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nsves · 3 months ago

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(ts4) cc making testing guide

we've been making cc for a longg time and figured it would be good to share how we test our own cc and make sure it works for as many sims as possible! the guide will be based on a loose understanding already of s4s.

remove the original shadow, specular, and normal maps!!! a lot of the base items you start on do have their own speculars (what makes it shiny), shadow maps (false shadows to make it look better), and normal maps (extra details outside the plain texture). very rarely those will work exactly with what new item you're making, so be sure to REMOVE them! double triple check that they're empty by clicking "Make Blank" in s4s. if your mesh is shiny even after removing the specular and there's already no normal, you need to upload just a blank 1024x2048 png to it to remove the shininess.

having weight transfer issues? try subdivision! sometimes when using "nearest vertex" weight transfers your CC can well.. goof up in CAS and be reallyyy spiky. those are the vertices that have screwed weights and smoothing out the weight transfer by subdividing it will help tremendously. subdividing will just double the amount of poly you have - imagine you're folding a piece of paper. your UV is small if you just fold your paper 4 times thus not much room for morphing wiggle room in your weights. fold that paper 16 times? that's a lot more coverage and wiggle room for morphs!

test on multiple sims - maxis defaults, cc presets, skintones, etc! more the merrier! just remember that everyone's sim is not like the standard female/male sim bases a lot of cc making is done on. you'll want to check how it looks on larger sims, different skintones (not just white to tan!), the opposite body frames, even on CC presets to see how well the weights are working. not everyone uses the same CC, so take it as a bouncing off point on what needs to be adjusted to work as best as possible. not everything is going to work perfectly! there's a lot of different mods that can make extreme changes you just can't account for if you're going for a general audience. it also helps to load different sims to try your CC on. sometimes you get a red herring where it works on the first sim you load up! all of the sudden everyone loads it up and it's not working at all. that's just ts4 for you, so watch out!

update your CC's tags! go through each and every category of your package to make sure it aligns to what it even is! make sure it appears in the right outfit category, not meant for kids, whether it should be on in the shower or not, and TAKE THAT ALLOW FOR RANDOM TICK OFF! not everyone knows how to use s4s and shouldn't be expected to go through all their CC to fix the tags so it works properly for your game

don't just stand there, make them walk! a lot of CC can look perfectly fine on a still model, but you can find a LOT of issues just by loading a walk cycle in CAS to see if there's any weight issues, clipping, or anything really odd that shouldn't be happening. people who use CC in their gameplay will be having their sims walk, talk, sit, and animate, so be sure they're just not gonna flash everybody or got some polygons stuck in their teeth!

exporting a s4s mesh? let's clean it up! for some reason when you export a s4s mesh, there will be extra polygons that can easily be removed in blender. in this tutorial, we'll be using 2.7. this really helps on high poly meshes and remove any conflicting UVs that can make clipping issues.

we hope that helps! this is based on our private guide for people who test our own CC, which you should definitely try to reach out to others to test it out. each computer is unique and something can pop up you wouldn't ever come across - it doesn't hurt to try work out all the kinks before publishing! if you need some more help or starting point, we even have our own resource pack that has great references and items that will make your process go easier. good luck to your CC making journey <3

#ts4cc #sims 4 cc #ts4 cc tutorial #sims 4 cc tutorial #tutorial #long post #lyko posts #aura posts

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kurithedweeb · 11 months ago

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It’s the same anon again because the MCD beetles are slowly consuming my brain, but what are you thought on clothing culture in universe?

Like of course climate plays a big role in how traditional dress looks, but apart from that there��s also things like religion that play a big role. We don’t really know what the climate is like in Ru’aun but Irene is a big thing, how does that effect clothing choices, what dyes are most common and how does that reflect in clothes?

I’m a sucker for world building

Hello again, anon! Lucky for you I, too, am a sucker for worldbuilding. I have been considering my answer for literal days. I’ve vaguely commented on modesty rules in Ru’aun before but we’ve yet to get into fashion trends and hierarchical or religious dress, not to mention personal ornamentation and the different meanings associated with that in different areas, so let’s talk about Ru’aun first.

Because of the impassable Sacred Forest, most towns are along the coast to facilitate travel, and it’s a very lush and green region. The majority of the land is either plains or various forests, with a variety of cliffs, shoals and a few mountains scattered around, plus stretches of swampland and beach. Dyes are usually made from whatever resources are nearby, so you’ll see a much wider range of colors in settlements near flower fields or birch forests. Popular port towns like Meteli, O’khasis and Bright Port also have more variety, but will most often stick to colors that have special meanings to the town. Whites, greys, and blues are popular in O’khasis and Scaleswind as the religious capitals of the region, but red is also pretty prominent in Scalesind.

The same general rule also applies to fabrics and jewelry—mohair comes from goats so it’s easier to acquire in Phoenix Drop where there are tons, there’s more precious metals in Scaleswind, and in Nahakra people take any broken glass they find and lay the pieces in fine mesh containers on the tideline to make sea glass for decorations. Fabric and dye are common trading goods, especially in more backwater towns where the physical currency used in bigger villages and city-states have about as much practical value as an especially shiny rock. The most popular kinds of fabrics in Ru’aun are mohair and wool for their durability and temperature regulation respectively, with leather, ore and ivory as the most common materials in ornamentation.

The primary religion is what I’ve been calling the Divine Faith, which worships the Divine Warriors as a whole under the figurehead of Irene and has various subsets that focus more on each individual Divine Warrior, with the grand majority of its followers falling under the Church of the Matron or cults dedicated to the Destroyer, with the Trail of the Wanderer as a close second. Which of the Divine Warriors you follow most closely definitely has an effect on your attire.

