Gettin' your OBJs worth out of TSRW ;)

Okie doke. So you need an OBJ to use as a prop in MS for your poses? Lets get it for you!


To start with, go ahead and open up TSRW-

Go ahead and select Create New Project.

For this example we're going to select New Import since I'm going to be using already made CC. If you're going to be using an Object that came with an EP or an SP (or BG) Then you'll select one of the categories above accordingly.

Once you select your category, select Next.

Since we're importing CC it'll bring up this window where you will browse to where you have your desired prop stored. See my red box? When this window first comes up the default file it's looking for is .wso. Or Resource Workshop Files. You can use the drop down function to select a Package or a Sims3Pack.  We're going to select a package and then click Open.

This is the next window. Go ahead and click next.

This is the next screen. I always try to put in a Unique project name. Even if I'm just getting the obj out. I'd really rather not booger something up. However, you might be able to get away with ignoring that and just not naming it at all. Anyhow, Next again! And you'll get yet another window where you don't need to do anything other than click a button. Though at least you'll (Finally!) get to click Finish.

So we've finally finished loading and naming, and waiting, and clicking Next and you'll get a wonderful visual of the object you've successfully loaded. Woot. See all those tabs in the upper right? If you would kindly direct your eyes there, we're looking for the Mesh tab. Go ahead and select it.

When the tab loads you'll see another drop down menu. Go ahead and select whichever mesh you think you'll need. Needless to say, the shadow is most likely worthless for this. Unless you're posing with a shadow and hey, who am I to assume?  I'm going to go ahead and select the High LOD (Level Of Detail) mesh. Then I'm going to click on the box with the Red Arrow that is immediately to the right of the dropdown menu.

Once you've clicked on that Box with Red Arrow this is the pop up you'll get. It's a Save As box. Go ahead and enter whatever file name you want, and you can even browse around to put the file wherever you'd find it easiest to find.

When you're done with all of that go ahead and click the drop down arrow on the Save As Type box. It's going to start with the WorkshopObject (*.wso) .

Go ahead and select the file extension you need. As the title of this tutorial implies, I'd figure you'd be selecting a Wavefront Object (*.obj). lol. Anyhow go ahead and select your file extension, name it, and click save. and Voila! You've got your prop as an obj all ready to go!

Transparent Overlay Tutorial for Misty

You're going to hate me when this is done. It's a lot easier than it sounds.

For starters, open up your image. I'm doing this in Paint.net because I know how to do it in this program. I'm sure you can do it in GIMP, I just don't know how. However, there are some simpler functions that Paint.net does better than GIMP, such as rectangle constraint so you get a nice square really easily.

First, we're going to find our Layers window and click the Add Layer button. It's the little white sheet with a green plus sign in it. Make sure your newly created Layer 2 is selected by clicking on it. It should be highlight blue.

Next, in your Tools Window you'll select Bucket Fill. Pick the color you want and click on your image.

Yeah, it's really purple. Now you're going to go Back to your Layers window and select the Layer Properties button. Again, make sure Layer2 is the Layer selected.

This wonderful little box is going to pop up. We really don't need to worry with the upper window right now, we're concerned with the Blending option below. See that opacity slider? We want to move it down.

As we move it down, the picture starts to become visible through the purple again.

The lower the opacity, the more of your picture is going to show through. Note though, this is going to mean you lose a little of the detail from the picture underneath. If you want those details to pop back up, you can always use the eraser working on Layer 2 to erase the purple film so the base image shows up clearly. Say I want a few of the candles to really pop.

Obviously, you'd be a lot more careful than I was there, but you get the idea of what you can do in order to keep some of your details while still changing the overall color of your image.

So there ya go! Have fun!

Resetting ONLY ONE JOINT when posing in Blender.

Yeah, you know you're drooling over this one. ;) And go straight to the bottom. That's where the 'how to reset only one joint part really is. -Sunny

 

For starters, I want you to see what the pose is supposed to look like without the dots and lines of the joints and bones. The face is fully posed, as are the arms and hands. I like this pose! I'm happy with it. But to start with we do not want the Hide Bones on. So don't copy me. This is just to show that the face and body is posed.

So, now we've got our bones and joints showing again You need to select a joint, any joint it doesn't matter. When you've selected your joint I want you to bring up the Pose Tools menu. You do this by hitting the 'T' key on your keyboard. It'll pop up on the left. There it is, yay!

