This post starts a small series of workshops about the methods i use to do 3D-Art.

How can you create good-looking poses? How can you compose a whole scenery? How do i pimp up the hot bodies of my models? How do i create all those wonderful virtual smut?

You want to know? I’m going to tell you…

Sorry to bother you, non-simmers!

But this time i must bother all of you who are not creating with The Sims 2. It’s required that i underline some things about the posing tool SimPose2 first.

SimPose is available here but before you try it you need to realize that it’s still some kind of unfinished software. Working with SimPose is really hardcore! Anyway, it is good enough to create great imagery.

I’ve already written a fat workshop about SimPose, please study Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 before you go on here. From now on i expect that you have basic knowledge.

SimPose in theory!

Before you start posing:

1. Make the SimPose stage as large as possible. Move the borderline to the left. Go to “View” and switch off “Toolbar” and “Status Bar”.
2. Also in “View” switch off “Show Ground Plane”. In “View/Options” set up solid blue as background color. Make your model appear in an all blue surrounding (other solid colors may work as well).
3. Load your model and zoom in, let the model fill the whole screen.
4. In “View/Set Lighting State” click on “Enable Lighting” and choose a middle gray tone. If SimPose didn’t crash here you’re on the safe side.

Note: What you see is what you get. The bigger your monitor screen the better.

SimPose-Beginners should avoid the following things because they can easily mess up everything. Try these only when you are an advanced poser:

1. Don’t rotate and move the view-stage to see the model from the side you want. Navigating in SimPose can be tricky. Better use the slider “root_trans / slider 3” to rotate the model around the vertical axis.
2. Don’t worry when your pose does not look nice from all sides. Most poses only look perfect from only one point of view. 360° degree poses are state-of-the-art and very hard to create.
3. Don’t expect SimPose to put out only beautiful results. SimPose is only for posing, it can position a model and add some lighting/shading – but the final master picture will always be created later in the graphic editor (Photoshop, Gimp…). This step is called post-processing.
4. Avoid using the “Screen Capture” function in SimPose (File/Screen Capture/…). It’s buggy and a potential SimPose crasher. Always use stand-alone screenshot makers like WinSnap or others.

A Guide through the sliders!

In SimPose every joint has 3 sliders that move the model’s joint into different directions. Not every pose slider is useful! Here’s a list of the sliders i never use:

1. “auskel” and “root_rot”: I can’t remember that i’ve ever used them. “root_trans” is the rotation tool of choice.
2. “Joint8″… stay away, useless.
3. I never touch “thumb1″ as well. Everything you need for thumb posing you can do with “thumb0″ and “thumb2 / slider 3″.
4. Can’t see anything that “breathe_trans” puts an effect on.
5. Everything including “dress” and below is useless. You don’t have anything to do in this area.

These sliders i only use in special situations:

1. “Location” is for last step fine tuning. Especially to make 2 (or more) models fit together.
2. “Spine2″ often creates strange looking poses. Normally i avoid this slider.
3. “bicep” is only emergency fine tuning. Playing with “upperarm” is enough most of the time.
4. “wrist” can create good-looking arm-poses but is not required in most cases. Also good for fine-tuning.
5. “pelvis” can create nice poses as well. But many poses you see in the internet look strange because creators have overrated “pelvis”.

Even in the main joints there are still some sliders more useful than others…

Example: While i always use all 3 sliders in “thigh” and “calf”, i never use “anyfinger1 / sliders 1 and 3″. This would mean i can move the joints of my fingertips to the sides, which is pretty painful ;)

Alright for now. Next time i will give you some practical tips and examples about posing a virtual character. This is going to be interesting for non-simmers as well.

To promote the upcoming super blockbuster “Luisa 6″ (working title) i’ve released a letter from Lena Luv today which you can read on her homepage.

To make it look like a “real” letter i needed to create a sheet of paper in Photoshop.

I will describe how you can make your own virtual letter paper as well – in only a few minutes; it’s pretty easy…

Figure out what you need

Before you start, first specify what you want to get:

I want a sheet of paper that fits perfectly into the design of the website.

It should be large enough but not too large, vertical layout and black background (to let it meet the background color of the website).

Step 1: Open a new document

Open a new file in Photoshop, give it the correct size and fill it with the background color (black in my case).

Step 2: Create the shape of the paper

Open a new layer (!) and – with the “rectangular marquee tool” – make a selection in the size of the paper.

Don’t let the selection meet the border of the document because we need some margin in later steps.

Fill the selection with a soft color, close to white but not white. I’ve chosen a soft rosé tone to let the paper look lovely.

Step 3: Add some decoration

Open another new layer (!) and set its “Blending Option” to “Multiply”.

Get a beautiful flower brush from somewhere on the Internet and add a flowery form to the paper.

