redsimmer-blog

[redsimmer-blog]

simmers:

[redsimmer-blog]

A few weeks months ago, I posted my recreation of Bring Me To Life in Sims 2 and quite a few people here seemed to enjoy the nostalgia trip.

I have just uploaded a behind-the-scenes video - check it out if you're curious about the process.

Of course, I didn’t cover every single step, so let me know if there's anything you want to know more about!

[redsimmer-blog]

Hello, The Sims lovers 🥰 After almost 6 months of work, I’ve finally wrapped up the last episode of my The Sims 2 horror series. It’s been a long, long journey that actually began 15 years ago, back when Sims machinima was still hugely popular.

These days, I find making these videos really relaxing — it’s also been a great way to develop some new skills, from building simple sets to creating unique animations and special effects. And this final episode is packed with all of that!

I’d be super grateful if you decided to take a quick look, leave a little comment, or to help nudge the YouTube algorithm — just so these 6 months of work don’t go unnoticed 🥰

Thank you in advance ❤️

[redsimmer-blog]

Hello, all The Sims 2 lovers! I’d like to share something very personal with you.

Between 2006 and 2012, Sims 2 machinima thrived. Even the game’s creators supported fan-made videos, often featuring them on official platforms. One iconic element from that era was a memorable logo, along with a few downloadable songs and themes.

While working on the final episode of Esoteric Relation, I decided to recreate that famous logo almost frame by frame as a tribute to those creators. It was something very meaningful to me and brought back some of the best memories I’ve ever had with this amazing game.

[redsimmer-blog]

Yet Another Package Editor

Download the latest version here

YaPe is a modern package editor for DBPF (.package) files

Features:

Edit any package - FAST

List and edit resources in a package

Filter resources by type

Easy editors for several resource types

Supports opening ANY DBPF-coded .package, .dat, or .sc4 file

Easily reduce texture size, add/remove/recreate mipmaps, change texture format

Import textures by dragging, export DDS

Native on Windows and Linux

Why make yet another package editor?

Simply said, because SimPe can be kind of cumbersome especially on Linux, and package editors other than SimPe (s3pe, s4pe, iLive's Reader etc.) do not support Sims 2 resources.

To illustrate, I timed someone shrinking a texture (convert RawARGB32 -> DXT1, shrink 2x) in both SimPe and YaPe:

SimPe + GIMP: 1m 30s

YaPe: 10s

Originally this started as just a way to easily test if my DBPF library was doing the correct thing, but over time it has grown to become a half-decent editor suitable for more general use.

Tutorial / usage tips

Here I will explain how to shrink and convert textures in YaPe because that's what I imagine most people will use this program for right now, but of course you can use it for other things as well.

Let's get started by getting the program to look the way you want to: use the options in the top left to change the scale of the interface and switch between dark and light mode.

Now drag a package file into the program (don't worry about closing the sims except when you save the package), a list of resources in the package will be visible. You can find out what the abbreviations mean by hovering your mouse over them; in general I try to add tooltips like this to buttons or options that are unclear.

Don't be afraid to mess around and make changes! The changes you make are never saved unless you press the save button, so if you simply drag your package file into YaPe again without saving you will get your original package back (there is currently no undo function, but it is a planned feature).

All these resources are great, but we're only interested in the textures for this tutorial so let's set a filter. Right click on a texture (TXTR) and select "Filter on type".

Great! Now you can only see the textures we're interested in. You can disable this filter by unticking the "filter" option at the top.

Now click on the "TXTR" to open the texture, it will open a new tab in the lower half of the window by default. If your window is not very big (like mine is for this tutorial) you might have trouble seeing the texture and all the options. You can drag the tab around and put it somewhere else in the program, I'm going to put it on the right and make it a little bigger so we can see what's going on.

Okay, now we can see all the options, and well... there's a bunch of them. We'll go over some of the options that you'll likely want to use but feel free to experiment of course.

First, let's have a look at the texture viewer at the bottom: you can zoom in on the texture by holding control and scrolling, and you can change which mipmap is displayed by clicking the radio buttons above the texture.

But wait, this texture does not have enough mipmaps to show up in game! (post by @pforestsims) Let's fix that right this instant by clicking the "Add missing mipmaps" button in the middle.

Okay, now the mipmaps will show up in game, which is good... except that this mipmap is really blurry. (post by me) Luckily we can fix this really easily, just click the "Recalculate all mipmaps" button.

Much better!... except that we've created a new hidden problem: the leaves will disappear when zooming out in game (blog by lisyarus) but even this problem can be fixed. We can actually preview what the texture will look like when zoomed out by switching the format to DXT1 since DXT1 has binary transparency, just like alpha tested textures like leaves and grass.

Right, so the leaves have a bunch of holes that don't look right when zooming out, let's change that. Above the "Add missing mipmaps" button there is the "Preserve transparency" slider: try changing it to something like 120-170 and click "Recalculate all mipmaps", you can see that the transparency changes, if it's still too thin/transparent set the value higher and recalculate again and so on.

Have a look at all the mipmaps (zoom levels) and once you're satisfied with the transparency change the format back to DXT5.

