NikitaDarkstar

PORCH LIGHT ON!

on my blog hidden somewhere is an Emoji Find it any you found your treat!

The setting that prevents your work being used to train AI models is turned off by default! I had no idea about this until now! Artists, go to your settings, click “visibility”, and turn on this setting! Protect your work!

Ok, you guys know damn well I'm anti-gatekeeping resources and anti-cc-creator-competitions-to-see-who's-better-at-playing-digital-play-Doh. AND ABOUT THAT, I found out about MESH REPAIR TOOLS by SINEWAVE. It's a FREE add-on for blender. It does A LOT of things, but do you know what it also can do? DECIMATE MESHES BETTER THAN BLENDER.

Before (taken on sims4studio):

After (taken on blender):

All of this with two clicks on the "Reduce" button. Yes I'm in an awe but can you really blame me?? The mesh looks exactly THE SAME. I don't need to fix wonky UVs or replace textures. It does everything PERFECTLY.

PLEASE put your name in your filename. One, someone will have a clue who it's by when they go to find more by you or to finally organize their Mods folder. Two, you're less likely to end up with the exact same filename as another creator.

PLEASE put your name FIRST in your filename. Alphabetization is super useful. It's less useful to alphabetize by the cute name you gave that hair or set of chairs.

PLEASE, for the love of all things Sims, consider not only using your initials. My Mods folder now has three different creators whose files start "MM". There might be even more of you MM's out there.

Enchanted by Nature so far is aiight, but on god the QC with the items in this pack is like non-existent. some of the lights were search lights, some of the tables had sunken in slots and slots floating away from the item and some items had like 1 slot despite being able to support more... so I fixed it List Below

Burly Basics Cabinets The Double Tile Piece and the Outer Corner Piece had no slots despite being empty and supporting slots. I added 48 Slots for the Double Piece - 6 Large / 12 Medium / 30 Small I added 32 Slots for the Outer Corner Piece - 2 Large / 6 Medium / 24 Small I also removed the occluders to prevent them doing the going dark weirdness.

Mossfire Hearth Literally only had 4 SMALL slots. There's now 11 Small and 8 Medium Slots Arborous Ambiance Desk This one was ... weird. I didn't want to get in the way of the computer slots, There's now 12 small slots to the back end of the desk

Floating Wreckage Shelf This one got me mad, it had NOTHING slots wise despite being a shelf. There's now 3 Large , 7 Medium and 33 Small slots

Fungi Fixture Shelf it had ... 1 slot despite its sizing. and it was small!!! There is now 1 Medium slot and like 4 more small slots.

Leafy Ledge Dresser This had like no medium slots and 2 small slots. There is now 5 Large, 10 Medium and 27 Small Decor slots

Tiered Toadstool Shelves this also had like 2 slots... There is now 1 large, 2 Medium and 12 Small slots

Timber Slice Table Whoever made this slot setup should be fired. The slots were unusable and 2 of them were sunken into the tabletop. There is now 1 Large, 6 Medium and 19 Small slots and none of them should be sunken into the tabletop!

Petal Dance Sink There was 1 slot under the sink and a slot all the way out partying away from the object. I added 5 more small slots.

Floralux Ceiling Light This thang was a WHOLE search light. I toned the intensity down to match its wall friends

Floralux Floor Light The base of this light would go pitch black because the vertex painting was crap, so you couldn't see the cool glowing effect on the bottom It also was EXTREMELY bright. I fixed both those issues. Avery Acorn Nightlight It's supposed to be a nightlight, it was more a searchlight. I toned it down to be an actual nightlight.

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⟡ＤOWNLOAD FREE HERE⟡

💜 EVE V10 Base 💜Made specifically for TS4💜Compatible with Sejian's Custom CAS tag mod Mesh: all LODs, 100% new Textures: 100% new, HQ enabled, norms incl., amended shadow maps for EA skin bug

Model Credits: Skin/Makeup: OneOfTheseDays, Obscurus, Northernsiberianwinds Hair: conversion (Doux)

CAS preview:

for those who have all their poses in separate files like me because there’s no tutorials on it for some reason

DISCLAIMER: this does NOT go over how to make poses, work the rigplus, or navigate blender!!!