With the right brush you only need to make one click. That’s the trick with brushes, get some free Photoshop Brushes from somewhere…

Just “paint” in the same soft color like the paper sheet. With the blending option set to “Multiply” it will look very natural.

Step 4: Transform the paper

The paper still looks very sterile, it needs some crinkles and waves.

First, “Merge” the layers “Paper” and “Flower” together: Mark both of them in the layer window and click “Strg + E”.

Now apply the filter-effect “Artistic/Film Grain” and set all three parameters to 1.

With the powerful tool “Liquify” (in the top area of the Filter-Menu) you can easily transform the border of the paper; it’s up to you and your taste.

Step 5: Add more effects

With a rougher brush i’ve added some more shadows and stains.

Again: On a new layer, set to “Multiply” and painted in the same soft rosè color.

I also reduced the “Opacity” of those effects to make them look less intense.

And i added the Layer Style “Inner Glow” to the paper layer. Set the Blend Mode of the effect to “Dissolve” and look at the other settings:

That’s it, you just created a nice sheet of virtual paper in only a few minutes.

Get a lovely handwriting font and write something down. It looks lovely, i’m sure.

And then leave the way of this workshop and try to find your own method, change and add stuff of your choice…

…and get the very last out of Photoshop.

You can download my original PSD-File here!

After a busy week i’m back with the next part of the SimPose Workshop.

Don’t forget to read the other tutorials about SimPose 2 and also install the Sims-Tool SimPe because you will need it now.

We will extract the required 3D-Meshes of the sims and open them in SimPose 2. We are going to look for 3 Meshes (Body, Face, Hair) which together form a complete Sim-Model…

Quick overview!

If you already know how to extract 3D-Meshes with SimPe because you are an advanced creator of pretty stuff, i only tell you what you need to do to make SimPose happy:

Extract the GMDC Part of a Mesh-File and save it in the .5gd file format. You can (and should) give the file another, better and shorter, name.

SimPose only reads .5gd and you must load the Mesh into the Mesh-Slot under “Mesh and texture(s)” in the “Character” Tab.

File organisation!

Before you start you need to think about how to organize all the files that will be made for SimPose 2.

I’ve created separate folders for every model and another folder for objects. This is not the best method and i’m sure you will find a way that works better for you after you made some tests…

There is no standard Windows Open/Save/Save as… procedure in SimPose. In fact, to open and save files and poses can be very annoying.

Mark these 2 rules:

• Put all files and folders inside the SimPose directory to get short and flat paths
  
• Never move files or folders to another place on the hard disk

The Body-Mesh!

The body is everything from feet to neck. No matter if the sim is wearing a skirt, trousers, jacket or if he/she is naked.

Standard Sim-Outfits can be extracted with the “Body Shop/SimPe” Method. Custom-Made Meshes are easier to handle; you only need SimPe…

2 more rules:

• Never take split outfits (top/bottom).
• Teen-Meshes will not work.

Body Shop/SimPe Method

1) Start Body Shop and choose an outfit. Extract it like usual and then import it back into the game directly without making any changes. Close Body Shop.

2) Start SimPe and open the outfit file. You will find it in the “Saved Sims” folder in the “My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2″ Directory.

3) In the “Resource Tree” click on “Property Set” and also activate the entry in the “Resource List”. Below, in the “CPF Editor”, click on the field “name”. Copy the main part of the appearing name to the clipboard (Strg+C or Ctrl+C).

4) In SimPe, make a “New” Package-File. Go to “Tools/PJSE/Body Mesh Tool/Extracting stage” and paste the outfit name into the field “Base mesh name”. Hit Okay and you’re almost ready.

5) Four entries appear in the “Resource Tree”, but you only need the “Geometric Data Container” better know as GMDC. This is the 3D-Mesh. Activate this entry and then right click on the entry that’s in the “Resource List”.

6) Choose “Extract” from the menu and save the file in your SimPose/whatever directory. Also give the file a better name but keep the extension as is: .5gd

Extract Custom-Made Meshes

This is much easier because you don’t need to find the right Mesh-File; you still downloaded it and only have to open the Mesh-File with SimPe. Look for the GMDC and extract it, that’s all.

So download a nice Mesh-File from somewhere and open it in SimPe…

Please note that i’m not talking about Skins; this is about Meshes.

The Face Mesh!

Every Sim has its own individual face. To get this face you first need to create a Sim in Body Shop and export the final sim to your desktop.

This is really a “first-10-minutes-standard-procedure” in Body Shop so i won’t describe that here.

Open the exported Sim (.Sims2Pack) with SimPe by using the “Tools/Package Tools/Open Sims2Pack” menu.

Now you will easily find the GMDC line. Extract it the same way like you did with the Body-Mesh. Save the Face-Mesh in the .5gd format as well.

The Hair-Mesh!

This is the same like extracting a Body-Mesh. With the exception that i highly recommend to take Custom-Made Meshes (best from xmsims.com) from the start.

