#sort of tutorial

[digisims2]

Sims 2 on Windows 11

Alright, the new computer with Windows 11 is up and running and Sims 2 has been installed. These are the steps I took to get it running and looking pretty:

Installed the game through EA App

I installed "George" so I won't need to start the game up through EA App and let it waste resources and spy on me.

I ran the 4GB patch on the Sims2EP9.exe and TS2BodyShop.exe

I ran Graphics Rules Maker and tweaked things through that enabling it to use my full texture memory etc

I installed the EmptyStandbyList since without it I got pink flashing very quickly

????

Profit.

If this helped somebody else out, you're welcome! :)

(long, pretty messy and image heavy version of this process written as I did it is behind the cut. I mean it, it's very long!)

added my graphics card in the video cards file manually

did the common graphics rules tweaks (these) manually

applied 4gb patch to bodyshop and game exes

tested bodyshop, it started up but has no smooth edges, otherwise textures are good and new projects export and import as supposed. 4GB patch works as supposed. It'll likely require tweaking it through nvidia control panel so leaving that for later.

Started up game, after turning the edge smoothing on it looks this good (no mods thus the boxy shadows):

6. However my log is reporting only 1gb of RAM for the game to use, will have to reapply the 4gb patch and try again. But it's using all 12 gb for texture memory so that's cool, I probably won't need to worry too much about pink flashing but I'm going to stress test it a little.

View distance maximized:

Shaders work:

"I probably won't need to worry too much about pink flashing" I said earlier and then left the lot and:

:'D But looking at task manager I see my standby memory has filled up the remaining RAM already so this is actually working as expected, I just forgot one step.

7. installed the EmptyStandbyList.

8. This is where I closed game, applied the standby memory fix, rechecked my exe and remembered that you weren't supposed to run it in compatibility mode so I turned that off but just in case I also reapplied 4gb patch and restarted the game. Now it's correctly showing me 4GB of RAM to use for the game so that should be handled.

Side note: Mr. Humble spawned, I haven't seen him for years as I have mod to stop him from appearing. Was this sim always so ugly? It looks like his face is melting.

No pink flashing after leaving the lot this time:

But it crashed when I clicked on the sims icon.

New try, game restarted and this time we'll go straight to CAS and... *immediately gets distracted* There are this many bin families by default?

I've used clean templates for years so this was an unpleasant surprise. I don't like them, you're all getting nuked soon once I've made sure the game runs as supposed and can go ahead installing clean templates. So then to the CAS, it loads and I click to create a sim and....

Oh. Okay then. :| Guess I'm missing some tweak still. Let's try graphics rules maker instead, it should also easily fix my resolution etc since I forgot to do that manually.

One restart later, are you fucking kidding me?

but hey, nice crisp textures. Too bad it's so tiny I can't see shit. (I realized this was my error after a moment, I thought graphics rules maker said minimum resolution in the spot I didn't change but it actually says maximum, so I fixed that and all is good) But I'm gonna ignore that now and try loading CAS again, pls work.

.... Hell yeah, at least that finally loaded up as supposed.

She is beauty, she is grace, maxis defaults really ruin her face.

After the final restart with screen size etc fixed I went back and forth to different lots trying to make it flash pink and it never did so I'm going to say this was success.

So to recap:

Installed the game through EA App

I installed "George" so I won't need to start the game up through EA App.

I ran the 4GB patch on the Sims2EP9.exe and TS2BodyShop.exe

I ran Graphics Rules Maker and tweaked things through that enabling it to use my full texture memory etc

I installed the EmptyStandbyList since without it I got pink flashing very quickly

????

Profit.

And seriously, that's all, even if this post ended up this long.

I still need to get smooth edges in bodyshop but that will likely be done with nvidia control panel rather than texture settings. Here's one more random maxis sims image to end this with a pretty picture instead of just huge wall of text.

