So a long time ago I played Sims 3 nearly every day! Then, the Sims 4 came out, I tried it, hated it, and kept playing Sims 3 for several more years before finally dropping the series as a whole except for the occasional quick install of Sims 4 to build some cool houses and uninstall it again.

Well, 4 years ago, when I was still actively playing Sims 3, I posted a WCIF thread looking for doors and windows of a very specific, yet very generic style found in almost every house in the US built since World War 2. The search came up mostly empty in terms of filling these specific requirements, but did yield some interesting finds that I ended up using for a collection of houses. I miss these houses, and I miss this game!

Anyway, I posted looking for these windows because I had absolutely no idea how make them myself, or how to put them into the game, which ended up leading me to searching for guides on how to import models into The Sims 3 (though this time with a collection of signs I had made for a different game and wanted to use in my own Sims 3 world). It went utterly nowhere and those signs never seen the light of day in my world.

Now, fast-forward to just this last Wednesday (September 25th) and I began the search that started it all again, but now for Sims 4 (because a friend of mine got me into it to build houses, again), which also came up empty, literally. No one responded, though I didn't give them much time before I may have sort-of accidentally made my own mod to solve the lack of the proper doors and windows!


I don't know if it's the fact that a nice program called Sims4Studio exists, or that I've learned a LOT about Blender and UV mapping because of a really stupid project for Stormworks two years back, or both, but work on this little happy accident has been going smoothly. I have made a door, a window, and blinds for that window, and as soon as I get shading fixed, I will be able to make several sizes of this window in minutes!

Now, my question here is, how could I go about porting these to Sims 3? What programs will I need, what will I need to do with them, and what will need to change (and how do I change it) for these to work in Sims 3? If I can figure out how to get these in Sims 3, that will solve one of my two main problems that I even CAN solve: the lack of proper doors and windows for my build style. The other problem I can solve will likely be relatively easy this time around, which is those darn signs (speaking of, if I do make signs for Sims 3, I need to find a Simlish font to write my signs with, since the US just loves putting paragraphs of text onto road signs). The third problem I have (well first problem, and one I don't think I can solve) is performance. From what I recall, Sims 3 is a 32bit game and can only use up to 4 GB of RAM. Has anyone ever found a way around this and to allow the game to be more efficient with the now 32 GB I have in my current PC (the PC I had back then only had 8)?

If I can do this, I plan to finish my current mod on Sims 4 in about a week, get it uploaded for my friend to play with, then uninstall the game and reinstall Sims 3.

More or less, once you have exported the meshes from whatever you are converting from (be it TS4 or any other source) you can basically follow any regular tutorial on how to create the item from scratch.
Many are found here: https://modthesims.info/wiki.php?ti...Object_Creation
And here's a window specific one: https://sims3tutorialhub.tumblr.com...s-tutorial-time

The only conversion specific thing that is likely to come up involves making sure the textures are appropriate for what TS3 supports. That's usually one greyscale texture map for all parts, of square resolution (ie 512px, 1024px), in .dds format- which may require some manual rearranging of UV maps and/or the texture itself. When in doubt, mimic whatever format and resolution EA used on the object you plan to use as a base.
You can use the original TS4 colour textures as overlays or choose to make the object recolourable with Create a Style, it's up to you.

The general toolset would be:
S3PE
TSRW (most tutorials written around this, but its technically possible to make things without it)
Blender - sometimes multiple versions of it.
Milkshape 1.8.5 (Unfortunate requirement for most objects, as the object plugins for Blender are very old- but 99% of the time you only need it as a conversion tool between mesh formats, any tutorial steps actually related to meshing can and should be skipped in favour of Blender)
S3OC (optional cloning tool, often creates a cleaner clone than TSRW's inbuilt feature- the resulting package can still be used in TSRW afterwards)
Any image editor that supports .dds (GIMP or Photoshop)

But each tutorial should cover what they used specifically, anyway.
Worth knowing that a lot of the object creation documentation is quite old- still useful, still accurate, but there may simply be easier or more straightforward methods out there that just never got the tutorial treatment. Feel free to ask on the forums how to accomplish any steps you have trouble with, and you may find that some of us have alternatives.

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As for performance, the short answer is generally no.
TS3 actually doesn't release memory properly- causing it to have a real RAM limit of around 2.8GB, which is the point where it will either stop saving (Error 12) or crash when the limit is reached. This is more or less a flaw all frequent players of the game live with and manage with good save and modding practices. (See here.)

Longer answer, there are a few tricks and tools out there that involve tampering with ini files, plugins, external programs and the like with mixed success for giving the game a bit more to work with. To be taken with a grain of salt, as they're often voodoo / misinformation.
A popular new one is DXVK, which allows the game to use as much VRAM as you want to allocate. Has some good benefits, but players should always keep in mind that these things should be considered experimental and aren't perfectly documented what effects they're guaranteed to have (both good and bad) yet. Your mileage may vary, and graphical oddities / incompatibilities with mods can and do arise with these things.

With just a few precautions, the game fares pretty well despite that limitation.