about what you're seeing.

This is a place to show stuff and show off stuff and talk about the process of making - the initial ideas, how you're going about it, how far you've got, thoughts, ideas, comments, discussion. Everybody's comments are welcome, even, especially, if you don't make stuff yourself. This is a community talking shop.

If the thread is approved, I'll come back and post all over it with pictures of what I've been making today (a project about half complete) but in the meantime, here's a picture of a folder on my desktop called SimPE Working Folder - you can see in there elements that belong to another project that got stopped as I started to work on Polgannon exclusively earlier this year. Personally, I get bored working on one thing at once and, particuarly if I run into a problem, I'll stop work on one thing and move on to another. I gives me time to think while also being able to go on doing the creative stuff I enjoy. This is what happened here. I will get back to this project shortly (I've thought through a solution to the issue). Polgannon stopped a lot of projects half way through though - I have a big backlog at the moment.

OK - well, having had the thread approved, I said I'd post about what I've been doing and so here it is. I wanted to do something else with the poster I made for Polgannon - mainly because that was a lot of work. So I made some recolours using it and other examples of British travel posters. I don't know if you got similar things elsewhere in the world. Here there were a whole pile of these, as far as I can tell, from around the beginning of the 20th century towards its end. You don't tend to see them now. They weren't posters made by the towns they advertise but were usually made by railway companies trying to get people to travel for their holiday (vacation). They could be very stylised or rather silly but were often very eye-catching. Because they were made for the railway companies, you tended to see them in railway stations. I've made 4 so far and have plans for another 4. Here are some of them in the station at Carping Magna.



Is anybody else making stuff at the moment? I'd really like to see what people are working on.

The posters look really great!
I'm glad you ended making this thread, too.

Wow Maxon, that's a big projects folder!

I like the posters a lot, especially the Polgannon one as I'm a bit of a fan.

I'm working on an old Sims 2 neighbourhood of mine, but not sure whether to upload. It seems most people like populated hoods (at least, I had a lot of comments to that effect with my Sims 3 worlds), whereas I like to create empty hoods which I can then play more than once with different sims. So the one I'm working on would be uploaded empty.

I'm glad this thread was created! Thanks Maxon for bringing it into fruition.

Simsample, that's actually a really good idea! If/when you get to uploading that 'hood, I'd definitely play with it. Looks gorgeous, too.

Anyways, I had just made a thread over in Creator's Feedback, when I saw this thread was up! So... here. I certainly can post a few pictures here, though.



It's going to be really fun building this, let alone playing once it's all done.

A really nice sense of place for both of those (that's a big hood though SimSample). It's one thing I really like about building hoods, making it look like somewhere. I love seeing Criquette's stuff used too.

Planning out a Multi-PT mod, so far I've had a mess about with SimPE and body shop to get use to it and turned two Belladonna Cove sims into aliens

Great idea for a thread.

Those hoods are beautiful. I wish I had the patience to do hood building/decorating. One day, maybe...

I've been playing with bodyshop and photoshop. I did my first hair retexturing the other day and now I'm trying my hand at retexturing clothes. So I decided to practice with the simple maxis turtleneck dress and coat as I kinda like the mesh. This is what I have:



I'm actually happy with the coat and some of the texture painting in the bottom half of the dress, but the top half has gone through some torturing phases. I also got a little carried away and forgot to check the sides where it comes together so the side seam is kinda noticeable and I can't seem to fix it :/.

I have to test it in game to see how good/bad it is and if it's worth fixing. Oh and I haven't even touched the boots, I don't know what to do with them yet. Ideally I'd like to shoe-swap them, but I don't have time to learn how to do that now, so I'm thinking I'll try to retexture them too if the dress looks OK in game, if not, boots stay.

Haha, viluxa, funny you say that! I always wished I could mesh/recolor clothing. Thank you for the compliment, though. That dress is really lovely! Got any pictures of it in Bodyshop?