[withlovefromsimtown]

Hi, Lifa! I hope you're doing great. I've just seen your answer to an anon regarding Monique's Hacked Computer - you see, I've been trying to sort of clone Maxis' computers and give them "Monique abilities". Unfortunately, I fail at it every single time. Would it be too much to ask for some kind of tutorial? I'd be forever in your debt <3

Honestly if you're trying to replace the Maxis computer with the Monique computer? Clone the Monique computer, replace the mesh of the cloned Monique computer with the Maxis computer mesh, & change the GUID of the (cloned & mesh-replaced) Monique computer to the Maxis computer's GUID. I promise it's easier to work backwards with these by starting from the Monique computer with working options, than it is to try & add ALL the options to a package that doesn't have them. ;)

[parisoonic]

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

thinkin' about Bardaby and his illusion smoke...

[bigfatbreak]

Hey I was wondering if you would do a post about how you make your feralnette au? I really like how you color it and was curious about your process.

Yes this is absolutely for plagiarism purposes /j

(I want to incorporate something similar on a smaller scale within my artwork, I don’t plan on posting anything but I can run the art past you if your worried about me actually stealing your style)

sure! as a note I'm not a pro or anything, this is just how I render my comic for ease of access

as a general note I draw everything in black and white first

I use a LOT of texture heavy brushes for effects, and specifically because I render with gradient maps a lot. people ask me why I do AU's in different styles - usually anything outside of feralnette is done in color - but that's because the rendering process is different.

for instance in the dad villain au, I do basic linework and chunky colors. if I was to do Feralnette in the same style, the gradient maps wouldn't nearly have the same effect, as you can see up there ^

when a gradient map is applied I can fiddle with the color values to set a Tone for the update I'm going for, while also making it really pretty, bc textures can really bloom the subtle colors in a gradient map. I get a lot from the CSP page itself, but I also MAKE a lot too. this specific map I made by color picking off of a neuron map from a brain scan I thought was pretty~

I don't do the feralnette AU in full color because generally, anything IN full color will have significance - either to show that a scene is important character development,

is a flash back,

or to put emphasis on something supernatural happening.

with Feralnette, when something is colored purposefully, its to emphasize it, whether that be to highlight character moments, or to stress that something eldritched and unnatural could be occurring, as its colors that do not exist in the pre-existing gradient map. Color out of space, yknow?

((SOMETIMES I put gradient maps on my colored chunky stuff, but once again, for the purpose of creating a tonal shift, like when papa Tom shows up in the dad villain AU!))

anyway I hope that helped!

[buglaur-cc]

cillian set

harrington jacket: 3 swatches, 4.1k polys

sweater vest: 3 swatches, 4k polys

vest and jacket: 5 swatches, 4.6k polys

flat cap: 16 swatches (credit to fableroot), 2.6k polys

tou: no paywalls or ads, do whatever you want :) if you find issues shoot me an ask on my main blog @buglaur, not this one!!

download simsfileshare (merged or separated) 

[namu-the-orca]

What color are orcas' eyes?

In short, mostly brown. In long, it's a bit complicated as Killer whales (and for that matter, all cetaceans) have multi coloured eyes! Unlike us humans, who have a singular coloured iris and a white sclera, cetacean eyes come in more flavours. Their iris is circled by a pale ring of varying colour, and the surrounding sclera is more often than not coloured too, sometimes even bi-colored. I have actually been working on a cetacean eye-colour-chart thing so I have some neat illustrations ready.

Here you can see the components that make up a cetacean's eye. It should be noted though that when relaxed, the eyelids cover much of it, leaving almost only the iris visible. As an example: a Harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena). On the left a clear view of the eye in its totality; on the right as visible in life.

Onto the whale in question. All cetaceans have beautiful brown irises: in many it is an unbelievably rich reddish hue when sunlight hits it directly. In shadow or underwater it looks more subdued though. Then comes the pale ring which in Killer whales is quite variable: in some animals it is very pale, almost white, while others have beautiful bright blue rings. The sclera appears two-toned in blackfish as far as I've seen. Killer whales have a rather modest dark brown area of sclera around the iris-pale-ring-combo, with the surrounding "base" sclera reddish pink. For comparison, False killer whales (Pseudorca crassidens) have a bit more substantive dark brown sclera area, with the surrounding sclera a striking bright red.