Disciples of Irene wear small cloaks modeled after hers and members of the church hide their faces as a way to present themselves as closer to the goddess since you don’t look upon those of divine nature or close to divinity without consequences, most often using dark blue or white veils stitched with gold, since those are the colors she’s documented wearing most often and are therefore most often associated with her, though purple is too. Devout followers cover their eyes, members of the church like priests and nuns cover the lower half of their faces, and the High Priest covers his entire face, usually veiled or with a simple mask in public and with a more ceremonial mask during sermons and ceremonies.

Followers of the Destroyer are much more subtle because they’re technically outlawed, they have a lot more to do with ornamentation than clothing. If you have long hair, it’s always pinned up and back, never in a ponytail and never left loose, usually in braids and buns and other hairstyles that wouldn’t be out of place on a guard, nothing an enemy can easily yank on. Hanging jewelry is also out. Hair is adorned with warmly colored beads and hair sticks that can be used as weapons and on occasion chains are woven into braids, most other accessories are close-fitting: there are nearly always cuffs around the wrists and ankles, subtly decorated wraps around the waist are more common in cities, chokers with detailing done in texture are uncommon but widely used, and earrings and ear cuffs are rare and usually kept for formal ceremonies.

Those on the Trail of the Wanderer are nearly always found to be wearing travel-appropriate clothes no matter the occasion or setting, and there’s touches of pirate and backpacking aesthetic throughout. They tend to carry just about everything they own, dedicating their life to traveling and seeing the world the way Kul’zak did, and dress accordingly. Knee high boots, at least two layers, oil-treated cloaks, many wear jerkins and sashes with stitched depictions of scenes from places they’ve been, and leather harnesses and holsters are common. Hair is usually left down or half put up and decorated with feathers and ribbons found on the Trail. Meditation beads carved of wood or stone are nearly universal, worn around the neck or wrapped around the wrist. Trinkets and charms found on the Trail are important to the travelers, and you’ll find bowls of them left behind by others at shrines and trail markers that you can add to or take from, and in doing so you bring other travelers with you on your adventures and are carried by other travelers on their own, it’s a very dear tradition on the Wanderer’s Trail. Imagine geocaching but with religious connotations. Many of these items are worn as bracelets, anklets, necklaces, or on waist chains, usually put together while camping out. Flower crowns are also a bit of a thing and when they start wilting they’re left behind in places bearing Kul’zak’s symbol.

I’m thinking of making flower crowns also a thing with Enki’s followers since I’ve recently been turned onto the Kulki ship by @warlocks-and-phoenixes, but instead of wildflowers it’s mostly herbs and grasses. The matching flora crowns are a symbol of their union. Enki’s followers are mostly stuck on an iceberg, so they show their faith by carrying carvings of his symbols and making tapestries and records of their history, studying the world and spreading a love of knowledge wherever they go. Children usually start with embroidering their favorite/their family’s stories into their own clothing.

Embroidery! I love embroidery. In Ru’aun, it’s a very popular pastime, especially among stay at home parents and the sickly, so you see it pretty much everywhere. Colored threads are easy to acquire, but some colors are restricted. Purple is only for the clergy. Gold is for the highest ranking members of the churches and Lords’ family lines, as well as important personal staff of the Lord’s household like a close advisor and the primary caretaker of the children. Silver thread is for other people in powerful positions like members of a council or the highest ranking members of the guard (commander of the guard, second-in-command, reserve commander, Jury of Nine), which helps to distinguish officers from soldiers in larger villages and city-states that have a standard uniform and armor template. If you qualify for both, the gold usually takes precedence. For example, Laurance would have gold embroidery despite being head guard of Meteli because he’s also the son of Joh. Many small settlements don’t bother much with distinguishing personal importance based on thread color, though. They much prefer to use embroidery to keep a record of family history. Abstract depictions of personal achievements are stitched into the edging of most clothing, and the rank and position of the wearer and their parents + lovers go across the back on formal clothes and if you’re a guard around the neck and cuffs of your gambeson and also your sash if you wear one as a way to identify bodies after battle like modern day dog tags. It’s very simple and blocky on guardwear and incredibly elaborate and stylized to the point of illegibility on formalwear. Other common designs are flowers, symbols of faith, waves, landscapes, and elements of regional stories.

Modesty standards in Ru’aun. Here’s the basics: the average person should show nothing in the range of torso between the knees and breasts in public, midriff can be seen only by people very close to you, mothers should be covered from somewhere around the collarbones to their ankles, visible shoulder straps and undershirts are generally a no-no but off the shoulder and sleeveless attire are okay, and open shirts should not go further than the base of the sternum and should not show undergarments or nipples. Anyone fifteen or older is expected to follow these, but it’s not as important that children do. Some of them are negotiable based on climate and regional culture; Meteli and let’s say Pikoro are more lax and pretty much do whatever they feel like while O’khasis and Scaleswind follow the rules very closely and places like Brightport and Boboros are somewhere in the middle.

In Tu’la, how you dress is so important because it shows your loyalties. It’s a place filled with hundreds of clans all on the brink of beating each other up on any given day. In their culture, you’re not defined by who you are but who your family and their allegiances are. Symbology is important, families have their own color blends, patterns and even specific plants associated with them since gems aren’t very commonly found in Tu’la and sparkly things go to the monarchy and the king’s pets (the humanoid ones). Throwing away your clan’s symbols when you’re not on a covert mission of some kind is seen as a betrayal.