Thank you too . I don't mesh though, yet... but basic recoloring is pretty easy, try looking up a tutorial, I'm sure you could do it.

Here's the dress in bodyshop.


You can see the seam in the first and third picture. I need to go in game some time to check how noticeable it is there.

The coat texture is bothering me now and I don't know what more to do with it. It feels like it's missing something (It is kind of a bland mesh, but still..). And the chest area looks really weird. I think this will stay an experiment.

PS: That's the hair I retextured. The fringe was hell, but nothing compared to the dress.

My project folder is 55.6 GB, and that's just the current laptop folder. My desktop computer is also packed. Granted, there are pictures, textures, extracted files, and some TS3/TS4 items for converting, but still...

I tend to work simultaneously on at least ten projects, particularly when converting stuff. My latest project is to accessorize some deco backpacks, and some accessories for my story. Still have a bit of mesh editing left, but it's going great.

I'm working on some default face templates, I have beautified about 5/6 templates so far that I didn't like, I'm beautifying every face template I don't like then defaulting them which will take a little while and I might not be going on the computer as much starting September 27 or so.
I have attached a few before & after pictures, and I did attach a picture of the beautified gorilla-ish face on another thread by Jawusa but I'm attaching it here too.

I don't know why you're worried about that first face Miley. I really like that.

It's good to know you like it maybe I will keep it after all.
I'm running into a problem, yeah sure the female sims look super good in the face templates, then you check out the faces using a male.. oh god no! most of them look like faces made out of play-dough by a 5 year old!

Feedback: Nice creations everybody. By the way, viluxa don't be too hard on yourself because I don't see a seam no matter how hard I look

Are you changing the different ages too Miley?

Yeah I will make sure the different ages look good with the templates
This will take some time though since it's my first time making face template replacements and like I said, I'm going to be busy starting from September 27.

Looking good, Miley!

Viluxa, I actually did recolor clothing before (my one and only upload here is some t-shirts, actually) - I just don't find it really entertaining. Bored me to sleep, haha. Fiddled around with meshing, even bought Milkshape, but ughhh... Bones... no. Please no, anything but meshing.

I'm trying to recolor some of Poppet's hairs/textures to have more natural colors... kind of like how Pooklet has a bunch of different blacks, browns, etc...? It's a pain in the butt because I can never decide on what colors look good enough. Thinking I'll need to post here with some pictures later and ask for help. By the way, that retextured hair is really nice!

Face templates are not a quick job.

@Ather we need to be a bit careful I think about asking for help - strictly, that's what Creator Feedback is for and you get some good help there.

Ahh, yes, pardon me, Maxon. Wrote that right after I had woken up. Of course! Creator Feedback it is.

I'm thinking of making 5 to 10 face templates and uploading them. What do you think? I will not have much time so uploading some is actually a good start, I'm going to open up bodyshop and make sure all ages look good with the faces I have made so far.

Too big, maybe? I was toying with the idea of just making a smaller neighbourhood to share.

I'd post in Creator Feedback and get some, well, feedback first.

That's always a difficult one. It looks great and has a nice sense, as I said, of being a real place. OTOH, so many residential lots likely mean many of them will never be played since it's unlikely people would have that many families in the neighbourhood. Then again, given the choice, I think people might like such a rich choice and, of course, everyone will choose different places so that's not necessarily a problem. Big neighbourhood is lots of work though (speaking from experience).

I'd totally download Blue Haven if you decide to upload it. It looks great and meet my criterias and I suck at using SC4.

Thanks for your replies; maybe I'll upload that one as well as making a smaller one, then!

Does anyone know anything about the guy who makes Milkshape? I reinstalled my copy on the new computer but I can't find the unlock code. I'm sure I backed up my emails but I have no idea where they are. Anyway, I emailed the guy four days ago now and have had no reply. Having paid for it legitimately, I'm getting pretty PO.

Edit - update to say he's been in touch. I can get on with the posters now.