I hope this answers your question! This makes me want to finish this chart haha so maybe that'll come soon-ish in its totality.

[nanite-city]

Do you have any drawing tips for drawing trolls?

there are a Ton of different ways to draw trolls but this is sorta how i start my sketches!!

[secretsimpleness]

I figured this out somewhere along the second-to-last act. Octavia, the Baroness / Pathfinder Kingmaker (c) Owlcat Games

[digisims2]

The real reason I logged in today was because I installed couple of Sims, each in their own folder so I knew I'd get duplicates and planned to sort them out but before that did this important little step:

Searched the whole folder for *.package to get all the package files listed. After that I set the order to "size" starting from the biggest one and it revealed me this;

Now you're probably wondering, what's so bad about these randomly named files I've highlighted. Well, maybe you've heard of the file that can make your game crash at for example sim aging to elder? Or perhaps your game randomly crashes when random sim enters your lot? Sometimes the file is called "uhkjhihjkj(11)" and it's a file that likes tagging along with packaged Sims and occasionally people pack it together with recolors that are actually using in-game meshes thinking that it's an oddly named mesh.

Well it's not a mesh. This file has few characteristics that make it pretty easy to spot: firstly usually the random name (or the uhkjhihjkj(11) mentioned earlier), secondly the file size, I've seen few slightly different sized ones but usually it is 6807KB or 6.64MB depending on where you check the size. Thirdly, if you open it in SimPE the contents will look like this:

It contains 1534 CRES resources, and as you can see it's CRES:es of all(?) base game accessories, clothes, hairs and who knows what else. The list is so long I never bothered checking it all though. Point however is that for whatever reason this file corrupts very easily and causes game to crash at random moments. And even if it doesn't corrupt it's just plain junk file that's taking space on your hard drive.

Now you're probably (hopefully!) looking through your Downloads folder to see if you have this file/these files and that's a good idea. Also good news is that you don't need to panic, if you find this kind of file in your game just delete it. Nothing will break, nothing needs it so your recolors will remain working. It's literally a junk file and it's perfectly save to delete so please do so.

I felt like making this little PSA since I realized that not everybody probably is aware of this stupid file lurking out there in random downloads. + this way I can just link this post whenever it sounds like somebody might have this particular issue with their game so I won't need to type it all over again every time.

[withlovefromsimtown]

I love a lot of your defaults, but I'm incredibly attached to a lot of maxis meshes and their rcs. Even the ugly maxis sweats for my elders lol. Do you think it'd be possible for someone who's never made anything repositoried before turn them custom while keeping compatibility with your bodyshape addons? I want to use almost everything you've defaulted so I'd hate to burden you or anyone else with a request, plus I'd like to learn if it's not too difficult. Anyway thanks for all your cc!

Oh! Actually it would be... maybe not SUPER easy but Just Tedious Not Difficult to undefault my stuff.

So, in order:

Install the default clothing (don't worry, you can uninstall them when you're done) & make a Bodyshop "recolor" of every (default) Eaxis-sized piece you'd like to keep. Just export/import the texture without changing it (via Bodyshop) so that in the end you have brand-new recolors with the CC star on them for every texture option you'd like to keep. Close Bodyshop when you're done. You only need to do this for ONE gender/age that was defaulted, whichever age/gender you use will be your "Master" file.

Open the default package that contains the mesh in SimPE & extract ONLY the EAxis-sized GMDC(s). Make sure when you're saving the extracted GMDCs you name them somewhat descriptively. You need to do this for every EAxis gender/age that was defaulted.

Open a new SimPE window, (File/New) & extract a mesh of the same age/gender/type as the original EAxis-sized mesh (Tools/PJSE/Body Mesh Tool/Extracting Stage). Extract a top for a top, a bottom for a bottom, a body for a full-body outfit. Aside from that, what the actual extracted mesh is really doesn't matter, I usually just use the naked mesh. It'll show 4 mesh parts in italics, then use Tools/Object Tools/Fix Integrity & rename those parts. Once you've renamed them, right-click on the GMDC in SimPE & replace it with the matching GMDC you extracted in Step 2 (AF for AF. AM for AM, etc.), then Save As. You need to do this for every GMDC you extracted in Step 2.