Cloth is very often uncut and styled by wrapping, pinning, and tying them into various shapes like you would a sari or toga or a variety of old African clothing styles I can’t remember the names of. Short sashes and waist wraps are very common. Many of the common people will also wrap their hands and feet in place of gloves and shoes. Cutting cloth is often reserved for important articles or the royal family and its vassal clans. It’s considered a wasteful expense since the excess cloth can’t be remade and isn’t recycled into other things like blankets. Scraps are distributed among the clan’s servants for them to wear to match their masters’ clothing as a sort of claim over them. Gladiators often wear their sponsor’s colors in the same way. When clothing is sewn, you’ll often see designs similar to the Japanese kimono and yukata and the Chinese hanfu and cheongsam/qipao. Designs with layers are more expensive and a luxury that very few, essentially only the king and his consorts, can afford. In most places, the only articles of clothing you’d find cut and stitched into new shapes are some forms of undergarments and a more form-fitting underlayer that covers the entire torso and cloth is arranged over top of.

Tu’lan clothing is essentially custom tailored by the wearer for the wearer, unless you’re super rich or a conscripted servant. Ideally it should allow you to be flexible, it should allow you to keep cool in Tu’la’s very warm climate, maybe with a window just above your butt if you have a tail, but easy to hide things in. Really the only rules about it is that you don’t wear enemy symbols and you keep your private parts private around everyone not your lover. It’s a war country, so most of the time the styles are very utilitarian and comfortable, but you’d only know how utilitarian it is if you were raised wearing them. To Ru’aun and Gal’ruk, even the simplest outfits seem fancy. Part of what makes them think that is the decoration and accessories.

Hair sticks. God do I love hairsticks. More formal ones are made of glass with a small hanging charm and common ones are simply carved from wood or made with the scrap metal shavings of weaponsmiths—those ones are usually sharpened into needles or knives in case you need it. Jewelry is usually close-fitting to make it harder to grab, so meditation beads would be wrapped several times around the wrist or ankle and no pretty hanging piercings. Humans are actually the only one of the three dominant species who get piercings because pretty much all meif’wa clans are warriors or their ears are too sensitive, and if a werewolf has to transform with a piercing in it’ll either warp super bad or hurt them when the change tries to push foreign bodies out of the werewolf. Cloth is usually made with patterns everywhere or very prominently displayed and accented.

Sun and snow motifs are also fairly widespread since the patron Divine Warrior of Tu’la was Menphia, it very rarely snows in Tu’la but she had ice powers so. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything more on Menphia’s followers right now, I’m basically scraping and redoing her whole temple and worship at the moment.

Gal’ruk loves yarn and fur, since practically every living thing out there is covered in fur and spinning yarn is a good time consuming indoor activity. A lot of people spend considerable time weaving and tanning and sewing over the blizzard season when they get trapped inside by storms. Fur goes inside everything from gloves to hoods to pants. People make competitions out of who can knit the best hat or scarf from scratch before the next moon.

For an idea of the style of clothing usually worn I recommend looking up ‘viking winter wear’ for some ideas. Plenty of layers, loose pants cinched at the knee, lots of fur cloaks and shawls, leather belts with pouches and space for your knife/sword/axe’s sheath over top. Leather goods like armor and belts are usually marked with subtle designs pressed into the materials and are padded. Nothing metal ever comes close to touching the skin directly. Clothes can either be simply pulled on or are closed with loops and clasps carved of wood or bone/teeth from a hunt.

Nothing hunted ever goes to waste. Gal’ruk is a plentiful land but it can be a harsh one too. Pelts, furs, teeth, claws, bones and tails are all made into clothing, among other things. Pelts can be scraped and tanned and made into leather, furs are stuffed into everything as an insulator. Teeth, claws and bones are carved into accessories or combs or buttons, it’s very common for someone to make the spoils of their hunt into necklaces or arm bands or earrings as a mark of their achievement or to exchange as a betrothal gift to prove their worth as a provider. Married couples wear carved tokens of their family’s symbol made by each other instead of rings, presented to the other for the first time at the wedding and very rarely taken off unless one dies or they get divorced. Widows and widowers usually keep their tokens old, but they’re burned to make the divorce official and if a divorced couple gets back together new ones have to be made.

Unfortunately color is fairly sparse on the island. There’s not many plants to harvest dyes from and clay takes ages to dig up and warm enough to use, so it’s mostly natural colors of the materials and some darker shades from smoking pelts over a fire to waterproof them. There are shades of green every so often from dye made with the kelp that washes ashore and sometimes if you can manage to grow beets there’s some reds and purples but not everyone is able to dye their clothing.

Gal’ruk has zero modesty standards. You wrap up to keep warm outside, but while you’re inside you can wear just about as little as you want. The public dining hall can get pretty warm with everyone packed in there, it’s not unusual for people to go titties out. They’re all warriors, they’re pretty chill about partial nudity and naked bodies are very rarely sexualized in such a close-knit warrior community, they’re all pretty much grown up seeing each other half undressed while tending wounds, so modesty isn’t a real issue. This is why I said in my post about Travis playing around with his shapeshifting that he needs to have Ru’aun modesty rules explained to him the first time he changes into a female form in public, because in his homeland having breasts show through an open shirt isn’t at all notable but in Ru’aun it’s absolutely scandalous.

And we’ve circled back to embroidery! Again, time consuming pastime, again, people who spend the majority of the year huddled inside waiting out the worst of the cold, again, followers of Enki. Personal history is recorded on parchment, but communal history is recorded on tapestries and clothing. They have very little in the way of colored threads, so designs are made with only lineart and shadows in mind to make it clear what they’re meant to be. Stories about Enki and the Divine Warriors are very common, and so are fables for the children. Animals bounding through the snow and their different tracks trailing behind them are used to teach the babies how to tell your prey apart by print. Kids are taught to embroider their own clothes to teach them patience and attention to detail.

These are all pretty general regional ideas, specific parts of the region and settlements also have their own deals sometimes. I’ll have to come back to this at some point to cover the rest of the Divine Faith properly. This was a fun question!