This texture will now look great in game! But it is also quite large, so we can reduce the size 2x smaller without sacrificing very much in terms of looks (sorry to all the cc authors who love their large textures). Click the "Remove largest texture" button, which will make it so that the first mipmap becomes the largest texture effectively reducing the size by 2x. Like mentioned it does use the first mipmap so make sure to fix any blurry mipmaps first.

You can repeat the same process for the other textures in the package, and then we're done. Save the package by clicking the save button in the top bar, and have a look in game at your beautiful textures.

Another option is to drag images/textures you've made somewhere else into the program (with special support for dds files), for a full lists of supported image formats you can look here. (image-rs documentation) The image/texture will currently go into the firsts open texture resource tab because of UI framework limitations.

Here's a look at some of the other editor currently implemented:

Enjoy :)

[redsimmer-blog]

Further Documentation of Sims 2 being an endless and vast chasm of depth

Toddlers literally get a "sugar high" and it's coded to increase their motives and make them perform random animations.

They can get this feature by licking up chocolate puddles made by the Cuisine career reward. Has to be used by a Sim with low Cooking skill to leave the puddles!

[redsimmer-blog]

is there any proof that separating a mesh in subsets actually helps the game?

I am going to start applying it to some high poly meshes if it's worthy!

[redsimmer-blog]

I just found out that pretty much all mipmaps in sims 2 cc are too blurry

While working on my package editor (which I'll make a post about later) I found out that pretty much all DXT-compressed textures in sims 2 cc have blurry mipmaps! Meaning that for most textures, if you zoom out slightly the texture will become blurry.

What, why, and how

Meepmops? What are those and why would I care?

Mipmaps are used in computer graphics to make textures look smoother when viewed at a distance. There is also some evidence that having mipmaps might help with texture memory (post by @episims). In essence, you take the original image and then combine four pixels into one to create an image that is 2x smaller in width and height than the original, then repeat this process until finally you get an image that is 1x1 pixel.

One complication is that mipmaps will not work if the smallest texture is not 1x1 (post by @pforestsims) meaning that if you don't have the maximum amount of mipmap levels possible, the game will only use the largest texture. This is a good thing, because that means the game will reject malformed textures, but it also means quite a lot of textures with mipmaps in cc don't actually work correctly.

That's also why you shouldn't make images which are not a power of two; if it's not a power of two you can't keep dividing the image by two to end up at a 1x1 pixel image, meaning you can't make proper mipmaps.

Why are the mipmaps blurry?

After some experimentation I've managed to find the cause of the blurry mipmaps:

All mipmaps made with Nvidia DDS Utilities are blurry. Yes, you read that correctly. And yes, it's exactly as bad as you're imagining.

For the uninitiated, Nvidia DDS Utilities has been the primary tool that sims 2 cc creators use when importing textures for pretty much as long as the game has been out. In SimPE you would click the texture, then select "Build DXT..." and that would open the dds utilities and allow you to import the texture.

So how many files are affected? By doing a scan of a 20GB downloads folder that was graciously donated to me I could get some raw numbers on the amount of textures that might be blurry. Let's have a look:

total textures: 107892

number of textures compressed in DXT: 98683 (91%)

number of DXT textures that have mipmaps: 69527 (70%)

DXT textures with not enough mipmaps to show up in game: 54709 (55%)

overall, 54709 out of 107892 (50%) of textures in this folder are blurry when zoomed out in game

How do I fix this?

Here's the good news: you can fix this! Kind of.

First of all for cc creators, let's take a look at how you can make good looking mipmaps.

The process is pretty simple: open the original texture is GIMP, export the texture, then select DDS as the format and use the following settings as a reference.

Now in SimPE right click the image, select "Import DDS..." and open the .dds file that you've just exported.

Now it is possible to do this process by first exporting the texture from SimPE, but the mipmaps that creates will never be as good as the ones made from original texture, along with it being an absolute massive time sink to do that on every single downloaded texture.

In a little while I'm going to officially release my package editor yape, which will hopefully make the process a little easier, and after that I'm going to look into adding an option into my texture search tool batl to recalculate the mipmaps for all the textures in a folder, but for now the GIMP export process sadly really is the easiest way.

[redsimmer-blog]

some sims 4 cc creators be like

[redsimmer-blog]

A Flimsy Facade (2004)

[redsimmer-blog]

Thanks to Sean @ SimWorld for finding this!

[redsimmer-blog]

GUID Database Revival

I've finished setting up a way to revive the GUID database, albeit not an automatic one, it is low-key, but rather simple. Instructions are on the pinned post. [It's a Dreamwidth community, basically one webpage where people can dump their GUID info, straight from Excel or a list].

It is searchable with multi search add-ons for browser. Search for multiple entries in one go.

Avoid conflicts with originally registered GUIDs (Not foolproof; assuming GUIDs where assigned in a certain way).

Avoid conflicts with new random GUIDs (that are in the DB).

Creators are indexed - see if your favorite active creators are on there.