One at a time, open your "recolors" from Step 1 in SimPE, click on the 3IDR in the list, & use Tools/PJSE/Body Mesh Tool/Linking Stage to relink them to the mesh you created in Step 3. SimPE might take a few seconds to load the 3IDR after you click on it, be patient. Follow the on-screen instructions & Save (NOT "Save As" just "Save) when you're done. While you're in SimPE, after you save the changes to the 3IDR, click on the TXMT & use the Export button (NOT rightclick-Extract, the Export Button in the Plugin View panel) to export TXMT info from each recolor. Make sure you name the exported files descriptively (ex. "BlackShirtGreenPants") so you know what they are. You need to do this for every "recolor" you made in Step 1.

Open my repo'd Bodyshape recolors &, using the TXMT extractions from Step 4 & the Import button in the TXMT Plugin View, replace the TXMTs on each of the Bodyshape recolors. Make sure you click the Commit button & Save (not "Save As" just "Save") after importing At least on newer stuff I've tried to make the filenames descriptive, but it's honestly kinda whatever... you'll have the number of TXMTs extracted, just go down the list if it's not clear which color the Bodyshape is meant to be linked to, the only difference it makes is that things will be shuffled into a slightly different order. You need to do this on every Bodyshape recolor file that you'd like to keep.

Make sure your edited meshes from Step 3 are in the Downloads folder. This is where most of my fuckups happen.

IF I DEFAULTED MORE THAN ONE EAXIS AGE/GENDER IN THE PACKAGE: Reopen Bodyshop (use this opportunity to check your work on the undefaulted items & Bodyshapes you've gotten through so far), grab literally any color of the other ages/genders, & make an appropriate amount of "recolors" for each age/gender that was NOT your master file. They can all be the same color, just export one & reimport the same thing however many times, you're not keeping the textures in these. Close Bodyshop, open the recolors in SimPE, & 3IDR link them just like Step 4, then import the TXMT like in Step 5, then delete the TXTRs from the package. Follow instructions in 3IDR linking, Commit on TXMT, Save (not "Save As", just "Save") at the end.

At this point you should be able to remove the default packages & have both the original EAxis clothing item & also my mesh, with repo'd Bodyshape content, in your game.

Kinda Not-Optional Step: Use the Compressorizor on all of the undefaulted stuff.

Optional Step: If Bodyshop did a crunch on the recolors, you can extract my textures from the original default package via SimPE & use BuildDXT in SimPE in your "master" undefaulted recolors to replace.

It's literally just copy-paste & data-entry, it's not hard AT ALL to do, but it would take some time.

[grendel-menz]

did you ever use like. skeletons to draw people? or have you always just gone Straight Into The Flesh? (as in like. stick figure frames vs shapes vs just. drawing a person - the couple of videos of yours I have seen just go straight into the person which is bonkers To Me you are soooooooo soso cool

Hi!! This is so sweet and also thank u for asking!

I personally prefer not to, they just don't work for my brain honestly, even as a kid I would get really frustrated with how to draw books and their skeletons and specific shapes. Sometimes I'll do an under drawing if the angle is complicated, but I'm not really using exact blocks or cylinders - just getting a feel for where I think things should be/line up. For a lot of my comics especially I'll just make blobs of where I want things to be and let my later self figure it out lol.

I'll include a straight to drawing vs a little under drawing video, and a sketch -> final for a recent work.

I learned to work this way because honestly I am just lazy, I don't want to draw the same thing multiple times so I cut straight to the end in most cases unless it's commissioned/contract work. There's a better chance of my personal art, if you look for it, to have wonky anatomy or repeating motifs, especially when it comes to elbows/hands.