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plumbobpaparazzi · 9 months ago

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Fixing Sharp Edges

(or a tutorial on how to edit the AlphaMaskThreshold)

This problem most commonly applies to textures on a flat mesh like rugs and wall decals. You make this wonderfully detailed texture, but when you open the object in-game the edges are pixelated and don't look how you intended.

This little guide assumes that your object already allows for transparency, if you need help with that this tutorial on the S4S forum is a good place to start. If you are editing a rug then it should be good to go. I'll be using @kirsicca's paint splashes as an example here since 1. I wrote this primarily for her (😘) and 2. it shows changes in threshold well.

1.) The first few steps depend on the type of mesh/object you are working with. Click on the Warehouse tab, then click either Model LOD 00000000 or Model 00000000 if you don't have that option.

2.) (Skip to step 5 if you have Model LOD 00000000) If you had to click Model 00000000 instead of the LOD, click the Data tab then click the Edit Items... button under Key -> Lods

3.) A new window will pop up. Make sure HighDetail Flags is the option selected on the left panel (it will be by default) then click Edit Items... under Model -> Resource -> Key -> Meshes

4.) Another new window will pop up. Scroll around halfway down until you see Material -> Resource -> Entries. Click the Edit Items... button next to Entries. Another new window will pop up, which is when the beginning steps dovetail. Go to step 7.

5.) (Start here if you have Model LOD 00000000) Click the Data tab, then click Edit Items... under Key -> Meshes

6.) (Only if you have Model LOD 00000000) Select either Phong or PhongAlpha on the left panel. Scroll around halfway down until you see Material -> Resource -> Entries. Click the Edit Items... button next to Entries and a new window will pop up.

7.) Now we're in the same place! Each VariantId you see is a different swatch. If you know you want to adjust transparency it is best to do this process before adding new swatches to save time. Let's start with the first swatch - Click on VariantId: set1-materialvariant, StateId: Default in the left panel. On the right side, click Edit Items... under Material -> Resource -> Material

8.) A new window will pop up. We're looking for AlphaMaskThreshold. This value tells The Sims which pixels in a texture should be shown and which ones should be transparent.

What does this number mean? The value can range from 1 to 255. The default is 128, which means anything less than 50% opacity will not be shown. Here is an example of what this looks like in practice using @kirsicca's texture. White are visible pixels, black are hidden.

1 and 255 are only there for reference; you generally don't want to select 1 because your texture can appear black where it thinks pixels should be, and 255 will hide most of your texture.

Once you change the value in Sims4Studio, click save on the window that popped up. From there, edit the value for each swatch (VariantId) and save everything then test it in game. If you are editing a rug, they don't get "burnt" because they turn to ash so you can skip those states.

I hope you found this helpful! Let me know if you have any questions or if something was unclear. :)

#tutorial #resources

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catastrothy · 1 year ago

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Do you have any tips for someone who wants to start rigging simple models and stuff?? i know basic live 2d but i really wanna make a new prettier model for myself!

ok so first of all i hate recommending joining discord servers BUT for better or worse the live2d community server is by far one of the best places to get resources, including a channel that's basically full of various tips n tricks.

there is also a LOT of good advice out there on twitter and i highly recommend following larger live2d artists cuz they're usually very happy to share any tutorials or tips

now then i will put down a bunch of shit i've bookmarked over the years under the cut here

lena's guide to making a very simple vtuber in 5 minutes (you should absolutely do an easy project first, something with not that many parts!!!!!)

nonon_yuno's basic mouth guide (this artist in particular posts a lot of tutorials)

nonon_yuno's slightly more complicated mouth guide and also how i learned how to add mouth toggles (so i can switch between :) and :3) (you do it by having a third parameter that you add after finishing the :) mouth. you don't HAVE to do :) type mouth first but i've found it's easier to edit afterwards)

Koziichu's mouth guide (this is the main guide I use)

Fennryn's guide to head XY angles

Cherrichu's $5 Live2d separation study file (also cherri is a fellow cringie RawrXD member and you should support her!!!)

Yoshinoart's guide to body X

Briatcookiebox's eye physics

Cat athenya's guide to animal ears

CutieDragon's guide to expressive animal ears

xaconite's guide to hair cutting

Kira Omori's guide to cutting Live2d models for beginners

Kira Omori's guide to hair and boob physics (Kira has a lot of good tutorials on her YT channel!)

i wasn't able to find an exact tweet about it BUT you can copy paste forms which makes doing XY angles a lot easier!!!! (ctrl shift c to copy and ctrl shift v to paste. apparently this is a pro feature only)

Cillia's live2d study model (make sure u read TOS! also it's paid (3000 yen) but well worth it for the study material)

CutieDragon's how to view animation in physics window

CutieDragon's way to add depth to your head turns

PeachnKey's way of making a tear animation

Moki's guide to animating tails

Koziichu's guide to getting the most out of your tracking

CutieDragon's guide to making expressions in VTube Studio (you still need to make the specific parameters in live2d itself)

Yoshinoart's guide to glue

Enma Akatsuki's guide to arms

BriatCookiebox's reminder that temporary path deformation exists (temp warp deformation also exists, amongst others)

Momoiro's guide to meshing objects to help them look more 3d

anyway that's all i can find off the top of my head but yeah. in my experience other live2d artists have been very welcoming in helping newbies out and that's why i specifically recommend the community discord!!!!!!!

#ask

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kelloggjkellogg · 10 months ago

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PART 62: HAPPY BIRTHDAY BARBARA EDEN

This last week was Barbara Eden's 93rd birthday. As a way to celebrate her wonderful career and life, here are 3 looks from "I Dream Of Jeannie" recreated by our fabulous model, Britt.

