Date Posted: 30th Nov 2020 at 8:34 AM

?????  !   Well darn! This wisiwg won't print Korean so I'll have to give an image instead.
  Hello !

A journal update!  Nov. 2020  (about time  lol )
I've been making stuff for sims since Sims2 and have been a member here since 2006.  I sure miss all the old modders from Sims 2 days.  I am still here though even though I was mostly gone for the last few years. My hubby was terminal and required a lot of care. Taking care of him and working full time didn't give me any free time. I had to take early retirement from my job and also retire as a moderator here to take care of him. He's been gone now for a year and a half. I'm finally getting back to making stuff.  I really like that I'm retired and have a LOT of free time. :D 
 
I ended up moving from the middle of nowhere to town and guess what!  I can STREAM! At our old house, we always had poor internet speeds and no arial tv or cell phone service out there. Could not stream anything -- buffering... buffering... buffering...  It took HOURS to download anything and that only worked if the internet didn't hiccup and kill that download. I know things were available but I couldn't take advantage of it while working.  (Ya see, they have this thing where you Actually have to work at work to get paid.  They won't pay you to surf. Isn't that rather mean of them? lol)  So, since January, I've been watching a TON of Kdramas.  Lots of them have missing subtitles so I decided to learn Korean. And... I can get the gist of a lot of conversations now. Of course, I am not fluent but I am getting the hang of it.  I've also accrued a whole folder of pictures of actors and singers I want to make into Sims.  (They may object to being turned into a sim so I may just have to make a fac-SIM-ile of them instead.  {yea, I know, BOOOOO} lol.) 

I actually love to model meshes and have the patience for it. I am still not all that great at art work textures though so finger painting is still a struggle for me. My first love was architecture which is why I've played this game so many years. In truth, I only play the game long enough to see how everything works and when I see that they need something then I go off to build houses and make stuff for the game. 

One of the biggest frustrations for me when making sims has always been the game's lack of sufficient sliders to make good faces.  Yes, Sims are rather cartoonish but at least Sims 4 features are better than Sims 1. I want to put my family and friends in the game (and a famous person or two) but making them has always been difficult. Being a somewhat perfectionist, I want a good face sculpt, not just makeup. So, without even realizing it, I became a plastic surgeon and have a badge to prove it!  lol  I should have object and clothing badges but my published stuff is in team sets so I don't get an individual badge for clothing, shoe or hair meshes.

I've been working on a set, maybe it's even a theme now since September.  Who knows when it will be ready.  I just hope I can publish it before the sun goes nova or I kick the bucket. Whichever comes first.  lol

So what is in the works?  Well, since I hate traveling all over the internet to find required CC, I decided to make my own:
1: A set of famous sims whose faces are sculpted as close as possible in a sims game.
2: A whole bunch of face sliders. nose, ears, forehead, mouth, etc. (I just got my plastic surgeon badge!  :D)
3: KPOP Clothes. 
4: Shoes.  Waiting for my 'Stereotype' badge.  lol
5: Hair styles - My future Simmies need some good hairstyles.
6: Accessories - Jewelry - Simmies need some bling.
7:  I may dabble in makeup - but that's fingerpainting and I flunked fingerpaints in kinniegarden.  But if I am successful. I can earn the makeup artist badge. lol
8:  Not sure what category eyebrows are in, but those too.
9: A CAR - I WANT the Hyundai Ioniq EV. That is  PRETTY car! Or else my Bugatti.  I was thinking about using the bicycle to animate the car but then my sims would get a ticket for driving on the sidewalk.  lol  I'll just have to make an object then.  (Where's Fresh-Prince, Dr. Pixel or Hexameter when you need them!  Darn! they're not creating for Sims4!)  https://www.hyundai.news/fileadmin/...ong-01-1610.jpg
Now, the question is.  Can I finish this project?  I could easily if it was Sims 2 but I am still learning Blender.  meh.  (I've been cheating becuase I learned how to mesh in Milkshape long ago and recently been dabbling in converting those to Sims 4.)  We'll see.  
I have mostly finished the sculpting on 5 sims of my set. Two more to go.. But they'll need makeup, hair, clothing, bling etc...  hmmm.

Date Posted: 30th Nov 2020 at 8:10 AM

My IONIQ EV



My Bugatti


Yea, I had a paper begging cup with a sign that asked people to help me buy my 'Bug' but none of the guys I worked with donated!  They just laughed at me and said, "You Wish!".  Meanies!   lol  

Date Posted: 14th Oct 2020 at 5:09 PM

Well,  I've been gone for over a year due to personal issues, but I am BACK!  and this journal entry has turned into quite the ramble. 