[deafeninggardenerpanda]

woke: thinking drawing the mages weapons is hard

woke: thinking drawing the mages bodies and clothes is hard

woke: thinking drawing the mages hair is hard someone please for the love of god give me a tutorial this isnt a joke im suffering so hard someone help

[ocpdzim]

I made a tutorial for how to make a kandi x cuff, but you have to go on the forum to see it because I’m not writing all that out again:

Thanks @psycada for showing me how to make these in the first place!

[c-rowlesdraws]

I wasn’t happy with the painting explanation I threw together the other day and I keep thinking of steps/important notes I should have included, so I made this more detailed version today! This is more or less how I paint, and the main things I keep in mind when I paint. Originally I was just going to “add a few more details” to the original tutorial, but I kept thinking of stuff and went a little bit nuts trying to phrase everything in a way that makes sense.

there are many incredible tutorials about digital (and traditional) painting, color theory, light and shadow, etc out there-- I want to urge anyone interested in learning more about this stuff to go seek out professional advice! Painting is really, really complicated, and I’m absolutely still learning how it works and how to do it good. This is just m’thoughts and some images to go with them.

[spacecolonie]

i adore your paintings so muchhh would you happen to have any other tips or tutorials for your process? anything from thumbnailing all the way to final render

Thank you 😭♥ I appreciate that a lot!! To start with I've got my advice tag (both new and veeery old stuff lol), & my youtube has a couple of speedpaints on it, one with commentary including process, brushes etc

In terms of general stuff about how I approach painting, I tend to tailor the method to the desired outcome. I talk about it more in depth on this post here, I also link to some references & tutorials that I really enjoy/recommend!

Besides that though, I guess I can do a little walkthrough of the Whisper & Tangle painting I uploaded a few months ago, since I tried something new with it that I pseudo integrated into my workflow & could be fun to talk about? 🤔

SO yes, I do always thumbnail when I'm doing a bigger painting, and they're definitely not pretty LOL. I usually use the colour fill lasso just to block in basic shapes and values with a gradient map slapped on the top -- I ended up swapping the values around in the end because it let me use the fireflies as the sole light source, making it more character focused! Then it's the usual process of resketching it all & flatting in the base colours (I also added Whisper's wisps hehe), then adding shading:

This is how I usually approach it, w/ all the shading layers clipped to the original flats to preserve editing. Multiply, screen & overlay are the most common layer modes I use while doing this, and if I'm ever struggling I'll sometimes add a gradient map too in order to unify awkward colours etc. The new thing I tried for this painting was doing what's often nicknamed as a 'clown pass' -- which is using hard edged shapes to create an easily-accessible selection mask for each part:

It looks Super funny but I actually found it very helpful, and I ended up using it to select & cut out all of their body parts onto seperate layers, which were then alpha locked. It meant I could go ham w/ large or textured brushes, smudges etc without worrying about losing those edges, or accidentally over-rendering and screwing up the anatomy in the process!!

I've kept doing something similar since, though it's a bit more dialed back; mainly using the lasso select to chop it up directly and preserve specific/necessary edges, grouping up similar body parts on a single layer etc.

After doing all that, I sat down and started rendering. The background was all blocked in & detailed with a hard round brush and these amazing brushes from Devin Elle Kurtz. There isn't anything super insightful that I think I could type on how I render, but I do have that speedpaint I mentioned earlier that'll probably shed more light. It's just a lot of eyedropping & painting, rinse and repeat

When rendering is done I usually add a concoction of adjustment layers, as well as an overlay w/ a noise texture on it. I also sharpen it all after doing so! These are the ones that I ended up adding for this painting:

The dupe & blur is a fun thing that doesn't always work, but it looks super neat when the painting itself calls for it, especially when paired w/ that noise texture. It can make stuff look like an old/low quality photograph or recording -- here's another example w/ a shadow and amy doodle I posted a few months ago:

That's about it for this painting, the majority of the time spent on it was honestly me rendering those damn leaves 🥲 Very tedious but worth it & it was a really good learning experience. I'm not sure if any of this will prove useful but thank you so much for sending in the ask, & if you (or anyone else reading this) wants a similar breakdown for a different painting of mine, please do let me know and I'll try my best to do one!! 🥺💞