Behind the Scenes Q&A

[simtopi]

I had a few questions from this post which I'll answer here along with a little more ramble.  Please keep in mind that what I do works for me in my game and for my story, and I got to this point by experimenting and following several tips and tricks from others as well as reading what they're doing. I may not know or have specific mods and hacks, and I may even be going about things the wrong way. If that's the case, please do add to this. I am by no means proclaiming myself an expert on sim storytelling posing and scene composition. I am always happy to keep learning and be inspired.

Anyway I'm going to go ahead and assume you're read up with all the usual sim storytelling cheats such as moveObjects on, boolProp snapObjectstogrid false, slowMotion and allmenus on . I'm also going to assume you know the difference between game animations and custom poses.  Also, I have all the expansion packs but I do believe the only ones I would consider essential for my story would be Night Life, University, Open For Business and Apartment Life.


Zombie gets kicked in the face

Picture in question:

(contributed by wisteria_sims )

Poseboxes, hacks, etc -
University animation box (JD Movies)
Aikea_Guinea's paintings
Silent_Lucidity's shiftable OMSPs
Treeag's freezer clock
SynapticSims fight animations (not used in this particular scene, but it's a great hack for fight scenes)



Animations:
Jasmine - Aikea_Guinea's painting I -> punching bag -> roundhouse kick
Adrian - Aikea_Guinea's painting I -> motives -> energy stop
Zombie Harper (on a 67° "forward" angle OMSP) JD's University anim box -> fun -> pillow fight - fightee reject

( This is a behind a scenes recreation of the above scene. You get the picture.)

Fun fact: This lot is a very slightly revamped University Maxis dorm, that I converted to a residential lot for ease of storytelling. Eric Swain (from the sim bin) is my placeholder sim for this lot. A lot of times it is just easier to convert or create lots to residential just for easier placement of objects and to enable all the pose boxes. Which brings us to the next query.





Moving Sims around on Community Lots
(asked by bunheadsbuns )


I was asked about moving sims around on a community lot. That's simple. The cheat you want is "boolProp dormSpecificToolsDisabled false" and "moveObjects on". Even though it says "dormspecific..." I use this cheat on any community lot where I'm shooting. It enables buy mode so you can move elements around.

It is a hell of a lot easier to shoot on residential lots, so even for some scenes which look like they may be community lots, I just make them (or convert them) to residential using the changeLotZoning cheat (the different lots are in the "help" menu). Be careful if you're converting a community to a residential though. You lose the mailbox, and I'm not exactly sure how to respawn it. This has the potential to cause issues in your game, so if you're shooting on this lot, I recommend not saving the game, and saying goodbye to it as a functional lot for gameplay.

Update: naughtydolphin added this link for buyable garbage cans and mailboxes. Also check out genlisae's comments below for more on community vs. residential lots for story posing.



I do like using community lots for some reasons. Sometimes I'm too lazy to convert a lot (such as if I'm using established Maxis lots), and most of the time I just like having random sims and NPCs. If the lot is a residential lot, it's easy enough to have your placeholder sim open a home business that way you get your random townie sims. If it's a community lot, you can have a sim buy the lot for that same effect too. Most poseboxes aren't enabled for community lots though, so in this case, I shove a bunch of them in the lot owner's backpack before I have them visit the lot.

In this case, where I built this lot from scratch, I built it as a residential lot, and added my entire posebox library (or at least the ones I know will get the most use). I shoved them somewhere inconspicuous. Then I rezoned the lot to a community lot and the boxes will stay. However, be careful not to delete these boxes. If they're not enabled to show up in the community inventory bin, you can't get it back easily. To enable poseboxes for community inventory, check out Ndainye's nifty tutorial (requires simPE).







Expressions and Eye Directions

(asked by Anonymous)

Another question was about how I get sims to look at something and also have their eyes follow. It's actually pretty simple and I haven't found any detailed tutorial I could link to so I'll get into this step by step. It can be a little tricky and you need a bit of patience.

I have two favourite game animations for expressions and eye direction. You don't find these expressions in Decorgal's Pose box. (actually, experiment with all the game animations, there are many different kinds of expressions there that are fun to use if you pick the right frame).

Anyway, this one is from Aikea_Guinea's anim painting 1 "NL Gestures -> Scope room":


This is from Aikea_Guinea's anim painting II "OFB -> Wait -> Low Loop 1 and alternatively Low Loop 2"

(I honestly love Jasmine. I think she has one of the most fun, expressive faces in my game.)

First, pick a static pose from a custom Pose box. This one is "Decorgal's Custom Modeling poses -> Female Stand -> (6) One arm holding other behind"


Now, select the game animation you want. Here's the "wait -> low loop 1" animation to make her look impatient:


Same pose, but with a different animation, that being "NL Gestures -> scope room". Now she looks a little mischievous.


Now to get the sim to turn their head, use the Fourth Wall Options (Look at Player) mod. You can use this mod and queue up an animation at the same time. The sim will turn their head to look at you while doing that animation. Same thing applies if you use a custom static pose.

This one is from May's Men's posebox -> stand -> pose 2. Use the Look at Me hack to get them to look towards the camera.


Now pause the game. Swing the camera to your desired shooting angle.


To get an expression:
Pause the game. Queue up "Look At Player". Then select the animation (Scope room). Move your camera to the direction you want your sim to look.