// before we proceed, prepare the following:

blend file containing your pose with a timeline window open (hereafter referred to as [BLEND A])

blend file containing the rigplus for the pose to be “pasted” into with an asset browser window open (hereafter referred to as [BLEND B])

// ok let’s get on with the actual tutorial now

in [BLEND A], insert a keyframe with BOTH rigs visible. make sure the normal rig is still selected! (for good measure, i like to clear my keyframes for both rigs to make sure i don’t have any duplicates or anything)

hide the normal rig and select the rigplus. then, in your timeline window, click “copy pose as asset”.

without closing [BLEND A], open [BLEND B]. in your asset browser, switch the library from “all” to “current file”. then on the header, click “asset > paste as new asset”.

hide the normal rig and select the rigplus (again). right click on your newly created pose asset, hit “apply pose”, and profit (don’t forget to keyframe again as you normally would!)

// troubleshooting

i can’t paste the pose as a new asset!

make sure you do NOT close the blend file you’re copying the pose from! leave it open until after you’ve added the pose to the asset library.

when i try to apply the pose, nothing happens!

this is probably because you didn’t have the right rig selected. after inserting a keyframe, make sure the normal rig is hidden and the rigplus is selected when you copy the pose!

// miscellaneous notes

this is the method i figured out when i was making my first all-in-one pose animation. copy-pasting poses as you would with the normal rig doesn't work with the rigplus, so i fiddled around a bit until i came up with this!

dm me or send an ask if you have any questions! i'm certainly no expert, but i'll do my best to help!

Hello!

While I'm doing a new hairstyle, I wanted to share one topic that has been on my mind for a long time. I finally figured out a more or less easy way to create textures, and I really, really want to share it. I'm not going to explain the basics, so I expect that you already understand basic concepts like uv, and are familiar with baking ui in blender and know shader nodes basics (please, enable node wrangler...)

Also you'll need this add-ons for better uv manipulation and uv-packing

FIRST STEP - UV

To begin with, we need a hair model, preferably one you’ve created yourself. However, game hairstyles also partially fit these requirements, since they're colored in a similar way. I’m basically trying to replicate something close to the Maxis pipeline using the tools and methods I have.

The model should be unwrapped and shouldn’t have overlapping UV islands. If you used hair curves, your UVs are probably already rectangular. Just rotate and resize them as you normally would when applying game textures.

You can place some UV islands in the head’s texture space, where the hairstyle overlaps the mesh. You can also check the game textures for reference. There’s usually plenty of space used by the hair textures, not just that tiny rectangle in the top-left corner.

This is how my UV looks like:

To achieve this result, you can use free add-ons for uv packing such as UV-packer.

I prefer hand modeling over using curves, so my UVs look a bit different. I used the UV manipulation add-on I mentioned earlier to get them this way, but that’s not the topic for today.

IMPORTANT: All UV islands should be as straight as possible and oriented vertically. Otherwise, this method won’t work. This is crucial because the noise texture stretches vertically to imitate hair strands. It’s too time-consuming to handpaint them, and honestly, no one really does that.

Meet Gem - the last fairy of the night sky...

A little bit of lore:

Fairies are such magical, powerful creatures, yet they are the most fragile beings here on Earth. People, who are kind in their hearts always tried to protect them, and in return - were granted wishes and presents from fairies.

Unfortunately, as it is known, greed tend to take human hearts and souls. Peace between magical and mortal was broken as soon as the first fairies were harmed. Femine hit those mortal, then came floods... Yet, humans didn't stop hunting. And the worse situation was - the more fairies they wanted. Humans believed that those fairies they capture - will grant their wishes in order to save their lives. But they were wrong, very wrong.

But, every life form has its unique d3ath. And after a fairy would pass - she will leave fairy dust. Such dust was so powerful - it could undo deseases, grow crops even in the desert and if a meal had at least one particle of such dust - it was the greates meal one would ever taste. That is beacause fairies were led into this world to help humans, wether they are alive or not. But such quality pushed mortals over the edge, they began to hunt fairies even more, not caring for creature's lives no more.

The most powerful of them - the night sky fairies... Their lives were too short-lived, too abrupt. Gem is the only one who escaped, bound to live with a burden, bound to always run away...

Thankfully, she isn't all alone - her friend, a rare species frog she called Hetty, is always with Gem. Wether they are flying away from danger, or catching a deserved break.

CC under the cut:

The modern Original Character Creator experience.