This last month, I have been working on some sims.  If you've seen my earlier comments on this site,  (I've been around here for 14 years or so), You'd know I don't think of my self as a sim maker, mainly because the game won't let me adjust the vertices the way I need them to go - It doesn't allow me to  do the fine tuning I want. 

 I am very good at using Milkshape but I suck using blender which is why I haven't made anything for Sims 4.   I have not mastered blender YET! Shameful I know.  I didn't have the time to master blender because my husband was ill for over 6 years and I had to take early retirement to take care of him. He passed last May, 2019.  So a year later, I am getting back to my hobbies.  I have a whole stockpile of samples I want to turn into Sims 4 stuff and not knowing  blender threw me off of meshing for too long.

I've been living on the backside of the rez for over 22 years. After my hubby passed I moved to town mainly because our house was way out there and my knees are too bad to be shoveling snow, much less try to walk over snow and ice using crutches.  Yea, my knees can't handle the shimmy-slide footwork anymore.   Also, the snow doesn't drift up in town like it does out there.  I used to HATE commuting in winter because I had to open at 7 am and leave home before the plows were out and that SUCKED!  On bad days, it took me about 1 1/2 hours to drive 25 miles over icy hills and drifted roads.  Couldn't even see the difference between the road or the ditch and in town, no drifted roads. Now that I am retired it's ironic that I live less than 2 miles from my old job at the university.  lol  I don't even have to leave home if the roads are iced up.    Yea, I LOVE retirement!  :D I used to do IT support at the university and I really don't miss the stress of it at all.  I do miss all the smart student employees who used to work in tech support with me, now I have to go back Old-school and do my own research like we had to do  in the the EARLY days of the internet - 80's-90's,  instead of having a brain bank handy. lol  As my then skinny 10 year old kid back, in 1986 once exclaimed in astonishment, "You were BORN BEFORE COMPUTERS!?!"  He was ASTOUNDED and DUMBFOUNDED! like I was a DINOSAUR!!    said kid now works in Silicon Valley where I once worked before moving to Ida-out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-ho (For the international reader, I moved from the most populated, diverse state of California to the mostly rural, potato and sugar beet farming state of Idaho.)

Huge Bonus!  In town I finally have REAL, HIGH-SPEED-INTERNET! (and cell service)  (Yea, I was not kidding that we lived on the backside of the reservation.) lol  and I can STREAM! and listen to MY KIND of MUSIC!  (Since I married my hubby and moved to Idaho, I've been living in head-banger, cowboy/country music land.  I don't hear the music I like around here.  I grew up listening to pop, R & B, and Latin music)  Since I moved to town,  I've been watching a lot of YouTube and KDRAMAS! Love Korean dramas! and KPOP!  all these talented 'kids' (They are younger than my son so that's why they are talented kids to me) - BTS!  TXT, EXO, SHINEE, Stray Kids, VIXX, ... I wish my knees weren't so bad. I LOVE to dance and I jump up to dance when I hear good songs but my knees just can't take it anymore.    *cry*  . I really like BTS.  They are so entertaining and have a boatload of content on YouTube. :D  Dynamite has me up and trying to dance again just like the OLD disco days!  lol  funny thing is I am not army, why? because I don't have a smart phone so I can't join. lol  Which really sucks because I wanted to watch that online concert they had.

So, "What project is in the works?" you ask.... Well...  I've decided to make my 'kids' into sims but I want GOOD sims that look as much like my models as possible. The game presets were frustrating to use because, while better than Sims 2 or Sims 3,  Sims 4 is still Cr4p at making ethnic faces.  The game's face controls don't allow for much 'fine tuning'. It is especially bad when trying to craft eyes and noses. Most people resort to makeup and skin textures to resolve the game's shortcomings but I want a better face sculpt options.

After spending the last month trying to use the game's presets and fiddling with them to make my sims and not getting the results I want.  Can't get the nose close enough to the face with the correct nose end... Can't get the right eye shapes.. I was thinking, 'What I really need to do is model the mesh!  I am very good at that, if only I could use Milkshape again! .......    However!  I have been inspired by CmarNYC's Morphmaker!  I found that CmarNYC's Morphmaker allows me to export a .m3sd format so I can use Milkshape again!   Instead of doing a 'close enough' face sculpt with the game's presets then applying makeup (which still doesn't make my sim the way I want), I can MASH THE MESH to get exactly what I want by making sliders. I LIKE mashing meshes!

Oops!  I overran the character allowance.  Continued in Comments!

Date Posted: 23rd Feb 2015 at 7:04 AM

Well, I dove into the deep end of Sims 4 meshing and am coming up for air.