Left: Hair: [EnriqueS4] Money Hairstyle New Mesh 18 EA... — ENRIQUE (tumblr.com) Dress: The Sims Resource - Tennis Dress Shoes: DallasGirl - Ballet Flats Collection Hi Y'all! 👋😄 I’ve had... (tumblr.com)

Centre: Hair: 60's Pack | Patreon Dress: SMÄELM Loose Shirt Split VestTwo Pieces Set by NO STYLE X W O O D L A N D - The Sims 4 Download - SimsFinds.com Shoes: The Sims Resource - Retro heels / 184 Right: Hair: Nancy Hair by Simduction – @simduction on Tumblr Blouse: Ribbon Blouse & Ruffle Mini Skirt is released... - GORILLA GORILLA GORILLA (tumblr.com) Skirt: Serenity X Enrique - Back To The 60s Collection, 22 items | Patreon Shoes: Aveira's Sims 4, SLYD’s Charlene Heels - Recolor 66 Colors ... (tumblr.com)

#1960s #decades challenge #sims 4 #1960s fashion #Barbara Eden #i dream of jeannie

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simstic-fairy · 1 year ago

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Yes, same sim! I've decided to have a designated model! I'll probably change her periodically though...

Mesh: Sims Resource

Recolor: SimsFileShare

#sims 4 cc #ts4 cc #sims 4 #sims 4 witchy cc #simstic

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catgirltoofies · 2 years ago

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witchspring r is a game that i am liking a lot. i hesitate to call it a good game, because it has a lot of things that a lot of people wouldn't like, but it pushes a lot of my favorite buttons in a lot of very nice ways. ended up typing a bunch so if you want to hear me ramble check the readmore

the main thing about it is that there's a whole bunch of grinding. i don't mind grinding; in fact i quite enjoy it when it's implemented right, and witchspring r does it in a way i really enjoy. everything in the game follows on a sort of global timer, and any action you take advances the timer on every other thing. so a low level gathering point might respawn after 2 or 3 ticks of the timer, while rare resources and bosses might require 10 or 15 ticks, and particularly rare resources might take even longer. this means that i don't get stuck in a loop of fighting the same enemy group hundreds of times in a row hoping to get good drops - i fight the few groups of the enemy, then run off to fight other groups of enemies or pick up useful items, then when i go home and rest, i can go back to the first group of enemies to find them respawned and ready to go. obviously the negative to this is that I'm forced to do other things if i want to grind a particular thing, but it's not that bad. and, of course, there's an instant-win button; but it doesn't become an idle game. to use the instant-kill button your magic stat needs to be higher than the HP of the enemy, and you need a higher agility, and you need to spend a proportionate amount of MP, unless you use the sword method, which requires significantly higher agility. no disgaea 6 auto battle here.

i particularly like how the battle system encourages you to use every part of it. in battle, you have three main relevant options, and three other options that aren't used as much. the main three are physical skills, magic slabs, and special attacks. physical skills deal a bit of damage, but cost no MP. magical skills do a lot of damage but you need MP to cast them. special attacks are unique and usually unlock after a number of turns. what's really interesting, though, is how it all meshes together - when you cast a spell, a portion of the damage you deal is stored in your staff, which gets released when you do a physical attack, so dealing the most damage most often involves casting the spell that deals the most damage, then using a physical attack on the next turn, and repeating back and forth. every four turns you get a guaranteed critical hit, which deals about 30% extra damage, getting better over time. this crit can't be banked, though, so you need to figure out what ability is best used to make the most of it.

the other options in combat are summoning pets, which give pretty substantial damage bonuses on their turns, using items, which are generally best used as a panic button or as a free turn every few turns (an extremely useful ability unlocked relatively early), and defend, which restores a percentage of HP and MP at the start of your next turn. early on i made heavy use of defend and had my pet kill things, which was really slow, but now I'm at the point where i can start really pumping magic, making most of my turns casting fireballs.

the story is decent enough. you play as the witch pieberry, who lives alone in a forest protected by a giant golem. pieberry wants to explore the human world for a taste of the pie from her dreams, which leads her on a grand adventure far from home, to which she can return at any point.

↑ pieberry. importantly, her snaggletooth is actually modeled in-game, and isn't relegated to just her artwork like a certain other magically inclined crafter character (RYZA). all witches are marked with dark(er) skin, white hair, and long floppy ears. her favorite things are pies and strawberries, the things which she named herself after.

for some lore: witches are the children of humans and demons (who are the former gods who had their powers stolen by humans), with extreme magical prowess that seems to dull with age. they're not immortal, there is a very plot relevant witch who's old and dying. pieberry suffered the fate that many other witches did: she was abandoned in the woods as a baby, in the hopes that she would be killed by nature so her parent wouldn't have to kill her themselves.

pieberry is obviously not at perfect peace with her lot in life, but she's still living her way. and who could blame her, she's like ten.

anyways rant over. play witchspring r it's out on steam right now

#witchspring r #child death tw #<- just in case

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theworldibuilt4you · 9 months ago

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[Crashlogs! CRASHLOGS!! Pumpernickle could practically shriek with excitement. She'd modded games before, crashlogs were invaluable as a resource. The cat-erpillar dug for the most recent one, opening and looking through it. What was related to what file name? In the background, a tool to help her fix some of the corrupt things downloaded]

"Okay! Hey...I'm not so useless..."

[Inch huffed]

"Not useless. Stupid. Stupid and naive. What are you even messing with?"

"...I don't know. But as long as all the files stay here, I can't hurt him anymore-"

[She noticed Sam appeared to be resting? That was different! This was definitely something. she noted everything down in her text file, and notebook just incase]

[It probably took a bit of sorting everything to find the really newer ones. Once figured out the order though, it was easy to see the newest ones werent actually too long ago (well... considering how old these programs must have been.)]

[Last one, dating only about only a few months ago, had listed several points of error in the last boot up and shut down.]