The game’s original hair styles also work but often make problems. I don’t know why and i can’t explain it; it’s just my experience that xmsims hair works best in SimPose.

So get the Mesh-File, extract the GMDC, save it in the .5gd format. That’s it.

Putting the meshes together in SimPose 2!

Now you have all 3 meshes that are required to form a complete Sim-Model in SimPose 2.

Start SimPose and go to the “Character” Tab. Remember, a Sim-Model is called “figure” and can consist of 4 parts. Also keep in mind that SimPose starts counting on zero: 0 to 3 instead of a more realistic 1 to 4.

So we have the 3 meshes (parts) of our first model (figure0). It’s up to you how you sort them… I like to start with the Body-Mesh…

In the “Model Selection” the buttons say “figure0″ and “part0″. Below is the section “Model Content”; click on the big button “Mesh” and open the Mesh-File (the .5gd you extracted in the previous steps).

Here it is, the untextured body appears in the workspace to the right.

Now switch to “part1″ in the “Model Selection” and open the Face-Mesh…

Switch to “Part2″ and open the Hair-Mesh with the same old “Mesh”-Button.

Saving the model!

Voilá, my dear friends. Time to save or to close SimPose to repeat these steps for practicing.

To save a finished Model click on the “Save” Button in the “Model Selection” in the “Character” tab.

Give the model a very detailed name, this will help you much:

• Wrong: MyModel1.fxml
• Right: LenaLuv-redbikiki-topless-tannedskin.fxml

Save it anywhere on your computer but not too far away. Just test what works fine for you.

To open a saved model start SimPose and use the “Load” function in the “Model Selection”.

And the textures?

You know that this SimPose Workshop is pretty long and i split it into 4 parts.

This was Part 2, extracting the 3 required Meshes for the body, face and hair, saving them as .5gd files and open/combine them in SimPose to form a complete Sim-Model.

In the next Part we have much to do again. Because we will create sexy textures without messing around with SimPose’s “Texture Overlays”.

It will be some work but it won’t be too difficult, don’t worry.

Welcome to another part of the MXM Master Class Workshop Series, how to make a good start with SimPose 2.

This is the second article about SimPose 2, please read “SimPose 2 for beginners” as well to get the whole thing.

This time i will tell you more about SimPose 2: Which options are important, what do the menus mean and so on…

Enlarge the workspace

The blue screen on the right half of SimPose is the workspace (1). The sims-model will appear here.

Enlarge the workspace as much as you can because the photos will be bigger (=better) then.

You can move the border between workspace and the tools to the left.

Both the “Toolbar” and the “Status Bar” are relatively useless, so switch them off to enlarge the workspace a little bit more.

Tip: While you are posing you can set the size of the workspace however you want. But when you shoot a final photo it always should be as large as possible.

Maximize the SimPose Application to make it fill the whole screen. Again, the larger your monitor the bigger and better photos you can get.

More View-Options

You can see that i switched off every option in the “View” Menu.

But in later lessons we will change the background color or add a background picture to the workspace… but only when it makes sense.

For now you can leave the background color alone.

The “Character” Tab

The most important area in the “Character” Tab is the “Model Selection”.

But at first have a look at all the functions and buttons that we will never use:

Yes, forget about the “Position”, “Vertex Indication” and even the “Texture Overlays“.

The Texture Overlays can be helpful sometimes, but most of the time we will use a much better method to texturize the models.

The “Model Selection”

SimPose can handle up to 4 sims (figures), each can consist of 4 parts (body, head, hair and probably glasses or other additional stuff).

So every figure consist of 3 parts at least: The body, the head (face) and the hair. The fourth part is optional.

Using Sims-Objects

You also can import sims objects (chairs, tables…) into SimPose. Such objects are called “Model”. You can use up to 6 “Models”…

…but you never will!

For some poses it’s helpful to import some furnitures – but i never use more than 2 object (models) in the same scene.

Parts consist of Meshes and Skins

Every sims (and every other 3d character) consist of a 3D-Mesh and a Texture.

Hint for advanced modders: SimPose cannot handle Alpha-Channels. But don’t worry, we will get transparency anyway.

Do you remember? We have at least 3 parts for every Figure (Sims): Body, Head and Hair. So you will need Meshes and Skins for every one of the parts.

3 Meshes + 3 Textures for every Sims. To get and create these 6 files can be pretty much work and a little bit tricky as well.

We will get closer to this topic in the next episode “Importing a Sims Figure”.

Resume

Many problems with SimPose seem to appear only because there are lots of…

• confusing names
• useless options
• unfinished functions

If you just forget about them it will be much easier to understand how SimPose 2 works.

The next time we will start to prepare the required sims-meshes and textures and put together our first Sims-Model, sorry, i mean Sims-Figure…