Everyone can join, but only members can post. Happy Simming! https://sims2-guid-database.dreamwidth.org/ Example:

Obligatory CCR music:

[redsimmer-blog]

Sclera Accessory for TS2

Finally, I’m ready to present the Sclera Accessory!

What’s the point?

This accessory helps solve a long-standing issue:

In TS2, when the sclera was painted directly onto the eye texture or used as a makeup overlay, it moved along with the iris, which looked unnatural. Players had to choose between a more realistic texture and better animation compatibility.

Now you can use eye textures with just a plain or gradient white sclera, while the lacrimal caruncle and eyelash shadow are placed on the accessory texture instead.

Thus, when the eye moves, the sclera remains in place.

How it looks in motion

Close-up:

Here’s how my Sims look with and without the sclera accessory:

Details

The mesh is a separated and slightly edited part of the face mesh, which allows it to work perfectly with facial animations.

I also edited the UV map to make texturing easier.

The sclera works with any eye shape and is available for all ages and genders, including infants.

The PU-EU and BU meshes are separate files so you can easily relink your recolors for all ages.

Recolors

I made 4 recolors. I wanted the texture to be something between hyper-realistic and maxis match — something in the middle. I know many of you are talented and will create even more amazing textures in different styles. Here's the PSD.

Known issues

First, I had to change the material type to StandardMaterial to make the texture’s opacity look better. Since this material type isn’t native to CAS items, it may cause transparency issues when meshes with alpha textures intersect.

Second, blue flashing fix: I didn't use a placeholder. Instead, I removed all references to the “lens” group in the mesh and texture files. I didn’t get blue flashing in testing, but if it happens, let me know and I’ll upload a fixed version.

DOWNLOAD: SFS | Box

[redsimmer-blog]

oh sims 2 machinima creators always surprising me with your amazing creativity 💓

Hello, all horror and The Sims 2 lovers! A few weeks ago, I shared one of the newest episodes of my machinima series, Esoteric Relation.

It’s something I started doing as a kid 14 years ago, and now I’m continuing it, having finally realized how much this game means to me. Throughout all these years, my love for horror and monsters has never faded. I’ve always enjoyed designing new creatures, sketching ideas, and filling my notebooks with designs. But this series has given me a chance to bring some of them to life.

It always started with my clumsy sketches. The idea for the Photo Monster came from the picture frames hanging on the wall in a previous episode. I knew something dangerous had to appear and attack the main character, but I wasn’t sure what.

Then it hit me—the photograph showed the main character’s current partner, so why not create an evil, alternative version of him? Using the original mesh, I designed a twisted counterpart, suspended on a metal accordion arm, as if controlled by dark forces, forcing him into battle with the ex-partner.

I really liked that idea. The final touch for this sequence was the lighting. Red, of course, symbolizes something evil, but on the other hand, it’s also the color of darkrooms where photographs were developed. In this way, the sinister version of this character was quite literally developed from the photo hanging on the wall.

[redsimmer-blog]

Cazy Hair Retextures in NHS

Colors by Pooklet

Textures: straight by Remi, wavy by Poppet (Carpe Diem and Sorrow have a blended together textures)

Binned, familied, tooltipped and compressed

Meshes included

More under the cut!

Cazy Aura

All ages

Conversion 3t2 by Martini

17K polys

Download: Mediafire/SimFileShare

Cazy Carpe Diem

All ages

11K polys

Download: Mediafire/SimFileShare

Cazy Izzy

All ages

Conversion 3t2 by Martini

13K polys

Download: Mediafire/SimFileShare

Cazy Mystical

All ages and unisex!

Conversion PM-TM and FU by DigitalAngels

14K polys

Download: Mediafire/SimFileShare

Cazy Rosanna

All ages

Conversion 3t2 by @rented-space

9K polys

Download: Mediafire/SimFileShare

Cazy Slayer

CF-EF

Conversion 4t2 by @redsimmer-blog

25K polys

Download: Mediafire/SimFileShare

Cazy Sorrow

All ages

14K polys

Download: Mediafire/SimFileShare

Cazy Susie

All ages

6K polys

Download: Mediafire/SimFileShare

@nhs-archive

[redsimmer-blog]

Bad news everyone...

Unfortunately, the release of the sclera accessory is delayed because I have a problem that I can't solve.

I worked for a texture that would suit me, and at first I checked how it looks only in Bodyshop, where it looked good, and then I checked how it looks in the game, and it disappointed me.

The screenshots show how smooth the gradients and transparency of the texture look in BS and CAS, and how rough it is in the game.

I tried SimStandardMaterial, StandardMaterial and SimSkin, AlphaRefValue 0/127/255, AlphaMultiplier 0/1 — but all in vain.

It seems that shaders in CAS and the game work according to different rules. I have already encountered the consequences of this when I wanted to make an accessory with transparency, an animated texture and several groups. Then the object also looked good in CAS and bad in the game.

If you have any ideas on how to solve the problem without redoing the textures, please share.

[redsimmer-blog]

ade-darma be alright hair (w/bangs) in new hair system and skittles unnaturals

conversion by redsimmer

binned and tooltipped

available for child - elder

download under the cut!

simfileshare

@nhs-archive