[Firstly, it seemed like many points in the avatar model labeled for this particular RRA file had been jutting out and causing meshing errors and instability. An autorepair seemed to have been ran with very little luck in the matter]

[Second, upon startup, a primary file that had been shorthanded to "STS_PERSONALITYMDL.PACK" had failed to start. More errors of unknown variety seemed to follow, but skimming them might have informed Pump that another file was inaccessible upon startup, labeled "MEMDATA.PACK". After finding out these names, it might have been rather easy to see some of these issues, but it doesn't entirely tell her how to actually FIX any of them.]

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glamfellens · 2 years ago

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Sorry if this is a bother, but I always see you uploading you (lovely)(gorgeous) head model edits for mass effect and stuff and was planning on doing a bg3 for myself. Since I saw that you were working on one (Lauren Bacall right?) I was wondering if you have any tips for people trying to do the same?

omg no bother at all!! thank you so much!

there is the down by the river server, full of very talented people and helpful resources and tutorials to help you along!

idk how experienced you are with blender but heres the doughnut tutorial which is a handy intro to the programme itself

for bg3 modding specific tutorials i really recommend padme4000's channel, she has video tutorials on importing/exporting meshes into blender, as well as extracting all the files you need from the game itself and links to the programmes you need in the descriptions of her videos

a nexus link to more of padme4000's resources and tutorials

here is another video on bg3 mesh editing

i hope these are a good starting point! honestly all my blender endeavours have been trial and error since i started messing around with it last year to create custom heads for mass effect :) im definitely not an expert but if u get stuck with anything im happy to try and help! good luck!

#yeah aeres's faceclaim is lauren bacall hehe #blender posting

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straurom · 15 days ago

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(I apologize in advance for whoever decides to commit to reading all of this, It’s a word skyscraper and I am only checking on it now while I was checking for misspellings or unneeded repetition)

Now originally I wanted to do something similar to what some other people have been doing, Where they have alternate versions of their character and whatnot for specific things. Like a dragon version of a croc gal for a medieval setting, Etc

But my main problem there is that besides me being dumb, I neither have the money, resources or know-how to properly write down certain things. Nor do I have what is needed for specific things like making a 3d model because I can’t draw for shite anymore

This is also why I have the Argonian version of Aeris, because as mentioned already. I use Skyrim like a 3d software most of the time. (I’ll talk more about that in a bit)

Chugs, As I’ve said previously. Is the Argonian version of Aeris’Xuxhlaith. I have ideas for different versions stuck in me head, A-e, One for a shitty futuristic setting where the lass is a sort of cyborg (got some help from me pal VillagerKing for fleshing out some parts of that actually). And more “primordial” or just archaic looking version that’s more fitting for a Bronze Age thing I’ve had stuck in me head for ages (Casimyrcsko definitely didnt make that get bigger or anything due to Paenitentia)

As I am currently writing this, It’s both due to being unable to yesterday, But also because I saw some art on Twitter of a dragon lass that just looked basically identical to what I had in mind for Aeris when came up with her. Minus a few things like 2 missing horns, No fins/flaps, And the dreads (Keep in mind, and I know this is probably the first time I’ve mentioned it, I wanted Aeris to have hair or pseudo-hair/fewthers that looked like dreads). Basically perfect from what I had in me head. So now I’m just a tiny bit worried that if I ever get a commission, Or fanart/gift art and it looks a bit too much like that specific piece. People will think I’ve stolen someone’s OC.

———

But anyways I am rambling about nonsense, I thought I would just be poorly writing about Aeris on here. But that’s probably not what’s gonna fully happen. I’m both too lazy and stupid to use this site full time so bah.

I’m plannning on finding some of my old notes I’ve written about Aeris and the futuristic version of her, Since I haven’t written anything down about the bronze age thingamajig I’ll have to do that later. For now, It’s stuck in my head.

Aeris is just Aeris, Now me being a Norwegian. I’m saying it with an Æ.

Zakh’Tra is the cyborg mess future nonsense

The Bronze Age version is just Arris’Xuxhlaith (creative I know) since it’s more of a parallel I guess to the other stuff I have stuck in here. It’s more just a look at an older time in Aers’s species history. Now yes of course it was just gonna be more HMOFA stuff with that, But I feel slightly bad since I don’t want to be accidentally ripping off Upai or Casimyrcsko

———

Now onto another poorly written tangent or whatever you’d call me writing. The Skyrim nonsense

I make character presets in modded Skyrim, It’s what I’m good at. It’s how I first “fortified” Aeris’s look. Now l plan on updating this as I do, Later this year. Maybe even next week. Although it’s difficult.

I’ve been unhappy for a short while with my direction when it comes to this, As I used to go for a “Looks plausibly natural” but over time I’ve been making thicker lasses, For stuff like twitter and whatnot.

I think I’ve done as much as is possibly with Chugs, I do want to make her even closer to my vision of Aeris, But I’m afraid if fucking up the head shape/snout shape if I try. It probably doesn’t help that the mouth mesh is a bit jank due to Skyrim being Skyrim.

This will probably all be somewhat rectified in the future whenever it is that I can commission an artist or two to make a 3d model or just a drawing of the lass.

———

Anyhow, I’ve rambled on long enough, Next time I’ll be posting the stuff from me notes (if I find them) after I’ve proof read them and such. And I’ll include a few more pictures of Chugs. All these variations of one character probably isn’t helping but eh, I’ll figure out out

#aeris'xuxhlaith #scalie #oc #chugs many loads

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joeabdelsater2 · 1 year ago

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D'Adda's Ghibli-Style Mountain Village - Part 2

Lara's approach revolved around the use of trimsheets, a flexible tool that allowed her to present the houses and props with detail and texture. She used an existing wood trim from a previous project to methodically sculpt and texture multiple iterations in ZBrush and Substance 3D Painter, resulting in a collection of assets each having a plain and a painted version. She used trimsheets in Unreal Engine to add an organic look to the wooden assets by incorporating the same moss gradients and colour changes to imply a sense of age. By adjusting the low and high target settings of the RemapValueRange, she managed to add more colour variation to the beams that were less apparent.