I wanted to make a simple Keds tennis shoes that was easy to recolor. I cloned something that was close enough in shape but the UV map was terrible - it was not suitable for prints and patterns which is what I wanted. So, to make it short, I've rebuilt the whole thing from scratch and made separate parts for what I wanted to make recolorable. I've just finished the mesh, now I have to do the LODs and bone assignments.

The point of all this tedious work is to make recolors as easy as possible. Plop a print on the shoes, pick a nice trim, etc, etc.
Pack it up along with the .PSD files so other creators can make recolors.

Someday, It may be good enough for upload. Look for "Easy Recolor Keds."

Date Posted: 5th Feb 2013 at 12:41 AM

Well, Making a jingle dress for multicultural has been an adventure. Good thing the upload queue has been on hold. Gives me extra time to finish the dress.

Originally, I made individual jingles for the dress but SimPE burped and tilted at the vertice count so I had to remove the 3D jingles. So I got photoshop out and worked up some png's for the jingles.. I'll need to insert a bump map to give the dress SOME kind of depth.....

Oh well, off to mash some recolors.

Date Posted: 8th Mar 2012 at 6:28 PM

Lunar Lakes has some pretty wild-looking trees., It inspired me to make an Integral Tree house lot. I like how it came out. It mostly floats in the treeline with just the spiral stairs on free form platforms going down to ground level. Of course, I used a ton of CC. and even made some aliens to go with it. I liked robokitty's braided fro hawk for my alien cuz it looked kewl. She did a great job on the hair's highlight, tip and base so I can make some pretty wild color sets. I need to create a new skin for my alien family because the ones I got on CC aren't really what I want for them. They are currently blue. I want orangey green. but that takes artwork to create... mebbe it will just be the lot. :0)

I may even make a series of them on smaller lots.

The interesting theng is that Lunar lakes is pretty arid, the buildings are futuristic looking and some float.. but the trees are cool.

I haven't packed it for upload yet because I am waiting for Showtime to arrive and I've removed all my Twallan mods and package CC from the game in preparation for the new EP.

Date Posted: 7th Jan 2012 at 8:45 PM

As usual, I get interested in making stuff and then get side tracked by real life. lol We've got a few of the original N8iveSims mod group people back in the group but they mostly like sims2 stuff. I haven't seen what they've been up to over the holidays so I'll have to check in on their progress. I didn't do hardly any sims stuff over winter break because my son was in town and it was family doings.... Visiting... eating.... some projects like making REAL clothes... visting and more eating. :P

Date Posted: 23rd Oct 2011 at 8:12 PM

TS3 PETS! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the horses! I've wanted rideable horses in the game since TS2 and the TS3 horses gallop and jump and race! WONDERFUL! My horse loving sim is already galloping around town bareback.

This inspires me to wake up N8iveSims mod group and get busy making some Palouses and horse tack as soon as the modders let me know how to find the mesh options for the saddles, blankets, bridles, etc.

Oh! and Jerome has 6 horses and about 10 zenyattas already.. those little horse-gnomes really like Jerome's horse spread.

Date Posted: 11th Jun 2011 at 11:30 PM

Yes, I have been derailed, yet again. I still plan on posting the contest, got the judges going on that for now but then this THEME idea came up so I am making some 'fitness' stuff for Sims2. Recolors of Maxis stuff and a new toddler mesh. But before I could do that, I 'had' to update Faylen's recoloring tutorial because the inline images were lost due to server changes - the images are not in those paths any longer , so, I wikified that so it is useful again.. We'll see how far I get on these recolors and new meshes. Life intrudes on meshing time. and I still have to do all those TS2 requests... sheesh! lol. Truthfully, I got derailed on that after I halfway completed the Bruce Lee clothing and the requesting party did a change order on me for a body type that is not on MTS. MTS is my main modding home and I only upload to a few other places on rare occasions and I didn't want to redo the whole thing so I put it aside. *sigh* So when the cook has spent time making up a batch of Stew and it's halfway cooked, don't change the order to Denver omelets with a side order of home-made chili - you end up with nothing and a pot of half cooked stew.

Note to self: QUIT Journaling and get to meshing! :p

Date Posted: 27th Feb 2011 at 3:38 AM

Ok. Converting TS2 objects to TS3 was successful, Now I am trying to make my 1st TS3 hair. The goal is a toddler girls 'palm tree' hairstyle. You know the kind, that little pony tail on the top of the head that sticks straight up.

Then if that's successful, I'l make a toddler girls fru-fru dress to go with it and black patent leather shoes- Que linda!


update June 11, 2011:Put aside until I get better at basic TS3 clothing.