Solsticesims

thank u in advance!

Hii! I render at a higher resolution and then hot sample my pictures. What this means is that I render at the higher resolution, edit the pictures, and then size them back down to 2K when I'm done.

Normally I render at 2160 x 2700 at 200% with 150 to 300 Samples.

I also render with a good GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti

Play around with Color Management in Render Settings to get a good color mode you like, and also play around with Compositor Nodes like Glare > Fog Glow to make your renders come out glowy and soft.

Hiii, so I can only speak on rendering in Cycles, so that's what I'll speak on.

Some things to play around with would be the radius or sizes of your lights. The smaller the light, the harsher/sharper the shadows. If you want softer shadows, up the radius of your point light or make an area light larger. If you're using a Sun light, increase the angle of it in settings.

I also recommend playing Compositor settings, adding a Glare > Fog Glow node can really emulate that dreamy effect you're looking to achieve.

Color Management modes can also impact the contrast of your photo, which make shadows appear lighter/darker. If you're looking for lighter shadows, you may lean towards Filmic more. I lean more towards AGX because I like my photos having more of a moody contrast.

I also paint some shadows in Procreate after by color picking the Sim's skin (darkest part) and putting the layer on Multiply, Gaussian Blur what you've drawn, smudge out with Blend tool if needed, then lower opacity.

Lastly, when editing, to also get the dreamy, soft look, duplicating your image and gaussian blurring it and adding different layer blend modes to the blurred layer can really add to the overall image. I usually like to use Overlay and Screen (or Add) on lower opacity. This makes everything smoothed out too.

Hopes this helps! Please let me know if you want me to extrapolate on anything.

sk8ing and taco bell 4 da win

Hii, it's because the hair has doubles. Make sure to go into Edit mode, select all, then go to Mesh > Clean Up > Merge by distance. And then if you still have the issue, go into edit mode in Cycles mode, press L over the dark spots, and then delete them. Hopefully this helps!

Adding: If this still doesn't work, you could always render one picture in EEVEE, one picture in Cycles, and then mask the EEVEE hair without black lines over the Cycles one in Photoshop/Gimp/Procreate

Im trying to start rendering my sims but my issue is with how my sims skin looks in the render, its still giving plastic. I am following your Google Doc slides, but I'm confused about what you mean by "apply the skin nodes on the body only."

do you mind explaining a little more?

Hi there! I apologize if that tutorial was confusing, as it's a little bit outdated now.

I highly recommend using the Shey Shaders Essentials skin shader, found here: https://shrenders.gumroad.com/l/shey_shaders_essentials?layout=profile

I'm pretty sure this is floating around some Telegram groups if you cannot afford to pay for it, but you didn't hear that from me.

The skin shader needs to be applied to the body mesh of your Sim—essentially, wherever your Sim has skin.

That means you have to go into Edit mode and press L over the eyeballs to select the eyeballs, then separate them from the body by hitting P, Separate Selection. Then separate the oral cavity and teeth by shift + clicking on the vertices.

This is because you don't want a skin texture (pores, etc) on the eyeballs or teeth.

To use the skin shader, you append the shader via Append, click the Object folder, and there should be a sphere or cube with the textures attached to it. In your Materials tab, note what the name of the Skin Shader is on the appended object. Click your body mesh and change the material to the Skin Shader by choosing its name from the material dropdown menu. Then, you can add your Sim's diffuse/texture map to the shader.

It could also be your lighting set up as well. If you aren't using enough lights or if you are using one big light, skin can look flat.

If your skin is too glossy looking, turn the roughness up, which you can see in that green box in the Shader Editor screenshot above.

Sims Blender Tutorial: Appending Clothes and Dressing Your Sim Model

The first installment in my long-requested series of Sim Blender tutorials is one of the most fundamental parts of creating a render: dressing your Sim. There are many tutorials out there on how to do this already, but this is my own process on how I dress my Sims in Blender. This is a full-length video detailing my process, and it is not sped up at all so that it is easier for you to follow along.

For this tutorial, you need the following: Blender: https://www.blender.org/download/ (I am using v4.4) Sims 4 Studio: https://sims4studio.com/ BlenderKit (Optional): https://www.blender.org/download/

If you have any questions, I'll do my best to help, but I am not a Blender Guru or anything like that. Most of what I know I learned via friends, internet tutorials, or trial and error (of which Blender requires a lot).