With the addition of painted wood slabs, she used the masks exported from Substance 3D Painter to carefully regulate colour and texture details. The trimsheets were very versatile and reusable, as they were reused for a variety of props and general features, including flower pots, market booths, windows, and more. This intentional reuse not only maximised resource consumption, but also created a consistent visual character throughout her set. Furthermore, Lara employed rock features in the scene by using the same trimsheets to build tiling rock materials and single rocks, which improved immersion and realism. Decals with leaks and dirt were layered on top of the textures to give the environment a sort of lived-in realism. She thanks in part to the invaluable resources and breakdowns shared by fellow artists like Silke Van Der Smissen and Jasmin Habezai-Fekri whose work I am already following so I can achieve similar results for my major project.

Trees, grass, and flowers were central to Lara's landscape design, so they were considered the main components of the environment. She followed Victoria Zavhorodnia's tutorials as a guide which I will be doing in the future as well. She created trees using TreeIt, a free program, to capture the spirit of her styled design. While the procedure was difficult, Lara's dedication paid off, by adding a small emissive value to her tree materials, Lara significantly reduced the deeper shadows created by the mesh, increasing visual clarity and brightness. Lara chose to use a single model for both grass and flowers, using virtual textures to dynamically change their colours depending on the surrounding space. This method simplified asset generation and added a level of proceduralism influenced by the color of the landscape. The artist hand-placed vegetation in flower pots and scattered others around the terrain using numerous flower instances of diverse colours, filling her setting with rich hues and natural charm.

As for the landscape itself, it was painted using a multi-layered material, using multiple base colours to convey varied hues of grass and ground textures. She also incorporated a stone walkway tiling material created in Substance 3D Designer to offer depth and visual interest to her scene. The combination of height maps and noise textures was used to connect the stone walkway with the surrounding grass, similar to the effects used by the EA team in the Frostbite engine, although this one is less procedural. One of Lara's primary goals was to make the moss seem natural and active, independent of the position or rotation of the rocks. To simulate this, she used shader tools, namely the Dot product of the BlendAngleCorrectedNormals node, to regulate the moss' orientation. In addition to the background rocks and mountains, Lara attempted to increase dynamism in her art by integrating a variety of moving components like falling leaves and butterflies she found on the UE Marketplace which she customised by editing parameters.

Lara's composition was centred on the clouds, so she used free cloud online photos to make cloud cards, a traditional technique. She strategically placed them behind houses and mountains to add depth to the composition and used dynamic UV distortion and subtle wind effects. For a more energetic feel, grass, flowers, and ivy were animated by a SimpleGrassWind node which made them sway. She also created particle effects that had velocity and force parameters to simulate smoke, which were layered with distorted noise and UV textures. Birds and flame particles she had created in one of her early projects were used to create a movement around the lamps and clock tower. While the birds actually have material maps of bats on closer inspection, this simple touch provided a kind of charm to Lara's scene. This convinced me that the slightest addition of movement in an environment makes a big difference even if the object being animated is not clearly recognisable.

Although she found lighting difficult at first, Lara ended up figuring out her lighting arrangement which relied on both natural and artificial light sources. She used a Sky Light with an HDRI and a warm Sun Light to fill her scene with a gentle glow that casts a golden colour throughout the area. To counteract the natural shadows generated by the high mountains, Lara intentionally placed invisible meshes in the sky that throw shadows, especially over the mountains so that they are not the centre of attention. I believe this is a very smart idea that I can use for my own projects since I usually struggle with composition and allocation of visual priority within environments.

With post-processing, Lara created a custom LUT (Look-Up Table) to fine-tune characteristics like shadow depth and colour saturation and create a cinematic style. Drawing inspiration from basic LUTs, she started with little tweaks to the Toe value in the PostProcessVolume settings, then edited curves and levels in Photoshop. This allowed her to balance shadows and highlights while infusing her scene with a calm aesthetic.

What started out as a casual demonstration later evolved into a warm fall version of her original design. With a few quick edits of rich reds, golden yellows, and blazing oranges, she was able to fully transform the look of the environment. This was how she realised the flexibility of the creative process she had created, and that what appeared to be a daunting task eventually gave way to a constant loop of inspiration and imagination, as each problem became an opportunity for development. By taking on stylised design, Lara learned that it's personality and clarity of vision that helped her project come to life. Inspired by this notion, I aspire to cultivate the same level of dedication and overarching perspective. I've observed that hesitation often hampers my progress, but I aim to overcome this obstacle by building strong commitment and a keen eye for the bigger vision.

Reference:

Lara D'adda. (2023). Making a Ghibli-Inspired Mountain Village in Unreal Engine 5. 80.lv [e-journal] Available at: https://80.lv/articles/making-a-ghibli-inspired-mountain-village-in-unreal-engine-5/

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doorbloggr · 3 years ago

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Artists and Violins

Media Recommendations #42

Sunday 18/12/22

Content:

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken (anime)

World's Smallest Violin (song)

It's almost Christmas, which means the school year is winding down and I have more free time to enjoy media. Expect at least one more Media Recommendation this year before Christmas.

Anime and animation in general are often misunderstood areas of media. What goes into the planning, storyboarding, and backgrounds? How is sound approached, and how do you pair it to the imagery? Hands Off Eizouken is a fairly meta series about how anime is made, but also about business and artistic minds. My enjoyment of anime these past few years and of being an artist meant I HAD to recommend this series.