I've purposely bungled the neck of my pose. It's a mess isn't it! I really don't want to take the time to try and untwist that boogered joint so instead I want to reset it. But I like the rest of my pose and want to keep it, so this is what we're going to do. First of all, in the joint tree on the upper right find your problem joint in the tree menu. You might have to scroll around and click on some plus signs to find it. Luckily, the tree will help guide you. The base of the joint you need will be a lighter grey and you can follow the plus signs until you find the one where the little bone icon is in a circle. That's the one you need. Make note of where it is.

First, you will hit the 'A' on your keyboard twice so that all the joints are highlighted light blue. Once you've got the joints all selected go to the tree menu and find that joint (or joints) you want to reset. Right click on the joint and select Deselect. Repeat this on all the joints you need to reset.

 

You'll notice on the tree that there is not a circle on the offending joint. You can also see the single black dot on Harriet (the rig.)
Once you've deselected the offending joint go to the Pose Tools Menu and select Copy. Now click on any joint on your rig, and import another rig. You can either use File-> Import or the Load CLIP button on the S3PY menu.

Once the new rig is loaded, you will go back to your Pose Tools Menu and click on Paste.

NOTE: If the joint you did NOT copy (ie: the joint you want to reset) is posed on the imported rig, when you paste the other joints onto this rig the joint you wanted to reset will be posed as it was in the imported rig.

Boom! The rig is going to snap back down to the pose as I liked it previously, minus the neck boogering.

NOTE: The neck was posed on my imported pose and when I pasted the other joints on, the neck went into the position it was before you pasted it on.

 

Here's a close up to show that the neck has indeed reset to a non boogered state. The face is the same, the body is the same. Awesome right? Now you can continue your pose as you were on your way before. YAY!!! Just remember to rename the pose when you export it. Otherwise you'll just save over the pose you imported. K?

Now, What if you like something, say the hand, and want to put it on other poses. Like, maybe your sim has a quirk and holds their hand a certain way all the time. Ok. Let's take one aspect of our pose and using our copy and paste technique and apply it on a smaller scale

For this, we're going to grab that hand. To start with, you will select all the joints you want to put on a different pose. To select more than one joint you can right click-select the joints in the joint tree in the upper right (or mid right depending on how your screen is set up) or you can right click on them all while holding shift down. Whatever works for you. You'll notice we've already got the Pose Tools menu up. If you don't, just hit T on your keyboard to bring it up. Make sure you have at least one joint on your rig selected when you hit T though, or you'll just bring up the Object Tools menu instead of the Pose Tools Menu.
Since we have all the joints selected we want to copy, we're going to go ahead and hit copy in the Pose Tools Menu.

Now go ahead and import the rig you want to put the copied joints on.
When your rig opens you'll notice the same joints are selected as you just copied. Woot!
Go ahead and click paste in your Pose Tools Menu.

Voila! There's the newly pasted hand joints all ready to go!


NOTE: Copying and Pasting between two open Blender windows DOES NOT WORK. For instance, you want HER hand on a male rig and so open a male rig in a separate window (Meaning: you didn't append the male rig in) and attempt to Paste the joints onto the separate rig you will just get an Error: Copy (something or other) Is Empty. Could you copy something between two rigs that are Appended together? I bet you could. I still haven't tested this yet though. I'm just so excited to have discovered this that I'm trying to get this up NAOW! lol

Alright. Now what about copying and pasting between different sized rigs? For example between Harriet or Fred and the Toddler Rig (What was the toddler Rigs name Gem?) Alright, lets take a look.

Well, that was unexpected. I'd opened my femaleRig (Harriet) and appended in the Toddler Rig. Then I copied all the joints in her left arm from shoulder down and pasted them onto the Toddler Rig. No stretching! How about the other way? Lets take the Toddlers left leg and put it on Harriet.

No distortions! Her foot is only cocked forward like that because she is bent at the waist slightly. Now what if we were to copy Harriet's pose in it's entirety? Would the face stretch on the toddler?

Nope! However, the Toddler rig moved into that position automatically. I didn't put it there. This leads me to assume that when I copy the joints from one rig to a smaller rig Blender copies the movements of the joints exactly. When I moved the adult rig down using the B_Root_bind joint (The crosshairs in her pelvis?) I moved it down a certain amount. When it moves it on the smaller rig it moves it the same amount, even though the smaller rigs b_root_bind joint is already farther down. Hence why the toddler rig is underneath the adult rig.

