iCad Likes Pudding

There is a disturbingly large part of me that wants to completely revamp and rebuild Champs les Sims because 1) I rather often move Sims there permanently, via Traveler, to be layabout drunkards upstanding winemakers, and 2) I hate the weird layouts of many of the houses, especially the really sprawly ones near the town center. Also, I love French provincial style architecture. 

On the other hand, I don’t love building in TS3 all that much. And I’d really like to restructure the lot layout and get rid of some large lots and replace them with multiple smaller ones, but I can’t get CAW to run, or at least I couldn’t on my old machine. I suspect it’s because I had TS3 installed weirdly on that machine, so it might not be an issue on this new machine, but...Even if I got it to run, I have no clue how to use it, and I’ve heard that it has a steep learning curve. (Not that I’m afraid of that at all, but I’d like to finish this potential project before I die, if I start it at all!)

Boredom and insomnia struck today (*cough*actually yesterday*cough* Sleep is for the weak!), so I decided to...make a lighting mod????

Well, not really. It’s more like I made a mod collage, snipping out bits I liked from several existing lighting mods and then mooshing the bits together into a new one. (Thanks to @technicallyswagpizza for the tutes! They are super-awesome and super-helpful and not super-confusing!)

Thought I’d share one of my favorite YouTube channels. This is a live cam of the aurora borealis, and there’s a camera operator, so it’s always pointing at the best view, if there is one on any particular night.

The cam is in Churchill, Canada, where the time zone is UTC -5, which is convenient for me because it’s only an hour ahead of my own time zone. 

This is the consignment cashier that the game generated. I think he might actually be Satan. I’ve changed his name accordingly. (Well, OK, I named him Mephistopheles, not actually Satan, because it went better with his surname, but still...)

Anyway, hail Satan, the consignment store guy.

Screwing around with ReShade. As usual. Pics be unedited except for cropping/resizing.

I like to increase the contrast because to me the game in its native state just looks...flat, but I’m also going for a sort of dreamy look. So desaturated, slightly higher contrast, and a bit blurry, basically. And also not terribly resource-hungry, so I can leave it on all the time.

I’m also trying to make the outdoor lighting less...harsh, I guess? Because no matter what lighting mod I’ve tried, they all seem to look over-exposed and washed out (yet with harsh shadows, somehow) and sort of...red? orange?...outdoors, so Sims, especially, look weird to me. I want less bleaching and softer shadows. I’m getting close to what I want, I think. (The third pic is the sim in outdoor lighting) It’s still washed-out, but at least the shadows on the sims faces are a lot better. Unfortunately, if I adjust the washing-out too much more, the indoor lighting (second pic) will be too dark. *sigh* It’s a balancing act, and I’m not sure I can have exactly what I want...but I will likely fiddle with it for a few more hours again.

I do like the nighttime exteriors, though! So that’s another thing to balance. *sigh*

Here’s a before-and-after. Reshaded on the right, obviously.

Storybrook County by My Sim Realty, at dawn.

Gots me a new computer that can run Sims 3 the way I want it to run -- all EPs, lots of CC, heavily modded, highest graphics settings + NVIDIA tweaks and ReShade, playing large worlds without lag, etc. -- and I’m kind of feeling like maybe sorta being online a bit again, so...here we are.

I was messing around testing out some makeup I downloaded and making some unnatural hair color presets because it seems hard to find ones that aren’t either pastel or eye-searing neon, and I made these two Sims while I was doing it. The girl ended up looking kinda sorta like a rounder-faced Rihanna, I think. Don’t know how I managed that; I just slidered a randomizer-generated sim a bit.

I think most people who follow this little sideblog also follow my main TS2 Tumblr, but just in case that’s not the case...

I think I’ve settled on a lighting mod for Lylanir. It’s not the one in this post, which I like better, because that one unfortunately has a longer day, with the sun not setting until 2100, which means it’s still semi-light at 2300 and then it’s already getting light at 0400 for an 0500 sunrise. I’m not fond of that. So this is an earlier version of the same mod that doesn’t have the extended day, just Maxis-standard. Unfortunately, that one doesn’t have a version with Moonlight Falls’s nice blue water. This one has Monte Vista’s green water, which I’m not as fond of, but I prefer green water over freakishly-long days year-round.

Unicorn! <3 His name is...

I lol’ed.

The perils of hitting the “randomize” button in CAS when you’ve got a lot of body sliders installed... Oh, the lulz!

This one’s not too bad, though...