I also want to recommend a song by AJR called World's Smallest Violin. I've been in an introspective mood lately, especially on my mental state and self-esteem. And this song tells a great message about the millennial struggle of sweating over the small stuff, which boomers will call us snowflakes over.

So with that intro, onto the recommendations.

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!

Science SARU/ Sumito Õwara

Pitch

Asakusa Midori is a highschool freshman and a big anime buff. Asakusa believes anime is all about setting and concepts. She has a wild imagination and gets lost in her own worlds, which she details in her sketchbooks. She is grounded by her friend Sayaka Kanamori, a realist sort who has a mind for money making. Kanamori and Asakusa meet a student model named Tsubame Mizusaki, who is big into anime technique, especially character animations and anatomy.

Midori wants to join the Anime club, but her eccentricty over detail has socially isolated her. Tsubame and Midori bond over their love for animation, and share their ideas with each other. With Tsubame's skill in character design and anatomy, and Midori's skill in concept and settings, they discover they have the skills to make their own animations, and with Kanamori's connections and business know-how, they would be able to start their own club, "Eizouken", or the "film studies club".

We follow the journey of the girls as they go through the processes of designing a world, and then a story. From storyboard to key frames, to full animations. But Anime is not just animation, the importance of outsourcing other processes through other school clubs, such as backgrounds, sound design, music, voice actors, and funding. And although Kanamori does not have any skills or interest relevant to animation, without her negotiations with these other resources, and a level head to push the others towards the deadline, the club would definitely have fallen apart.

My Thoughts

As an artist and general fan of weaboo culture, I gotta say I appreciate series that give a behind the scenes to the processes of it all. But while My Dress-Up Darling was a focus on fans of anime, Hands-Off Eizouken offers a focus on the types of struggles creators must endure.

I might do some more comparisons of series here, but I feel a good contrast is K-On! K-On is about the struggle of an artist (here a musician, Yui) on their journey to be good in their medium, and how her mesh with the others in the group obstruct the band from success and notoriety. Hands-Off Eizouken presents a group that are already very good at what they do, the struggle is putting those skills together, and a much greater focus on reaching the audience.

The school band in K-On never really have to struggle to reach their audience, and the only places where balance matters is Yui's attention span having to battle guitar practice and school studies. In Hands-Off, since Kanamori is such a realist of a character, the grim reality of anime is put in scorching spot-light. Anime is time-sensitive, so animation tricks have to be deployed such as long wide shots, looping movements, flipping and rotating frames, and smears, in order for the projects to be finished in time. It is Kanamori that suggests taking on other artists and sound engineers to take the workload off the main animators, and she makes sure that corners are cut where possible so that they have something to show when the deadline hits.

Anime is not about individual frames, it is about the whole at the end. Sometimes scenes have to be cut, animations have to reworked for the resources available. And most importantly, if nobody knows about the project, all the work may as well have been for naught. Advertisement is important.

Hands-Off Eizouken is a very important series that I think any artist should watch. Not just animators, but anyone who wants to pursue art seriously. The characters are endearing, the animation is amazing, the soundtrack is fun, and the series comes together as a whole. Because every moving piece is important. Please watch it.

World's Smallest Violin

AJR

AJR is an indie pop trio, three brothers with an overall upbeat tone and penchant for mixing genres to great effect. The first song I heard of theirs was "I'm Ready", a groovy motivational beat that sampled a line from Spongebob Squarepant ("I'm Ready" obviously) as it's central motif.

Admittedly I hadn't kept up with AJR beyond this song for a long time, but I recently heard a newer song of theirs called "World's Smallest Violin", and after my own emotional turmoil I've been through this year, I thought it a good a time as any to recommend this song to others.

First, musically, it is a really fun sounding song. It sort of has a Country undertone, but at the same time has the pace of Big Band, that come seamlessly together with acoustic clapping and the aforementioned Violin.

But lyrically is it is a less happy song, but it's not a sad song. More like a cry of desperation and a call to arms for confidence. Another call to Spongebob here, the World's Smallest Violin is a mocking call of pity. Oh boo hoo, let me play a song on the world's smallest violin. It is a mocking phrase meant to belittle insignificant problems. And the verses of this song are about explaining how "bigger" people in your own life have dealt with issues bigger than any you've had to deal with.

Although human society has progressed in a way that means that life is easier for newer generations, boomers will often try to sell this as a bad thing. But without trying to sound too snooty here, according to Maslow's Hierachy of Needs, the human experience is about securing basal needs so that more specific and intricate personal problems can be addressed. So yeah zoomers and millenials have more personal problems to deal with, but they're not insignificant.

The bridge of World's Smallest Violin explains that although:

"Next to them, my shit dont feel so grand/ But I can't help myself from feeling bad/ I kinda feel like two things can be sad".

Just because it's a different or "smaller" problem, doesn't mean it's not a problem.

The final part of the chorus goes:

"The world's smallest violin/ Really needs an audience/ So if I do not find somebody soon/ I'll blow up into smithereens/ And spew my tiny symphony/ Just let me play my violin for you."

Even if it is a problem that only the World's Smallest Violin is needed to play for, we need an audience. Someone to comfort us, someone to at least LISTEN. Because much of the struggle today's youth have with mental illness is because parents and carers do not recognise them as problems. The issues are repressed, the stresses increase tenfold and everything becomes worse.

Sure people before us have fought in wars, and conquered technologies, created the foundations for modern infrastructure, but that doesn't mean there aren't problems anymore. We've worked on the big things, so now we need to work on the small things. And it starts with listening to the world's smallest violin.

It's a good song that tells a good message. Give it a listen.

#blog #blogpost #media recommendations #music recommendations #anime recommendations #worlds smallest violin #ajr #spongebon squarepants #keep your hands off eizouken!#tsubame mizusaki #asakusa midori #sayaka kanamori #anime #Spotify #long post

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