Now, how about the other way around?

Going back to the Toddler Rig having Harriet's arm copied onto it, then we copy that pose to Harriet. Harriet immediately snaps to this position when the joins are pasted onto her. However, in this instance she is in exactly the same position as the Toddler Rig(you can see their anchors to their right.) So when scaling up, Blender does not change the root position. I'm not positive why it would work the other way, and not this way but at this rate I'm just thrilled to have learned this much.

Now for more practical application:

I like this pose. It's nicely closed and standoffish. And I've got a sims party coming up where that b***h shows up wearing the exact same dress as my sim and I want her to react. That body is perfect. The face?

Uhm, while I have uses for that face it's not quite the "That B***H!" face I want. I need more annoyance.

So I've appended in the rig that has an appropriately annoyed expression and moved her out of the way. Notice the joints are not hidden again. I know it makes it harder to see for a tutorial but the Pose Tools menu will not come up with the joints hidden and that menu is kind of crucial.

Then I select all the joints I want to copy. Remember that sometimes there are multiple joints in a single location and sometimes you've got to right-click multiple times to get those joints to highlight. Open the Pose Tools Menu, and select Copy when you've got all the facial muscles selected.

Then select the original Harriet again and paste. New face, same pose! So nice. So.Easy. So fast!

I've tried this method in game copying between adult and toddler poses (toddler in adult pose, adult in toddler pose) with the correct animations in, and without the correct animations in (meaning I did NOT import the a_xvets in) and it works just fine in game. The bones are not stretched and the poses took the first time I inputted the names. A word of caution though, a lot of poses will need slight adjustments to correct clipping. If you are pasting an adult pose onto a child you need to pay particular attention to the arms as they tend to be closer to the body and will sometimes clip.

Also- a far easier way to reset just one joint? (THANKS -A-!) Is to go to the Pose menu at the bottom and click it. Then select the submenu Clear Transform. Then select All. Much much faster and easier for resetting just one joint in Blender. ;)

Adding Accessories Part 2- Adding Clothes

Ah! My dearest Gemma! Posing with Meshed clothing a guessing game that's got you down? Well fear not! For Sunny is here to show you how to get those clothes in Blender and onto your rig for posing your convenience!

You read the first one right? You need to remember how to do that. However, I think we're going to start by getting rid of the hair on our rig. Dammit! Harriet's hair is forever in my way for posing! Especially if I'm going to have someone's hand on her face.

To start with, open the rig whose hair is rather hair-raising to you. A warning! If you delete her hair you cannot put in other hair. She will continue bald until you close and reopen her.
First of all, we're going to look over in the tree menu on the right. There you go. In the box. There are a lot of branches on our tree but we're mainly concerned with the part of the tree titled afrig. Immediately to the left of that word you should see a little plus or minus sign in a circle. It needs to be on a plus sign. Once that branch expands scroll down until you see afhair.

Once you've come across afhair right click on it and this menu will pop up. Select delete.

Ack! She's bald! But yay! Now we can pose and see things her hair otherwise covered. A warning though! Remember that sims can have both very wide and very narrow heads. Harriets headsize is average, but not everyone plays with average headsized sims.

But now, don't we need Kaity's dress on this sim so we can make sure Fred's hands don't clip through Harriets dress in game? Well, yeah! So go click on Load CAS.

Ah Ha! Looks familiar doesn't it? Make sure the article of clothing you want your rig to wear is already in package form and somewhere you can find it. Navigate to it and select it (#1) and then select Import Sims3 Prop.

Yay! The dress is on our rig. How nice. But! Just as in the previous tutorial our rig is now in Object Mode and the joints are orange. Never fear! The solution is simple! Right click on any joint on your rig.

And we're back in pose mode. yay!

Now, I want to show you something that will have no bearing on anything whatsoever. When you get close up to your rig you will notice either black or white spots on your rig. THIS IS NORMAL. THIS IS OK. Really. Don't panic. I will admit that there were times when I'd delete the dress so the white spots would disappear so I could check a joint's rotation. That is easy. Note up under afrig in the tree menu there is a lovely string of numbers? That's the dress. Just as you did with the hair, right click and delete, and it's gone. Putting the dress back on is as simple as following the above steps and doesn't mess one whit with your pose.

So now you know how to add in custom outfits so you can pose around them, go grab that huge puffy wedding dress and make poses for it! Have fun!