To get eye direction on an overlayed expression, I use Decorgal's face overlays in combination with one of the game animations above. You can start off with queueing this up:
pause game -> neutral face -> Look At Player hack -> anim painting 1/NL gestures/scope room -> position camera ->unpause game.

Now have fun with overlaying different expressions. To get Jasmine's expression above, that was face overlay Neutral -> Eyebrows up (interested) -> Scope room


I can leave the eye direction animation out of  it all together and it would be easier to get a pose. But our eyes follow where we tend to look, so I try to get more natural looking poses this way.   There's actually a lot of mixing up and matching different game animations, custom poses and overlays, with a bit of patience, you can get the right action and expression you want.

I do hope this was helpful. If anyone would like to contribute to correct, add to this and/or improve the process, to make my life easier as well as other story teller's, you are definitely more than welcome to! And of course, if there's anything you want to ask me, go right ahead. :D (Not going to bother screening anymore questions though!)


By the way, for those that remember Jasmine failing her last exam, she did manage to pass it this time! :D

Jasmine: That's right, bitches. Exam pwned.

Comments

[naughtydolphin.livejournal.com]

You can download a buyable mailbox and garbage can from here, which makes it easier to convert community lots to residential.

I love this sneak peak! I think I'll be stealing some of your ideas for sure.

[simtopi]

Nice, and thank you so much! I'll add this to the post, and I definitely need to download this. :D

[naughtydolphin.livejournal.com]

It comes in really handy! Some of those community lots just work better as residential.

And Jasmine keeps stalking my Glittergaze kids in their dorm, hah.

[simtopi]

lol @ Jasmine. Which reminds me I still have to put all of Cecilia's kids to help populate my p_t hood. :D

[sullivansims.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

THANK YOU!

I don't know why, but even though I overlay poses frequently, using AikeaGuinea's painting together with the static poses never occurred to me. This is fantastic!

[simtopi]

No problem at all. I feel like I'm still picking up new tips every time I read someone else's story. :D I'm really happy this was useful.

[genlisae.livejournal.com]

I haven't had a chance to read through this entirely (I'll be back to do that!) but I did want to add a bit about changing community lots to residential since I do this all the time.

The easiest way to do this and have them remain functional is to duplicate the lot, (move it to the lots and houses bin, then place a new instance to be converted) then go into the lot in build mode, convert the lot and then place buyable versions of the maxis mailbox and trashcan. This should keep the lot fully functional.

Obviously it can still glitch. I've had it happen. Which is where having duplicated the lot comes in handy. Just delete the glitched one and try again.

There are earlier game versions of the buyable mailbox and trashcan available but I do not have the link handy and since I am not sure I explained it very clearly, this thread explains it in more detail.

[genlisae.livejournal.com]

Oh, and naughtydolphin beat me too it :D

[simtopi]

Thank you! I think I actually only did this once for a Maxis lot, which was the Sim State U library. I altered it a bit, changed it to residential and promptly borked it up. I actually went to another premade neighbourhood to package the library back up from the game, returned it to my neighbourhood, recreated all my changes and this time repackaged it before I changed it to a residential. I complicate things way too much, I know. >.<

But yes, I agree, save your lots before they glitch!

[bunheadsbuns.livejournal.com]

These are great tips! Putting poseboxes in the backpacks is especially clever, I would have never thought of that. I always forget about the backpacks.

Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us :D

[simtopi]

No problem, I'm glad they could help.

The poseboxes in the backpacks only work if they're going to a community lot that the specific household owns. On non-owned community lots, the sim's backpack is inaccessible and I have no clue if there is a cheat or hack that will make it accessible.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

These are great!

I would love it if you would post a link to these 'how I did it' posts to SimScenes. :) This is exactly the type of thing that helps people out. I only just learned about using animations with the poses, so this is some timely advice for me. :)

[simtopi]

Thanks. ^_^

I'd love to link it to Sim_scenes. I'll write a post after I'm done work and if it's helpful, that's great. :)

[wisteria-sims.livejournal.com]

Thanks for clearing that picture up for me. I really need to learn how to use camera angles to my advantage. ^_^

Also, interesting, the eye direction bit, I usually just use the 'look at me' mod for posing, I sometimes forget that animations can do the job!

[simtopi]

No problem. Yes, I really do experiment with lots of camera angles. Some animations don't come across at all at certain angles, while with others, it just hits it.

[chocobeans.livejournal.com]

Hi there. I wandered over here from Beth's blog (Windburn). I'm a new author in terms of simming and using it as a storytelling tool. I'm always looking for new ways to get get rather natural poses, besides catching default Maxis poses at the right time. Thanks for the tips and extra links. I'm hoping to use them soon.

[keoni-chan.livejournal.com]

Just wandered over here from your twitter. Late comment is late, but I want to thank you for explaining how to let your sims look at things and have their eyes follow. I've been battling this for ages and I finally get it! :) Thanks so much for taking the time to write this all out.

[simtopi]

No problem. I'm glad it can give you some tips anyway. It's a little outdated though. It's a little outdated, as there's this nifty pose box here that can control the angles of the Sim's head, neck and spine. It's very useful. :)

[amelia94.livejournal.com]

Thank you! This is very informative :)